Quadraplegic artist uses human tracker to express her vision

Quadraplegic artist uses human tracker to express her vision. Artist Judith Snow poses with her work in the show Who's Drawing the Lines: The Journey of Judith Snow, at the Royal Ontario Museum until January 2012. Quadriplegic, Snow developed a technique using laser pointers to work with assistants to build her vision. She has spent her life working towards inclusion and a society that recognizes everyone's gifts. Staff Photo/MARY GAUDET

But the only label she lets truly define her is that of artist.

"Art totally changed my life. I'm still catching up. I wake up some mornings and have to say to myself, 'hey, I'm an artist,'" said Snow, who lives in New Toronto. "It gives me a real way to express humour and passion, and my different ways of seeing things."

Snow's unique and empowering perspective on the topic of inclusivity is on full display at her first Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) exhibition, Who's Drawing the Lines: The Journey of Judith Snow. The show, which features 23 of Snow's works on canvas, runs in the ROM's Hilary and Galen Weston Wing, Level 2, until Jan. 20.

Janet Carding, ROM's director and CEO, said Snow's exhibition is the most recent in a series of displays at the museum to illuminate contemporary issues that affect the community at large.

"I know visitors will be moved by Judith Snow's personal journey and motivated to help her create a world where we all celebrate our differences instead of being defined by them," she said in a statement.

Snow's journey towards becoming the internationally recognized author, lecturer, and leader on inclusiveness issues she is today perhaps began when she was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy as a child, which led to her becoming a quadriplegic. In the years since, she's carved out a name for herself as a social innovator and builder of inclusive communities, known for championing inclusive education, support circles, individualized personal assistance, and person-directed planning.

But it wasn't until her life as an artist began at age 55 that Snow found her true calling.

Introduced to art realization technology through an artist friend while on a trip to Boston in 2003, Snow picked up Tim Lefens' 2002 book Flying Colors. In it she learned all about the use of head-mounted laser beams enabling the so-called disabled to project where they want a human tracker to put paint - and a world of artistic possibilities opened up for her.

"So I brought that to Canada because it was only available in New Jersey at the time," she said, noting that soon after, she founded the Laser Eagles Art Guild, an initiative that offers individuals with limited physical mobility the opportunity for self expression through art. "We used a very simple technique: we just bought laser pointers and put them in elastic head bands and people started tracking them."

Each of the 20 or so members of the Laser Eagles have since moved on to other forms of tracking. In Snow's case, she simply uses words, detailing to her human tracker which brushes, the colour of paint, and how each are to be used in a given painting.

For others who are less vocal, other forms of communication are used. In the case of Felicia Galati, with whom Snow is sharing some wall space at the ROM exhibition, that communication comes in the form of rocking.

"She doesn't use any words, but she's very rhythmical and people started to notice pretty quickly that she responds to how they're painting with slowing down or speeding up or smiling," Snow said. "It would be easy to say that the tracker is doing the painting, but then when you step back and look at what Felicia paints, it comes out of her life, it doesn't come out of the tracker's life. So it's Felicia who's actually drawing those lines."

While art has become her primary passion, Snow hasn't let her inclusivity work fall by the wayside. In fact, her art has come to complement her advocacy work, by giving her a whole new means of expressing herself and what it means to be abled.

To illustrate art's transformative power in her life, Snow related a story about how, while at her ROM exhibit one day recently, a couple wandered in with their three-year-old daughter. In very short order, the little girl approached Snow's wheelchair and began playing with her shoes.

"Art opens up a whole different way of being with people and perceiving groups of people that you run into...it gave that little girl a way to figure out 'this person isn't walking,' but in a comfortable way," she said. "So, in that way, my art has helped my advocacy, by challenging what it means to be abled.

"That's what I meant with the kid playing with my shoe. Who says feet are for walking? Apparently they're for toys, as well. Art opens up a whole other vehicle for seeing something differently. Disability can only arise because we say there's a right way to be in your body and a wrong way to be in your body. If you take that away, there is no disability; there's only difference."

Snow will be taking part in the speakers series Contexts: Lectures at the ROM, on Wednesday, Oct 26 at 11 a.m. in museum's Bronfman Hall, Level 2.

Her autobiographical book, entitled Who's Drawing the Lines is available for sale at the exhibition. Prints and posters of her art can be purchased online at www.judithsnow.org