Local art gallery owner Mark Ruschman says Clarian Health's Photos for Health initiative is taking opportunities away from local artists. (Star file photo)

Jacqueline Buckingham Anderson owns the art design and consulting firm that helped Clarian design the Photos for Health initiative. (Submitted photo)

Clarian Health's new Photos for Health initiative is supposed to make hospital patients feel better. But it has certain members of the local art community feeling peeved.

Clarian is inviting patients, staff and members of the general public to submit nature photos via the Web site www.photosforhealth.com. Eventually, more than 2,000 of the pictures submitted will be used to decorate three Clarian buildings currently under construction -- the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center and the Riley Hospital for Children Simon Family Tower, both in Downtown Indianapolis, and Clarian Arnett Hospital in Lafayette.

Mark Ruschman, owner of Ruschman Art Gallery, is among several in the art community who think local artists should have been involved in talks about how to decorate the new buildings, and is disappointed by Clarian's request that photographers submit their work for no compensation.

"Artists living here need opportunities to sell and show their work locally," he said. "Given the size of this project, I think it is a shame that Clarian chose to go in this direction ... I think they are trying to get it all for free."

Clarian Health CEO Dan Evans was unavailable for comment, but spokesperson Holly Vonderheit said the organization "does and has supported the local art community."

"One thing to keep in mind is that Photos for Health is just one way that Clarian is using art in its facilities," she said.

Jacqueline Buckingham Anderson, owner of an art and design consulting firm and the wife of Indianapolis Museum of Art director Maxwell Anderson, came up with the idea and is helping Clarian execute it.

Anderson said that photos taken by patients, staff and other community members best achieves her clients' goals.

"This project was designed to empower the patients, employees, doctors and clinicians within Clarian Health," she said. "If the (program's critics) were to go to the hospitals and see how the patients and staff react when they talk to them about it, then maybe they'd feel differently."

John Domont, a local artist and gallery owner who has worked on commissions for Riley Hospital for Children and Community Hospitals, praised Clarian's intentions while lamenting the consequences of Photos for Health.

"There are some great talents in this local art community and an opportunity like this can catapult a person," he said. "This has hurt some feelings and hurt some local pocketbooks."

Anderson's close ties to the Indianapolis art community has amplified the debate.

"Jackie unilaterally decided to ask people to send images so she could reproduce them as she sees fit," Ruschman said, adding, "I don't know that anybody knew that she was an art consultant."

Anderson launched her consulting firm in 2003, and cites her work on the Westerley Estate, a 20-room historic home on the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, as her most recent project. She and her husband live in the house.

Scott Grow, a local artist who maintains www.onthecusp.org -- a local arts blog where the debate erupted last week -- was initially skeptical about the Clarian initiative.

"I was on one side about it at first," he said. But Grow softened his stance after an e-mail exchange with Anderson.

"In her eyes, it really isn't about artists or art with a capital 'A,'." he said.

(Photos for Health is described as "a unique art initiative" on its website.)

"That's what's making the artists and art dealers mad," Grow said. "If they just dropped the term 'art' from all the statements, I don't think it would be that big of an issue."

Arts Council of Indianapolis president Greg Charleston sees the issue as a misunderstanding.

"It really is more of a community project than an opportunity for professional artists," he said. "It's hard to argue with the fact that they are asking patients, doctors and other members of the community to participate in the creative process."

Anderson agrees.

"I think that's what the local art community is missing," she said.