Autism Awareness Month
Considering that April is Autism Awareness month I feel that it is only appropriate for me to end my time as April’s monthly mentor with an article on autism. For my Graduate Studio Thesis I had the opportunity to collaborate with a group of youth with autism. I proposed the project of drawing where you buy your food. I worked closely with these individuals and noted their artistic process as they moved from understanding what food they eat, and then in turn where that food comes from. I took note of their brilliance in the breakup of their understanding of this artistic problem.
The final results they were presenting to me revealed a unique and individualistic interpretation of their experiences of the place where they purchase their food. What was most striking to me was these students’ ability to pull out and represent an aspect of these places that they valued as highly important. What was even more impressive was their ability to represent what the place was without the other elements. Every child’s artwork was individualistic to them, however, they all shared some common threads. I witnessed a reoccurring breakdown of the artistic process. Instead of starting by drawing where they bought their food over and over again I was seeing students either list the food they like to eat, draw the food they like to eat, or collect images of the food they like to eat. It was from here that I began to see students draw the origins of this food. Every student chose to represent this place by pulling out an element that they felt was the most important to them.
One student chose to draw only the windows of a building while another student chose to draw the item they buy from this place on a shelf. What was even more interesting was that the students did not bother to draw the shelf itself or the walls that the windows were attached to. These details were unimportant and obvious. These students were creating artwork at an intellectual level that I have had to train for years to reach. They helped me to slow down and consider every aspect of an experience in order to fully understand my own perceptions of it, and take note of the things in life that make an experience meaningful to me. I will never be able to thank them enough for taking the time to create artwork with me and teach me the immeasurable benefits of taking the time to notice the brilliance of each and every child.
-Sarah Damiano