Bio: Brenner, Karen (Artist at St. Joseph’s-1977)

Contact: Betty Comstock

Email: Comstock@Stateline-ISP.com

Surnames: Brenner, Adlkofer

----Source: Tribune-Record-Gleaner 08/06/1977

It all began when Karen Brenner “doodled” on the menu at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Marshfield, where she’s been a patient since March.

That ‘doodle’ led to a request from the hospital Dietary department for an Easter bulletin board. Everybody enjoyed that, so she enlivened the walls of her own and other rooms with a collection of cartoon figures. Then she did a suitable rendering to commemorate the hole-in-one of hospital Chaplain Dale Trimberger. These projects led to Karen redoing a coronary bypass diagram. That led to a visit from Sister Rita Adlkofer, hospital Clinical Nurse Specialist-Critical Care, with a request for diagrams for a new booklet to replace the coronary care patient education booklet the hospital has been using. All this from someone who’s “never had a lesson” in art!

The patient-artist also is a nurse, so her nursing knowledge and natural artistic skills are combined to produce her “Joey, the Happy Heart” drawings for the booklet. Karen graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing in 1963, working three years on Pediatrics and most recently has been Clark County Home Nurse.

Between the two nursing jobs, the upbeat artis-in=residence married and had a family. She, her husband George, and sons Steven, 12, Dean 10 and George, 4, live in a new home in Loyal. She has a small ceramics studio there, and is starting a ceramics business-lessons and supplies-for friends and neighbors who share her interest.

She’s always drawn, Karen says, and she welcomes the time-consuming art project. The revised coronary care patient education handbook will outline the prevention of heart problems, medical/surgical treatment for those which exist, pre-operative and post-operative patient information, and living with problems which may remain.