The Art Of Healing
Children's Health Quilt
Location: DHMC Child Care Center
The "Health Quilt", made by children from the "Rainbow Room" classroom of DHMC's Childcare Center, was initially inspired from a day's discussion of "How It Feels To Be Sick". Each week Dartmouth undergrads (and Koop Institute ArtCare volunteers) Tom Kim and Katie McCarthy, teach the Rainbow Room's eighteen children health prevention lessons through the use of various arts activities.
Over the Fall and Winter Terms of '97/'98 Katie and Tom came up with the idea of having the children express their thoughts about "being healthy" and "being sick" by letting them paint pictures about the topics that they had been discussing. While exploring ways to make the painted images into a permanent display for the children to enjoy, Tom, Katie and I thought that if the children painted on raw canvas, Katie and Tom could eventually sew all the squares together into a "quilt". That way it could be displayed as a wall hanging in their classroom for everyone to enjoy.
The children that participated in the project are between the ages of three and five. So, most of the paintings might look a bit abstract to an adult viewer. But I guarantee, when any child is asked about his or her square, each knows exactly what message he or she was describing about health! On the day that Dr. Koop arrived to help dedicate the quilt, all the children were very eager to point out each square and explain the meaning behind the array of colors, shapes and textures they had created.
The images you see here are samples from the quilt prototype -- the smaller trial paintings that were made when the project was still in the beginning stages of development. The real quilt is much bigger. It is beautifully stiched together with colorful boarders and embossed hand prints of each child who participated in the project.
Many thanks to Katie McCarthy, Tom Kim (and Yuhka Muira -- who helped during Fall Term)