When you find yourself at a hospital admitting department, does it help to have art to look at? How can it not? Even if your recognition is peripheral, surely it's better to have something beautiful quivering at the edge of consciousness.

Recently installed in a long, sky-lighted shaft near the entrance of Christ Hospital's Heart Center (2139 Auburn Ave., Mount Auburn) is "A Walk in the Woods" by Pennsylvania-based sculptor Rob Fisher. Light from the shaft, over an open corridor separating a low-ceilinged seating area and the registration desks, establishes a visual demarcation of space, but on brilliant days the sunlight was overwhelming. The hospital called on Fisher to temper the situation.

His simulated leaves, cut from perforated sheets of metal, break up the sunlight to suggest a place you might like to be -- perhaps taking a walk in the woods. Suspended by slender, unobtrusive wires, the leaves are in three groups, two smaller sets flanking the central stretch of the strongest color, a burnt orange-red of October. At one end the leaves are bronze-ish, at the other yellow. Sizes vary: Some are exaggerated giants, others no larger than one you might find on your front lawn.

The effect alters as you move beneath it, the layered leaves taking on new guises with each. Fisher wants the least amount of substance, and from that riddled matter, he works wonders. Although the piece is static, it feels as if a breeze moves through those imagined trees.

A leaf motif pervades the Heart Center's entrance, in oversized color photos, in multi-colored, three-dimensional forms against a wall, and even imprinted like fossils in the floor. Is there a message here? I'm not sure what the hospital intends, but I read it as an affirmation of life.