Who We Are

Soul's Palette Arts, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion, was cre­ated to pro­vide heal­ing arts ser­vices for extended stay hos­pi­tal patients in local hos­pi­tals. Through the choice of music, drama, cre­ative writ­ing, dance and visual arts, stress is relieved, com­fort found and spir­its lifted.

I have been gone from home for 9 months. I live in NE so I don’t get many visitors, except from the HAP. They were the core of people I could count on.

There are long days here. If you have someone to paint with it is more fun. It is good for me, I feel productive!

After the music played, we all walked after that. It was interesting I would get so inspired by those ladies who are giving up their time to make me feel better. I walked 10 times around in laps after that when I couldn’t walk before. Why? I felt like I was dancing during the performance.

I highly believe in the HAP and have had many patients who have participated in it. We have had patients here nearly a month and the program really helps them with something to do and to focus on. It really helps them emotionally.

The guitar player would come and play for 30 minutes. I was having trouble falling asleep because I was in pain of a magnitude you cannot imagine till you’ve been there. You have to live through that kind of pain and feel how that dissipates with these artists taking the time to play for you.

I was there for 8 weeks. My family can only do so much because they are overwhelmed too. But you know, there is a group of people in the HAP at PSL that engage your brain in a different way. I looked forward to it and could count on it. It was priceless.

Research

Part­ner­ing with clin­i­cians to develop and imple­ment quan­ti­ta­tive stud­ies to demon­strate effects of the arts in healthcare.

Collaboration

Partnering with local hos­pi­tals, art orga­ni­za­tions and mountain communities to extend the expe­ri­ence of arts and well­ness. Please have a look at our developing “Cabin Project” wellness center.

Creative Programs

Visual Arts

Trained pro­fes­sion­als and visual artist vol­un­teers bring the cre­ative arts to patients and care­givers through paint­ing, draw­ing, col­lage, three-dimensional media, fiber arts and crafts. Patients are able to expe­ri­ence the visual arts indi­vid­u­ally at their bed­side or gather together in classes.

Performance

Our per­form­ing arts pro­gram brings dancers, musi­cians, actors and magi­cians to the envi­ron­ment. Lob­bies, wait­ing rooms, clin­i­cal hall­ways and patient rooms become the stage–transforming the hos­pi­tal expe­ri­ence into an uplift­ing unfor­get­table moment.

Music

Hospital con­certs pro­vide engag­ing and uplift­ing pre­sen­ta­tions for vis­i­tors, fam­i­lies, friends, and staff. Pro­fes­sional musi­cians in the Den­ver com­mu­nity bring a vari­ety of live music to the hall­ways and wait­ing areas on Tues­days from 9am to noon.

Writing

Our poets and writ­ers encour­age patients and care­givers to explore cre­ative expres­sion. When shar­ing words, com­mu­nity is cre­ated and patients feel connections.

Check out our patients' artwork

View, watch, read, and listen to the creations from our patients and staff.

View latest artwork →

Hospital Units Served

Adult Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant Unit Antepartum & Pregnancy Bed Rest Unit Pediatrics Unit

Adult Oncology & Bone
Marrow Transplant Unit

Patients and caregivers explore creativity as a way of healing the emotional stress of cancer. Patients who need an allogenic transplant are in a sterile environment for weeks and sometimes months. Their lives change forever in ways almost unimaginable.

During this extended hospital stay, patients are encouraged to explore creativity. The goal is to engage in the process of creating for its healing and life enhancing qualities. Artists-in-residence and volunteers provide a patient-centered open studio approach offering the opportunity for creativity at any time throughout the day.

Antepartum & Pregnancy
Bed Rest Unit

Fiber Arts are the staple for this program offered to soon-to-be mothers who are on bed rest. Pregnancy is an exciting time but can also be frightening. Imagine going to your regular doctor checkup only to be flown directly to the hospital without a moment to gather belongings or to hug the children at home.

Bi-weekly group classes teach knitting and felting. Often patients go home with baby hats, blankets and wall hangings for the nursery. Escaping the four walls of their rooms for an hour to engage in creativity with other bed rest moms creates bonding and a sense of normalcy.

Pediatrics Unit

Through art children communicate their feelings. When under the emotional stress of illness and its treatment, children will express through their drawings thoughts that sometimes cannot express with words.

Artists-in-residence, therapists and volunteers provide weekly activities in the art room and offer bedside art kits with instruction. Notebooks with supplies are available providing creativity as an option any time of the day.

Board Members

Cynthia
Lockhart
Donna
Line
Millah
Nikkel
Rosie
Opp
Doug
Sandusky

Cynthia Lockhart

Founder of the Soul’s Palette non­profit orga­ni­za­tion and direc­tor of the Heal­ing Arts Pro­gram at PSLMC and RMHC in Den­ver CO, Cyn­thia has thirty years expe­ri­ence in the art world as an ele­men­tary to col­lege level edu­ca­tor, ther­a­pist and supervisor. Cyn­thia grad­u­ated from Penn State Uni­ver­sity with a M.Ed. where her focus cen­tered on chil­dren writ­ing about art. Honors include pre­sent­ing at national and state level art con­fer­ences, edu­ca­tor of the year for mul­ti­cul­tural stud­ies, and cre­ativ­ity grant recip­i­ent to study in Cairo, Egypt. Cyn­thia was born in Indi­ana, worked in the U.S. and four years in Japan then set­tled in Col­orado in 1999. She enjoys her son, ski­ing, ice skat­ing, read­ing, travel, and landscaping.

Donna Line

Donna Line has been a member of the Denver community since the fall of 2004. She became acquainted with the field of healing arts in her role as a special education teacher working with students in a community-based transition program.

Donna identifies herself as a mother, educator, investor and business owner. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska, attended college in Indiana to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies with minors in English and Education. She continued her education to earn a Master of Science degree in Special Education from Mankato State University, Mankato, MN. In her role serving special education student, she was honored to be selected for inclusion in the 10th Edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers®, 2005/2006.

Donna has four sons and a daughter-in-law, Breton Line, Brandon and Vera Line, Benton Line, and Parker Jessen.

Millah Nikkel

Millah Nikkel has lived, worked, and volunteered in Denver since 1978. She became involved in healing arts when a friend received a very successful stem cell transplant. Her passion for fiber arts meshed perfectly with the healing arts philosophy. She enjoys introducing patients to new art forms.
Millah has lived in many places around the world while working as an environmental geologist. She received a BS in Environmental Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an MS in Geology from the University of Bergen, Norway. She is married and has two daughters currently in college.

Rosie Opp

Rosie Opp is currently studying Communication Design at Metropolitan State University, Denver, CO. Since a child, Rosie has had a great passion for art and design. In fourth grade she won first place in a logo design contest at her elementary school and was featured in the local newspaper. In high school Rosie worked at a print and copy store where she met Cynthia Lockhart. Recently they have worked together on small design projects for the growing healing arts program. Rosie designed the logo for Soul’s Palette Arts and became a board member in 2012.
 Rosie takes pleasure in photography, painting and crafts. She is a Coloradan by birth and by heart and loves spending her time outdoors camping, biking, running and snowboarding with her high school sweetheart.

Doug Sandusky

Biography is pending.

Volunteer With Us

You can make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of patients. We are attract­ing stu­dents and com­mu­nity vol­un­teers at all skill levels.

Some vol­un­teers assist in group activ­i­ties for artist-in-residence pro­grams. Other, more expe­ri­enced, vol­un­teers visit patients at their bed­sides. Soul’s Palette artists are trained in a vari­ety of media includ­ing visual arts, music, dance, the­ater, cre­ative writ­ing, guided imagery and more. If you choose to become a vol­un­teer, we will assist you in find­ing an area that suits your tal­ents.

Start Volunteering with Us

Volunteer Application

Download, print, fill out.

Download PDF
Background Check

Download, print, fill out.

Download PDF
Fax to 303.869.1504

Attn: Lorie Klumb.

Current Volunteers

Cait
Chloe
Cynthia
Jamie
Jill
Kathleen
Kathy
Millah
Nathaniel
Rosie
Travis

References & Links

Have a look at our inspiration.

Can­cer as a Turn­ing Point

Dr. Lawrence LeShan, PhD.

Work­ing toward cre­at­ing a richer, more ful­fill­ing life appears to be far supe­rior in sur­vival time to that of tra­di­tional psy­chother­a­pies focus­ing on psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems and past causes. For peo­ple with can­cer, this approach often increases their pos­i­tive response to med­ical treat­ment by (the­o­ret­i­cally) stim­u­lat­ing their self-healing abilities.

Journalution

Journalution

In Journalution, Grason offers guidelines and prompts, encouraging readers to pick up the pen and journal their way to greater self-awareness.

My Stroke of Insight

Dr. Jill Bolte Tay­lor, Ph.D.

Jill Tay­lor was a 37 year old Har­vard trained brain sci­en­tist when a blood ves­sel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of a curi­ous sci­en­tist, she watched her mind dete­ri­o­rate whereby she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Because of her under­stand­ing of the brain, her respect for the cells in her body, and an amaz­ing mother, Jill com­pletely recov­ered. In, My Stroke of Insight, she shares her rec­om­men­da­tions for recov­ery and the insight she gained into the unique func­tions of the two halves of her brain. When she lost the skills of her left brain, her con­scious­ness shifted away from nor­mal real­ity where she felt “at one with the uni­verse.” Tay­lor helps oth­ers not only rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us with nor­mal brains bet­ter under­stand how we can con­sciously influ­ence the neural cir­cuitry under­ly­ing what we think, how we feel and how we react to life’s circumstances.

The Artist's Way

Julia Cameron

The Artist’s Way: A Spir­i­tual Path to Higher Cre­ativ­ity writ­ten together with Mark Bryan. The book teaches tech­niques and exer­cises to assist peo­ple in gain­ing self con­fi­dence in har­ness­ing their cre­ative tal­ents and skills. Cor­re­la­tion and empha­sis is used by the author to show a con­nec­tion between artis­tic cre­ativ­ity and connection.

The Jour­ney Through Can­cer

Jeremy Gef­fen

What do you do when your world is turned upside-down by a diag­no­sis of can­cer? How do you sort through the dizzy­ing array of con­ven­tional and non­con­ven­tional treat­ment options while also search­ing for mean­ing­ful ways of embrac­ing the men­tal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual dimen­sions of healing?

The Jour­ney Through Can­cer answers these ques­tions and more. Board-certified oncol­o­gist Jeremy Gef­fen, MD, has spent more than fif­teen years pro­vid­ing treat­ment, guid­ance, and care for thou­sands of can­cer patients and their fam­i­lies. In this ground­break­ing work, he offers real and inspir­ing solu­tions to the unique chal­lenges encoun­tered on the can­cer jour­ney, while hon­or­ing and car­ing for the whole person-and his or her entire family-at every step along the way.

Contact Us

Want more information about Soul's Palette Arts? Feel free to contact us below:

Phone

Call us any time. If we are out of the office, leave us a message.

Call 303.838.7630
Email

Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

Email Cynthia
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1719 E. 19th Ave. 3C Building
Den­ver, CO 80218

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