APRIL 2009 EXHIBIT: DLDA

Blue by Vaughn

The third annual DLDA (Danville Learning Disabilities Association) exhibition at the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky, sees the exhibit getting bigger, involving more children, as well as sharpening its focus. This exhibit showcases well over one hundred works of art from children in the region with learning disabilities. Where the exhibit once featured a variety of media, including ceramics, it now solely focuses on paintings by the students. This decision by the organization has made the show much more uniform by placing all of the students within the same parameters of size and format. The sheer number of paintings becomes an instant delight when stepping into the Community Arts Center’s Grand Hall. Each year the show gets larger by involving more schools, more classes, and more children. Rumor has it that next year’s show may even be growing larger to include work from outside the region – possibly even nation wide.

The greatest part of this exhibit, which has grown to become one of my perennial favorites, is the artists themselves. Opening night sees so many children with learning disabilities crowding into the gallery, standing proudly by their work, having their pictures taken, and hustling sales. These kids can sell like nobody’s business. Each piece in the exhibit sells for a flat rate of $25, with $20 going to the artist and $5 going to the DLDA – so the students are eager to mingle with their buying public. Usually friends and family purchase the pieces to support their budding artists, but a lot of these paintings are also sold to gallery patrons who have never met the artists. I have a wonderfully minimal striped painting hanging in my kitchen by an artist named Alejandro that I bought at the first DLDA exhibit and it makes me want to smile every time I see it. Even though these students may have learning disabilities, it doesn’t hinder their creative sensibilities in any way. There are some paintings in this exhibit that any (and I do mean any) abstract expressionist would love to have painted themselves. As an artist, I go into this show looking for inspiration and find it in heaping spades. I don’t see this exhibit as a representation of students with learning disabilities, but rather an exhibit by a group of artists with their own perspectives and interpretations. These students approach each of these works with such energy and lack of angst that each becomes a masterpiece in its own right. Artists must reach that certain point where they can put aside their self-criticism and enjoy the process, the initial part of any artistic endeavor. The kids in that show seem to live in that moment. Rather than being overwhelmed with the possibilities of the blank canvas, they appear to just dive right into the work and emerge with a completed painting that truly represents the moment in which they created it. A lot of artists claim that they make work “that shows my emotion at the time,” but with the painting taking days or weeks to complete, I often find myself wondering which moment of time they were striving to create. The artists in this exhibit are a fine example of living in the moment of joyous creativity – knowing that when the paint dries, the pictures are hanged, and the spotlights are on, that their work will be seen by the world.

Group shot of some of the 2009 DLDA paintings.

Opening night for this exhibit is April 16th, 2009 from 6-8:00. The paintings will be on display until the end of the month.