Medical Surrealist

It was almost as grotesque as seeing the workings of your own stomach through a fluoroscope. Minneapolitans stared, fascinated, or smiled a little uneasily last week at Daisy Stilwell's pastels on view at the Walker Art Center. Some of them:

P: A picture of a stomach sitting at ease in an armchair with beer and pretzels beside it while esophagus and duodenum stream off nonchalantly in all directions.

P: A human liver garnished with onions.

P: A picture (called Brainstorm) of a brain in a storm. (The brain forms the body of an ostrich and the spinal cord is the bird's neck which tunnels through the sand, emerges on the other side with a sheepish expression. The brain's convolutions represent voluptuous female nudes. Miss Stilwell says the brain is that of an escapist.)

P: Planned Parenthood (see cut), in which one fetus knits booties while another fetus thoughtfully soaks up vitamins from a stalk of celery.

All these pictures were perfect in anatomical detail, because 28-year-old Miss Stilwell is one of the top medical artists in the U.S. (there are only about 50 U.S. medical artists, all told).

She has eight years of serious medical art behind her. Among other things she has 1) illustrated a book on orthopedic operations for Dr. Arthur Steindler of the University of Iowa, 2) illustrated surgical and medical works for doctors at Johns Hopkins, 3) made hundreds of sketches of Dieppe and Dunkirk plastic surgery cases in Britain to illustrate a forthcoming book by Boston and Oxford's Dr. John Marquis Converse. One day last fall she got sick & tired of being always serious in her medical drawings, began her surrealistic compositions "as a sort of psychotherapy."

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