Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005 | 8:14 a.m.
Ask Janna Bernheim Bernstein about cancer and she will tell you its story. She has lost five immediate family members to the disease. An in-law died from it and her own diagnosis came within a month of losing her mother to pancreatic cancer.
The pain, the anger, the fear and the difficulty in talking with family members it's all too familiar to this mother of three, who has detailed her cancer journey in her artwork.
To her, cancer is a reality. So when the artist and art teacher from Memphis, Tenn., learned that some of her artwork was rejected from exhibits at area clinics because it was too graphic, she was taken aback.
"It was terribly disturbing because both of the venues are medical venues," Bernstein said. "I thought, 'You're a care unit and you don't want to exhibit the reality of what you are doing?'
"I was told that the art should be upbeat and not all of mine is upbeat. I know they're uncomfortable to look at, but I thought the purpose of art is to make that which is uncomfortable, not necessarily comfortable, but put in the open."
Fearing further rejection, Bernstein was reluctant to enter her work in "Oncology On Canvas," an international exhibit about women's cancer journeys.
When she finally submitted a piece, an uplifting charcoal drawing titled "Healing," there was nothing graphic or disturbing about it. But had there been, it's likely that Bernstein's work would have been included anyway.
This exhibit does not hold back.
It was designed to create dialogue between cancer survivors, caregivers, families and health care professionals and welcomes all expressions of the cancer journey: the horror, the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness, the joy, the hope, the enlightenment.
Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis, wanted the exhibit to tell the whole story. To have one story without the other would be sanitizing the reality. "People have stories to tell," said Jackie Tschernia (pronounced chur-nee-ah), executive director for Comprehensive Cancer Centers Foundation, a new local organization co-sponsoring "Oncology On Canvas," which will be displayed Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Fashion Show mall.
"You tell those stories and that's what brings people together. You increase your strength. We wanted to go beyond this taboo, this stigma of cancer. There are people who will tell you that they've lost friends when they got their diagnosis."
Upon seeing the artwork for the first time, Bernstein, whose "Healing" won second place among U.S. entries, said she could easily relate.
"I stood there and said, 'Yes, yes.' It pretty much says what I went through."
The stories
Roughly 200 of the submitted works -- oil, charcoal, acrylic, watercolor and photography -- will be featured at in the east and north first-floor wings of the Fashion Show.
Some of the work is horrific. It's angry, graphic and will break your heart. Some images are uplifting and comforting. Some celebrate joy. It really depended on where the artist was on her journey.
But each piece, now matter how different than the one next to it, shared the common theme of a woman's strength in the face of this disease.
Images include hairless women sitting alone. One is titled "Por Que? (Why Me?)" Symbolic imagery includes butterflies and trees with deep roots.
There are abstract works of women's breasts and cancer cells, figurative images of women holding their breasts, examining or embracing them. There are landscapes. There are women's bodies portrayed as landscapes.
In some, the breast, a symbol of life, represents the fear of death. Breasts are completely omitted from some of the women, leaving a hole through their bodies. There are scars, depicted brutally, but then there is a flower growing from one of the scars.
"In Peace," an acrylic painting from Puerto Rico, depicts three friends standing together. Two of them have had masectomies. The other lost an arm to cancer. They are smiling and look happy. Enlightened, even.
"A lot of what people talked about their cancer journey is that life began at diagnosis," Eli Lilly spokesman Gregory Clarke said. "That's profound. They went through anger and fear. They also grabbed onto a higher level, higher understanding of life.
"Medicines only do so much. Attitude is the rest. Belief in survival, that's the other part of the equation. The art taps into the emotional and spiritual side of the journey."
Communicating
"Oncology On Canvas" was unveiled at the College of Art in London. It's been to Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis and at Eli Lilly headquarters in Indianapolis.
It has been to South Africa. There was a small display in Turkey.
In late September it will travel to Union Station in Washington, D.C., where Clarke anticipates it will reach tens of thousands of viewers.
A book of the work has been created and is being distributed to doctors, keeping in line with the exhibit's mission of creating a dialogue between health care professionals, patients and caregivers.
Marek Kania, a manager with the Oncology Global Brand Development team at Eli Lilly, said that often, in terms of medication, the patient becomes an object. An exhibit such as this, he said, "sheds a different light in a humanistic way."
Also, Kania said, it provides a release and a connection for women, families and medical professionals across the globe.
"Art is one common language across all different cultures," Kania said. "It doesn't matter where you are, you are affected in a very similar way."
Clarke said that prior to the exhibit, researchers didn't often get the chance to connect with patients.
For survivors, it provided an outlet for their emotions.
"Just pounding a pillow wasn't enough for me," Bernstein said, referring to her anger and difficulty communicating all of her feelings. "I could go in the bathroom and sit there and cry --that didn't get it for me.
"You make family members and other people very uncomfortable when you look at them and say, 'Why me?' They feel that they want to do something and really, there's nothing they can do so the 'Why Me' (a painting) was a part of that anger, having the opportunity to get that out and express that was very cathartic."
Bernstein said she hopes the exhibit will have a positive influence on the medical professionals it reaches.
"It's one of the hardest things about this whole project," Bernstein said. "You can't spend 35 afternoons receiving radiation in a white coat on a gurney with a voice talking from to you from another room so they won't be exposed to radiation. And not feel 'done to' as instead of a participant.
"It's something I wish that the doctors had a little clue about."
Tschernia, whose mother died of esophageal cancer in December 2001, said that because of its nature, the Fashion Show mall omitted some of the work from the exhibit. Still, she said, an exhibit such as this helps families, friends and caregivers understand what cancer patients and survivors are going through.
Also, Tschernia said, "It's very important for people to realize that they're not alone. I have patients who live alone and have no one to help them."
For Bernstein, who says she's grateful that her cancer was only stage one and removed by a lumpectomy, rather than masectomy, the thought of it returning can sometimes consume her.
"What I have to keep reminding myself that there aren't any guarantees," Bernstein said. "We were never really promised 'X' number of years so we have to be thankful for what we have. It changes when you really get that this is no dress rehearsal.
"It gets to the best of us, regardless of the number of times we say, 'I'm going to keep my chin up.' "
Her artwork has changed in that she now envisions herself healed. Her charcoal work "Healed" is an abstract image with reference to a bird. It alludes to the human and spiritual.
"Is it human? Is it spirit? I wanted those questions to be there," she said. "The paper is torn and stitched together, it's mended. It's healing.
"Can if fly? Is it fully prepared? I wanted that ambiguity there."
Referring to the other art in the exhibit, she said, "I think there's hope in a lot of those images. What you see from a lot of these women is the fact that they survived.
"It's not easy. It's doable. Even with all the pain, there is hope."
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