This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Unveiling the Inner Artist: InterArts Cabinet of Curiosity

Basket of Flowers

This page is referenced by:

Test Page My job title is Medical Actor, which means I play sick. I get paid by the hour. Medical students guess my maladies. I’m called a Standardized Patient, which means I act toward the norms of my disorders. I’m standardized-lingo SP for short. I’m fluent in the symptoms of preeclampsia and asthma and appendicitis. I play a mom whose baby has blue lips.

Medical acting works like this: you get a script and a paper gown. You get $13.50 an hour. Our scripts are ten to twelve pages long. They outline what’s wrong with us—not just what hurts but how to express it. They tell us how much to give away, and when. We are supposed to unfurl the answers according to specific protocols. The scripts dig deep into our fictive lives: the ages of our children and the diseases of our parents, the names of our husbands’ real-estate and graphic-design firms, the amount of weight we’ve lost in the past year, the amount of alcohol we drink each week.

My specialty case is Stephanie, a twenty-three-year-old who suffers from something called conversion disorder. She is grieving the death of her brother, and her grief has sublimated into seizures. Her disorder is news to me. I didn’t know you could have a seizure from sadness. She’s not supposed to know either. She’s not supposed to think the seizures have anything to do with what she’s lost.

STEPHANIE PHILLIPS
Psychiatry
SP Training Materials

CASE SUMMARY: You are a twenty-three-year-old female patient experiencing seizures with no identifiable neurological origin. You can’t remember your seizures but are told you froth at the mouth and yell obscenities. You can usually feel a seizure coming before it arrives. The seizures began two years ago, shortly after your older brother drowned in the river just south of the Bennington Avenue Bridge. He was swimming drunk after a football tailgate. You and he worked at the same mini-golf course. These days you don’t work at all. These days you don’t do much. You’re afraid of having a seizure in public. No doctor has been able to help you. Your brother’s name was Will.

MEDICATION HISTORY: You are not taking any medications. You’ve never taken antidepressants. You’ve never thought you needed them.

MEDICAL HISTORY: Your health has never caused you any trouble. You’ve never had anything worse than a broken arm. Will was there when it was broken. He was the one who called for the paramedics and kept you calm until they came.

Our simulated exams take place in three suites of purpose-built rooms. Each room is fitted with an examination table and a surveillance camera. We test second- and third-year medical students in topical rotations: pediatrics, surgery, psychiatry. On any given day of exams, each student must go through “encounters”—their technical title—with three or four actors playing different cases.
Basket of Flowers 8 Object 1 Submission plain 2021-05-13T03:20:29+00:00
By Emma Stover
After visiting the Wadsworth, one piece has been stuck in my brain. As soon as I saw it, it became my object of desire, it was everything I wanted it to be and more. This piece was titled simply, “Basket of Flowers." It is exactly as it is titled, a basket of flowers, but the flowers were made from delicate porcelain and silk.Unlike the classic woven basket, they were held in an intricate porcelain and bronze one. The piece at first glance was an ordinary bouquet, but it oozed with craftsmanship and delicacy. It is unlike large paintings in gilded frames and massive statues of marble. It tries its best to replicate an everyday object in a tastefully preserved way.

There is not much of a history to be found through research of this object. It was bought by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1900 and displayed at the Princess Gate in London prior to being gifted to the Wadsworth. Due to the many unknowns of this piece, I decided to research the flowers themselves. Flowers have often been used as their own language, to tell stories and convey meaning. Although it is difficult to identify the exact flowers in this everlasting bouquet, with the help of Emma Perry we are fairly certain of a few of them. One of the most obvious ones was the pink and white tulips near the top of the bouquet. The most common and well known meaning of tulips is “deep love”. They are also associated with rebirth due to their early bloom. Another flower in the piece was pink and white carnations. These are also associated with love. The pink part is known to mean affection, while white is synonymous with innocence. There are small clusters of yellow daffodils in the bouquet. The daffodil is a symbol of rebirth, similarly to the tulip. It also has an early blooming period. The white flowers at the very top of the piece could very well be representative of larkspur. This flower represents love and an open heart. In general the bouquet seems to be telling the story of new love, the innocence of a first love perhaps.

Although flower bouquets just like this could be made everyday using real flowers, this rendition of a flower bouquet has something special. It is undying, everlasting love. It conveys intricacy and delicacy in its form. It feels special. Despite its rather undocumented past, it tells stories in its composition. It inspires me on a level that few other artistic pieces can do.

Bibliography: