The Wegner Library, along with the Sanford School of Medicine and the Sioux Falls Arts Council, have recently launched a Resident Artist Series as part of our Health Humanities efforts to support teaching and learning in medical and health sciences education through art.

Amy Fill, Gallery Director for the University of South Dakota, was named as our first Artist-in-Residence in Fall 2024. Fill has installed her piece in the Nettleman Classroom, a continuation of her Exquisite Cloud project, entitled Murmur(ation). The work connects with the history of the Surrealist’s drawing game, Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative, improvisational, playful approach to creative exploration and flow. The piece uses the cloud as a metaphor for observation and participation without judgment. The practice of observing “passing thoughts” and reinforcing the universal truth of the impermanence within beauty and nature and the interconnectedness of life and death.

Our goals for these efforts include promoting the visual arts as one path towards nurturing understanding, empathy, and kindness among the upcoming generation of physicians and other health care providers and to engage the greater Sioux Falls public in dialogues about health and well-being and the differences that foster understanding and community.

With these goals in mind, we will be hosting a reception for Fill’s work on Monday, April 14, in the Mary Nettleman, M.D. Classroom at the Wegner Library, beginning at 5:30 p.m. The reception will include light hors d’oeuvres and feature an artist talk from Fill as well as opportunities for multidimensional interaction with the art and the ideas of kindness and medicine, as a provider, a patient, a caregiver, or whatever context you bring to the topic. The reception is open to both the general public and the University of South Dakota community.