The Other Side of the Mind

[Summer 1997; Vol. 24 No. 2]

The Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry sponsored an art exhibition and reception June 8, 1997, 5 to 7 PM at the Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt Hospital. The reception was underwritten by Bristol Myers Squibb. The original work in the show was by psychiatrists and their family members. The art on display included oil paintings, charcoal drawings, water colors, sculpture, photography, cloisonne and stained glass. Some of the art was offered for sale.

The non-juried show embraced a wide range of art and artists from amateur to professional. Professional artists included:

• Photographer Barbara Young, M.D., who is represented in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC; the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, NY; the Yale University Art Gallery, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and many private collections.
• Photographer A. Carl Segal, M.D., who photographs zoo animals world wide and whose company ZooTrek publishes posters using his work.
• Painter Alexander Kamevsky, M.D., a Russian émigré and resident in psychiatry at the University of Maryland whose work is exhibited in galleries in New York.
• Painter Carol Carpenter who has been in group and solo exhibitions in galleries in Baltimore, Columbia, Washington, New York, and Florida.
• Painter Jacob Glushakow who has had many exhibitions in Baltimore and the Mid Atlantic region and whose work is in many private collections as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Watercolorist Diane Gibson who has been in many exhibits on a regional basis.
• Sculptor Jill Lion who has been in over 34 juried exhibitions and won many prizes and exhibits in numerous shows in the Baltimore-Washington area, galleries in Chicago, New Haven, CT, Las Cruces and Portales, NM.
• Enamelist Audrey Komrad whose cloisonne work has been selected for international juried exhibitions every year since 1967. She has won many prizes and her work is in the collections of Beverly Sills, Mikhail Barishnikov, and Elie Weisel.

In addition to these professionals, there was a group of extraordinarily talented residents at the University of Maryland including Drs. Susan Boyd, Laura Gaffney, Maria Louisa Baldomero, and Eric Nicholson each of whom had a very distinctive style and much promise for careers in psychiatry and art. It was Dr. Jamal Fawaz who first recognized their talent and suggested the idea of an art exhibition as a project for the Foundation.

Amateurs but, nevertheless, distinctive contributions to the exhibition were made by watercolorist Dr. Riva Novey ("It was my first love"), painter A.W.R. Sipe who at one time studied painting at the Vatican, and photographers Dr. Jennifer Katze, Dr. Mark Komrad, Fran Hershfield and Dr. Thomas Allen.

The purpose of the Exhibition was to raise money for the Foundation and its anti-stigma efforts and to foster a sense of community for the psychiatrists and their families. Both of the goals were met at this event.