University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak Community College and Colorado College faculty join with a community artist to bridge the worlds of art and medicine in Touches: Healing Art – a mixed media art exhibition at the PPCC Downtown Studio Art Gallery, 100 W. Pikes Peak. The exhibit explores the powerful bond between the creative process and the healing phenomenon. 
  
Touches: Healing Art
Opening reception Friday, October 23, from 5 to 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talks with the Artists – week of November 16
Exhibit on display through Friday, November 27
Free and Open to the Public

Mango Fan Django, a Gypsy jazz band playing swing classics, French ballads, waltzes, calypso and some reggae too, will perform live at the reception. The reception is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be provided. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. For more information, call 502-4040.

Exhibiting Artists
Ann Sullivan-McKean, Sculptor, chair of the PPCC Art Department
Jean Gumpper, Woodblock Artist/Printmaker, Colorado College Art Department
Ceil Horowitz, Community Artist and Painter
Taffy Mulliken, Watercolorist, Dean of the PPCC Communications, Humanities & Technical Studies Division
Lea Gaydos, Art & Healthcare Expert, Associate Professor & Undergraduate Department Chair, Beth-El College of Nursing and Health Sciences, UCCS

About the Exhibit
This exhibit is a bridging of health and creative expression through the visual arts. The featured artwork explores, demonstrates and expresses the vital relationship between art and healing, showcasing four studio artists for whom the “healing relationship” has played a role in their personal journey as artists along with the gem-like works and studies of a healthcare expert in the field. Each of the participants emerges from divergent life experiences and is affiliated with different learning institutions.

• Ceil Horowitz has struggled with her own debilitating illness and through it, found her voice as a painter.
   
• Jean Gumpper is a master Print Maker at the Colorado College Art Department, dedicated to the Liberal Arts ideals of collaboration and interdisciplinary discovery.
   
• Ann Sullivan-McKean’s interest in the subject originates from her previous career in the field of nursing along with her  personal experiences and their impacts on her own creative process.
   
• Taffy Mulliken has witnessed the struggle for health and survival among her friends and has used her watercolors to document their individual battles.
   
• Lea Gaydos has long been dedicated to the power of Art as a healing force. She has published extensively on the subject and considers visual art to be academic expression, exploration and documentation of that POWER.

Touches: Healing Art presents the unique coming together of working and teaching Studio Artists with health professionals and educators. UCCS’s Beth-El College is a longtime promoter of the connection between these two worlds. That connection continues to flourish under the leadership of Dean Dr. Nancy Smith. Pikes Peak Community College’s Art Department has been an advocate for community concerns and well-being since its beginnings. Under the leadership of Dean Taffy Mulliken the dedication strengthens and expands. This exhibit showcases a dynamic natural evolution in the bond between us. “Collaboration and interdisciplinary explorations are the key to learning, future and to health,” --Lea Gaydos, UCCS Chair of Nursing. Beth-El College of Nursing & Health Sciences at UCCS and Pikes Peak Community College Student Nursing Program have a longstanding relationship of shared resources & articulation agreements.