Client: Children's Wisconsin Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

Overview

I was commissioned by Children’s Wisconsin to design their new NICU floor. The concept for the artwork was “local Wisconsin wildlife” and they had chosen a color palette of paints for the walls. Using this concept and color palette, I designed and illustrated a series of images with one animal for each section of the NICU wing: Bear, Bunnies, Ducks, Deer, Owl and Fox. This makes it easy for people to orient themselves. My signature animal family artwork is in every room, at every nurses station, and down all of the hallways. In addition, I designed a huge installation piece that is hung right when the elevator doors open on the NICU floor, showing all six of these animal families in one harmonious group.

Goals

The main goal of this commission was to bring calmness to the families who have a baby in the NICU. This is a stressful time for the people who spend many hours in the NICU, and I was honored to use my artwork to make their experience a little more peaceful. The other goal of the commission was to use my simple, friendly and inviting artwork to make the busy and hectic NICU floor easier to navigate.

Process

Children's Wisconsin Neonatal Intensive Care Unit gave me so much creative freedom with this commission. We all understood the purpose of the artwork and it was a seamless collaboration from start to finish.

Additional Information

I love every commission that I take on but this one was especially meaningful because of the effect that my artwork has on families that are dealing with a stressful time.