New Partnership Pairs Artists Living With Illness with Premier Art Firm
Minneapolis, Minnesota (PRWEB) February 09, 2016 -- Corporate Art Force LLC (dba Art Force) and The Creative Center at University Settlement (dba [The Creative Center) have launched a unique partnership featuring the artwork of people who know healthcare best: professional artists living with illness. Using a social enterprise model, the partnership makes a compelling collection of artwork created by artists with illness available for purchase to hospitals, healthcare facilities, corporations and individuals, while supporting the Creative Center’s program to promote healing and growth through art. The collection, Still Life: Art by People who Know Healthcare Best, is available for purchase online now at http://www.artforce.org.
Art Force, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the premier provider of artwork nationally, renowned for working with organizations of all sizes to source and supply art that enhances and complements their space. They provide consulting, framing, and installation services. The Creative Center is a non-profit that is part of University Settlement, a leader in providing social service programs in New York City. The Creative Center delivers creative arts programming to individuals in treatment for, and living with, chronic illness, with the goal of promoting healing and growth. It offers art experiences to patients, families and staff in healthcare facilities in NYC, across the U.S and at the Center’s headquarters on New York’s Lower East Side.
Making the partnership a social enterprise project was important to both parties. “I was very taken with the idea that our financial return would also produce a measurable social impact for patients and families and even healthcare staff,” Leslie Palmer-Ross, Art Force’s Director of Healthcare and Art Services said.
Working with Creative Center Director Robin Glazer, the two developed Still Life: Art by People who Know Healthcare Best, a a collection of curated imagery created by professional artists who are represented by The Creative Center. Images are offered as framed pieces, wall murals or printed on a variety of substrates, including collateral materials (take-away postcards, greeting cards, posters) that are tailored to each purchaser’s needs.
For Glazer, the project has been a fulfillment of a longstanding goal to make more people aware of how important expression through art can be to those experiencing illness. “In Art Force, I knew I found a partner that understood the power of art to be transformative for the good, especially for those facing what is often the challenge of their life. I believe we have created something very special – and unprecedented – in Still Life.”
Sales from the Still Life collection will support The Creative Center’s programs in public hospitals, as well as provide a financial and emotional benefit to the selected artists. As 82-year-old photographer Paula Goldfader, a Still Life artist, explained, “When cancer entered my life, I started walking about with a camera, searching. It was a form of meditation and the pictures I captured allowed me to enjoy those moments in time, again and again. At that point I realized I wanted to teach people to open their senses and experience the full range of what they see. Because – to see is a gift!”
About The Creative Center
Founded in 1994 on the belief that "medicine cures the body but art heals the spirit," The Creative Center began as a series of free art workshops for women with cancer. Twenty-two years later, with immeasurable recognition in the field of arts in healthcare and the nonprofit sector, The Creative Center is proud to have Hospital Artist-in-Residence programs in more than 30 healthcare sites around the New York metropolitan area (and replicated nationally in 60 hospitals and cancer centers), free-of-charge art workshops for people living with cancer every day of the week, an online gallery representing professional artists living with illness, and a training program bringing The Creative Center's proven approach to arts in healthcare around the country. In 2011, The Creative Center became a program of University Settlement and has begun to expand into the growing field of "creative aging". For more information, visit http://www.thecreativecenter.org.
About Art Force
Formed in 2009, Art Force is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Finance and Development, Inc. (OTC Markets: GFDV). Our mission is to be the Premier Provider of Artwork Services. Located in the heart of the Northeast Minneapolis Minnesota Arts District, we help organizations achieve their objectives through artwork and visual solutions. Leveraging decades of combined expertise, our team of art consultants, advisers and production professionals provide artwork solutions for organizations big and small. Utilizing the healing, motivational and aesthetic power of artwork, we help organizations unlock their full potential through visual storytelling. Since our formation, we have delivered more than 30,000 pieces of artwork to more than 150 clients in 42 states and Canada. For more information, visit http://artforce.org.
Leslie Palmer Ross, Art Force, http://artforce.org/, +1 763-567-2205, [email protected]
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