Who's Who

Adria Klausner

Adria says that when she retired to Gainesville, she wanted to devote more time to her first love, painting. At the same time, she wanted to assist people in pain by doing some volunteer work, preferably in a hospital. In her own experience, painting had helped her surmount personal tragedies, by enabling her to express her pain and sorrow on canvas. Arts-in-Medicine at Shands offered her an opportunity to aid people through the arts.

She works mainly on the Mother/Baby unit, visiting expectant mothers on bed rest. She says that when she shows them how to paint a baby T-shirt, or embroider a bib, the beaming smiles and the warm thanks are her rewards.

For several years, Adria was a member of the Reflections, an Arts-in-Medicine improvisational theater troupe that performs for patients. She has also acted in an educational video for the University of Florida Geriatric Education Center, The Nursing Home Visit.

Adria is a board member of the Jordan Klausner Foundation, which supports the Gainesville Conductive Education Academy (GCEA). Conductive Education is a therapeutic method developed in Budapest, Hungary, to help children with neuro-muscular disabilities, especially CP (Cerebral Palsy) achieve independent lives.

Prior to coming to Gainesville, Adria had exhibited her art in Chicago and its suburbs. In Gainesville, she tried to refine her skills as an artist, attending painting courses at the University of Florida. She has participated in group shows in galleries around Gainesville. In 1999 she helped organize a cultural exchange between Italian artists from Pisa and AIM’s artists.

www.jordanklausnerfoundation.org