Innovation
Tranformation
Healing
The PENN IDEA ART AWARD is a celebration of emerging artists, building visibility and support by providing a platform for artistic experimentation and critical discourse around the intersection of art and healing.
JACOB STROHAN
2022 PENN IDEA ART AWARD WINNER
A new work by Jacob has been installed on the windows of the Emergency Department Waiting Rooms at VGH
In my photographic practice, my primary intentions are to document local, contemporary landscapes that generate psychological responses in the viewer. With this proposal, my focus remains the same; I want to display a series of images in the Vancouver General Hospital that will enable the viewer to experience the quiet stillness that encompasses the familiar and quintessential BC landscapes depicted. The cool tones and static composition calm the viewer and allow a place for the eyes to rest from an environment that can often be sensorily overloading. The panoramic nature of these installations also accentuates the feelings they produce by physically enveloping the viewer. I believe that these images have the potential to enrich the sites they will be installed at-by allowing us to feel beyond what we can spatially comprehend, we remind ourselves of the beauty that exists and the beauty we have experienced.
Jacob Strohan
About the Award
Founded in 2009 by Dr. Ian Penn (BFA 2010) and Dr. Sandy Penn Whitehouse, the PENN IDEA Art Award was established to link the world of visual art with that of health care via a response by the recipients to site-specific needs at Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital and other health care facilities like GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. Initially awarded through Emily Carr University of Art and Design to an ECUAD student or alumnus, we are excited to announce that the award has now evolved to include students and post graduates from other Fine Art degree granting institutions in the Lower Mainland. Over the past eleven years, the winning work has been placed in different areas of our hospitals as part of the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation Art Collection.