In a project that has touched women from throughout the Bay Area, the Art for Recovery program at UCSF/Mount Zion has now assembled eight quilts created for and by survivors of breast cancer.

“We’re looking for more people to participate in this worthwhile project,” says Cindy Perlis, director of Art for Recovery. “Those who are welcome to join the effort are those with breast cancer, those who want to create an image honoring a friend with breast cancer or those who lost a loved one to breast cancer.”

To help women deal with the painful issues around breast cancer, the Art for Recovery program at UCSF/Mount Zion created the breast cancer quilt project two years ago. To date, about 200 women have completed squares for the project. Squares have also been created in memory of loved ones who have died.

Individual squares in the 8-foot-by-8-foot quilts contain poems, photographic images, personal memories and paintings by women who are attempting to describe their illness.

The quilts will be on display in upcoming exhibits throughout the region. Some 25 works of art and the eight quilts will be shown at the California Breast Cancer Research Symposium at the Sacramento Convention Center on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The quilts will also be displayed at several Nordstrom locations during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

The quilts are a poignant and tangible reminder of a disease that has affected 2.6 million women in the United States and has particularly threatened the lives of women in the Bay Area, where breast cancer rates are among the highest in the world.

The quilt project began "so women who have breast cancer can have a voice and not be victims," says Perlis. "It gives them an opportunity to express their pain, their hope and their creative spirit at a time when illness threatens to take away so much."

Art for Recovery is a nationally recognized program of Mount Zion Health Systems Inc., and was conceived by Ernest Rosenbaum, MD, in 1988 to help people cope with life-threatening illnesses through their creative spirit. For information on contributing to the quilt or for exhibition information, contact Perlis at 415/885-7221.

By Dale Martin

1st appeared 8/12/97