A.R.T. - Artistic Realization Technologies

New A.R.T. program at Access Gallery in Denver!

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been awarded a $15,000 Arts in Society Grant from Redline Contemporary Arts Center!

Thank you, Redline, for supporting our work using painting instruction to combat social isolation and create economic opportunities for artists with disabilities. We could not be more thrilled about this project and to have you as a partner!

With Redline’s support, we are bringing the Artistic Realization Technologies (A.R.T.) program to Colorado. A.R.T. brings technologies, studio programming, and training that empowers those who lack the articulate use of their hands to gain perfect individual control of the art-making process.

To manage A.R.T., we’re adding a new member to the Access Gallery team. Meet Louis! Louis is an artist, curator, and drag enthusiast born and raised in Denver, Colorado. As a q***r contemporary artist, they are motivated to disrupt gender stereotypes and inspire social change.

He is excited to start this new journey as the Mobile Art Studio Coordinator with Access Gallery, where he will launch the Artistic Realization Technologies (A.R.T.) Program in Denver through the Arts in Society Grant.



ID: Louis, looking stylish in a blazer and fedora, poses in front of a pencil drawing of Louis. The Louis in the drawing is wearing the same blazer, sparkly heels, and has pink hair.

Think we can all admit how buttoned up most of us are when it comes to expressing raw unbridled joy. It is so intense we can find it kind of embarrassing.

For us at A.R.T. seeing raw joy lights up our hearts. The liberation!

First let's imagine how it feels to live a life without any means of making anything happen in the physical world. To always be a passive observer. All that yearning to engage the world stymied.

Then A.R.T. comes to town and you see what you can do with the laser.
All those colors. All those different application tools. Any size canvas you want. Suddenly you are in charge and can make any color go anywhere you want it to go. It feels like a dam has broken and out floods the joy.

So. Clifford [quadriplegic, nonverbal] choosing to use our laser technique he directs the color to race, to swoop, to make slashing zigzags, looping circles, all at high speed. In this dam break Clifford begins to shout.

The more he feels his liberation the louder he shouts, color flying over his canvas, creating a super supercharged field of energy.

His professional caregivers, feeling he might be embarrassing us with all this wild shouting, they tell him, "Clifford, no shouting. Clifford? Please no shouting."

The artist, never taking his eyes from the energized field of freedom he is creating, he is living inside, Clifford manages to bring a forearm to his mouth and bites onto it to muffle the shouting he cannot stop.

Its like someone has duct taped his mouth, but you still hear him. And the color flies, Clifford's eyes blazing with his having burst into a realm of freedom.
Real action. Real energy. Real joy. That had remained so bottled up for so long.

Middle aged, always gracious, and surprisingly blunt when it came to the truth, Renee was one of our famous artists at United Cerebral Palsy of Philadelphia. When she discovered she could connect curves, she created a painting that garnered much praise from the staff. Referring to this painting of tightly writhing skinny curved lines that had brought her so many compliments Rene told us, “That painting gives me a migraine.”

Renee's second, more graceful, much larger, painting beautifully stretched and framed on the auction block at the fancy catered gallery reception the auctioneer asked, “Can I get an opening bid?” From the crowd we heard Renee’s voice call out: “One million dollars!” The final sale price not a million dollars, but Renee did quite well. After the show had come down, and the artists were settling back into their studio life with us, Renee said, “I really like painting, but what I like more is the money.”

Image credit: Leola Renee McMillan