Art Provides Hope and Healing for Patients, Visitors, Faculty and Staff

Napa, Calif. (January 29, 2002)–Can art help heal those who are critically ill, and add comfort for friends and family members?

The newly-opened University of California-San Francisco Comprehensive Cancer Center showcases the work of Napa Valley artist Gordon Huether, who was selected by UCSF with the intent that his art will contribute toward the healing process for patients, and their families and friends.

Huether recently completed six pieces for the Center’s art- and light-filled Meditation Room, modeled on the design motifs of Path, Wall, Garden, and Spirit. The six art pieces express hope and healing through abstract imagery of nature and water. The Meditation Room serves as a quiet space for the staff of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center as well as patients, families and friends.

Huether was selected because of his frequent record of designing successful and sensitive art for healing spaces. Huether also designed the meditation room for the San Diego Hospice. In addition, he has created art for ten other chapels and meditation rooms, including the University of California-San Diego, Methodist Hospital in Sacramento, and three facilities for Kaiser Permanente.

The Meditation Room of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center was designed in a collaborative process led by Cindy Perlis, Director of the Art for Recovery Program at UCSF; Scott Sypult, the UCSF Construction Manager; and Huether, who created the art pieces and assisted in the overall concept of the Meditation Room. The Meditation Room was entirely funded by the Mount Zion Health Fund.

The UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, located at the Mount Zion Campus, is the first Comprehensive Cancer Center in Northern California so designated by the National Cancer Institute.

Huether’s art includes a 4-ft laminated and painted glass and metal disk as the focus of the room; three multi-dimensional panels of silk-screened glass representing mountains, air, and water; a glass privacy screen at the room’s entrance etched with an abstracted water pattern; and a steel bookstand that holds a journal for visitors to sign or offer prayers, poems, or messages.

"I used the natural world, themes of nature, in the art to help patients and their families draw closer to the beauty around them," said Gordon Huether. "Glass has a translucency, like water or the sky. I used metal and steel like the elements of mountains and rocks, and you can see images that remind you of a sandy beach. All of these things can bring the greater world inside, and help people diffuse the power of their anger, or pain, or grief or whatever they’re feeling when they come into the hospital."

Art in the Meditation Room

Art and Recovery Director Cindy Perlis characterized the design parameters of the Meditation Room, located off the main lobby of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, in terms of Path, Wall, Garden, and Spirit. The Path is the journey into the meditation room. The Wall forms the sacred space. The Garden is expressed in a water feature and in the colorful art of Gordon Huether.

"The Spirit comes from visitors, who create their own spirit in the room, a reflection, a spiritual ambience that changes constantly," said Perlis.

"We spent a lot of time with Gordon to come up with the feel of the QuietMeditation Room," said Scott Sypult. "We wanted it to feel like it was an open space, yet at the same time protective, with the sense of being enclosed in a real comforting atmosphere."

The 180 sq. ft. room is long and narrow, with a high vaulted ceiling. The entrance is at one end, and Huether’s laminated and painted glass disk is suspended at the other end. The entrance is separated from the room by a partition screen of etched glass, also created by Gordon Huether. It protects the privacy of those inside, and allows visitors to see if someone is already there. It is etched with wave-like forms reminiscent of the sea washing up on a sandy beach. A spotlight on the etched partition casts shadow wave patterns on the limestone floor inside.

On the left of the entrance is the sign-in book mounted on the floor-to-ceiling patinated steel column designed by Huether. The sign-in book rests on a shelf curving out of the column, which Huether colored with a polished rusty brown surface, using welders’ torches and acids for texture, detail and highlights. Etched above the shelf are the words: "This room is dedicated to people of all faiths for meditation and quiet prayer."

Inside the room, three Meditation Chairs along the left wall face Huether’s triptych of silk-screened dichroic glass on the opposite wall. The three panels are made of layers of glass designed with a built-in optical illusion that gives them a 3-D quality.

The top glass panel is silk-screened with a half-tone image from nature, either mountains, clouds or water. The panel behind it is made of dichroic glass that is mirrored to provide a reflection of the person sitting in the Meditation Chair opposite. The colors in the dichroic glass shift with movement or viewing position. Lighting on the three panels changes four times daily, controlled by automatic dimmers.

The focal point of the Meditation Room is Huether’s glass disk. Huether encapsulated healing motifs in the disk–soothing blues, wave shapes, a circle, and a calm horizon line. The water motif suggests the flow of life, washing free of pain. Originally designed in a watercolor painting by Huether, the cool hues were reproduced by selecting wavy bands of blue, green, turquoise and white mouth-blown glass, which has natural color variations built in.

The surfaces of each piece of glass were carved to produce soft gradations. Kiln-firing the individual pieces with glass paints brought out highlights and additional detail. The various colors of glass were then laminated on a single backing of clear glass to match Huether’s watercolor.

A patinated steel lattice overlay was cut with a water jet to frame the liquid colors with warmer hues of iron and earthen minerals. The metal lattice was laminated to the surface of the glass composition after it was fused together. Where the metal was cut away, the glowing glass colors are revealed and defined. The finished piece is suspended in a round steel frame at the center of the meditation room, and is lit from behind by shaped neon.

"Gordon Huether’s artistic sensibility, his spirituality, his sensitivity towards the population that comes to this hospital are very poignant," said Perlis. "The beauty, skill, and talent in his work are remarkable. As an artist, Gordon was able to connect with our vision."

Main Entry Doors and Obelisk

Huether designed two sets of automatic doors at the main entrance of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center with rows of glass prisms laminated completely across their width. The beveled prisms catch sunlight and split it into all the colors of the rainbow. The doors become kinetic sculptures when they slide open or closed, the moving prisms showering sparkling light throughout the lobby.

The steel-framed glass Obelisk stands 22 feet above the street, rising as a beacon for the Center. Huether etched the panels of glass in the Obelisk with cloudlike patterns that suggest its use as a giant skylight, and beveled it with prisms like the ones on the entry doors.

A tent made of stretchable fabric attached to the base of the Obelisk spreads down to form a glowing funnel of light over the ceiling of the Family Waiting Room two stories below street level. During the day, the Obelisk acts as a giant skylight, pulling natural sunlight down into the Waiting Room through the fabric funnel.

About the Studio

The mission of Gordon Huether’s studio, founded in 1986 in the Napa Valley in Northern California, is to contribute to the emergence of glass as a fine art medium and to help evolve its use, as well as the use of metal and other non-traditional media, together with the traditional fine art palettes of painting and sculpture. The Napa studio has grown to be one of the largest and most innovative fine art workshops on the West Coast.

Gordon Huether’s studio is one of only a few that expands the intimate fine art medium of the painted canvas into large-scale formats including architectural installations.

Gordon Huether has won a number of important art commissions, including the San Bruno Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Station, near San Francisco International Airport; the Charles Schwab Building in San Francisco; the TIAA-CREF Regional Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Sacramento Midtown Parking Garage, Sacramento, Calif.

The studio is composed of principal Gordon Huether, who is a painter, glass artist and sculptor; various guest artists; and numerous expert craftspeople who are developing new techniques for working with glass and metal, and are establishing innovative creative contexts for its use. Mr. Huether and his associates apply the fine art sensibility and techniques usually found on canvas or in small art pieces to large-scale glass and metal installations and freestanding sculpture.

Gordon Huether has created art installations for Spago Restaurant in Beverly Hills, the Oracle Corporation headquarters in Silicon Valley, Stanford Biomedical Center in Palo Alto, Tendo Chapel in Japan, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and J Wine in Sonoma. Gordon Huether is the artist-in-residence at Artesa Winery in Napa.

The TIAA-CREF corporate headquarters in New York hosted Gordon Huether’s most recent show, featuring his large freestanding glass and steel sculptures, paintings and assemblages on canvas and board. He recently produced a solo exhibit of mixed media at the Andrea Schwartz Gallery in San Francisco.

The Napa studio has also transcribed large-scale architectural installations in glass for other artists, including Al Held at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, designed by architect Cesar Pelli; Gregory Kondos at the Sacramento Airport; and Rupert Garcia and Mildred Howard at the Elihu Harris State Building, Oakland, Calif.