My Artist

Joey's Contribution/Front of Card

I guess I just can’t stay quiet for long; the powerful force of parental bragging rights beckon.  The Director of External Affairs of Devereux New Jersey, my son Joey’s special needs program, asked to have 500 note cards printed (with envelopes), featuring his artwork.  I am not quite sure of the intended purpose yet – I think it is related to the upcoming fundraiser on April 30th.  I’ll find out.  But I scanned in a quite large piece of art, for which he won an award (and, much more meaningful to him, a banquet dinner) about seven or eight years ago at his previous special educational program. 

Joey has autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and an unusual splinter skill – visual hyper-acuity.  He sees and remembers things in minute detail.  In his 28 years of life, he has completed with ease hundreds of complex jigsaw puzzles, some even gray side up.  He can erase and duplicate, pixel for pixel, complicated images on a computer program (oops, there go those bragging rights again; I’m really sorry). And he has created countless numbers of colorful, swirly, abstract interpretations of objects and settings that we can only begin to guess at.  He’s Joey and he’s always done this.  I’ve saved a lot of the best attempts, but we would be put out of the house and featured on “Hoarders” if I saved them all.

I am proud of him.  The cards came back from the printer and they turned out great.  He will help me package them up with ribbons and cellophane bags later today.

Back of Card