Sometimes "a new self" emerges
For 20 years, Heather Bucalos has worked as a nurse in specialty areas that include high-risk obstetrics, student health and orthopedics. For the last 11 years, she has also been navigating a cancer journey that has led her to consider pursuing another of her passions – visual art.
“Cancer gave me the time to let the artist emerge,” says the Sidney, NY native, a self-defined “out-of-the-box creative thinker” who liked art class as a kid. As an adult, the first artistic hobby she had time for, in between working full-time as a nurse, was photography. When cancer entered the picture and she was on leave from work, she had the time to explore other artistic mediums.
“I think when you’re a cancer survivor, you learn how to go with the flow and to appreciate the ‘time in between,’ in between appointments, in between treatments.” This is a philosophy she believes applies not just to the cancer journey, which requires patience from diagnosis through treatment to survivorship, but to life in general.
“What do you do with the time in between anything?” she asks. “Sometimes a new self emerges in the in-between time, and I think for me the artist was born from that.”
Art programs sparked her creativity
When asked what she wants people to know most about her experience at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, it is how to get to the Healing Arts Gallery on the first floor – and about its Creative Arts Team, their roving Patient Art Cart and art workshops in the gallery’s Small Studio.
Heather was first diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma more than 10 years ago and, after chemotherapy treatment, achieved remission. When her lymphoma relapsed in 2019, she returned to Roswell Park to undergo a stem cell transplant. After rounds of pre-preparation chemotherapy in October and November that year — and contracting coronavirus during the 2019 Christmas holidays — her transplant was scheduled for January 23, 2020.
“I didn’t go home until February 2020,” she says. This also left Heather with a lot of “time in between.” As she was preparing to undergo the transplant, Heather connected with a member of the Roswell Park Creative Arts Team who was offering rocks painted with inspiring messages in a clinic waiting area. “The woman talked about the painted rocks and about her art residency, and it was interesting because during the pandemic everybody was painting rocks. I got into painting rocks around that time too,” she says.
“I find a rock that looks like something and then I paint what I think the shape looks like,” she explains, and shares an image of her 2025 rock art. One looks like a chameleon, and the other is a take on the famous “Girl with the Pearl Earring” masterpiece by Dutch painter Vermeer.
During the “in-between time” of her stem cell transplant, Heather began visiting the Small Studio, located in the Art Heals Gallery, to try other artistic pursuits. There, she was encouraged to just “push paint around on a canvas.” “It was healing for me just to feel the texture of the paint with no rules,” she remembers. “I painted before the transplant, but I was very rigid with my ideas. I was painting a lot of triangles and pointy edges. Now I’m doing a lot of soft, flowy edges.”
Sculpting the time in between
The change Heather sees in her art folds nicely leaning into her novel concept of “the time in between.” In addition to her photography and masterpiece-painted rocks, she has painted a series of vibrantly colored “smile blobs” on canvas, with google eyes and inspirational tags that have become popular among the members of her Roswell Park Survivorship group, Elephants and Tea Cancer Camp attendees and members of the Hope Club at the American Cancer Society in Albany, New York.
“I used to get very upset, you know, thinking things should be that way or this way, until I realized maybe the universe is trying to work with me instead of against me, and maybe I can go with the flow a little bit more. Maybe it’s a little better that way,” she says, a long clinic wait she used to color stickers instead of getting upset about the at times long wait to see the doctor.
Heather credits the artists-in-residence of the Roswell Park Creative Arts Team for inspiring her to embrace her internal artistic muse in the in-between times of her cancer journey.
“It’s a great program. They’re very patient with the patients, and you learn a lot of things about yourself and about art. When you learn new things in a new environment that’s not a pressurized environment, it’s very healing,” she says, adding that creativity supports neuroplasticity that can help to heal trauma.
“I want people to know that it’s OK to try new things like art. You never know what kind of artist is hiding inside of you.”
Donations to the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation support the Creative Arts Team and art programs at Roswell Park.
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Editor’s Note: Cancer patient outcomes and experiences may vary, even for those with the same type of cancer. An individual patient’s story should not be used as a prediction of how another patient will respond to treatment. Roswell Park is transparent about the survival rates of our patients as compared to national standards, and provides this information, when available, within the cancer type sections of this website.
