Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Ascension St. Vincent Indianapolis Cancer Art Therapy Studio
Top honoree, Volunteer
he work and influence of Lebanese native and mosaicist Fatema Amro can be seen throughout Ascension St. Vincent Indianapolis, where she serves as a volunteer at the facility’s Cancer Art Therapy Studio. Established in 2012, it’s an all-inclusive space where patients with cancer can use art, in mediums ranging from painting to mosaics, to process and hopefully resolve emotions surrounding their diagnoses.
But for Amro, it’s become more than just a place to help others learn about art. It’s also a second home, a source of strength as she faces her own trials and the place where she learned to express herself artistically.
“I really feel like there’s a strong connection between me and the group I work with there,” she said. “We share a lot, and we’re close friends.”
She first encountered the Cancer Art Therapy Studio in 2013, as she was struggling with her first breast cancer diagnosis.
“It had been open for a year, and I talked to the manager, and she said I was welcome to come any time I liked,” Amro recalled. “I didn’t know anything about art at all, but when I started working there, I came to enjoy and love it. I volunteer there three times a week.”
The chance to process her emotions through art couldn’t have come at a better moment. In addition to facing cancer, Amro lost both her parents in 2013, just two weeks apart. So she decided to create mosaic glass portraits of them. Never mind that she’d never made a mosaic in her life.
“When I started working, I realized I loved doing mosaics,” she said. “And the pictures came out very well. The work took me back to my childhood memories. I felt so happy and also sad. I felt the connection with my family again.”
Amro has since become an accomplished mosaicist and a driving force behind the creation of a portrait installation of important, but sometimes little-noticed, Ascension St. Vincent personnel. All the pictures, which will hang in the hospital’s entrance, feature diverse trailblazers and unsung heroes who work or have worked in various capacities at Ascension. The lineup includes Katie Knox, who went from working in housekeeping to becoming a surgical nurse assistant, and racial-equity activist Sister Andrea Hickey.
Amro fervently pursued the collaborative effort to create the works because the theme of celebrating diversity strikes a chord with her. As a Muslim immigrant, she’s experienced her share of racial and religious hostility. She said the people who visit the Cancer Art Therapy Studio have become a surrogate family and a bulwark against the many hardships Amro has faced over the years. She’s gone through two bouts of cancer, her husband died more than a decade ago, and her 22-year-old daughter is herself currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
“I come from a different culture and a different religion,” she said. “I love this place because it feels like a second home. I share my sad story with them, because I feel like they care about us.”•
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.