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Marsha Connell Studio

Marsha Connell Studio

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Jewish Community Free Clinic in Santa Rosa brightens patients’ visits with art

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by Marsha Connell in Art, Healing art, Oils, Painting

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art, California, colorist, en plein air, Jewish Community Free Clinic, landscapes, Marsha Connell, nature, oils, painterly, paintings, Sonoma county

Jewish Community Free Clinic in Santa Rosa brightens patients’ visits with art (More photos online here)

CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | May 22, 2016, 6:07PM

Can art heal?

Champions of what’s been called a miracle of a Santa Rosa health clinic can’t prove that the fine and vivid pieces of framed beauty that adorn the walls help to make the low-income patients better.

But good luck persuading them that it doesn’t.

“Art lifts the spirit of this place,” said Donna Waldman, director and co-founder of the Jewish Community Free Clinic on Montgomery Drive.

The operation runs on a shoestring — its budget is less than $300,000 a year — and it relies on the volunteer labor of doctors, nurses, translators and other staffers. Patients, a good many of them immigrants without health insurance, are charged nothing for the care they receive.

Given the austere nature of the mission, someone walking in the door might expect the waiting and reception areas, the halls and the exam rooms to be clinical and plain.

But for the donations by acclaimed Sonoma County artists Marsha Connell and Sally Baker, they would be.

It’s not coincidental that Connell, the landscape and abstract artist who chairs the county’s ArtTrails open-studio program, is married to Dr. Jerry Connell. The retired family doctor was an early volunteer medical director with the 15-year-old clinic.

Said his wife the artist, “I was always wishing I could do something for the clinic.”

Marsha Connell with one of her oil paintings, Mallows and More—Pepperwood Preserve, donated to Jewish Community Free Clinic.She found that something when she perceived that the walls pleaded for art. Several of the 15 or so pieces Connell contributed are lavish landscapes of Sonoma County scenes.

The total effect is an environment far more inviting and calming than anyone would reasonably anticipate upon entering a free health clinic.

“Our medical offices should look exactly like any other medical offices,” Waldman said.

It helps that the building on Montgomery Drive, just west of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, is not some beggarly space, but the smartly designed and well maintained former home of a prosthetics practice.

The clinic operated within a smaller location in Rohnert Park when the owners of the Montgomery Drive building did something grand two and a half years ago: they donated it for the benefit of people without health insurance or the ability to pay for health care.

“This is more than double what we had,” Waldman said of the space.
The Jewish Community Free Clinic is open about 25 hours a week, and its volunteers see between 1,500 and 2,000 patients a year. That’s 500 to 1,000 fewer patients than eight and nine years ago, when the recession was in force and the federal Affordable Care Act wasn’t yet enacted and offering coverage to the uninsured.

That law “has absolutely, positively helped many of our clients,” Waldman said. Yet, the clinic’s safety-net services continue to be essential to people who remain without health insurance, or who come down with a medical issue and don’t have a doctor to turn to.

Many impoverished people also look to the clinic for vaccines, prescription medications other than painkillers, pre-employment physicals and women’s health services. People who come in with chronic illnesses are referred to one of the county’s low-cost community health centers.

Though no one is charged for the care received at the Montgomery Drive clinic, Waldman said it often happens that grateful former patients will send in donations when they’re able to. The other operating funds come from philanthropic gifts and fundraisers.

Giving Tree Final FilledArtist Connell is completing a large, colorful giving-tree painting that will be placed prominently at the clinic and will feature ceramic leaves, doves and poppies bearing the names of donors. The ceramics are being made by artist Leslie Gattmann of Sebastopol.

Connell said the model for the purple-hued tree in the painting is a great oak that stands near her Santa Rosa home and that has proven to be healing to her.
“We want to make this clinic a healing place,” she said, “and art is very healing.”

Sales of her giving-tree painting’s ceramic accoutrements will generate $90,000 for the Jewish Community Free Clinic. Once completed and hung, the tree painting and its personalized leaves, doves and poppies will indefinitely beautify a clinic wall.

Leslie Gattmann cutting models for Giving Tree A wine-and-food benefit on June 5, 5-8pm at Congregation Shomrei Torah on Bennett Valley Road will honor Connell and Gattmann for their creative contributions to the mission and raise additional dollars to sustain it. You can sign up for the benefit evening here. http://jewishfreeclinic.org/upcoming-events/

Director Waldman said that ideally, the day will come when everyone is provided quality health care and the little miracle of a clinic will no longer be necessary. She added, “As long as we’re needed, we’re going to be here.”

And as long as the clinic exists, an abundance of art will surely be there to help patients feel welcomed and honored and, who knows, maybe even feel better.

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Landscape Painting at Pepperwood Preserve. May 15

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Marsha Connell in Art, Art workshops, Drawing, En plein air, Landscape, Painting, Pepperwood Preserve, Sonoma county, Watercolor, Workshops

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abstract sensibility, art, brushstrokes, California, colorist, demonstrate, en plein air, Expressionism, Impressionism, joy, landscapes, Marsha Connell, nature, observation, oils, painterly, painters, paintings, Pepperwood Preserve, Realism, Sonoma county, voice, watercolor, weekends, wildflowers, workshop

There are just a few spots left. Sign up by Thursday May 12 noon!
Landscape Painting: Observation and Expression. Sunday, May 15, 9am – 3pm
Only $45 per participant ($40 for members)!
Ages 13+
Explore plein air painting with me! Deepen your observational skills and express your responses to Pepperwood’s verdant and blossoming spring landscape. The continuing rains have gifted us with wildflower joy this year!
Beginning painters: learn basics of working in the field. Experienced painters: expand your repertoire with elements of realism, impressionism, expressionism, with support for finding your own voice. Demonstrations in oil but you may use any media.Marsha Connell-The Warmth of Autumn, o/c, 24 x 24", 2010

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This week! Empire College Exhibit Reception

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Marsha Connell in Art, Empire College, En plein air, Exhibits, Landscape, Oils, Painting, Uncategorized, Watercolor

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art, California, Coastal, colorist, en plein air, gallery, landscapes, Marsha Connell, nature, oils, painterly, paintings, Sonoma county, watercolor

Empire College Exhibit May 2016Empire College Reception. May 12

Please join me and other Sonoma County Artists, most from our Northeast Santa Rosa Artists group at a reception for a spring exhibit at Empire College
(You can find my 8 paintings of waterways and hillsides next to the Law Library)

Thursday, May 12.
Enjoy Appetizers and Beverages 4 to 7 pm

Empire College
3035 Cleveland Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95403

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STEM to STEAM

03 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by Marsha Connell in Art, Art workshops, Drawing, En plein air, Landscape, Lecture, Painting, Pepperwood Preserve, sketching, Workshops

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art, artists, California, class, collaboration, drawing, journaling, landscapes, Marsha Connell, Mt. St. Helena, naturalist, nature, observation, paintings, Pepperwood Preserve, science, Sonoma county, STEAM

Go left to science, right for art

By Sandi Funke, Education Director

Posted on http://www.pepperwoodpreserve.org/2016/03/29/go-left-to-science-right-for-art/

March 29, 2016 Categories: Blog, Education 1

When I was a student in high school back in the *throat-clearing* 1980’s, our fully enclosed Midwestern high school had “wings.” All of the humanities and language classes were upstairs. Downstairs to the left there was a long winding hallway which housed the science classrooms. These halls always smelled a little funky and to me, they represented hands-on, relevant learning. Way at the other end of school were the hallways where the visual arts classes happened. I often craned my neck looking at the desktop easels to get a glimpse of what those classes were working on. I have always LOVED to draw, but in high school, drawing and painting weren’t “college prep” classes so I didn’t take many of them. I took so many science classes however, that they added up to 6 years of high school science.

What if things had been different?

IMG_8070
STEM represents the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. STEM seeks to integrate these subjects while focusing on solving real-world problems in education and research. The STEM to STEAM movement, led by the Rhode Island School of Design, adds “Art and Design to the national agenda of STEM education and research in America. STEM + Art = STEAM”. The objective is to “foster the true innovation that comes with combining the mind of a scientist or technologist with that of an artist or designer.”

How would our world be different if artists and art were regularly included in scientific endeavors?

STEAM in our Own Backyard
Last year, Sonoma State University took the creative step of integrating authentic natural sounds with music and dance. With training from nationally known bioacoustics expert Dr. Bernie Krause, students from SSU recorded a diversity of sounds in the field at SSU’s Fairfield Osborne and Galbreath Wildlands Preserves. The recordings were given to composer Jesse Olsen Bay, who created an original composition. Choreographers Christine Cali and Kristen Daley and dance students used the original score to explore the sounds and create a dance performance. The collaboration was shared with the public last fall. Check it out here.

Art and Science Merge at Pepperwood
Collaboration is also central to the relationship between Santa Rosa Junior College visual artist and instructor Marsha Connell and biology instructor Shawn Brumbaugh. Marsha and Shawn discovered their common interests through co-teaching the Natural History of Pepperwood course, which certifies participants as UC California Naturalists. This course, which served as the pilot for the now state-wide program, emphasizes sketching, nature journaling, and practicing deep observation as fundamental skills for naturalists of all experience levels.

Marsha and Shawn will be presenting a Discover Nature lecture entitled The Synergy of Art and Science – Perspectives of Pepperwood on April 1st, 2016. Through lush slides of artistic renderings of the environment and its inhabitants, they will discuss the relationship between art and science including the historical importance of sketching in documenting scientific inquiry. Click here for more info on the lecture.

Later in the season, you can deepen your own observational skills and express your responses to Pepperwood’s verdant and blossoming spring landscape through a Landscape Painting class with Marsha on May 15th, 2016. Click here to learn more about this class.

Poppy Fields at Pepperwood. 2008 o/c

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Marsha Connell Studio

  • About
  • Contact and Social Media
  • Gallery Five – Seasonal Paintings, A Pepperwood Sonata
  • Gallery Four – Artist in Residence at Pepperwood Preserve
  • Gallery One – Lakes and Gardens
  • Gallery Seven – Pastel Landscape and Still Life
  • Gallery Six – A Murder of Crows
  • Gallery Three – Hats on Broadway
  • MEET SONOMA COUNTY ARTIST MARSHA CONNELL by Satri Pencak
  • Gallery Two – Pond in Bloom
  • Art Workshops

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Marsha Connell Studio

Marsha Connell Studio

Articles

  • Gathering Clouds Magazine past Issue #2 (3) "Color & Mood" Marsha Connell and others. . .”My paintings are a dance in color, a moving meditation in the landscape,” pages 4-9.

Artist Website

  • Sally Baker

Blogroll

  • WordPress.com
  • WordPress.org

Books

  • A Murder of Crows: Three Artists, Three Objects, Three Images Catalog of an exhibit by Sally Baker, Marsha Connell, Micah Schwaberow. This exhibit has traveled and is available to more venues! *Murder is the collective noun used to describe a group of crows.

Collections

  • Art Talk / The Doyle Collection / Santa Rosa Junior College Libraries Art Talk captures the inspirations and experiences of artists showcased in The Doyle Collection. Click on each artwork to see the full set of videos for each artist.
  • The Doyle Collection, Santa Rosa Junior College Library I am honored to have three paintings included in this permanent collection: “Dissolve – Three Tree Hill”, “Salmon Barn”, and “Dusk at Duncan’s Landing”. They can be viewed on the 4th floor of the Doyle Library.

Fundraising website

  • Amy's Healing Journey: A Fund- and Spirit- Raiser Fundraising website for Amy Connell

My Art Website

  • Marsha Connell Fine Art Expressive Landscape Paintings, Dream Vessels Collages, Workshops

Nature Preserve

  • Pepperwood Preserve

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