Doing something or becoming something?
There is a subtle difference between giving someone with a disability something to do and giving that person an opportunity to become something.
Providers and parents have spent decades creating activities for people with disabilities. Art activities. Recreation activities. Day programs. Special events. Wonderful people with the best intentions created many, and some have undoubtedly brought joy and friendship into people’s lives.
But somewhere along the way, we need to ask a different question. What happens when we stop seeing art as an activity for a person with a disability and start seeing the person as an artist? What happens when they sell their art?
Belonging and Expectation
For Mikelle, part of the answer has been Access Gallery in Denver. Mikelle is a selling artist there. I love saying that because it changes the conversation immediately. She doesn’t simply attend an art program. She creates work that is displayed where other artists display their work. People come through the door, look at what she has created, decide they like it, and sometimes spend their own money to take it home.
That transaction carries dignity and expectation. Someone expects Mikelle to create something worth looking at. Someone believes her work deserves space on a wall. Someone she may never have met decides that what she created has value. No longer is it the soft bigotry of low expectations.
That is quite different from being congratulated for participating.
Access Gallery
Access Gallery has created something that we still don’t see often enough for people with significant disabilities: a place where accessibility and expectation can exist together. Artists with disabilities have opportunities to develop their work, exhibit it, sell it, and participate in the economic side of being an artist.
That last part matters to me.
I have spent much of my professional life thinking about employment for people with disabilities, and I have watched us sometimes lower expectations in the name of being supportive. We celebrate participation when we should also be creating opportunities for contribution. We build special places for people to go when what many people really want is a meaningful place in the larger community.
Mikelle’s path as an artist certainly doesn’t look traditional. Neither does much else about her life.
Each artist has a unique journey.
She is nonverbal. Her cerebral palsy affects virtually every physical movement she makes, so creating art requires support, adaptation, patience, and people who understand how to assist without taking over. The finished piece may be hers, but making sure she has access to the process requires other people who believe the process is worth figuring out.
That is what accessibility should do.
It shouldn’t determine someone’s outcome. It should make the outcome possible.
I thought about all of this recently when author, poet and artist Allard Broderick sat at our kitchen table with Mikelle. Allard’s creative work comes through poetry, illustration and words. Mikelle’s comes through a very different process. Yet Allard didn’t seem to need an explanation for why Mikelle belonged in the conversation as an artist.
She simply saw her that way. And that stayed with me, and I treasure Allard’s respect for Mikelle.
Because perhaps one of the most powerful things a place like Access Gallery provides isn’t an accessible easel, adapted materials, an exhibition or even a sale. Perhaps it provides something we have historically made far too difficult for people with significant disabilities to acquire:
An identity that isn’t defined by disability.
Mikelle is an artist, not a client, consumer, or participant. She is a selling artist. People brag that they bought a piece of her art. They tell stories about her and her art. Mikelle has a reputation as an artist and an entrepreneur. Does she make loads of money, not but enough to be respected for her effort.
And once the rest of the world begins seeing someone differently, something else happens. We begin expecting different things from them.
Mikelle has been building a life in the community for more than four decades, and if there is one lesson I keep learning, it is that belonging doesn’t happen simply because someone is physically present. Belonging grows when people know you, expect you, miss you when you’re gone, and recognize that you bring something of value when you arrive.
For Mikelle, art has become one more avenue into that kind of life.
She has her podcast. She has her bracelets. She has her artwork. She has people throughout Denver who know her from coffee shops, galleries and the places she frequents. None of these things alone define her, but together they keep expanding the number of ways the world can know her.
And perhaps that is the larger lesson.
Accessibility isn’t only about getting through the door.
Sometimes it is about what becomes possible once you’re inside.