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Volunteers reporting on community issues in Monument, Palmer Lake, and the surrounding Tri-Lakes area

OCN > 2408 > Art Matters – On the superpowers of art and daydreaming

Art Matters – On the superpowers of art and daydreaming

By Janet Sellers

Our local arts scene has a lot to offer us for fun, health, and well-being—and we can take the benefits with us when we buy some art for ourselves or gifts. We have had our Chautauqua arts and culture events in Palmer Lake through Aug. 4. Our monthly Art Hop (5 to 8 p.m. on the fourth Fridays through September) is free arts and music for meandering around downtown Monument, and there are lots of art to buy and take home. Participating in the arts improves the quality of life for everyone, especially children and older adults, including cognitive function, memory, and self-esteem. On top of that, the social factors of interactive arts experiences reduce stress and isolation. And the natural sense of flow—such as when looking at art—is an element to high performance sought by athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and artists.

Art: health and anti-aging

Participating in the arts improves the quality of life for older adults, including cognitive function, memory and self-esteem. On top of that, the social factors of interactive arts experiences reduce stress and isolation. Our dependance on science for factual information is one factor in looking at art for health, but proven methods and results in terms of the arts as medicine and intervention are factors that are being introduced for hospitals and health and for schoolchildren and military veterans. The interdisciplinary use of art, aesthetics, and science can offer relief from our current age of chronic stress, burnout, depression, and mental illness, not to mention pain management. We have complex problems now like never before. Art experiences show a way out of these and into health and longevity.

Hospital health benefits

Besides lowering costs in healthcare, interventions beyond the usual use of medicine have shown that art has a profound effect on the circuitry of the body, the brain, and thereby overall health. The University of Florida has developed a rigorous game plan for arts in medicine. The UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine has a sizable staff of artists-in-residence and creative arts therapists. They offer group workshops and bedside programs, including music in trauma care. As far back as Roman times, the use of music, drums, and other creativities were used in healing the sick. This could transform care into less use of drugs—especially addictive opioids—through mitigation of perceived pain and stress.

Arts provide superpowers

In her article for the National Laboratory for Medicine at the National Institute for Health, Your Brain on Art: The Case for Neuroaesthetics, Susan Magsamen states, “The default mode network, once associated solely with daydreaming, is now linked to many different functions core to human connection and well-being. These include personal identity, sense of meaning, empathy, imagination, and creativity as well as embodied cognition, which allows us to place ourselves in a piece of artwork and make us feel what the artist was feeling.”

Join our local community in celebrating the arts this month. The next Art Hop is Aug. 23, 5 to 8 p.m. Arrive early and enjoy the sculpture park on Second Street, have dinner and ice cream at local venues, and get some art for your life at the many pop-up art spaces and gallery venues.

Janet Sellers, an artist, writer, and speaker who makes and shares her artworks locally and nationally via galleries and writing. She gives talks on the power of art and making things. Contact her at JanetSellers@ocn.me.

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