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The ubiquitous white sterile environment that has long been equated with healthcare settings is gradually changing its image to be more reflective of a home, as opposed to an institution. This evolution and revolution of the healthcare industry is shaping the way new facilities are being designed and furnished. Change is occurring as a direct result of education. The information base shared by healthcare executives, architects, and designers is expanding. These professionals are now learning that the built environment has a tremendous effect on the well-being of a patient. Due to the industry's recent readiness to blend alternative therapies, spirituality, and prayer, there is a strong hunger for products that can accelerate the relationship between patient, technology, medicine, and spirit. Manufacturers of healthcare products have recognized the need for innovative ideas to facilitate the transformation of a cold institution into a warm and friendly healing environment. Impressions of Light, designed by artist Vara Kamin, Studio Cati, Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of the products bringing new art and scope to the healthcare environment. Kamin's Impressions of Light provides facility planners, designers, and architects with an affordable way to transform high stress healthcare environments into more relaxing spaces. Kamin is motivated by the quest for self understanding and serenity. She wears the hat of both author and artist and is a former public health nurse and graduate of Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing in Boston (1972). She has combined her background in healing, meditative practices, and art to create modern impressionistic paintings that encourage equanimity. "I listen, I see color, and I hear music. Every painting has a different tempo. The music that I play echoes inside me when I paint. As a result there was something that seemed to emanate from the work that people began to recognize," says Kamin. Her Impressions of Light ceiling panels change the energy of spaces by altering the intensity of light and interjecting color therapy in the form of easy-to-look-at, multi-layered paintings that allow the viewer an inward journey of peace and imagination. "When you have an image that is interpretive it makes the imagination work. When your imagination is actively engaged you stimulate different aspects of your body's chemistry. That healthy body chemistry invites the relaxation response," explains Kamin. If you have a moment where something engages your eye it takes you away from what's physically going on." Without the costly problems associated with custom installations, these ceiling panels are designed to be installed into typical 2ft. by 4ft. florescent fixtures, and they replace the plastic ceiling panels used to cover common fluorescent lights. They have been tested to provide the appropriate amount of light diffusion and color saturation into a space. Vara Kamin's Impressions of Light ceiling panels are high-quality, limited edition digital reproductions of her original acrylic paintings that were created with the aid of new technology from 3M, St. Paul, Minnesota. The body of work represented by Vara Kamin's Impressions of Light was created from 1996 to 1999. The panels are offered in 12 palette selections that provide a variety of intentional moods for different kinds of therapeutic environments. Properly placed, they have the ability to assist in inducing the relaxation response in dental, healthcare and clinical environments such as physical therapy, imaging, OB/GYN, dialysis, oncology, pre- and post-operative holding areas, and blood transfusion rooms. They are also helpful in wellness areas like massage, acupuncture, and mental health clinics. Kamin does not make any health claims, but simply expresses that the panels provide a context that invites the possibility and potential for healing.
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