- Cancer is something that you don't have to go very far before you realize you know someone who's gone through this as a challenge.

- We know that Western medicine is capable of miraculous things, but only so capable.

- This gentleman walks up to me and he says, I really can appreciate your area here because you don't say that art can heal, but art can promote healing.

- My hope is to give positive energy.

- You know, it's not necessarily uplifting for you to come into the hospital setting.

- Frontiers of healing, embrace subtler energy fields.

- I really hope that a viewer can really get that uplifting moments of contemplation and healing.

- One of the things that I remember was talking with a good friend of mine who was going through this as a challenge. And not only was she saying that she kind of has these good days and these bad days, but that we had a long discussion about how you envision your life's going to be, which is this, the point A to point B mentality. Kind of in the beginning, I was at a sculptural level let's say, I was really curious if there would be a way of mediating these two kind of ways that we imagine how life works. That difference between how you'd like things to be, which is kind of straight, straight as an arrow trajectory where there's no unknowns and that you're in control of everything and have these other moments which are going left, going right swirling around. And then how do you have it do that simultaneously? And on top of that, how do you have it live on a wall?

- I wanted to make something that symbolize or activity at UNMC cancer center, like a huge Creek center actually. At the beginning, I thought 57 feet is good enough. And then I started to feel there is something missing. So I increased the height to 80. It made a good visual balance between the building and the tower itself and the surrounding. And then Dr. Jim Linda came and he said, this looks like chromosome pattern from DNA. So we started to shift the pattern a little bit, in my approaches to make something. And you will just say, wow, that's it. That feeling of a wow, is I think really important for all of us.

- This is a contemporary glass, a hard-edge building. And I create a cloth that is, that is warm, fuzzy, and has tremendous carries a lot of frequency and energy conversations immediately revolved around, warming up the space, creating a vibrational frequency, not only that was captivating as, as art objects, but also pieces that carried mantras for healing embedded in each of the different pieces are the words for healing and hope in 15 different world languages. I think if you came from Africa, and you're at the Buffett Cancer Center and you walk into the lobby and there in Somali, in front of you is word for healing and the word for hope. That's your native tongue. That's, that's a, that's a powerful mantra.

- So the dining room and the Yanni conference center, those are two different approaches. So the dining room, we have this real three dimensional artwork and create something that you almost could close your eyes and feel like you're in this Irish garden. And then for the Yanni wall, the colors pop a little more because you're walking by and I want you to be able to see the color first. I want it to have a little more of like a Nebraska feel to it with the native grasses, but I wanted these native grasses to have color. You would almost be like surrounded by grasses and these butterflies, just kind of taking off.

- So the title of my work is called a Waltz. And the waltz is a multi-layered painting to facilitate a sense of healing and refuge. I used a spontaneous puffs of colors to convey joy and vitality very much inspired by a musical notes. The waltz dance kind of tries to have this harmonious interplay between music and the body. So the droplets are like staccato. So it's like pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, and it's coming out of it. I like the skirts are like, you know, very grand explosions. These are flowers are kind of mimicking those, I guess, musical tempos.

- With the background in architecture. I've always been interested in space and light. And I thought this type of structure would be an appropriate extension of the healing garden, part of the healing arts program to provide some relief for people dealing with such a big life challenge.

- It's how all of these elements in this facility kind of work together. There's my artwork. There's many other artists artwork. There's the lighting. There's the kind of the architecture of it.

- And everyone who walks in the door is going to be greeted by amazing art.