Artists from Gallery A3 Exhibit at Cooley Dickinson Hospital
 
As part of the Art and Healing Program sponsored by The Friends of Cooley Dickinson, six artists from the local cooperative Gallery A3 will exhibit their work in the hospital’s North Gallery during January and February. Ten percent of the artists’ sales benefits programs and services at the hospital and its satellite health care facilities, such as the renovation of the emergency department and the new pediatric wing.
 
Rhea Banker, who manages the Art and Healing Program at Cooley Dickinson, explains that the ongoing project of displaying rotations of local art work in the hospital comes from a strong conviction that art can be an important part of people’s healing process. “It can be so scary, as you all know, coming to the hospital, so to have some things of beauty on the walls of the hospital just brightens up a part of each day,” Banker says. This includes patients and their families, and, she emphasizes, also the staff. “I've heard from nurses, doctors, technicians, maintenance people. They can’t wait to see what new work comes in when we change the exhibit. And I love for the artists to be part of this, to hear from the people who are actually in the environment, expressing so much gratitude and joy from seeing the art.”
 
Banker usually coordinates exhibits for individual artists or for two-person shows, but is excited to display works by a six-person group from Gallery A3. “It's more challenging – as you know – to get a group together, but it's such a varied look and it creates more dialogue among the patients in the hospital.”
 
The six artists from A3 offer variety that may encourage dialogue, working in different media, subject matter, and style. Marianne Connolly will exhibit photocollages, hand-cut and pasted works from analog photographs; Laura Holland will show color photographs rooted in cycles of nature; Karen Iglehart will display abstract oil paintings on canvas, from her Allowing Space series; John Krifka will exhibit paintings; Nancy Meagher will display life-sized pencil drawings of mid-late 1800’s local millworkers; and Larry Rankin will show  black and white prints of local scenes and travel photographs spanning the past 25 years.

In November and December 2025, a second group of artists from Gallery A3 will exhibit their work at the North Gallery.