A Medical Artist's World

              Hearts and Charts
A Medical Artist's World
By Marilyn Seymour
Of The Times Staff
What does a medical artist do?
In Shreveport, the answer will be "a lit-tle
bit ef everything."
"It's not all hearts and flowers — well,
there are sometimes hearts," said artist
FCarolyn Knapp with LSU School of
Medicine in Shreveport.
Carolyn, her co-worker Diane Sum-mers,
Janet Germany at Confederate
Memorial Medical Center and Annette
'Porter at the Veteran's Administration
Hospital all work in the same field. Yet,
trier backgrounds are different.
Annette followed a formal medical il-lustration
course of study, but it took her
a while to decide on her life's work. Her
course was designed to prepare her for
the tedious and technical anatomical
drawings she would be required to do.
A native of Shreveport and the
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Burnie Porter,
Annette received a bachelor's degree in
fine arts from Baylor University. After
working in Georgia at a commercial art
studio, she accepted a job at Confederate
Memorial Medical Center in the medical
illustration department. Her experiences
there sparked her to interest in medical
••art.
She entered the University of Toronto
where she received a B.S. in art as ap-plied
to medicine. "There are just five
schools in the U.S. that carry that
course," Annette said. She chose Canada
because she had never been in that area
and thought she would gain much more rafa just her study of art by being there.
From there she went to the University
of Texas Southwest Medical School in
Dallas where she received a master's
degree. She returned to Shreveport last
year after working at Washington
University School of Medicine in St.
Louis, Mo.
Hard Field to Crack
"It is a lucrative field and kind of
hard to get into," she said. "Most
(schools) take two to six students . . .it's
a restrictive entrance so as not to flood
the field," she added. There are about 300
certified medical artists in the U.S., she
estimated.
A brochure from the Association of
Medical Illustrators, of which Annette is
a member, quoted a beginning salary in
1972 as between $12,000 and $15,000. The
civil service classification salary range
for her profession is between $12,000 and
$18,000, Annette said.
Janet Germany never thought about art
classes in high school. As a matter of
fact, though she drew posters and such,
she didn't take her first art course until
she went to college. While majoring in
social studies and making poster after
poster for friends it finally came to her
"What am I doing in social studies? I
ought to be in art." Her degree in art
education from Northwestern State
University led her to the job at Con-federate
where her husband, Joe, is assis-tant
administrator. Her job, as well as
those of the other women, is a civil
service job.
Janet, the daughter of former
Shreveporters Mr. and Mrs. E. L. Jones,
has lived here most of her life and
graduated from Byrd.
Diane Summers' summer job turned in-to
her career. When looking for a job
after her junior year at the University of
Dallas she heard about an opening at the
LSU School of Medicine. That was five
years ago.
The St. Vincent's graduate is looking
toward graduation in the fall from LSUS.
She is the daughter of Mrs. Constance
Summers.
Carolyn's job has been a sort of therapy
for her. She went to work at the medical
school following the death of her husband
and one of her sons in an airplane crash
in 1973. Her husband, Dr. Robert D.
Knapp, was a member of the medical
school faculty.
Carolyn had always been interested in
art and started out in college in a pre-med
curriculum. "I decided I didn't have
it as far as going into medicine. I re-ceived
my degree in art and went to
work," she said. The Ohio native is a
graduate of Northwestern University in
Evanston, 111.
Art and Medical Interests
After the tragic crash Carolyn felt she
needed a job. She took some placement
tests and went through counseling with
the state employment service where she
was given the idea of combining her art
background and scientific interests. "All
my life I have been interested in both art
and medicine. This job is the culmination
of both interests," she said.
Not every task a medical artist is as-signed
is as glamorous as drawing a new
procedure for heart surgery. These
women deal with the humdrum too.
Charts and graphs, diplomas, posters are
all a part of their jobs.
Janet enjoys doing posters. The clever
posters she does can be seen throughout
Confederate. The volunteer office is filled
with posters of children in sailor suits.,
Her posters asking workers to donate
blood have been scattered on the various
floors. A bandaged tiger is a familiar
character in her work. "I get most of my
ideas from greeting cards," she said of
the interesting characters she draws.
"Nobody is really fond of charts," An-nette
said with a smile. "Most medical
artists like to do nothing but medical il-lustration,"
she said, "but few are
fortunate enough to have a job doing only
this."
"We are really commercial artists as
well as medical artists," Diane said. "So
much of our work involved designs for
program covers, layout work for class
pictures, designing certificates for resi-dents,"
she said. "The charts and graphs
get pretty old," she added.
Can Make Complex Simple
Most of the artists' drawings and charts
of a medical nature are used in medical
publications. Sometimes professors use
them in lectures as well. "It's a real joy
to try to crystalize the idea that the physi-cian
is trying to get across to his au-dience,"
Carolyn said. "The exciting
thing about what we do is that we feel as
though we really contribute to the
medical community because visual art is
different from both the spoken and writ-ten
word. Sometimes it will make
something complex seem simple," she
said.
Annette finds it very exciting to be a
part of new procedures and ideas in the
medical world. Annette said that she gets
to find out about the newest things before
even other doctors know about them.
Sometimes it's difficult to illustrate pro-cedures.
When Janet found it necessary
to draw a section of a face, she stuck her
finger in her mouth and pulled it aside so
she could use her own teeth as a model.
Annette has pressed people in the office
into service as models.
Annette is the only one of the artists
who has gone into the operating room '
observe procedures. The others «•
from slides or sketches which the doctor,
provide.
Janet has prepared herself for the time
when she must go into the operating room
or into the morgue. Her predecessor did
both. "You just have to be in the right
frame of mind I guess," Janet said. She
added that as a child she was never
bothered by slimy worms — maybe that
will be a help.
(Continued on Page 2-E)
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GIVE BLOOD
Times Photo bv LlovdStitev
Frog Makes Plea for Confederate Memorial Medical Center's Blood Bank on Janet Germany's Poster