ALEXIS SHOCKLEY: Art in Richmond - its kind of like a little scavenger hunt.

Everywhere you turn you find a mural, and this is no exception.

You peek down here and you can see this bright mural.

So maybe you take a little turn and you come and take a look at it.

Since this building was built three years ago, this space has been bare.

It was always on our radar as a place that needed some warmth, it needed something to welcome our patients.

This mural, and reaching out to Nico, was just such a special turn of events.

She said she knew this wall and had walked by it so many times, and that she was a patient here, and that was just really special because I didn't know that about her.

And, it just, it was meant to be.

NICO CATHCART: I was extremely excited to get that email.

I am a survivor of thyroid cancer.

So I have this perspective, on what it feels like to kind of walk into this building.

So I kind of latched on to that because if I can make a difference in someone else going through what I went through, of just that uncertainty when you walk in the first time, that means the world to me.

So the first time I walked through the doors, I didn't really know.

It's like, what is this?

What's about to change?

The other experience I had was that, because I'm hard of hearing, or some people would call me deaf, is that it was in the middle of COVID.

The technology Im currently using to talk to you, which is like a closed caption app, didn't exist, and I didn't know sign yet because I always rely on lip reading.

But in the middle of COVID, everybody had masks on.

So I was kind of going through this and also not being able to communicate.

So it was a very- it was a very scary time.

When I first started this project, they brought me here and walked me through the building as not a patient, but an artist, so that was interesting.

They brought me into, there's a meditation room, and it was kind of that feeling that they wanted to bring outside.

What you're looking at here is florals, they're actually all from Lewis Ginter.

It's from the ground up, so it's meant to make you look up.

And then we brought in the meadowlark that is pulling a violet ribbon, which is the color of all cancers ribbon.

I use a lot of birds in my work because it does remind me of my, disability.

Because I found out that I was losing my hearing because I can't hear the birds anymore.

What's kind of awesome about public art is you have that, you know, intention, and you put that research in and put that together.

After you leave it, you don't own it anymore.

The public gets ownership of it and they can ascribe their own meaning to it.

ALEXIS SHOCKLEY: Everybody can enjoy art.

So, it's important to have the art there to create that healing environment which is our focus in Arts in Healthcare, is to just normalize the hospital environment and make it welcoming for everybody.