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For four years, team member artwork has decorated and dazzled the University Hospital lobby in the annual Team Member Art Show. The artwork of eight team members will be on display through Thursday, June 24.

One of the artists is Kelsey Couzzo, Data Visualization Developer for the Business Intelligence Program in the Dean’s Office at the School of Medicine. She has been at UVA Health for about a year, and her medium is artificial-intelligence (AI)-assisted digital. 

Couzzo always loved art. She went to art school and turned her passion into a career as a professional digital artist. After several years working in the field, Couzzo started noticing tremors and a loss of abilities that required her to change how she did everything in life. 

“I have a disability and pretty severe hand tremors,” she says. “Losing the ability to draw and paint was devastating because it had been a creative outlet since childhood.” 

“Like many people with complex illnesses, it took me a long time to find an accurate diagnosis and even longer to get effective treatments,” she says. “During that time, I had to learn a new way to walk, to do activities of daily life, and new ways to work. Fortunately, I had already changed careers to working in Data Analytics when I started dealing with the hand tremors, so it only impacted art as a creative outlet and not as a career. For more than a year I was left without the ability to creatively express myself, and that was more emotionally devastating than having to adapt to walking with assistance or using other adaptive technology.”

While she can hold a pencil and paintbrush, she does not have the steady hands to draw and paint like she used to. Couzzo had to find a way to completely reinvent herself. She — and her love of art — turned to the computer to help. 

“I started experimenting with machine learning as a way to try to understand it better,” she says. “And then, I realized I was creating these really cool art pieces. It’s kind of like a collaboration with the AI, where I’ll be doing multiple iterations in directing the machine learning model on what to do and what colors to use. And then, I’ll edit in Photoshop. Over the course of a couple years, I’ve really perfected that technique.”

Couzzo calls her art AI-assisted art as opposed to AI-generated art because she guides the computer more and focuses on the design.

“It a collaboration more than anything,” she says. “What I am doing is a combination of traditional digital art and AI art.”

Couzzo thinks it’s important for everyone to tap into their creative side, even if your works don’t end up on the walls of the hospital lobby.

“I think doing art is a part of the human experience,” she says. “Creative outlets are necessary for mental and physical health, and that’s why it’s important to find ways to continue to do those things, especially if you are sick or busy. I don’t think that art is something that you need to do professionally to get a benefit from. To me, I think the creative outlet itself and the process itself is what’s most important.”

Through Wednesday, June 23, learn more about Couzzo’s story in an audio and visual wellness event called Take C4re.

To see Couzzo’s and the other team members’ artwork in person, visit the hospital lobby by June 24. Other artists in this year’s show are as follows:

• Kay Taylor, Media Specialist/Photographer, Strategic Relations and Marketing–Photography
• Melonie M. Napier, Grant and Contract Specialist, Cancer Center – Mixed media
• Christine Bilous, RN, Coronary Care Unit – Photography
• Kim Kelley-Wagner, Webmaster and Editor, Department of Medicine – Archival photograph
• Patty Collins, Diagnostic Medical Physicist, Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging – Photography
• Lynn Gaffey, RN, Cardiac Transition Unit – Photography
• Amanda E. Whitley, Cardiovascular Technologist, Cardiac Catherization Lab – Gauche and watercolors

Applications Now Being Accepted for Rotating Art Exhibit

The UVA Health Arts Committee is currently accepting submissions from artists, including team members and the general public, for the rotating art exhibit in the hospital lobby. The deadline to apply is Friday, July 30. Learn more and apply.

A call for entries for the next Team Member Art Show will be made in the fall.