Artist Grace Walker Goad turned 21 last month and all of this hawt month of July, some New Works, Plus, can be seen at the Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville. “The JCC” is located at 801 Percy Warner Boulevard, just off Highway 70, up “Nine Mile Hill,” in the St. Henry’s / West Meade region and near the Nashville side of Bellevue.
At the reception, Wednesday, July 8, 7-9 PM, we’ll have vino + nibbles for your belly and a visual feast for your eyes and heart. The vino will be at the Chinese Art reception area—the first gallery when you walk in because Grace never met food or drink she did not like. (Let’s not go there. Wink.) A Facebook invitation is linked here.
You can take in the color and composition of Goad—that was first discovered when she was a wee four years of age—in the Sig Held Gallery at the JCC. The artist, my daughter, has moderately severe autism, was on “The View” at age 12, and launched her business that year. She’s shown and has had representation from Soho to Seattle, and Nashville to Ventura, Calif., respectively, is in permanent collections, both public, private, and governmental, and has been covered widely by other local and national television; radio; magazine, (including three covers); newspaper, book, (including one cover,) and online media.
Grace also has intellectual disAbilities and has severe speech language impairment, rendering her non-conversational. She has low muscle tone in her hands, thus her work is largely abstract.
Her talent was unearthed after a years of grueling, typical autism early intervention that began with her diagnosis at age three. Where was the childhood joy of making visual art, music, and dancing, her mother [I] lamented? And so we set off in an arduous and zealous quest of finding arts therapists. Music ability was found, but to this day, Grace just wants to make visual art. (She still dances like a wild thing whenever and wherever she hears music playing. It is a sight to behold.)
After the JCC show, Grace will have a three-month exhibition at Parks Realty in Hill Center, Green Hills, followed by a show planned at Crumb de la Crumb in the new year with tentative plans for a Tennessee Art League Poston Gallery exhibition also in 2016. Meanwhile, Grace will have pop-up art shows at various venues including farmer’s markets, art events, and special education conferences. At these she sells her popular merchandise including coaster-sized Art Tiles and notecards. Her website, GraceGoad.com is still up but under reconstruction having passed through the design stage and awaiting her mother’s tedious data input, plus a web designer’s completion. She is also on Facebook at Grace Goad | Autism Art.
Grace has one more year of Metro Nashville public school services at their Community Based Transition Program, (CBTP). This year she transfers to the Methodist Publishing House as her home-base site. In May, she joins 50,000 young adults with autism, alone, and 500,000 within this decade, leaving their service system supports. Our future housing, daily schedule/life, is unknown. We would love to find a boots-on-the-ground, energetic nonprofit organizer to begin a local, inclusive arts center to create, exhibit, and sell the work of artists with disAbilities in community with other artists. I have a logo, name, blog design, 15-page proposal, 10-years of research, two-state multi-location site visits. I have also run a successful social enterprise for artists with disAbilities from around the world selling their work to high-end luxury apartment buildings. End story is I’m a single mother, managing Grace’s business and her transition out of the service system and I will be transitioning, too, hopefully, from her full-time care to the next phase of my own life in the next couple of years. I’m endeavoring to be creative here as every state, but less than a handful, are facing legions of families in variations of the same challenge. I am psychic-ly tired of special needs caregiving and the many gyrations of wheel invention it has taken in 21 years to (willingly and lovingly) get her the best of services I could in the big picture of our lives. Like every midlife mother, I want a break. I can offer my skills in marketing, visioning, and programming. It is difficult to admit my limits. I feel people will not understand. But I take solace of how many other parents are out there in my position. And I carry on and continue to tell my story. Our story.
See you at the show. x
