2022 Arts and Humanities in Medicine Graduating Class
The Certificate, Arts & Humanities in Medicine, is the result of an inter-organizational working group from Northern Light/Eastern Maine Medical Center (NL/EMMC) and the University of Maine. This program, focused on the intersection of arts, humanities and medicine, seeks to bring together practitioners from many fields and disciplines to explore imaginative solutions to the issue of well being in the 21st century. The Institute of Medicine supports a graduate student for the program.
The 2022 Arts and Humanities in Medicine graduating class was the first year to finish each part of the Med Arts Program hatched by its founders Owen Smith, and Patrick Mcfarlane. This meant that the field study summer session produced multiple final projects at the intersection of Art and Medicine. They are on view at the Stewart Commons, until September 14, 2022.
This year’s graduates include Maddie Kimble, a recent University of Maine graduate, who is considering medical school. Her final project looks at Two-Eyed Seeing, reframing how to perceive the western and indignous cultures of Medicine, in consideration of place and audience.
Dr. Connie Admunson, a chiropractor in Seattle, is a PHD candidate in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington. Working with her extensive background in theater, she created a pilot study to evaluate the effectiveness of acting activities training on physicians and physicians-in-training’s satisfaction with telemedicine communication. This, now a mainstay of health care, is displayed as a short film.
James Winters, a iPHD candidate at the University of Maine, in the Intermedia program, has built an autoethnography called The Hat Story Project. This utilizes the hat as an entry point to understand a person’s story. His work stems from his experience of coping with death, and a person being more than their diagnosis.
Tanja Kunz is an artist and herbalist with a background in traditional healing. For her final project she is presenting a painting, Stellar Field 2 and an installation, Night, based on our relationship to stars. Tanja is a iPHD candidate at the University of Maine in Intermedia.
Augusta Sparks Farnum is a Multidisciplinary Artist, who graduated with her masters in Art in Medicine, as she was finishing her Med Arts certificate. She used the visual memos of her qualitative research project called “Here is the thing you need to know: weaving arts and medical education, to create photo chap books, which are on view.
Continuing on in the program is Barbara Mainguy, a filmmaker and therapist at the Wabanaki Health and Wellness center. Barbara’s installation centers around the work at “Project 142: Ecology of Being, Art and Medicine Community.”
We welcome our 22-23 cohort which includes physicians, aspiring medical students, teachers and interdisciplinary doctoral students.