Art and medicine have brought balance to Arinze “Ari” Ochuba’s life for as long as he can remember.

As a boy, he sat glued to the TV, absorbing episodes that featured surgical procedures, the universe or science. “My family would get really annoyed when I was the only one watching TV. But I wanted to see how you do those cool things you see in science shows.”

It is no surprise that one of the earliest drawings the preschooler did was of a human body, sort of. “I drew a human being with a leg and foot sticking out at a 90-degree angle! I could not grasp what the body looked like, but I wanted to communicate the idea of it.”

Since that time, Dr. Ochuba has made bodies – their breakdowns and their rebuilding – his life’s work. The physiatrist is completing his medical residency at a major Florida healthcare system, where he leads the rehabilitation of people who have muscle and spinal cord injuries and diseases.

His family’s move from Nigeria to the Illinois Valley left the teenager feeling severely culture shocked and isolated. Attending IVCC opened doors to friendships and stimulated his curiosity about the world he could see around him and the worlds he could not see.

Before Ochuba graduated from IVCC in 2017, his artwork appeared in campus art shows and he was recognized as much for his artistic abilities as for his scientific acumen. But it was managing the College’s popular science festival that still resonates a decade later.

Ochuba said organizing SciFest tested him and helped him develop skills he still uses as part of a medical team. He was inspired by Professor Matthew Johll, who appointed him to the SciFest role and showed his confidence in Ochuba’s capabilities.

“He told me I was creative and smart and I could figure this out and move to the next step, then the step after that would reveal itself. I do not remember what the issue was, but I remember the words,” Ochuba recalled.

As he continued his medical career, he kept refining the fusion of art and medicine. He researched, wrote, and illustrated articles for medical journals, and later was featured in a review of practitioners whose passion for the arts is as vital as their healing skills.

“Finding ways to use art in whatever tasks or functions I am doing has given me a way to keep passionate with both things and find ways they can work together. Medical illustrations let me give insight into what I do.”

His two passions are not really that far apart, he says. “Science is curiosity and the discovery of how things such as the universe come into being.  When I start to draw, paper becomes my own universe. I use colors to try to put things into being. In my own way, I am telling a story, like the story of the universe.”

Art and medicine bring balance to Ochuba’s life and each trains him for the other.

“My medical training teaches me to consider all that is going on – not just a fracture, but the whole person, the medical history, the home, the culture – everything. In art, I am not just looking at an apple, but an apple on a table, and the light and shadow – I want to make sure this or that is in the picture so the picture becomes clearer and more vivid.”

He was drawn to medicine because of a family member’s ill health. “I saw what poor health and lack of health care could do to devastate a human being. That leaves an impression on you and what also left an impression is when I saw what medicine could do to alleviate that. Medicine can bring hope.”

Ochuba is aware that he also brings hope even by entering an exam room. Young African American men are in the minority in the medical field, and “I encounter patients who look like me who are stunned that I can do this or that they have the option to do it too. I hope one day more people in medicine look like me.”