Edward Lentsch is a well-established mid-career painter. On a recent trip to New York to exhibit his work; his life was changed forever in a profound way that he describes as “an old school voodoo big magic miracle and definitely not just luck!”
Upon arriving in NYC for a pop-up exhibition sponsored by owners of the Empire Hotel at Lincoln Center, Lentsch had been working for several days straight with little sleep and drove from Minnesota to the Big Apple in less than two days. When he awoke the morning of his final leg of the trip, he had a funny blind spot in his left eye. Thinking nothing of it, he shrugged it off as the result of being over tired and in need of some rest and a bottle of Visine.
This is where it all gets very interesting. As Lentsch arrived at his hotel he received a phone call that would change his life forever. A prominent doctor in NY had his assistant call Edward to set up a meeting to view his new paintings. Lentsch posts his shows and exhibitions on social media which this doctor happened to be watching---they had met three years earlier at a show in Aspen, where he and his wife purchased a painting.
Edward recalls, “I thought it was nothing at the time until I mentioned that I was having trouble with my eye and wanted to call her back after I put in some eye drops and took a nap. Her response was emphatically, “the doctor will want to know about this immediately! You just wait for my call back and make sure you answer the call! I thought ok fine---then when she called back the doctor (as it turns out he is actually the CEO of Mount Sinai Hospital) and he had made some calls to have me checked out. I did as they told me and went to the address as instructed and this is where it got very crazy---I was quickly admitted into the ICU and was told that I was having a stroke caused from being in atrial fibrillation for an extended period of time. My eye problem was caused by an ocular inclusion and my heart was throwing clots to my brain. In fact if not treated immediately I could have had a serious life changing ---or life ending ---or what you might call major catastrophic event!”
“There’s a reason why this felt like such a miracle---there’s no way I would have gone to the emergency room in such a giant city like New York---that call saved my life, there’s no question in my mind!” Lentsch explains.
As he lay there in the hospital counting his many blessings, an idea came to Lentsch. “I thought: why not see if they would accept a painting as a gift,” he recalls. “They could hang it, sell it, or even use it for some kind of fund raiser. I am often asked to donate works for fundraisers, but this was different I wanted to give them a painting almost eight feet tall and eleven feet wide worth about $100,000. Would they even want it? I wrote to the CEO and offered the gift and to my amazement they (he and his colleagues) thought the gift was fabulous and they actually had a space to prominently display the work; The Leon and Norma Hess Institute of Medicine---brand spanking new! I thought wow this is great and then it hit me. This is what is next for me---this is my new project I will call it “One Artist’s Pledge” I Edward Lentsch hereby pledge $1,000,000 worth of monumental scale paintings to “For-Benefit” institutions that are making a contribution to humanity as my contribution. Lentsch realized that the power to make a difference was available to each and every one of us – and that through art, he – and his peers – would have the chance to make an immediate and tangible difference to the environments of major institutions helping others.
Lentsch began to contact other institutions to see if there were others who would participate. Singularity University (one of the premier think tanks in the country) quickly expressed interest for a new building scheduled for 2017. The idea had quickly gone from conception to a working model. Lentsch is currently working toward spreading this message of artist’s participating in new ways to give back their talents to their communities. “For me it’s like a second chance to make a difference and raise myself up beyond the accolades of academic and artistic success to really making a difference,” he says. “I discovered a new set of goals as an artist and this; I consider not just a major breakthrough but the ultimate inspiration of a lifetime!”
Installation of the first painting in this initiative, titled “Conversations with God”, is scheduled for the middle of December. More information can be found at www.oneartistspledge.com
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