Krakow. Plasticine works of children's hospital patients will be featured in “Picture in a Nutshell”

Obraz w Pillułka is a foundation of Marcin Kowalik, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. As part of the project, the artist meets with children in hospitals, bringing “the everyday, external world and the joy of creation” and allowing “experience the miraculous properties of art”.

At the Małopolska Rehabilitation Centre in Radziszów – a branch of the Provincial Specialist Children's Hospital of St. Louis in Kraków – a dozen or so children took part in the July workshops. – The girls are the most enthusiastic about creative work, and that's how it is every day. However, boys also get involved when they see that girls are having fun – admits the hospital carer, Mrs. Agata.

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During each meeting with art, representatives of the foundation give children a topic based on which the young patients are to prepare plasticine squares. This time, works presenting “robots of the future” were created on square bases.

– Creating such a picture consists of several stages, the first is the design of plasticine robots. In the second stage, we will apply them with brushes to the picture together with volunteers during the medical physicists congress – explains Prof. Marcin Kowalik in an interview with tvn24.pl.

What will medical physicists paint? – A robot that can heal sick people. Down here, its patients are – Ola shows her work. Amelka prepared a robot that sorts waste. A group of boys: an automatic fan. A robotic sower also appeared. – The idea is for it to sow grass in places where it has been burned, for example. Next to it is another robot that trains flies. If it trains them, they will be able to fly over the city, give some reports, record – says the author of the work. Her colleague shows an extremely detailed, black silhouette with a red heart on a metal and plasticine torso, around which flowers are blooming. – My robot is supposed to water plants and help them grow – she describes.

Marcin Kowalik admits that it is sometimes difficult to “involve children in a subject”, but “it is even more difficult to persuade adults to pick up a paintbrush”. – The date and place have already been set, so they cannot get out of it – laughs the artist. – Then we will improve the painting a bit at the foundation, and then the finished work will return to St. Louis Hospital – he adds.

Marcin Kowalik has been running the foundation for about 10 years. He says that over three thousand children have passed through his charity workshops. As part of his initiative, about 100 paintings have been created, which hang in hospitals in Krakow, Poznan, Warsaw and Gdansk, among others.

– I have received feedback more than once, especially from more closed hospital wards, that thanks to us, children can do more artistic things. It is a source of joy for them, thanks to which they forget about pain, fear, separation from their parents, even for a moment. They also know that their work goes on, that someone will take care of it later, paint it. This gives me great satisfaction from this project – admits Prof. Kowalik.