The magic begins when the sun sets, reflecting off the bay water and revealing Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont. The “golden hour” is a photographer’s favorite palette, because the setting sun bathes the hills, the swamps, the animals and the visitors in warm light. The deer appears and increases the dark sky.

Photos by Dai Sugano

Originally published: January 26, 2025 at 6:00 am PST

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No one ever really desires to go to the hospital, and hospitals know this.

That's one reason more medical centers are filling their partitions, lobbies and waiting areas with art, hoping to remodel what could be a worrying or painful experience for patients into something more welcoming. The opportunity to view a wonderful mural or sit in a garden next to a surprising sculpture is taken into account healing for patients undergoing tests, surgeries or treatments for serious health problems.

The art world has also taken note that hospitals, particularly those who display high-quality works in newer, state-of-the-art buildings, have turn out to be art-filled public spaces, identical to libraries, parks and shopping centers.

Patients and art lovers alike can find aesthetic relief in two striking, large-scale lighted sculptures on display at John Muir's Walnut Creek Medical Center. The sculptures by two internationally recognized Tucson artists were commissioned for the hospital latest Jean and Ken Hofmann Cancer Center, which opened in February within the gleaming 15,000-square-foot Behring Pavilion.

Both sculptures are equipped with lights that make them glow at night, making them visible in remarkably other ways at any time of day. The lighting means “they can extend beyond the boundaries of the sculpture,” it says Joe O'ConnellCreator of the sculpture “Uplifting Together”. He and Barbara Grygutiswho created the second sculpture, “Regeneration,” makes a speciality of art that uses light. For this installation, her pieces embody themes from nature intended to encourage hope and healing.

Visitors coming from the car parking zone to the pavilion's most important entrance will first encounter Grygutis' “Regeneration.” The sculpture is 20 feet tall and consists of two curved, elongated pieces – halves of an entire – standing on the ends. Its aluminum panels feature an intricate, lace-like network of cutouts through which daylight and other light sources can shine.

Grygutis, whose sculptures also grace public spaces in Santa Clara and Palo Alto, said she imagines a seed pod bursting open, setting off a cycle of recent growth and life. The natural theme is especially evident after dark, when the embedded green lights illuminate the sculpture in hues harking back to leaves or blades of grass, shining through the lace panels into the night sky.

“Hopefully people find it beautiful and calming,” says Grygutis. “Hospitals are increasingly commissioning art as a focal point and to create a calming atmosphere.”

On the opposite side of the pavilion, visitors will find O'Connell's “Uplifting Together,” a 19-foot-tall installation mounted on the outside of the pavilion. Tucked away on the far end of the middle's meditation garden, it’s shielded from traffic noise – and each the garden and the art could be viewed by patients visiting the middle's radiation and oncology department on the primary floor.

Like Grygutis, O'Connell used aluminum to create forms that appear alive through movement and growth. He formed the metal right into a vine-like “twisted branch,” he says, with tendrils and softly coloured orbs rising above the wall and reaching toward the sun and sky. LED lights follow the trail of the vines and are programmed to activate at sunset, making a soft nighttime glow that rises from the garden.

O'Connell viewed the “twisting branch” as connected to life “in all its various forms.” It might remind some people of the human circulatory or nervous system, he says, but you may as well see these shapes in nature.

O'Connell says his love of crafting and lighting comes from growing up in New Jersey – his father was a math teacher, his mother an artist – near Thomas Edison's laboratory in West Caldwell, who helped make it , inventing and commercializing the sunshine bulb. O'Connell says his grandfather and Edison were friends.

When O'Connell was commissioned to create the sculpture for John Muir Hospital, he said his work was informed by his father and his health problems, as his father went “from one hospital to another” and hung out in spent in a recovery ward before he was capable of return home.

“It gave me the opportunity to think about what kind of art people need in hospitals,” he says, especially when “they spend long periods of time in one place or keep returning.”

This experience also made him appreciate the unique challenges and advantages of making art for healthcare, knowing that individuals come to his work with a wide selection of emotions and reasons they is likely to be there.

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