Newsletter:
the cows
Title: CardioFlyer
Artist: Robert Dancik
Sponsor: Cohen & Wolf P.C.

Robert Dancik has been an art teacher for more than 30 years, with students ranging from kindergartners to adults. Throughout he has maintained his standing as a professional artist and designer, exhibiting his jewelry and sculpture in museums and galleries in the US and Japan.

"I have long been a devotee of Jules Verne, the French master of science fiction. Inspired by his stories of space travel, I imagined how Verne might use his imagination and knowledge to relieve the suffering of a loved one. I created a daughter for Verne, Lily, born with a heart defect that caused her heart to beat abnormally fast. In Verne's studies, he comes across a theory that the human heart would beat slower and less labored in outer space, due to the absence of gravity. He fashions a space vehicle just for Lily. Based on one of Verne's own drawings where he has placed the passenger module atop the main rocket, I put Lily's capsule at the top, inverted so as to be more aerodynamic. I also placed a window for the pilot (Verne, of course) in the center of the larger heart-rocket.

Cardioflyer is another "flight of fancy", where I've tried to inspire people to remember how child's play can be so good for the heart, something we forget to do as we get older. I also pictured patients zipping around Danbury Hospital after their heart procedures!

"The theme of Heartbeat of Our Community is particularly poignant for me, as I lost my father to a heart attack many years ago. I often think that he might still be alive today had the many recent developments in cardiac care been available back then. One of my works, 2,186,490,000: Heart Monitor measures the number of heartbeats from the time my father died until I finished that piece."

Dancik holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts and a Masters degree in sculpture. He regularly teaches workshops in the US and abroad, and his works have been published in numerous books and periodicals. He serves on the Boards of the Brookfield Crafts Center and the Hammond Museum. He is also partner in Zoe & Floyd, a gallery in Seymour.

For more information, visit www.robertdancik.com


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