Harborview Nurse Log
Barbara Noah
Harborview Medical Center
A dynamic installation combines elements of the natural world to inspire healing.
Aquariums are common in waiting rooms for good reason: Their motion is soothing.
Inspired by these positive effects, Barbara Noah created Harborview Nurse Log, which transforms a handcrafted driftwood tree stump into a case for an aquarium where fish swim through ripples of light. Visitors can gaze into the piece like the aqueous equivalent of a fireplace, and its sky-blue background with soft clouds simulates a window in an otherwise windowless space.
"The combination of these elements creates a meditative and life-affirming presence," Noah said at the time of its completion.
Harborview Nurse Log takes its name from the term for a fallen tree or stump out of which new life grows. The aquarium itself contains various natural forms: a coral “tree,” wishing stones (rocks with rings around them), ammonites (shell fossils), rose quartz, and picture jasper, which reveals a landscape within a stone, as if it were a recorded moment in time. Practitioners of gemstone healing consider picture jasper a grounding stone that promotes connection to the earth and alleviates fear.
Originally created in 1997, the piece was later relocated from the Surgical Suites Waiting Room in the Center Wing at Harborview Medical Center to the Family Medical Clinic in the hospital’s Patricia Steel Building, where Noah repopulated it with new live fish and custom corals.
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Based in Seattle, Noah is an interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid works interweave natural, scientific, and cultural themes. While her recent focus is on archival pigment prints, her practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, digital media, sculpture, installation, and public art. Noah’s work has been exhibited at major institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, Portland Art Museum, Artists' Space, MoMA PS1, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, as well as museums in Russia, China, and France.
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Harborview Medical Center
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