When Tuyet-Minh Tran, a medical student in the Class of 2025, was given the assignment to reflect on her anatomy lab experience through artistic expression, she chose to use her love for paper quilling to create art that mimicked the muscle fibers of the human body. Her artwork, titled “An Ode to Anatomical Donors,” was selected for the cover of the journal Academic Medicine’s May issue.
Paper quilling is a technique that involves rolling thin strips of paper into small coils, then further pinching those coils into different shapes and gluing them onto paper. Tuyet spent about 25 hours creating her artwork for the assignment, which consists of hundreds of quilled strips of paper.
Tuyet-Minh Tran
“While anatomy lab revolved around the premise of dissecting the human body, I wanted to use paper quilling as a means to put everything back together and to honor the donor,” Tuyet-Minh explained. She discovered paper quilling as a hobby when she started college. Her passion for this art form indirectly influenced her choice of specialty in medical school.
“I’ve always liked working with my hands, but the fine detail of paper quilling made me realize that small-scale microsurgeries interested me the most. Paper quilling helped reinforce my decision to pursue ophthalmology,” she said.
Tuyet-Minh, who is also a 2024 Bowman Scholar, is looking forward to graduating on May 18 with her classmates and beginning her residency in ophthalmology this summer at UVA. She gifted the paper-quilled artwork depicting the human body to her anatomy professor, Dr. David Moyer.
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