For Mikelle, color is a language.

For Stevie, stories begin with an active imagination.

During this year’s Month of Printmaking, Access Gallery revisited Arts For All, a beloved program that uses adaptive tools to make the creative process accessible to people with different abilities.

At the center of the project were Access Gallery artists Mikelle and Stevie.

Together, with assistance from Access Gallery volunteers and specially adapted equipment, they created a monumental 20-foot by 12-foot printmaking work filled with color, texture and movement.

Both Mikelle and Stevie are nonverbal and use wheelchairs, but each has developed their own way of expressing ideas through art.

Mikelle has been communicating through color and creativity for years. It began with bracelets after high school, choosing colors and arranging them in combinations that felt right to her. She went on to embellish fanny packs and phone cases before returning to painting and discovering abstract art.

A visit to the Clyfford Still Museum became an important moment in that journey. Looking at Still’s large fields of color and movement, Mikelle recognized something familiar. Art didn’t have to depend on fine details or realistic images to communicate.

She could speak through color.

Stevie’s creativity has been developing in another direction.

Access Gallery volunteer Rebecca Petty began working with Stevie on his fine art skills and discovered that he is also a storyteller.

“He has a very active imagination,” Rebecca says.

Today, Rebecca and Stevie are working together on his stories as well as developing his visual art skills.

For Arts For All, Stevie and Mikelle brought their individual ways of creating to one enormous work.

Using adaptive printmaking tools and with physical assistance from volunteers, the artists worked across 240 square feet of surface. The process filled the gallery with movement, color and laughter as the work took shape.

Look closely at the finished piece and, in a few places, you can see marks left by the wheels of their chairs.

Those marks stayed.

They weren’t mistakes to be covered. They became part of the artwork and part of the story of how Mikelle and Stevie created it.

When the work was exhibited during Month of Printmaking, visitors were invited not only to experience it, but to take home a piece of the artwork Mikelle and Stevie created with a donate-what-you-can gift.

The monumental work became many individual works, carried out of Access Gallery and into people’s homes.

For Mikelle, whose bracelets first became a bridge for connecting with other people, art continues to be a language all her own.

For Stevie, whose imagination is finding expression through stories as well as visual art, art offers another way to share his ideas.

Through Arts For All, their individual ways of creating became one shared work and, piece by piece, what Mikelle and Stevie created found its way beyond the gallery.

For Stevie, whose imagination is finding expression through stories as well as visual art, it’s another way to share his ideas.

In Arts For All, their individual ways of creating came together in one remarkable work, shaped by color, movement, imagination and the marks they made along the way.