I AM ART

A 5-week art program for adults with disabilities

In partnership with Stride, Winchester, Kentucky

Art is beautiful. I am beautiful. I am art.

I am art is a 5-week program developed by Kids Place Lex for adults with disabilities, piloted in partnership with Stride in Winchester, Kentucky—a day program serving thirty adults who embraced the experience wholeheartedly and asked us to come back.

The program begins with something powerful: each participant is photographed. Those portraits are printed large—18 × 24 inches—on quality poster paper and returned to their subjects in later sessions to be decorated with paint and collage. In the meantime, participants create Modigliani-inspired self-portraits with characteristic elongated necks, paint and collage scenes of themselves and the people they love, and create artwork celebrating their favorite people and things.

By the end of five sessions every participant has made multiple serious works of art—including a large-format portrait of themselves, decorated by hand.

For adults who are rarely seen as artists—or as beautiful—that is exactly the point.

Kids Place Lex is available to bring I Am Art to other organizations serving adults with disabilities. Contact us to learn more.