About a decade ago, Diane Brown, an art dealer and curator, was having some health problems and had to have a CT scan. She was scared to death, and the sterile atmosphere of the hospital didn't help.
Staring at the blank white ceiling, she conjured up a vision of a favorite Matthew Ritchie painting, envisioning the art to calm her nerves.
When visiting friends in the hospital, the ARTKABINETT collectors's social network often appreciates the ability of art to make sick folks feel better and less intimidated.
From that, Brown came up with the notion of putting art into hospital settings to help create an atmosphere that would put patients at ease. The non-profit organization she founded, and directs, is called RxArt.
The organization has worked with a lot of American contemporary artists. Ed Baynard, known for his watercolors that meld Eastern and modern art, and John Margolis have contributed works. A group of artists -- including underground comic-book artist R. Crumb -- collaborated on coloring books.
The New York-based organization is small. Its staff consists of two people -- Brown and Nicki Eicher Sebastian.
Sebastian is from York -- her dad, Ray Eicher, is well-known in town. If you've ever had anything to do with music, you probably know Ray, a great guitar and pedal steel player who has taught a generation of people how to wrestle music from planks of wood adorned with six strings at his base from Campbell's Music Service in Spry. (As a matter of full disclosure, I've known Ray for more years than either one of us cares to say.)
And while RxArt is happy with the artists it works with, it has always sought the great white whale of the modern art community -- Jeff Koons.
"We've worked with some major artists in the past," Sebastian said. "Jeff was the ultimate dream for us. We really wanted to work with Jeff."
Koons -- a Dover native -- is, it almost goes without saying, huge. His work is shown around the world.
His sculpture, "Hanging Heart," sold in 2007 for $23.6 million, then the most ever paid for a work by a living artist. He broke that record the following year when another work, "Balloon Flower," sold for $25.7 million.
His work regularly sells for multiples in the seven figures and is featured in some of the world's great art galleries. He is an institution.
It seemed daunting -- a small nonprofit dedicated to cheering up hospitals getting one of the leading figures in modern art to donate some work to its cause.
It turned out to be easier than they thought.
"We sent a proposal to Jeff and he went for it," Sebastian explained.
They were hoping for a work or two to lend a cheery atmosphere to a CT-scan room at Advocate Hope Children's Hospital in Chicago.
Instead, the results were stunning.
"He completely transformed the room," Sebastian said.
The stark white walls of the previously sterile room were painted pink, blue and yellow. A smaller version of "Hanging Heart" is suspended from the ceiling.
A painting called "Donkey" covers one wall. Koons' iconic "Balloon Dog" is attached to another wall. The CT-scan machine itself is covered with decals of Koons' "Monkeys," grinning cartoon simians.
It came out better than Sebastian expected. The artwork has a playful, cartoonish quality -- perfect for a children's hospital, she said.
Koons really threw himself into the work, Sebastian said. "He's going to make T-shirts for the kids," she said.
Koons did not take a fee for the work, Sebastian said, which was good. "Jeff's works go for much more than we could afford," she said.
And Koons had a connection with Chicago. He studied painting at the city's School of Art Institute in the '70s.
He also had a connection with RxArt -- one he was unaware of until he sat with Sebastian at a luncheon when the Chicago installation was unveiled.
She was kind of intimidated at first -- Koons is an international celebrity, at least in the art world.
She mentioned to him that she was also from York. They talked about York and Dover, Koons' hometown.
Sebastian mentioned she had her wedding at Lauxmont Farms, and Koons brightened up. He owns a farm nearby and spends a lot of time there.
They chatted about other things. But Sebastian just thought it was cool that here were two people, both from the same place and now living in New York, who collaborated to make something good happen in Chicago. It was strange.
For all of his success and international fame, she said, you could detect some York County in Koons, a down-to-earth quality.
"People talk about him as if he is some kind of enigma," she said. "But he had to come from someplace." And that someplace was here.
courtesy, Mike Argento,York Daily News
