Meet the Art for Recovery Team

Art for Recovery Program Director

Award-winning leader in the field of arts in healthcare, Director Amy Van Cleve was honored in 2024 with the UCSF Chancellor Award for Exceptional University Service in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the university and its patients. As Director of UCSF’s Art for Recovery program, she has spent over two decades using the universal language of art to foster healing, connection, and personal expression.

Her commitment to this work is rooted in formal training—having studied art therapy during her undergraduate education—and enriched by more than 20 years of hands-on experience working at the bedside and in group settings with patients. Her background also includes professional work in the mural industry, where she collaborated with world-renowned muralists. Yet, her deepest understanding of art’s power emerged while co-creating with cancer patients in treatment. Bearing witness to their stories, courage, and humanity profoundly shaped her approach and reaffirmed her belief in art as a vital tool for storytelling and healing.

Amy creates safe, compassionate spaces where patients can express themselves without judgment, connect with others, and feel truly seen during some of life’s most challenging moments. Through curated exhibitions and installations across UCSF Medical Center and beyond, she brings patient narratives into public view—offering comfort to the isolated, dignity to the unseen, and a sense of community to all who engage with the work.

Healing Harpist

“Music can touch and comfort the deep part of the self.”

Patrice Haan started playing harp with Art for Recovery 20 years ago, through her non-profit agency, Healing Muses. She believes the harp is an invitation to self-care and wellness, creating a safe place to rest in wordless music, allowing room for emotions and healing. 

Her partnership with Art for Recovery has included projects with the Bone Marrow transplant wards and the Hem-Oncology Clinic at Parnassus, supporting cancer patients through Symptom Management Services clinics at Mt. Zion and Mission Bay, and playing harp during the Meri Center’s biannual Days of Remembering. 

In recent years, she has shared her dedication to poetry during online workshops as a door to entering and centering meditation. 

Musician Song Writer

Originally from Montana, Jim first performed in the San Francisco Bay Area with the Pickle Family Circus as an apprentice clown and roustabout, appearing in clown and club juggling routines. Jim has since presented his own clown show at fairs and festivals up and down the west coast from Lompoc to Puyallup. Outside the ring, Jim has pursued a variety of interests: jazz piano, accordion, movement and flamenco dance.

In the tradition of the minstrels and troubadours of old, Jim has been sharing his love of music and the performing arts with healthcare communities throughout Northern California, including the Art for Recovery program, for many years. Just as a vase of flowers can transform a room through beauty, a ‘bouquet’ of music and stories can create community, balancing the fear and stress of illness with wholeness.

Creative Writer

Ned Buskirk has worked with UCSF's Art for Recovery creative writing with cancer patients since 2018. His work is creatively engaging with healing through writing - at the hospital bedside, creative writing with cancer patients, and in groups, facilitating Healing with Writing Workshops. The Founder and CEO of his own nonprofit, with a MA in English Literature, he has over 5 years experience working with hospice patients, an active hospice program sending musicians to patients' bedsides, monthly sell-out live events facilitating creatively conscious mortality space for community, and enlivening open mics for men inside the prison system. He believes that our community deserves ongoing and consistent opportunities to creatively and vulnerably show up for one another. To face the hardest parts of being mortal, we need to come together, supporting and inspiring one another to heal, grow and claim our own uniquely individual creative aliveness.

Creative Lead

"Sometimes you're the one in the room and it doesn't matter what your strengths or your limitations are, you just have to show up and allow what wants to happen to happen."

Elias, who goes by Eli, has been involved in the cancer non-profit space for over a decade. Eli is an abstract artist and cartoonist that has been with Art for Recovery since 2021. He is an active facilitator for several workshops around the Bay Area including the inpatient drop-in group at Parnassus and the Mount Zion Open Art Studio. Eli finds every experience with patients unique and inspiring - He loves bringing his humorous side and excitement for art to every interaction. He also is always taking on new opportunities and believes that every person is capable of using art as a means of healing and expression. Eli is as well a skilled grief group facilitator. He can be seen curating personal displays of his art in galleries around the city. 

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Artist in Residence

A lifelong artist, Jun comes to UCSF Art for Recovery with a wide range of skills in all types of mediums. She facilitates expressive art workshops guiding others to express their deeper feelings and discover the freedom of therapeutic art methods.

"I make art as I live and travel, with an intention to show that life is about realizing possibilities. My work is a dynamic encounter with nature, perception, and challenges that lead us toward a place of insight and learning."

Born and educated in China, my art reflects the unique cross-cultural journey I have taken from China to California. After my son’s cancer healing journey, I built a Tiny House in the deep woods of Sebastopol and enjoy living in nature. I teach expressive art on a daily basis. I frequently travel to immerse myself in inspiring cultures and landscapes and explore different expressions of humanity."

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Musician in Residence

I am an artist and spiritual care provider with a deep passion for collaborative improvisation in music, dance, poetry, performance, and ritual. As a song leader and creative writing facilitator, I love to cultivate moments of presence and bravery by making music collaborative and accessible for others to co-create and embody. Creatively, I love to collect, write, and share prayers, poems, and folk songs as a way of connecting shared experiences of love and loss. 

I am thrilled to join UCSF’s Art for Recovery team in 2025, and to continue visiting patients, families, and staff in the hospital–this time with a guitar or a banjo! I am always deeply moved by the patients I meet and the moments of joy, grief, honesty, courage, and resilience I witness and aim to honor. With a tender heart, I am honored to offer music and song to anyone who needs it.

Former Director, Art for Recovery 1988-2020

As the director of UCSF Art for Recovery since its inception in 1988, my life changed when I began working with HIV patients at the beside at Mount Zion, where the expressive arts gave a voice to those who had no more words. As Director of Art for Recovery’s award-winning program, I was responsible for raising funds through grants, solicited and unsolicited donations, and presenting programming that would continue to serve our patients who are looking for community, and a safe place to be vulnerable.

I have created and facilitated numerous art and healing programs including: The Breast Cancer Quilts Project, Firefly Project, Employee Well-Being Project, Healing Garden Music Series, the Open Art Studio for anyone dealing with cancer, writing and expressive art workshops on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, and Hematology/Oncology Dept with adults living with cancer.  In addition, and in collaboration with the UCSF Department of Medical Humanities, I have published: The Firefly Project: Conversations about what it means to be alive, Bedside Manners: What to say and what not to say when someone is ill, The Portable Artist Workbook and The Portable Artist Coloring Book, the Art for Recovery Book of Prompts, and Prompts for Reflection, and The Postcard Quote Project. In the spring of 2018, the Patient as Teacher Anthology was published.  Along with the Art for Recovery staff we have painted eight murals (six on the ceilings of the Ultrasound suites) throughout UCSF. Collaborating with the UCSF architects the UCSF Mount Zion Meditation Room, the Jeffrey Pearl Meditation Room was created.   I am currently serving on the Mission Bay Core Committee for Arts and Interiors for new buildings and clinics associated with UCSF Health and continuing to create healing environments for our patients.   In 2020, I was nominated to the board of the National Organization for Arts in Health, and currently, co-leading NOAH’s ARC, a national initiative to alleviate burnout and stress in clinicians through the expressive arts.  My background is in fine arts, psychology and art history, and my career began doing research in 18th and 19th Century American Painting and Sculpture, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.  I am a painter, illustrator, and work in mixed media.  

I returned to the UCSF Cancer Center in June 2020, to work on special projects, part-time,  with adults living with cancer and creating healing environments throughout UCSF Health.  This works continues to be life-changing