 
This page from the visual journal of Yale student Annette Lee is part of the exhibit now on display in the rotunda of The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.
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The artful results of soul searching by members of the Yale and New Haven communities are now on display in the large glass cases wrapping around the rotunda of The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at 333 Cedar St.
The exhibit features dozens of artists' visual journals that were produced in courses and professional development workshops -- all titled "Visual Journal: Imaging the Interior" and taught by Constance Pierce, a lecturer at the Divinity School. The exhibitors are Divinity students, and educators and artists from the Greater New Haven arts community. Among the latter are noted Connecticut artists Martha Savage, Yolanda Petrocelli and Jon Mascartolo, and calligrapher Annette Chittenden.
According to Pierce, who also curated the display, creating a "visual journal" brings together the healing qualities and spiritual renewal so often associated with journal writing and image making.
"Part soul retrieval and part personal narrative, the intimacy of the sketchbook allows archetypal imagery to surface from memory and imagination," she says. "Through explorations in watercolor, ink and monoprint unexpected images emerge and prompt the accompanying journal writing. ... The journal reveals our interior life and its healing connection to the sacred whole."
The participants in the courses and workshops enriched their understanding of sketchbooks and journals by studying special Yale collections including the historic and contemporary sketchbook archives of the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale Arts of the Book Collection, as well as special examples from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. After "paraphrasing" master artists' work, the students were better equipped to express their own voices in a meaningful way, says Pierce.
The Yale students and New Haven artists featured in the display engaged in separate but related work in their visual journals. The students in the Divinity School courses searched for new ways of pondering and expressing scriptural texts through visual imaging, while the educators in the professional development workshops sought to renew their creativity and germinate fresh approaches teaching art and literature.
"The aesthetic process itself, however, engendered a common language which can be easily discerned in the library display," says Pierce. "In many cases the qualities of compassion and inner healing are evident, and so too the connection to issues of arts, humanities and medicine."
Pierce also noted that the library's rotunda is "a perfect setting" for the exhibition as it is dedicated to the Yale surgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing, who was known to enjoy sketching in his diaries and personal medical journals.
The "Visual Journals" exhibit is sponsored by The Program for Humanites in Medicine, directed by Dr. Thomas Duffy. The idea for the show was generated by the Reverend Sally Bailey, who heads the program's Arts Subcommittee and is a noted pioneer in illuminating the links between the arts and healing.
The exhibition will run through April 28 and is open to the public during normal library hours. For information contact the office of Toby Appel at (203) 785-4354 or at www.med.yale.edu/library/about/exhibits.html. For information on the artists, contact constance.pierce@yale.edu.
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