Current Exhibitions

Rana Awdish began painting while incapacitated after a life-threatening illness. Through the creative process she developed a visual language to express her thoughts and emotions. Her work, complemented by expressions from photographer and musician Misty Lyn Bergeron and physician Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson, MD, reveals her experience both as a caregiver as well as a patient.

Healing Arts invites viewers to contemplate their own feelings and perceptions as well as discover the ability of art to communicate, inspire, and heal.

Rana Awdish is the Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, a practicing Critical Care Physician, and Medical Director of Care Experience for the Henry Ford Health System. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, In Shock, which chronicled her own critical illness. She has published numerous articles which have often begun on the canvas. A sought-after public speaker, she often integrates art into her lectures, drawing off the traditions of Visual Thinking Strategies and Narrative Medicine to engage her audience. She fully believes in the ability of art to heal.

Jacqueline M. Pflaum-Carlson is a specialist in critical care and emergency medicine at Henry Ford Hospital. She is a mother to two twins and a lover of all things creative.

“I use art for healing, to process my emotions, to verbalize things I may not have fully understood before I started a piece. I share that art in the hopes that it may help others do the same.”

Misty Lyn Bergeron is a photographer, musician, and podcaster. As the resident photographer for the music preservation project, River Street Anthology, she helps document the musical landscape of Michigan. She is the creator of the 52 Portrait Project, photographing and interviewing inspiring women. As a musician, she is the front lady and songwriter for Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful, and singing, tambourine-ing side lady for Matt Jones & the Reconstruction.