Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center (Rancho) is one of the top ranked rehabilitation hospitals in the United States, and is a public health facility with a history of excellence and innovation with a patient-family centered approach to care. Vital to the success of the Civic Art Program for Rancho is the engagement of Rancho artists from the art programs and the clinicians, researchers, staff and volunteers that form the Rancho family. The artworks created under the Los Angeles County Arts Commission Civic Art Program foster a sense of community and humanity that reflect the mission of Rancho to restore health, rebuild life and revitalize hope for persons with a life-changing illness, injury or disability, while creating a welcoming, humanizing and uplifting atmosphere for the patients, visitors and staff. Artists Deborah Aschheim, De la Torre Brothers (Jamex and Einar) and Glenn Kaino/Kainoco, Inc.’s civic artworks contribute to the healing environment and are integrated within the Campus to build a cohesive vision that recognizes the power and journey of recovery, rehabilitation and reintegration.
Deborah Aschheim's Story Wall visually communicates Rancho Los Amigos’ history of innovation and patient-centered care, its mission to rebuild full and rewarding lives aided by an incredibly supportive patient and caregiver community, and program’s remarkable history and vision for breakthrough achievements in medical science and technology.
Deborah Aschheim spent time in residence at Rancho interacting, observing and participating in the daily happenings on campus that inform her hand drawn glass artworks and videos. Story Wall’s first section, “History,” tells the story of Rancho’s transformation from the County Poor Farm to one of the largest and best rehabilitation hospitals in the country, featuring historic images from Rancho’s archive, contemporary photographs shared by the staff and pictures the artist drew from observation and the architectural renderings. “Mission” features stories and intimate portraits of patients and caregivers actively living fulfilling, challenging and creative lives that show the diversity of people and interests of Rancho. The final section, recognizing Rancho’s “Future,” is a network that makes a stylized reference to brain calls or the nervous system through subtly glowing lines. For the video program, the artist filmed and collected footage from scientists and researchers across Rancho and from its research affiliates at Caltech and USC; from physical therapy, Rancho robotics, Rancho sports and women’s competitive wheelchair basketball; from recreational therapy, performing and visual arts; and patient created videos.
Deborah Aschheim makes installations, sculptures and drawings about memory and place. She has created permanent public artworks for the University of California, San Francisco; for Amazon.com in Seattle, WA; for the City of Sacramento and for the Los Angeles Police Department, and she has created numerous temporary public art installations including projects for San Francisco Arts Commission, Pasadena Transit, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Los Angeles International Airport, the Wellcome Trust in London, England. From 2009-11 she was the Hellman Visiting Artist at the Memory and Aging Center in the Neurology Department at the University of California, San Francisco, creating permanent installations for the Sandler Neurosciences Center that incorporated data from the clinical research program and patient experiences as the culmination of her residency. She has had solo and group exhibitions across the United States and internationally, including the Barrick Museum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; OPC in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Suyama Space in Seattle, WA; San Diego State University CA; the Pasadena, CA Armory and the Pasadena Museum; Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO; the Weatherspoon Museum at the University of North Carolina Greensborough; the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA; Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA. To learn more, visit:
http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/ 
