ART and MED

These pieces are some of Meyer’s favorites from his times as Artist-in-Residence at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Over 10 years he as curated 40 exhibits focusing on the bodies biosystems. He ties these exhibits to the school’s core curriculum to produce not just beautiful exhibits but informational ones. Ted has curated show by artists with such illness as, Cystic Fibrosis, brain cancer, Gaucher Disease, Pulmonary illness, migraines, Breast Cancer, Polio, facial blindness, Strokes, and more.

Meyer believes that art about illness has it’s own beauty and that this work would never have been imagined/created/conceived had these artists been healthy. That fact alone give it a powerful narrative not achieved by other artwork.

Artists: Ellen Cantor, Ayin Es, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Siobhan Hebron, Cathy Immordino, Rachael Jablo, Daniel Leighton, Krista Machovina, J. Fredric May, Bhanva Mehta, Ted Meyer, Dylan Mortimer, Kathy Nida, Alice Marie Perrouit, Jane Szabo, Susan Trachman, James T. Walker

For over a decade Ted Meyer had curated art shows focusing on artworks by patient-artists as a means of teaching future doctors and current medical workers about the lived experience of chronic pain and illness.

These patient-artists create work that depicts the myriad of ways their illnesses affect day-to-day living, physical health and mental well-being. Like all important art, patient artwork makes strong statements about the human condition. These works are personal in their creation yet universal in their scope.

Respected authors can write about their pains and illness and they are revered, yet all too often visual artist are met with disdain for their work or told it is just too graphic and not “couch worthy”. Writing about illness is one thing but confronting it visually seems to have more of an impact, and that is the point for all these artist