Whether she was working with sick children, their anxious families or college students feeling alone and far from home, Krupa Jhaveri always relied on her confidence that art can be good medicine.

“I believe in art,” said Jhaveri, the University of Delaware’s international artist in residence during fall semester 2016. “I believe that it has the potential to heal us, both individually and collectively.”

Jhaveri, born and educated as an art therapist in the United States, traveled to south India to explore her own ethnic roots and now works there in the Sankalpa art initiative, which provides art therapy and creative empowerment programs for children and adults.

In Delaware this fall, she was the third artist to take part in the 2-year-old international residency program that is a partnership between UD’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.

Visual and musical artists in the program spend time on the University campus and at the hospital, lending their talents to special creative activities. Each of the three artists in the program to date has represented a different cultural background.

At the children’s hospital, Jhaveri worked with patients and their families, as well as staff members. She developed and led activities designed to help the youngsters think beyond their illnesses — identifying themselves, at least for a time, as children and not patients — and to promote stress-reduction and self-care for the adults.

Children being treated at the hospital had the opportunity to create artwork that would decorate and personalize their gowns and to work on group art projects.

Jennifer Sciolla, director of child life, creative arts therapy and school programs at duPont Hospital for Children, called the artist in residence “an incredible program … that brings health care, art and healing together.”

The hospital and CAS collaborate on selecting each artist and deciding how much time that person will spend at each institution. The diverse cultural backgrounds of the artists are key to the program’s success, she said.

“That cultural piece of the program brings something unique to the hospital,” Sciolla said. “That lets us share the diversity of the world with our patients and our families.”

At UD, Jhaveri worked with students in a variety of academic departments, from Art and Design to Women and Gender Studies.

A culmination of her time in Delaware was “Return to Roots” in November, a celebration through art of community, creativity and cross-cultural connections. Held in the Taylor Hall gallery, the event encouraged students and others from the community, including a contingent of international students, to contribute to a large work of art made from natural materials such as beans, oyster shells, pebbles, feathers and twigs.

A video of the “Return to Roots” event can be viewed here.

Students added items to the interactive artwork, and some also wrote about why a particular material connected them to their roots.

“One of the goals is for people to come together,” Jhaveri said. “We encouraged everyone to talk to a stranger during the event, to talk with them about what finding your roots means. Art really is a tool that can bridge our differences.”

Colin Miller, director of global arts and faculty director of the African Studies Program in CAS, said he and other leaders of the International Artist in Residence program already are thinking about who the next visiting artist might be and what skills and background that person will bring to the program.

“I think the diversity that we’ve had so far is really the strength of the program,” Miller said. “Every artist brings their own tool kit, their own experience, their own culture, and they’re all different. … After all, the world is a big place.”