Artists with disabilities find creative outlets to communicate

Tucson— The artwork is stunning. Bold, unconventional composition. Vibrant color. Arresting images. 

Participants in the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA)’s biennial social justice conference here Jan. 13–16 seemed drawn to it like moths to a flame. 

And as unconventional as the art itself are the artists who created it — members of VSA arts of New Mexico, a Tucson group dedicated to providing creative learning and employment opportunities for people with disabilities or limited access to the arts.

It shouldn’t surprise people without obvious disabilities that these artists are so brilliant, says Gerry E. Hendershot, an elder at Church of the Pilgrims, a PC(USA) .church in Washington, DC, and a consultant to many organizations on disability research.

“The artworks created by people with disabilities tend to reflect the core values of disability culture,” he said at a biennial workshop entitled “Disability, Art and the People of God.” Those values, he added, citing University of Chicago researcher Carol Gill, “include the acceptance of human interdependence, dark humor, tolerance for all kinds of differences, and creativity marked by a lack of rigidity.”

It is certainly so for No. B. Coe, a wildly impressionistic painter and sculptor who has lived with numerous mental illnesses during her 40-year career. “In my work, I attempt to first catch and hold the viewer’s attention with color, then stimulate an awareness in thought and feeling,” she says.

Coe is frank about the personal challenges she faces and how she makes her illness enrich her art. “Everyone has a story. Life can be complicated with its twists and turns,” she says. “For an artist these twists and turns change the flavor of the work. The goal of the work is to express the facts of any given imagery while maintaining the integrity of the human’s being.”

The arts have given Roger Torres the key to expressing himself and sharing with others that is not available to him through normal speech. Torres, who lives with extreme cerebral palsy, has over the years become more controlled and with the support of adaptive painting methods suited to his disability has evolved into an artist whose work his been exhibited and sold throughout his native New Mexico.

And the church is uniquely equipped to provide venues for artists like Coe and Torres to exhibit their work, Hendershot insists. “Empirically, churches do more with the arts than they do with either political or social action. Fully 17 percent of churches show art in some fashion.”

Much of Hendershot’s workshop was devoted to practical tips for displaying art — from equipping gallery space to recruiting artists with disabilities to organizing and planning exhibitions to providing hospitality to artists and visitors.

For more information about how to establish or accommodate art exhibitions featuring artists with disabilities, contact Hendershot by email at . For more information about VSA arts, a national organization, visit the Web site http://www.vsarts.org.