Alan Powell: “Brandy gets Covid”

 I have been working with artists with disabilities since the 1970’s. I started out in Rhode Island working as an artist-in-residence at the State Mental Institition and at Women’s Maximim Security Prison. At these institutions I used video and photography to help the ” inmates” develop there own images that represented their lives in these institutions. Over the years I have worked with various institutions in Pennsylvania and New York.

   SInce 2018, I have been working with Studio 190 in Walton, NY. Studio 190 is a  facility that is part of another organization ARC of Delaware County, New York. The studio has about 20 artists who have various intellectual and physical disabilities. My role as a volunteer consultant is to get the artists and the facility to develop and function as much as an arts organization as a social service organization. With the Covid Pandemic it became harder for me to access the artists who were in a shut down in their respective homes. I started working with Brandy Parker a 37 year old woman with Cereabal Palsy. She is highly motivated and really shined and developed as an artist. In the fall of 2020 , Brandy , Loagan Fulmer , an Arcadia senior , and I developed a monograph from Brandy’s Flower paintings and drawings. This spring we are embarking on a video project on her life and her plans to get married.