Visual art a tool for expression, even for the neurodivergent
Art on display at a Butler coffee shop intends to raise awareness following National Autism Acceptance Month in April and showcase the skills of clients from In Toto, a Zelienople nonprofit.
For the second year in a row, clients of the community resource center for autistic and neurodivergent individuals made art, mainly paintings, which are now hanging in Pennie’s Bake Shop & Espresso Bar in Butler.
Kim Bingham, a client of In Toto from Penn Township, said she was excited to not only make paintings, but to see them publicly displayed in a business. The activities provided by In Toto have helped her develop her own YouTube channel, book series and now paintings which all are visual representations of her person.
“We play video games and make art, watch videos and things like that,” Bingham said. “I have been making lots of friends there.”
Krystin Smith, program manager for In Toto, said the center’s clients of all ages had no specific prompts for creating their paintings, she just wanted them to use visual art as a medium for expression.
“This year, our theme at the center for Autism Acceptance Month was ‘celebrate your differences,’ so I gave no one any rules on what they could do with their canvasses,” Smith said. “They just had free rein for almost two months.”
Michael Bestwick, the owner of Pennie's Bake Shop, said he was introduced to In Toto in 2024 by an In Toto volunteer who is a regular at the bakery. He let In Toto clients put up paintings in the bakery last year and was happy to be a makeshift gallery for the nonprofit again this year.
Bestwick said he was not aware of In Toto before being introduced to it by the regular customer, but wanted to provide a gallery space to the nonprofit after meeting staff and clients from the center.
“To me it's a no-brainer that we would want to be involved, and we're just lucky the right people came into our life and introduced us,” Bestwick said.
Paintings of different shapes, sizes and, especially, colors, populate the walls of Pennie’s. Bingham has a few paintings on the walls — one a picture of a mermaid waving “hello,” and another a more abstract piece comprised of differently colored shapes that make almost the entire square canvass into a rainbow.
According to Bestwick, customers already have approached him to ask if any of the art on the walls is for sale, an idea Smith considered for a future collaboration with Pennie’s.
Smith also said a 7-year-old client of In Toto may have been the one most excited about seeing his art on the wall.
“There is a participant who is 7, and his mom drives him down from Clarion twice a month to come to the center,” Smith said. “He made that piece up there, and she emailed me and said she drove down here, and he has been over the moon ever since. It really did make an impact.”
Bestwick said reactions from the customers already has made hosting the art display a worthwhile endeavor, but hearing that the artists are also affected by seeing their art publicly displayed puts the icing on the proverbial cake.
“Knowing that the people who made it were thrilled to have their art hanging, we're thrilled to have it here,” Bestwick said.
Making art is a constant activity that clients of In Toto participate in through the center, but Smith said now seems a particularly important time to showcase art made by neurodivergent individual.
Nevertheless, having art displayed in public can help shatter people’s expectations of neurodivergent individuals, Smith said.
“Perhaps a more assertive theme might have been helpful in light of world events I may have targeted it a little differently,” Smith said. “It was just about expression and enjoying yourself while you're at the center.”
And although many clients of In Toto can now say they have painted pictures that are now on display at a business, Smith said there still are misconceptions she, In Toto and many other advocates for neurodivergent people are trying to correct.
“A misconception is that neurodiversity is equivalent to a disease. That is not true, and that's a misconception that we're always fighting back against,” Smith said. “We have this motto, which is ‘Meet people as they are where they are’ at the center. So that's kind of how we treat all of the neurodiverse umbrella.”
Smith said she hopes the art on display at Pennie’s is enough to demonstrate to people that people with autism and neurodivergent diagnoses are still their own people who have traits and talents all their own.
“The misconception that this is somehow a detriment to a family life or a person's success, because I don't think success is measured by particular accomplishments,” Smith said.
Bestwick said the art will remain on the walls in Pennie’s for the foreseeable future.
