Altaring Consciousness

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In her six-week-long "Healing Icon" workshops, Darr-Hope starts by giving patients a homework assignment: They are asked to fill a small box with random objects that please them--peach pits, buttons, shells, whatever.

In one of her first workshops, a burly prison guard who was suffering from prostate cancer returned with a box full of leaves. He had collected holly leaves first, which are tough and have needle-like points that can scratch the skin. But he had also picked a sheaf of soft sassafras grass, which bends easily in the wind and releases a lovely fragrance when cut. "The prickly exterior, the sweet essence...he really got it," says Darr-Hope. "I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is gonna work!'"

And it did. But how? How, exactly, does a box of fallen leaves help cancer patients make sense of cancer's forbidding emotional landscape? Sitting at a table laid with scissors, glue, and materials for a collage is a safe starting place, suggests Darr-Hope. Consciousness is diverted from disease to a peach pit. No goals are stated; indeed, words are not required at all. Some weeks later, patients emerge with an icon--artwork, yes, and a piece that may well be suitable for display at the hospital's gallery, but also a talismanic object that can induce a state of prayerfulness.

"More important than the pieces or even the art process is the opportunity to express feelings and concerns and concretize them in a way that helps you deal with a major life crisis," says breast-cancer survivor Donna McGreevy, age 53, who was diagnosed in 1995 and joined Darr-Hope's workshops because she felt neither the need nor desire to join the talk-therapy-based support groups offered. "I'm not a trained artist. But I liked the fact that cancer survivors can work side by side, speaking and sharing their feelings and experiences--or not--while creating something of deep personal meaning."

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