Patients visiting the emergency department at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) will see a calming vista after a Kwantlen Polytechnic University grad transforms the space.
Jacob Strohan, a KPU instructional associate and graduate, has won the 2022 PENN IDEA Art Award, a $5,000 prize that links visual art with health care. Strohan’s winning proposal will see his photographic artwork installed on the windows of the emergency department waiting rooms at VGH this summer.
“It is very fulfilling to have my proposal selected for this project,” says Strohan. “Having felt so supported by my peers, professors and the many individuals who I have met through this process, I am motivated to continue to create work that explores how art can be beneficial to the well-being of its viewers.”
Strohan graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in 2021, majoring in visual arts, and today is an auxiliary instructional associate in KPU’s Fine Arts department. His panoramic artwork will occupy two sets of four-window panels—one of a B.C. mountain range, the other reflecting that same mountain range in a lake.
“My intensions for this proposal were to create a series of images that could serve as a place for the eyes to rest, and upon discovery, calm the viewer and allow them to feel enveloped and lost in the work.”
KPU alumna Roxanne Charles and artist Svava Tergesen were also finalists for the 2022 award.
Created in 2009 by Dr. Ian Penn and Dr. Sandy Penn Whitehouse, the PENN IDEA Art Award is open to students and postgraduate artists from fine arts degree granting institutions in the Lower Mainland. Over the past 11 years, one winning work has been placed in different areas of Vancouver health care facilities.
