By Doug Brunk, San Diego Bureau
When an uncle of Dr. Peter G. Tuteur gave him his first camera at the age of 10, one of the first images he captured was shards of light beaming parallel to a gangway in his native Chicago neighborhood.
The angle of light "put a strong shadow on any kind of rough surface like bricks or stones," recalled Dr. Tuteur, an internist who directs the pulmonary function laboratory at Washington University, St. Louis.
Today, he still snaps photos of abstract images, some of which hang in the university's pulmonary function laboratory. "I favor taking images in junkyards or back streets. My goal is to depict on film what anybody could have seen if they were in the mindset to look for it. You frequently find me crouching down in gutters looking at broken windows or walking through empty lots or defunct or closed factories."
He recently spoke to a group of inner-city middle school students about his hobby and told them that a photograph "is an example of what the photographer decides to include and decides to exclude. Then you put a tone or twist on it to emphasize your message. That's what I try to do."
Dr. Tuteur estimates that he spends the equivalent of 14 days a month taking photos. He considers the hobby a healthy outlet from his medical practice. "Medicine is very comfortable after you've done it for awhile, because you know what the rules are; you feel comfortable in making decisions," he said. "If you start something new, you lose that comfort. So it takes some energy to make the decision to go ahead and do something else."
Galleries in St. Louis, Chicago, and Breckenridge, Colo., have shown and sold Dr. Tuteur's work. "I love not only showing my images, but I love to be in the galleries to discuss them with the viewers as well," he said. During a gallery showing in Chicago, a man was admiring one of his sepia tone images depicting a sunrise over a lake in eastern Missouri. Dr. Tuteur introduced himself to the man, who said, "You've made my day. This is where I spent my youth."
The man used to camp along the lake's shoreline as a child. "That evoked all sorts of historical memories for him," Dr. Tuteur said.
Symbols of Resiliency
As a youngster, Dr. Carl C. Bell aspired to be a cartoonist. "I wasn't that good, though," said Dr. Bell, chief executive officer and president of Community Mental Health Council Inc. in Chicago. "That was the problem."
But that didn't stop him from taking up a hobby of replicating drawings of Marvel comic book characters and making collages of cutout comic book characters and superheroes. "I can replicate but I can't create," he said.
In medical school, he drew an image of Captain America on the wall of his apartment. Today, three murals of cutout comic book characters hang in his home. "It's a cheap escape," he said.
He's also dabbled in other art forms over the years, including animated film and sculptures made of soapstone.
Last summer, he created a mural of Spider-Man on the wall of his back porch. He found a Spider-Man comic book cover, drew a grid of the image on the wall, then filled in the grid with felt-tipped marker, and then painted the image.
"It's a good feeling to do something concrete, because my work as a CEO does not give me the opportunity to see tangible 'oh, look what I did' outcomes of my work," he explained. "For me, the Marvel comic themes represent turning learned hopelessness into learned helpfulness. Daredevil was blind, Spider-Man had relationship problems, and the X-Men are mutants, so they're freaks. Hulk has a temper problem; the Fantastic Four got irradiated by cosmic rays, so they're messed up; [and] poor Ben Grimm [of the Fantastic Four] is the Thing, this ugly monster."
He especially identifies with Spider-Man because "I want images of power, and models, and helpfulness, and winning, and a goal to live for," said Dr. Bell, who is also director of public and community psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "I want strength. I'm not interested in a deficit model. Who better to represent that than Spider-Man?"
In Glass, a Sense of Fulfillment
Five years ago, Dr. Natalie Semchyshyn took an 8-week evening class on leaded glass at a community college. She was in the middle of her dermatology residency at Washington University in St. Louis, and she initially worried what impact the class would have on her busy schedule.