Changing Images, Changing Lives

As Towaco resident Arlene Sulliavn sat in the Saint Joseph's Children's Hospital with her infant son over 14 years ago, staring at the mass of wires against the dull hospital walls and listening to the hum of machinery and its inexplicable beeping, she knew she had to do something or we was going to go mad.

For the two months she stayed in the hospital with her son, she began to decorate the walls around her. As an artist, the painting came naturally, and the walls began to change from sterilized cinder block to a child's dream. The nurses were so impressed by her work that they threatened to move her from room to room throughout the hospital, decorating the rooms and hallways.

"You never know where something is going to lead," said Sullivan. Because soon enough, she joined with hospitals, shelters, nursing homes, schools and orphanages to do just that.

Her nonprofit, the Changing Images Art Foundation, came to life in 1997. The project started as a thank-you for her son's good health. He had broken a blood vessel in his head which, in some infants, can lead to permanent brain damage or paralysis.

Most people, she said, judge a hospital by its decorations in the lobby. But once patients and their families passes those doors, it can be a struggle for some to cope with the bland hospital setting. And that's where her murals come in.

Sullivan creates the outlines for murals, then charges volunteers or the patients, students and seniors themselves to paint the works. Afterward, she gives them a professional touch-up and they are mounted in a suitable location in the facility.

"People don't notice their importance until they're in the hospital," she said.

And unlike most art placement, Sullivan makes sure her murals are placed at a child's eye-level or, for senior citizens, at a wheelchair level, a facet of interior decorating that most overlook.

Though she began this undertaking with a partner in Georgia, the distance proved to be a challenge and she created Changing Images in 1997. She has worked with thousands of volunteers in some 500 facilities, and her work has made it as far as New Zealand,  the Cayman Islands, Australia, Russia, the Czech Republic and South Africa.

"It's a remarkable body of work," said Dan Grant, who is on the foundation's board of directors and helps drum up support and funds for projects.  

Grant is amazed at Sullivan's drive and has seen the returns firsthand. On a visit to the Morris Planes Regional Day School, a school for special needs students, he met a boy who, despite not being able to speak, pointed at a section of one of the murals he had helped with and smiled.

"It's very rewarding," he said.

For Sullivan, these projects, made from non-toxic, latex-free paints, are a clear way that people can give back to their communities. Though some facilities request finished murals, many ask for unfinished paintings that the those in the facility can work on.

"If you can give them a paintbrush to let them change their environment, why wouldn't you?" Sullivan said. "You don't really need to be talented. You just need to pick up a brush."

"Arlene is great," said Elaine Goodman, the principal of Morris Planes Regional Day School. The school currently works with 65 students, from ages two through 21, who have a wide variety of disabilities. Over the past few years, many of the learning communities inside the school have seen Sullivan's paintbrush.

"The children are always excited to see the lobby when they walk in," Goodman said. Here Sullivan created a montage of animals that teachers use to work with students on counting and color differentiation.

From underwater, oceanic worlds to an upcoming butterfly room for the youngest learning communities, Sullivan has painted hallways, classrooms and ceilings. Parents and teachers have come in after school hours, paintbrushes in hand, and worked well into the night to create the murals adorning the school's walls.

 "She came in and transformed the school," Goodman said. "It's really wonderful."

The murals can completely change the atmosphere of a living situation, explained Sullivan. ""It just makes such a big difference." She recalled working on a project with a ward of Alzheimer's patients , and returning a year later to discover that they all remembered who she was.

But, like so many art projects, the foundation finds itself constantly constrained by finances. The foundation typically works with a budget of $25,000 a year for materials and other expenses.

"There are projects we'd like to do, people would like us to do, and we don't have the funds," Grant said.

Part of the organization's fundraising comes from a children's book Sullivan wrote, illustrated and published called The Journey of Hanna Heart, which relates to the idea of children being in an unfamiliar hospital setting.

The foundation has also teamed up with a number of corporations to work on murals, including Glaxo-Smith Kline, Johnson and Johnson and a number of other pharmaceutical companies. Companies send departments to work on murals as part of team-building exercises, and Johnson and Johnson commissioned Sullivan to create a children's book mural set in a pediatric ward.  Each page was turned into a three by four foot mural and hangs close to the ground.

"When the kids walk in the door, they're going to be inside a book," Sullivan said.

Sullivan has high hopes to expand the company even further. She has been trying to convince companies that end of the year parties could have both a company softball game and a mural painting. She wants to facilitate a mural chain letter, where a facility receives a finished and unfinished painting, which they paint and pass along to the next facility.  And she would like to create a traveling zoo mural set of exotic animals for children and patients who cannot get to a zoo themselves, with a matching coloring book to leave behind.

When Sullivan is visiting a facility and hears a family gasp as they turn the corner and see the murals, she knows she needs to keep her interactive projects going, not just for the students and patients, but for their families and the nurses, doctors and teachers who work with them.

"Why wouldn't you want them to have a good memory?" she said.

To learn more about Changing Images and ways to donate or volunteer, visit www.changingimages.org.