SCANS TO SCULPTURE

As a former registered nurse, Mary Giehl explores themes in her art that reflect her experiences working with patients. She communicates signs of darkness and confinement in her textile installations, yet she manages to harmonize these aspects with beautiful materials to achieve balance in her outcome.

Similarly, in her outreach project as the Carolinas HealthCare Artist-in-Residence, she merges the medical field with her artistic production. Through collaborating with the staff at Carolinas Medical Center, in Pineville, Giehl and staff participants will choose interesting scans to serve as bases for a final product to be installed in CMC-Pineville.

From each scan, CMC staff will convert the 2-D images into 3-D sculptures using a process of needle felting dyed wool roving. Giehl says “there is a beauty in the scans, especially when color has been added to them.” Although the final piece will appear abstracted from the prior image, each work will convey the inspiration of the original scan.

Giehl’s ability to create beauty from an object representative of a patient’s pain may be read as something of an aesthetic cure. Her ultimate goal is to educate the viewer and stimulate intellectual discourse on the relationship between art and medicine, as it relates to humanity.

>> Meet Mary Giehl on Friday, January 27 from 6 to 9 PM during a free Opening Reception.