Cross-collaboration brought the event to fruition, with Adaptive Recreational Services (ARS) and Open Arts Minnesota organizing the workshop, and Ulm Sweet Ulm and The Grand offering gallery spaces. 

Timing for the displays lined up with July’s disability pride month.

ARS is a program that hosts weekly events for people with disabilities. Some of these events consist of board game nights, league bowling, attending the Concert in the Park Series, and of course, the once a month canvas paint group, where the self-portraits were created. 

Attendee Elisabeth Robinson praised the range of activities ARS provides. 

ARS display at The Grand Center for Art and Culture Photo by Dylan Jackson

“They have so many different things for so many different kids and what they like or don’t like. Even if they don’t like it they get to try something new, and if they really like it they get to grow in that instance,” Robinson said.

Karrie Borchert, the coordinator for ARS, said that art is a great form of self-expression. “People with disabilities tend to tell their stories through pictures.”

Wilbur Neushwander-Frink, founding member and executive director of Open Arts Minnesota, which was created 33 years ago with its roots in New Ulm, partnered with ARS’s art instructor Rhonda Johnson to create the workshop. 

Neushwander-Frick explained the workshop process “Everybody was given a blank canvas, because everyone is a blank canvas.” 

Johnson prepared a self-portrait as an example and instructed the group how to create different features. Following the self-portrait was a collage aspect, which allowed artists to express themselves through magazine clippings they resonated with.

Adaptive Recreational Services’s Self-Portrait exhibit at Ulm Sweet Ulm.  Photo by Dylan Jackson

“The portraits were all done in an hour,” Neushwander-Frick said. 

Among the 35 artists that participated in the self-portrait workshop, 21 chose to display their work. Three of the featured artists, a brother and sister duo, and their mother from Lake Crystal, discovered the organization through an adaptive bowling event. 

ARS has 157 registered participants from six counties that come to events.

“[It provides] a network of people ideas, and support,” Borchert said.

Attendee Pam Klossner, whose kids are involved in ARS and whose daughter had a painting feature, praised ARS and New Ulm for all that it provides. 

“We’re lucky to have this in New Ulm, not a lot of communities have this kind of involvement,” Klossner said. “They have so many activities and it reaches so many different people.”

Ulm Sweet Ulm employee Emily Sowers was glad to be a part of the place that provided a location to display the exhibit. “I think community is extremely important, and Ulm Sweet Ulm seeks to be a place where people can gather.”

“People hang out, play games. We do yoga classes in the morning and bookseller events,” Sowers said, “I like it here because it’s more than just a bookstore or coffeeshop, it’s a third space.”