The Society for the Arts in Health Care

exhibits

Art under the Microscope

Expressions of Courage

Artist Always

Healing Gardens Quilts

Breast Cancer Journal

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Breast Cancer Journal

This series of 14 works using oil pastel was created by Hollis Sigler after she was diagnosed with breast cancer for the third time in 1992. The drawings portray with immediacy the range of emotions an individual may have after being diagnosed with this illness. The replica exhibit of Hollis Sigler's Breast Cancer Journal: Walking with the Ghosts of My Grandmothers was retired in 1999 to the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC. The show, a collaboration between the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, the artist, and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, visited hospitals throughout the country on its four-year tour.

“Walking With the Ghosts of My Grandmothers,” oil on canvas, 66" X 54" with painted frame, 1992.

On the frame Hollis Sigler wrote, “Cancer, the crab from the Greek Karkinos, is a term for a group of diseases. The word cancer, the crab, comes from advanced breast cancer, which is a stellated from tumor in the breast. Cancer is not a new disease but one which has been recognized since earliest times. It is mentioned by the Egyptians in the Papyrus Ebers and by the Hindus in their medical writings, which probably date back to 2000 BC. My great grandmother Sarah Anna Truitt Ryan died from cancer. This happened 60 years ago. My mother, Marilyn Ryan Sigler, has breast cancer. She had a mastectomy in 1983. The cancer metastasized to her lungs five years later. I discovered a lump in my underarm on a summer day in 1985. I had a mastectomy in the beginning of August of 1985. It was followed by six months of chemotherapy. The cancer is now in my bones, my pelvis, and my spine.” This is the title piece in Hollis' Breast Cancer Journal, and she uses classical imagery here to solidify her statement.