When Dr. Renee Tegeler walked into her husbands new office, she knew she had to do something.

I realized his office space had nothing on the walls, she said.

As an healing artist meaning she makes art specifically for people who heal, such as doctors and therapists Tegeler was appalled by the lack of decoration. Dr. Charles Tegeler had been give the office last June when he was appointed the interim chair of the department of neurology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

So, the minute Tegeler retired on July 31, having worked as a doctor herself for almost 40 years, she began furiously working on art related to the brain, creating pieces for her husbands empty walls.

It looks much better now, Tegeler said, laughing.

Her brain-inspired work didnt stop there. Tegeler has created 72 pieces for her Neuroscience Collection, 46 of which are on display at the Keener Gallery in the Allegacy Headquarters through the end of the month.

This is Tegelers second show at the Keener Gallery, having displayed another collection there at the beginning of 2019.

For the Neuroscience Collection, Tegeler added new mediums to her repertoire, but most of the artwork involves fused glass.

Within the Neuroscience Collection is a mini-collection called Silhouette, a series of seven colored photographs of an original piece of fused-glass art. In it, a colorful brain sits inside an opaque profile of a head, created by fusing two layers of glass. The brain, also fused onto the head, was arranged with pieces of dichroic glass, a type of glass that transmits one color and reflects another color depending on the light.

Shes fusing glass in a way that no one else is doing, said Beth Blair, a massage therapist who helps run Tegelers gallery and gift shop. It mirrors the depth of a person, because it has layers.

The silhouette was then photographed on a piece of frosted glass through which a light was shone. To get each of the individual colors, ranging all the way down the rainbow from red to purple, Tegeler said she put different filters over the light for each photograph.

Her art is not only aesthetically pleasing but also scientific a challenge Tegeler felt prepared for with her strong background in medicine. This unique balance of neuroscience and art is best exemplified in a piece entitled The Neuron.

The Neuron differs from the rest of the collection by being the only non-brain image. Instead, this piece captures a snapshot of the inner workings of the brain: a neuron, with all the correct anatomical parts represented.

The purple cell body of the neuron, known as the soma, contains a pink nucleus in its center, and branch-like dendrites splay out from the soma. Across the middle of the piece, a thin black line, representing the axon and with a oval around each representing the protective myelin sheath, connects the soma to purple axon terminals with little synapses at their ends. Bright, multi-colored cells make up the background of the image.

Creating this image of the neuron happened almost purely by luck, since the materials Tegeler used alcohol ink on ceramic tile are hard to control. Instead of painting, she had to blow the ink to guide it into the correct formations. One wrong blow and the whole image would have been ruined.

Ill never do it again, Tegeler said, laughing. I tried to do a spinal cord or a brain. I decided to do a neuron, and that one worked.

With the Neuroscience Collection, Tegeler hopes to reach a new audience of doctors and therapists, healers of all kinds, who want to transform their office space with art.

Tegeler emphasized that by now focusing on healing art instead of medicine, she can doctor whole groups of people in lobbies and waiting rooms instead of just one person in an exam room. But at the end of the day, Tegeler believes its all worth it, if even just one person feels moved by her art.

If I can make that one person feel special, she said. That feeling brings me to my very core.

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Healing artist combines neuroscience and aesthetics in new collection - Winston-Salem Journal