Dear Readers,
Welcome to the latest edition of Rubor, now celebrating its fifth anniversary and publication! Our mission as ever is to provide an outlet for students, staff, and patients in the University of Utah Health Sciences to share their challenges and triumphs through art. Whether from the healthcare setting, the Wasatch Front or yet farther afield, this year’s submissions confirmed anew the wealth of thoughtful talent in our community.
Contemplations on life and death by medical students and experienced physicians alike demonstrate ever present learning and gratitude found in healthcare, such as in the essay The Storyteller and the poetry of Dance. Passion and sacrifice are beautifully rendered in Give Me Another Letter, the story of an immigrant and her son’s experiences with medical training abroad and in the United States. Leaving Earth altogether, Panacea heartbreakingly asks what cost you would accept to have you, or your child, cured of an otherwise incurable disease.
With visual art, our contributors demonstrate skill with myriad techniques from the Impressionistic anatomy of our watercolor cover, Acute Appendicitis, to the deliberate calligraphy of our closing image, The Precision of Medicine. Between these covers, L’essentiel lays bare the clinical encounter with computer generated imagery, Layered State suggests the beating heart of a community with pen and ink, and a book is painstakingly transformed into whimsical, ingenious sculpture with To Fly.
I’d like to express bountiful thanks to everyone who submitted their work, to the hardworking staff of Rubor, and to the School of Medicine’s Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities and other sponsors for making this edition possible. Here’s to more art and more understanding in the world!
Sincerely,
David Smyth
