mare dianora
08.25.08 | 2008 Birdhouse Auction Invited Exhibition
Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane Southampton
Saturday, September 27 at 5:30pm to 8pm
Tickets are $40
Auctioneer: Allan Newman
Call 631.726.8606 for more information
www.southforkbreast.com
Wine Reception ~
Hampton Road Gallery 36 Hampton Road Southampton
Saturday, September 20 2008, 6pm-8pm
Silent Bidding on Bird Houses begin
Birdhouses will also be on view Sunday, September 21 from 1-4pm
Or by appointment at 631.329.2811
Honorary Chair: Renee Zellweger
08.06.08 | Tea Book Workshop
August 21 ,2008, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm at North Fork Breast Coalition
Riverhead, New York
In this class, participants will learn how to make a small book that resembles a tea bag complete with tag. This project is perfect for a gift or individual card to mail off. No experience necessary and supplies will be provided. Feel free to bring your own photographs and scrap materials to add to your individual creation.
06.13.08 | Memory Box Making Workshop
July 14 ,2008, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm at North Fork Breast Coalition
Riverhead, New York
This workshop will allow participants to explore the box as an intimate object. Each participant will create a memory box containing personal photographs and memorabilia. We will also talk about examples of how other artists use boxes in their art practice.
05.02.08 | Art Making Workshops for North Frok Breast Health Coalition
Spa Weekend of Renewal and Hope in Lebanon, CT ~ May 2 -5th, 2008
Art Making workshops provided for the women of the South Fork Breast Health Coalition during their first Spa Weekend of Renewal and Hope at the Spa of Grand Lake in Lebanon, CT. Each day contained a different memory box workshop.
04.07.08 | Card Making Workshop for Breast Cancer Survivors
April 7,2008, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm at North Fork Breast Coalition
Riverhead, New York
Come learn how to create 'one of a kind' cards for you to connect with friends and family. Samples will be shown for various methods that are easy, fun and you can do at home. Supplies will be provided and no experience is necessary.
Guest artist is Mare Dianora who most recently conducted a card making workshop at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington, DC. Mare will be sharing examples of her own work and helping you to create your own small pieces of artwork to be mailed off.
04.06.08 | “Collaborative Voice: Naming Ourselves Beyond the War Time”
I am excited and proud to have been asked to be a part of this journal publication, “Collaborative Voice: Naming Ourselves Beyond the War Time” is now available to the public at:
http://web.goddard.edu/collabvoice/contents_fall07.htm
12.06.07 | The Art of Healing: Inspiring Creativity in Cancer Patients
THE SAG HARBOR EXPRESS
06 December 2007
By Annette Hinkle
Mare Dianora has long understood the profound power of art. But rather than something to be admired from behind glass or velvet ropes, Dianora feels that real art should be hands-on. Much of her own work in fact, is.
'I use bookmaking a lot in my own art,' explains Dianora. 'I've always been drawn to bookmaking, stories, photos or things I've written. I like the intimate nature of you and a book.'
For Dianora, these days it is not her own work, but that of her students - cancer patients and survivors - that is truly inspiring. They come to her workshops looking for a break from the stress of dealing with their illness, and leave having created art that is textural, inspirational, meaningful, and ultimately, she feels, healing.
As a volunteer at a children's hospital in Portland, Oregon, Dianora created art with sick children. When she moved east, she was sad to leave that work behind her. Then she found The Creative Center in New York City which placed Dianora at NYU Medical Center.
'I'm the artist in residence in adult oncology,' explains Dianora. 'For me it's so amazing to give this to adults. It's assumed there are playrooms and arts for the sick kids, but the adults need the attention and services too.'
Dianora spends one morning a week at the hospital's out-patient cancer center where she sets up at a table and invites people to join her for projects as they come in and out of appointments. In the afternoon, Dianora works creating bedside art with patients in the hospital. While she has found that children have no inhibitions and jump right in to projects, adults, on the other hand, often come with feelings of inadequacy when it comes to making art.
'Adults say, 'I'm not an artist,'' notes Dianora 'Society trains people by saying they're not artists. In school when you're not considered the artistic one, you just stop.'
Dianora's goal is to turn that philosophy on its ear. She loves sharing her enthusiasm for art with her students.
'I tell them, you can paint, you can do this,' says Dianora. 'One woman is 93, she's painting with me and making amazing things. It's not something she has done since she was a child.'
'They're given permission to be artists again.'
Dianora has a masters degree in fine arts and spends much of her time with arts in health care, a fairly new field that differs from art therapy in that she does not direct the work or ask that patients describe their emotions on paper. They are encouraged to simply relax and create as they like. With time, the words and the meaning comes, both in the work and in conversations with others in the group.
'I think that because I'm not a therapist, they open up,' notes Dianora.
The workshops also give patients a chance to focus on something other than cancer, if only for an hour or two. Having seen the difference art has made in the lives of patients at NYU Medical Center, Dianora, a Sag Harbor resident, decided to try and bring a similar program to East End patients.
'It's such a success in the city and there's such a need out here,' says Dianora. 'I gave Susie Roden a call. She was open to the idea.'
Susie Roden is the director and co-founder of the South Fork Breast Health Coalition. She is also a breast cancer survivor, and she immediately took Dianora up on the offer. Just this week, Dianora finished leading a book making program for breast cancer patients at Southampton Hospital sponsored by the coalition. For six weeks, a group of women, including Roden, came together to create their own handmade book using photographs, drawings or quotes.
'There are very personal and beautiful things in their books,' says Dianora. 'The importance of their relationships, who they're creating the book for and how strong that bond is.'
'Mare is absolutely incredible,' notes Roden. 'You feel very safe with her and she's full of knowledge. When we started the class, I went in just to do an introduction. Then I sat down and participated and loved it.'
'I made a book for my nine year old niece,' explains Roden. 'Some of us wrote things, some of us cut out quotes. For my niece all the quotes turned out to be about hope. Was I talking to myself or to her? Or was I saying that she always has to have hope?'
'One woman made a book for herself but it was all about her children, just really very sweet,' adds Roden who found that in the end, the class was about more than simply making art.
'How many times do you have an hour and half to color, draw and cut pictures, without doctors or someone pulling on your leg for dinner - just time for yourself? In the first class, no one was talking. But by the end, it was like we really knew each other.'
'None of us thought that we were artists. Now we think we're so good. That's Mare. She's the best.'
'I think arts in health care is emerging,' says Dianora. 'There's such a need. As cancer becomes a chronic illness, and is not seen as the end anymore, people are getting treatment and living normal lives. This is a nice gift to get them out and keep them going.'
Roden agrees that art, yoga and other activities offered by the South Fork Breast Health Coalition go a long way toward giving patients something to focus on beyond their diagnosis.
'You're done with treatment, the doctors says I won't see you for three months,' says Roden. 'That's why things like art, yoga and visualization are so important.'
On Monday, December 10, Dianora will lead a one session Holiday Card Making Workshop at Southampton Hospital (room 320) on Meeting House Lane from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Sponsored by the South Fork Breast Health Coalition, it is open to all cancer patients and survivors -- both men and women. Call 726-8606 to register.
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