Therapeutic Art with Seattle Children’s

Guided by Seattle Children's art therapists, patients from the hospital's oncology and rehabilitation units used therapy sessions to process their medical journeys through color and form. With families' permission, several of those original pieces — including a detailed study of a hospital room, an anatomical heart made of embroidery thread, and a group painting created using adaptive methods so every child could take part — were adapted into a single Monorail column, moving the patients' stories from the bedside to a citywide platform.

One piece on display honors Jaxon, who was 13 when he created it in colored pencil while navigating a four-year journey with Ewing Sarcoma. Jaxon described art as something that helped him process and share how he was feeling, especially during stressful moments. His family has shared the piece publicly to shine a light on childhood cancer and offer hope to other children still facing their own battles.

Illustrator Stevie Shao drew on sketches patients made of their own "stuffies" — the stuffed animals and comfort objects that travel with kids through treatment — and reimagined them at mural scale for a piece at 3rd and Stewart in downtown Seattle. The mural translates a well-documented source of comfort for young patients into a larger-than-life Pacific Northwest scene, giving the children's own creative ideas a permanent, public home in the city.