Art and Healing: A Gallery A3 Art Forum
Rhea Banker, View Along Tunulliarfik, photograph. Photo: c/o Gallery A3
Gallery A3 will offer a free, online art forum on Thursday, December 18 at 7:30 p.m. The forum will bring together in conversation, artists from the Gallery A3 collective who displayed their work at Cooley Dickinson Hospital as part of the hospital’s Art and and Healing Program. The forum is free and open to all. Registration is required.
As part of Cooley Dickinson’s Art and Healing Program, eleven artists from Gallery A3 exhibited their work in the hospital’s North Gallery. Beginning and ending 2025, six artists exhibited work during January and February, while the other five had work on display in November and December.
The forum presents a conversation with Rhea Banker about the Art and Healing Program at Cooley Dickinson Hospital and also looks at her own work as a photographer. We will also see one image by each of the eleven artists who participated in the exhibits and invite them to say what it meant for them to show their art in a hospital setting.
Banker, who manages the Art and Healing Program at Cooley Dickinson, explains that displaying rotations of local art work in the hospital comes from a strong conviction that art can be an important part of people’s healing process. “It can be so scary, as you all know, coming to the hospital, so to have some things of beauty on the walls just brightens up a part of each day,” Banker says. This includes patients, their families, and, she emphasizes, hospital staff. “I’ve heard from nurses, doctors, technicians, maintenance people. They can’t wait to see what new work comes in.”
Banker usually coordinates exhibits in the hospital for individual artists or for two-person shows, but was excited to display works by a group of artists from Gallery A3. “It’s more challenging – as you know – to get a group together, but it’s such a varied look and it creates more dialogue among the patients in the hospital.”
Working with different media, subject matter, and styles, the eleven artists from A3 offer a lively variety. Paula Hite, Evelyn Pye, Rochelle Shicoff, Diane Steingart, and Janet W. Winston are exhibiting in November/December. At the beginning of 2025, in January/February, Marianne Connolly, Laura Holland, Karen Iglehart, John Krifka, Nancy Meagher, and Larry Rankin displayed their work.
About Rhea Banker
Rhea Banker is a photographer and award-winning book designer. After living and working in New York City for 30 years, she now makes her base in northwestern Massachusetts. Much of her work is inspired by journeys to far rocky edges of the world, including Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Greenland, and Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego. Her abstract studies of patterns within the Earth’s ancient surfaces have been exhibited in a variety of museums, galleries, and cultural centers, including locations in Copenhagen, Denmark; Edinburgh, Scotland; Scotland’s Outer Hebrides; New York, New York; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and several museums in Greenland.
Her most recent work is focused on explorations along Greenland’s west coast over the last five years. These images are responses to the deep connections she experiences between stone, sea, and ice as we witness a new epoch in the life of our fragile planet. She has also done site-specific work and has permanent installations for the Stornoway Airport, Isle of Lewis; Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, New York; and the University of Pennsylvania Berks Campus, Pennsylvania.
About Gallery A3
Gallery A3 is a fine art gallery in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts. Members of the artist-run cooperative include painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, plus mixed media artists. It is supported in part by grants from the Amherst Cultural Council and the Pelham Cultural Council, local agencies, which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
Gallery A3 was founded in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. A group of local artists believed art to be essential to the health and healing of a community and began the gallery as a place to share ideas and artistic support. Since that time, the gallery has been home to over 60 artists and is now celebrating 23 years of monthly shows with monthly openings and forums, all free and open to the public, and an annual juried show that supports local and regional artists.
Gallery A3 is located 28 Amity Street, 1D. Gallery hours are 2 p.m- 7 p.m., Thursday – Sunday. More information at www.gallerya3.com