Participant Biographies and Project Descriptions
Nancy Torbitt-Stewart
Nancy has a wide-ranging and impressive background as a visual artist who has worked in oil, acrylic, fiber arts, ceramics, mixed-media, and even designing and manufacturing leather goods. The creator and producer of ART START, a series of art education videos sold nationally which are used regularly as curriculum, Nancy is an accomplished artist, a professional, and someone who values giving to those in need. Nancy has spent the past twenty years creating, managing educational arts programs, and most recently teaching and empowering people through art. For the past eight years, through a grant from “Very Special Arts California” and later with her work with “Art and Creativity for Healing, Inc.,” Nancy teaches art workshops and each week visits the bedside of children battling cancer at Children’s Hospital Orange County (CHOC). She states, “The creation of art is a powerful force for all ages, as I am constantly reminded in my “play” (it is not fair to call it “work) with children at CHOC on the oncology/hematology floor.” This important experience along with Nancy’s natural compassion and dedication to art has also lead her to teach painting at battered women’s shelters, at regional hospitals, and to victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse.
As a recipient of the Senior Artist Project grant, Nancy is expanding upon art lessons with children at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) to children receiving treatment for cancer at CHOC’s new out-patient Infusion Clinic. Nancy is teaching drawing, collage, book and journal making, and other mixed-media projects to children who must wait for several hours to complete their chemotherapy treatments. Fighting cancer is an exhaustive battle for children, siblings and parents. Children often feel isolated and restricted. Nancy’s goal is to utilize creative projects that will not only help the children recognize their uniqueness and their strengths, but also to provide additional ways for them to communicate and express themselves with their limited energy and mobility. Art making will give these children, and their families, a venue to be introspective visually all while enjoying the artistic process and giving them skills they can use throughout their lifetime.
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