If you pay a visit to the Allen County Museum, you’ll find a display of artwork in the meeting room on the first floor. There’s something special about this particular art show - all of the art was made by young artists with autism, and their siblings. For the West Central Ohio Autism Community, holding an event like this shows the community that those artists are more than just their autism spectrum disorders.
"Throughout the artwork you can see little tidbits of information about autism, and one of them says something about 'see me for more than autism'," said Tera Viola, Vice President of the West Central Ohio Autism Community. "A lot of times our kids have amazing talents, they can draw, or they can sing, and just to be able to display them and show the abilities instead of the disabilities is really nice."
It’s also a special event for those artists - many of whom don’t often have an opportunity to show off their skills.
"At school, most kids get the opportunity to have the art show, to have a band concert, choir concert, and a lot of times our kids with autism don't get that," Viola said. "We wanted to have an opportunity where they could be proud of their artwork, display it, bring grandparents and families here and just have a quiet, mellow place to be proud and show off their art."
And it was fun for all of the young artists just to submit artwork for the public to see.
"I painted an art picture called War of the Dragonflies, where dragonflies are flying around and there's two dragonflies about to fight," said Alex Viola. "I just thought that it would be cool to show people art."
The art will be on display until July 1st.
