Growing Resilience, 2025, side-view

Artist(s): Philip Roberts
Materials: Copper, plant, soil
At first glance, this may appear to be a simple pot made of pennies — but it is, in truth, a sculpture with much deeper meaning. The approximately 1,500 corroded coins that form its walls were gathered from the fountains of MD Anderson. Over time, water and metal reacted, leaving them too damaged to be accepted by banks or coin machines (we tried). Rejected by systems of commerce, these coins have found a second purpose here.
Each penny once left someone’s hand with a wish — a wish for healing, for strength, for time. Some of those wishes ended in remission and reunion. Others in unimaginable loss. The weight of the sculpture reflects this sacred tension: the unimaginable joy of recovery, tethered to the quiet heaviness of grief.
Just as we all navigate light and darkness, sorrow and sweetness, transformation allows us to carry both — not by ignoring the contrast, but by growing within it. In the presence of both heartbreak and hope, something beautiful can still take root. There can be purpose in the heavy, and there can be beauty in the joy — not in spite of the struggle, but because life has grown through it.
The plant growing within — an Aglaonema ‘Siam Aurora Lipstick’ — is itself a survivor. It once grew in The Park, a special place that brought comfort and beauty to many before it was closed. Now, it thrives again, surrounded by the patina of wishes, reminding us that even in endings, there are new beginnings.
Every part of this piece is made from leftover materials (soil, a plastic pot, glue, pennies, and a plant). Nothing was purchased. It is a work of transformation — discarded elements becoming something purposeful, beautiful, and whole. Like the people this institution serves, it is a living testimony that resilience is not born from ease, but from endurance — from choosing to grow, again and again, in even the most unlikely places.