HeartShare is a nonprofit organization that provides education, housing, and healthcare services to individuals with developmental disabilities. Through its arts initiative, ArtShare, members are supported in expressing themselves creatively by producing, exhibiting, and selling their artwork. Each year, the program culminates in an annual exhibition featuring work by participating artists.
For HeartShare’s 15th Annual art show, I was tasked to create a visual description for a piece by one of their members to make it accessible to those who are visually impaired. Rather than simply describing what the artwork looks like, the goal was to translate its composition, texture, mood, and meaning into language — preserving the artist’s intention while expanding access. The written description functioned as another medium of interpretation, allowing audiences to engage with the work through narrative and sensory detail.
The artist I collaborated with communicates verbally in limited ways, which meant our conversations unfolded slowly and nonlinearly. Rather than relying on traditional interviews, I approached the process as an exchange — observing closely, asking simple confirmation questions, and responding to the words he chose to repeat.
Through this dialogue, I confirmed the colors used in the piece and learned it was created with marker. When he repeatedly said “door” while pointing to a yellow block of color, I began to understand that the shapes were not abstract, but representations of familiar elements from his day program environment.
Piecing together these moments required patience and interpretation, but it allowed the final visual description to reflect not just the artwork, but the artist’s way of communicating about it.
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Untitled (Portrait of Jayson)
Marker on paper
Artist: Jayson Lewis Brooklyn Day Program
In this expressive portrait, Jayson depicts themself with a vibrant orange-red complexion and bold black outlines, using circular marker strokes to fill in every detail. Wide eyes and a broad, smiling mouth convey warmth and personality, with clearly defined teeth rendered in thick black marker. Jayson wears a green t-shirt emblazoned with the word "POLO" in large, block letters, a detail the artist emphasized as especially meaningful.
The background consists of colorful squares and rectangles in hues of mustard yellow, pink, teal, light beige, and red. These geometric forms are abstract representations of the HeartShare day program’s environment: a yellow door, a black-and-white cabinet, a gray cubicle, a red fire alarm, and framed paintings hung around the space. Each shape is filled with the same circular motion technique, giving the entire piece a cohesive, stylized energy that reflects both the artist's environment and personality.
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