EOU Art Professor Gifts Hospital Foundation with Artworks
Contact: Mardi Ford
Last March, an emergency visit to Grande Ronde Hospital by Kathelene Galloway saved her life and inspired her to give the gift of art in recognition of the doctors, nurses and medical staff at Grande Ronde Hospital. On Wednesday, March 12, the Eastern Oregon University art professor presents the Grande Ronde Hospital Foundation with two of her artworks from her Rupture series. The reception is from 3 pm to 4 pm at Grande Ronde Hospital, 900 Sunset Drive, in the Mt. Emily conference rooms. The public is invited to attend the event. The gift is Galloway’s way of giving back to the doctors and nurses who treated her with compassion and care and made her feel safe during her two day visit, 12 months ago.
Galloway’s understanding of the term “medical arts” was redefined through the experience, she says. “Medicine now seems to me to be a careful juxtaposition of concrete knowledge with the infinite variables of the organic,” Galloway says. “Like scientists, the nursing and medical staff practiced their techniques with precision and eloquence while as artificers they watched my condition closely and responded to subtle fluctuations within me.”
Though Galloway’s situation was “terribly frightening,” it became, at times, an enjoyable and interesting experience, she says. “It is clear these professionals were simply at work, doing the jobs for which they had been trained. But to that responsibility they brought a profound humanity. They reached out to me, then a stranger, in a compassionate way far beyond what I would call clinical. They must be doing this daily and I imagine that I am not alone in my gratitude.”
The Rupture series of drawings are the result of Galloway’s experience studying the land and fossil record of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, in Kimberly, Oregon.
Galloway is a La Grande resident and an associate professor of art at Eastern Oregon University. She received her B.F.A. Boise State University, Boise, ID and her M.F.A. from Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and is represented by Opus Six Gallery, in Eugene, Oregon and Indigo Gallery, in Joseph, Oregon.