Art with heart: Making children's health wards less scary

For Dorkas Kaya and other young patients with HIV, seeing the walls of their residential treatment facility transformed with broad splashes of color and graffiti-like scribbles brought a singular reaction: "Whoa!"

Artist Jose Parla spent several days last week decorating bedrooms, hallways and common areas of the Incarnation Children's Center in his signature improvisational style, the latest project in a charitable effort that commissions top contemporary artists to make pediatric health facilities less intimidating.

"We were all like 'whoa,' yelling, 'cause it's so different," says Kaya, a 19-year-old who has been in the center for three years.