{"id":287682,"date":"2017-12-18T12:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T17:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=287682"},"modified":"2017-12-21T13:40:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T18:40:47","slug":"introduction-painting-community-engagement-287682","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/introduction-painting-community-engagement-287682\/","title":{"rendered":"Introductory Painting course turns Rochester waiting rooms into \u2018welcome rooms\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inside the Anthony L. Jordan Health Center at Brown Square, in the heart of a Rochester neighborhood marked by its high rate of poverty, lives a group of polychromatic paintings created specifically for the center\u2019s space and patients by students in an introductory painting class taught in spring 2017 at the University of Rochester.<\/p>\n

The works, all a permanent donation to the center, adorn waiting rooms, patient rooms, and hallways. Hanging above the check-in counters, the first stop for patients, a majority of whom are refugees, are a series of small paintings depicting flags of countries from around the world, and the word \u201cwelcome,\u201d in the various languages. They\u2019re the work of Prerna Vatsa \u201920, a sophomore from Singapore who is studying biochemistry and studio art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done projects before, where I give away my paintings to families, but this was different,\u201d says Vatsa. \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing it for a place like the Anthony Jordan Center, you can see a transformation of the space.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Students in senior lecturer Heather Layton’s introductory painting class created paintings in the Sage Art Center for the Anthony Jordan Center on Holland Street. (University of Rochester photo\/J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Community<\/a>Heather Layton, the instructor, has made community engagement a centerpiece of her introductory painting course. \u201cI want our students to learn how to be engaged in a community. I want to create opportunities for them to develop meaningful relationships with people from cultures other their own,” she says. The students are \u201clearning about privilege, class, and culture and what it means to be here at the University within the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

A senior lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History, Layton had students in the advanced painting class in 2015 work with University-affiliated Highland Family Medicine<\/a> and the local nonprofit Refugees Helping Refugees<\/a> to create a journal, Painting for Health<\/a>, which is distributed to patients as a way of sharing information about personal wellness through visual means.<\/p>\n