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Parks@Home > Poe Park Visitor Center Online Gallery: Disabilities Awareness Exhibition

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Poe Park Visitor Center Online Gallery: Disabilities Awareness Exhibition 

The Poe Park Visitor Center proudly presents a Disability Awareness Virtual Exhibition. The exhibition features moving, powerful, and thought-provoking works from emerging and established artists living with physical, mental, neurological, and/or emotional conditions. 

About Poe Park Visitor Center

Poe Park Visitor Center is a community hub at Poe Park in the Bronx that offers art, literature, fitness, and community events, including adaptive programming for all. This exhibition was previously scheduled to take place in-person in May; due to the coronavirus pandemic, the center is closed until further notice and the gallery has temporarily moved online.

Various Artists, Institute for Applied Human Dynamics 

This artwork is Collagraph Print on Rice Paper. The image of the artwork includes symbols in pink of hearts, starts, crowns, puzzle pieces, a skull, grate, and more stamped, some smudged, and on paper. The artist signed Clottey dot G on the bottom left.

"Art Skull" by Clottey A. Griffth
11 x 14, Collagraph Print on Rice Paper,  2020

Although Clottey Griffith has only just begun his journey with art, using art as a means of self-discovery, it is evident that this form of expression is a powerful means to explore the meaning of the world around him. Clottey's curiosity and self-awareness can be seen throughout his work, each element tells a unique story of someone finding joy in everyday life.

Click a thumbnail to view a larger image.

This artwork is Collagraph Print on Rice Paper. The image of the artwork includes symbols in pink of hearts, starts, crowns, puzzle pieces, a skull, grate, and more stamped, some smudged, and on paper. The artist signed Clottey dot G on the bottom left.
A brown hallway leads far down a hall of a house. It passes by rooms, including a bedroom and a bathroom, and another room on the left with brown floors and a lamp turned on. The walls of the hallway are salmon colored.
This artwork shows various players in positions one might assume while playing baseball, including one player in pinstripe uniform getting ready to bat, another in a pinstripe uniform swinging into a pitch, another player in pinstripe leaning on his knees, a player in a New York uniform with the ball caught in his gloves, and another person walking on field. The player preparing to bat is colored blue like the sky above. The hands of the pitchers are colored green, while the catcher's body is outlined red.
This acrylic painting shows a neighborhood in Paris. The Eiffel Tower against the blue night sky is towering over a cluster of buildings painted brown with yellow and white windows and red roofs.
This watercolor painting uses shades of black, gray, blue, and green to form a plant-like structure with what looks like closed leaves on the left, and open leaves on the right.
This piece is Styrofoam Print on Rice Paper and includes outlines of figures and objects in white against a pink background.
Blotches of akua ink in blue and red, and sometimes combining into black, on cardstock paper form the background of the painting, where loops like winding paths are blotched by six larger red dots.
Large strokes of paint in red, yellow, green, and burnt yellow form the background from which hands extend as if to grab a hog whose body is detailed with drawings of leaves of various species.

About the Institute for Applied Human Dynamics (IAHD)

The Institute for Applied Human Dynamics has committed to positively impact the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. The art program is one of many programs at IAHD that is helping to enrich the lives of many individuals. The program gives participants a platform in which to express themselves while developing skills that will enable them to display their work alongside that of working artists. This enables them to showcase their talent and ability to an otherwise exclusive community, integrating their work with that of their peers. These pieces were selected and curated by the program's Creative Arts Coordinator, Johnny Mattei.

Bobbi Beck

Bobbi Beck has spent years documenting her daily experiences, feelings, and emotions while living and working in New York City. The selected pieces shown here were done over time.

Message from the artist: Reflected in these works are some of the same issues that we all confront and deal with especially now in today’s uncertain world. As you look at each piece, see if you can also find yourself woven into these images.  

Nails extend and bend as they stretch out from a purple face that sits atop of a composition of faces with yellow and red eyes and many hands. Some of those hands are covering the eyes of two faces, some are folded, some hold on to the shoulders of the folded hands, some are clenched into a tight or resting fist, and some hands are around what looks like a compass with the points pointing to numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 2, 6, 12, 7.

Disability / Migraine 
22 x 28, Mixed Media, 2020

My young granddaughter has been having migraines for years. I first became aware of her condition during a sleepover, when she became very sensitive to bright light and sound, pulling a blanket over her head for most of the day. She also was losing her sense of balance and direction. Over the years, she has learned how to cope with this unpredictable condition. This drawing illustrates the pain and suffering she fights and struggles with as she grows older in dealing with her own personal disability.

Click a thumbnail to view a larger image.

Nails extend and bend as they stretch out from a purple face that sits atop of a composition of faces with yellow and red eyes and many hands. Some of those hands are covering the eyes of two faces, some are folded, some hold on to the shoulders of the folded hands, some are clenched into a tight or resting fist, and some hands are around what looks like a compass with the points pointing to numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 2, 6, 12, 7.
Four side profiles of faces are connected by ornate objects and loops that connect to two pairs of legs. The front pair of legs are chained as the legs make their way down steps, the front leg about to step on the tiny middle platform (the size of a step) that leads to another flight of stairs that the figure would have to go up.
An interpretation of a para-cyclist. The four phases of the moon are spread across the top of the drawing. Under the full moon are the head and feet of the cyclist with a red teapot leading the way, between the waxing and waning moons are the wings and wheels of the cyclist, and under the crescent moon are two more feet and a clock.
A woman is in an ornate cage with a blue bird sitting on top of the cage.

Silvia Blumenfeld: Crippled, Queer, and Here

A woman in a wheelchair with buttons on her hat holds up a sign that reads "crippled, queer and here" while in the Women's March.

Still Here
8x10, Photo, black and white 

This young woman inspired me to keep resisting. [I] met her at the NYC Women’s March. 

Acrylic painting of a person in shades of brown and green with a white triangle near her eyelid that has the words "resist resist resist" inside of it. There are four more of these triangles in front of the woman's face.

Window
11x14, Acrylic

This piece is about fighting anxiety and depression — continuing our resistance.

Michelle Pappas: Sincerely

Upon doing some research, these pieces include real quoted notes left on actual invisible illness sufferer's cars when parked in a handicapped parking spot. When someone insinuates that an invisible illness sufferer is not disabled enough to use their placard because they are not in a wheelchair, it is the same as telling them they are not worthy of getting out of their house, socializing, spending time with their family or enjoying the best of what life has to offer.

Naked figure of a person from behind with words on two pieces of paper affixed to the back. The words read "Did you forget your wheelchair???" "You don't look like you have a handicap walking out of your car. Don't be an asshole."
 
Naked figure of a person on their knees, knees shoulder with apart and fists clenched and covering the eyes. Words on a piece of paper is affixed to the thigh read "You are not disabled PIG".
 

Laura Anne Walker

Message from the artist: These paintings are from my Psych War (a play on words: War vs. Ward) Series. My illness was triggered by the sickness and death of my mother in 1993, combined with the prior deaths of my aunt and uncle, all three within nine months. The cats that graced my life are my muses. They helped me start to live again.

In a room painted red, orange, and yellow two women face another woman in a conversation while sitting on chairs. They are all wearing blue dresses. The woman facing the other two has her hands placed together on her lap, the other older woman has her palms open up in conversation while the younger version of her has her hands placed palms down on her thighs. On the wall are yellow pairs of eyes peeping in and figures of cats lined arranged under the eyes. There's a fourth woman, unbeknownst to most of the women, who flies from the youngest woman and whispers "help me". There are red outlines with eyes on yellow floor, and a blue figure that runs under the chairs of the youngest women and the other woman in conversation. Words like "all the white," "full of space," "know," "my friend," are part of sentences written on the wall.

Help Me!
11 x 15, Mixed Media on Watercolor Paper, 2016

Click a thumbnail to view a larger image.

In a room painted red, orange, and yellow two women face another woman in a conversation while sitting on chairs. They are all wearing blue dresses. The woman facing the other two has her hands placed together on her lap, the other older woman has her palms open up in conversation while the younger version of her has her hands placed palms down on her thighs. On the wall are yellow pairs of eyes peeping in and figures of cats lined arranged under the eyes. There's a fourth woman, unbeknownst to most of the women, who flies from the youngest woman and whispers "help me". There are red outlines with eyes on yellow floor, and a blue figure that runs under the chairs of the youngest women and the other woman in conversation. Words like "all the white," "full of space," "know," "my friend," are part of sentences written on the wall.
A woman sleeps on a yellow bed with purple sheets. There are writings along the sides of the beds and on the headboard in repetition that read "I recede into the wall. I see morning and no one at all". The words on the side of the bed read "The clock goes off, but I don't hear it -- I never needed an alarm before depression took me over. It's not how I think -- it's how I feel; I think depression is a controlling power. I'm exposed. I'm raw. I'm not LAW. Words written on the foot of the bed read "I lie in my room and stare wishing I could get out of here." The bed is surrounded by white spirals, infinity signs, shells, cubes, squares, sprays, and webs against a midnight blue background.
A woman lies on a surface. Her eyes are closed and her hands are tied together and placed on her lap as blue hands approach her with needles filled with pink fluid.
In front of a bed with blue sheets and a pink headboard in a room with green walls and a nightstand in the far corner with a vase on top of it, is a person who sits on a mat with octopus-like swirls that loop in and out of the legs of the person sitting there with their eyes closed, their head leaning on the side of the bed where words are scribbled and faded. At the center of the painting, there are writings on the closed blinds of a window above the radiator that reads "Blinds let the sun shine in. Blinds protect me from my imagination that sees only monsters, that sees only disaster. Gone are the days of living happily ever after". Then the words fade out. There are also writings on the floor; words in focus reads "I lost you and have no idea of what I should do. What should I do? Oh, I should ... but you're not here; ... you're dead and gone while I'm trying to find reasons to carry on." 
A woman and man in conversation against a wall with cat heads repeated in a pattern. The man says, "I want to take you off of a medication to see if you don't need it -- I'm on the cutting edge of medicine." The woman says, "And I'm on the chopping block! I was psychotic, and, depressed for eleven years before they finally found the right combination of medication that worked for me, and you want to take me off? What are you, crazy? I won't go back to the psych war!!!"

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