Healthcare
By Carolyn Fair
Serenity can be found in those moments when you're gazing up at a clear blue sky or watching the first flowers of spring burst forth from the Earth. Creating peace and serenity in stressful environments is a difficult endeavor, especially when the territory seems unfamiliar or threatening. Patients undergoing MR examinations usually find the imaging procedure to be a stressful experience. Patients are affected by the dreadful anticipation of their diagnosis, the anxiety from the illness or injury and the stress of claustrophobia.
The responsibility of soothing the patient usually falls squarely on the shoulders of the treatment facility and its staff. But they now have help from Bill Witherspoon, president of the Sky Factory in Fairfield, Iowa, who has created a way to help foster a sense of calm in highly agitating situations: He has brought the sky inside.
"A good magician knows our habits of perception and uses these habits ... to create an alternate reality," says Witherspoon. The Sky Factory creates photographic sky scenes for MRI suites, hospitals and physicians' offices. SkyTiles™ and Luminous SkyTiles™ create a sense of the sky in indoor spaces. The illusion is created using standard grid ceilings, photo-realistic acrylic panels and radiofrequency-free light emitting diode light sources or full-spectrum lighting. The result is a piece of sky right in your own office. The Sky Factory itself is characterized as a place "where art and technology help to deliver the peace and balance that come ... from nature."
WANDERING SPIRIT
Witherspoon has spent most of his life exploring the artistic and holistic possibilities of nature. He received a degree in Russian literature from Reed College in Portland, Ore., and continued his scholarly pursuits at the Portland Museum Art School. His artistic education culminated with his attendance at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Following graduation in the mid-1960s, Witherspoon set out to discover a pure and uninterrupted connection with nature. In the high deserts of Eastern Oregon, he embarked on a period of what he refers to as "very deep introspection." Witherspoon had a friend drop him off on a deserted ranch, 95 miles from the nearest town. He brought some sacks of rice and beans, a stack of art supplies and a wealth of possibilities.
Witherspoon spent the next six months alone on the ranch, meditating and painting, looking at the expanse of desert and sky while contemplating and structuring the space. He developed a sense of a "very dynamic and highly disciplined silence." He began to notice patterns in nature, its mysterious ebb and flow, and he formed a deep connection with the surrounding environment. Inspired, Witherspoon sought to reach out to others.
"From the point of view of the artist, a painting can be used as a device to structure consciousness, modify physiology and transmit information," Witherspoon says. Upon his return to civilization, he opened an art installation titled "The Sky: A Gentle Reminder," featuring the artwork he created in the desert.
"I sought to increase people's awareness of the beauty of the sky," he says. "Human beings take care of what we love, and we love what we know to be beautiful."
He continued his artist pursuits and returned to the Oregon desert many times. In 1989, Witherspoon ventured again into the hard-packed desert, seeking its simplicity and serenity. This time, he lived in a bus that he converted into a mobile art studio. In this vast space of the desert, 7,500 feet above sea level, Witherspoon again spent his time meditating and painting. This time, he sharpened his artistic focus, painting the eastern sky at sunset, trying to capture the elusive earth shadow and bring it to life through large water-colors. During his three-month stay, he produced 1,600 paintings, but only about 30 satisfied him.
The larger satisfaction came from his observation of nature's healing and restorative powers. Witherspoon began to consider the possibilities of a connection between nature and healing through a series of artistic experiments to study the reaction of casual observers of his artwork.
CROSSROADS
In 1993, while working as a full-time artist, Witherspoon saw his art and philosophy converged in an unusual way. Faced with the news that his children would need braces, he struck a deal with the orthodontist. In return for providing the dental work his children needed, Witherspoon agreed to paint a mural of the sky on the orthodontist's ceiling. It would help bring a little bit of peace into a generally stressful environment and help relax patients before their appointments.
Witherspoon got to work, removing the acoustic panels in the office and replacing them with homemade wood and paper panels. On Oct. 10, America watched as Ty Pennington and his "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" team descended upon the home of 13-year-old Shelby Pope from Northern California. The ABC TV series transforms houses for needy families. In this one-hour episode, they were able to give one girl something that no one else could: a view of the sky. When she was 6 years old, Pope was diagnosed with an extreme form of polymorphic light eruption, also know as sun poisoning. To avoid burns and blisters from even minimal exposure to the sun, she must wear protective clodiing and sunscreen. Since her diagnosis, Pope, her sister Madison and her parents Matt and Caroline have spent little time outdoors as a family and have stopped taking vacations altogether. Her parents have tried to make the necessary renovations in their home by tinting windows in the house but were unable to complete the project because it was too costly. Using SkyTiles111 from the Sky Factory, the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" team was able to bring the outdoors inside, allowing one family to attain an impossible dream.
He used watercolors to imitate the soothing colors and sense of the sky. Although it was a success, Witherspoon recalls, "When the project was finished I realized two things: It was not cost-efficient and technology hadn't advanced enough for me to get the realistic effect I sought."
Witherspoon kept his eye on developments in the field, and in January 2002, he was able to dynamically combine technology, art and nature. Witherspoon founded the Sky Factory, which creates a modern version of his ceiling mural, essentially bringing the vastness of the sky inside.
The Sky Factory offers multiple images of the sky, from morning to evening settings, tree-branch canopied skies and views of outer space. What once took many months to complete now takes just a few weeks and the results are incredibly realistic.
Just as the sense of smell evokes pleasant memories, the sight of the sky evokes an overwhelming sense of peace and serenity. It is this sense that Witherspoon and his colleagues seek to elicit in patients and others who encounter unfamiliar and stressful situations. He believes the sensory experience of the indoor "sky" will promote a sense of healing.
"When individual, societal or planetary life becomes separate or dislocated from nature, health on all levels is lost," Witherspoon says. "Removing separation and restoring balance and harmony with nature is the most fundamental form of healing."
