- So art is everything in anything.

If a person has very limited movement and can make little teeny circles, there's a place for you.

If there is a person who loves making big, giant things at a cardboard, there's a place for you.

We can draw it, we can build it, we can write a poem, we can sing a song, you can do anything.

The idea of workers contorting themselves to a job is one business model.

Our business model is that the job responds to the worker.

And if a person is born into a body or lives into a body that has limited mobility, this is a place for expansion.

Yep.

And growing up I, I lived with my brother Brad and we also had another brother who was institutionalized.

And so there was this mystery of where this other person was and I just was fascinated with like why?

Why isn't this, why aren't they with us?

Where are they?

But he passed when he was 12, I was 10.

And so as I got older, I promised that I would live for the both of us.

And I came here to school in 1983, study photography and volunteered up at the ridges at the mental health center.

And I got to experience what that institutional culture was like.

And so that immersion, that learning experience by doing, I saw some really beautiful things, really interesting people.

And we would play volleyball, go for van rides, make art, do all these different things.

And I could see people come to life when power was given to them.

It was a cloistered environment where in a lot of spaces, community just didn't naturally come in.

And it also is about control.

It's like, okay, you, you line up for your cigarettes at 10, your medicine's at 12.

It's a punishment base too if you step out of line from the rules.

So it's like, okay, that's the rule.

How can we get around it?

What's the positive deviating approach?

Because these, these people just aren't numbers.

They're people.

When I worked on locked men's ward, the most profound activity that I could bring to a situation was drawing the, sitting with another person.

In drawing, we didn't have to talk, but we could, we could share, we could, what I learned now is parallel play and like to find that connection.

And so when I saw that profound opportunity and that sim simplicity of the activity, like okay, that's it.

This is what I'm gonna do.

The rest of my life is provide spaces for this to happen.

So we asked to have a, to build a studio inside this sheltered workshop and through the Ohio Arts Council, we began to experiment to see if people would want to and immediately it was yes.

And we grew from there.

- Well I am Tanner Ingle.

I'm an artist in residence here and volunteer coordinator.

My job here entails facilitating the art making process for our core artists.

The big huge dining room table, so to speak, in the middle of the studio, we call at that collection of tables, art tables.

So from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM every weekday.

We have our core artists here and they are working on various projects and it's not just them at the table.

We have staff artists there as well, student volunteers, interns.

So it kind of becomes this collaborative space with tons of different folks, tons of different backgrounds, just a lot of art centered work activity and coming together, we really respond to what folks' interests are.

So we're kind of meeting people where they are and not trying to have workers fit the work, but have the work fit the workers.

Some folks wanna come in and draw flowers all day and that's their jam.

So that's what they do.

Some folks like to do line drawings and then staff artists like myself will go in, kind of collaborate, paint those in.

Some folks want to work on a piece from start to finish.

So we really just kind of lean into whatever specific interests are of each individual artist.

There's basically the two different categories of income for our artists.

The first being production.

So that's an hourly wage based off of the time spent working on metal products, collaborating with passion flower production in any way.

The second being fine art, which is commission based.

So we have a percentage that goes to the artist right into their pocket and then the other percentage goes back into the studio for operations to provide the various art supplies.

So you like saving up the money from all the artwork you make?

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah, it's definitely very empowering.

So Cardin was one of the first artists of Passion Works in 1998.

So he is been here for going on 27 years.

He is probably one of our most prolific artists.

He is always working on fine art.

He has this really cool, kind of like architecturally centered aesthetic, lots of shapes, lots of harsh lines that are super like dynamic and colorful.

He uses like pretty much every color in the rainbow on each piece.

And his work has been shown all over.

He has artwork hanging out at the FBI building at the OU President's office.

He's had his work on textbooks all over town.

He's incredibly talented and he's a major, he's a passion Marks icon for sure.

So yeah, lots of painting You work on probably like five canvases a week, I'd say, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

My guitar up there too.

Pretty much anything You'll paint on anything, right?

Yeah.

Oh, oh yeah.

Are these little people up here?

Yeah.

Nice, nice.

Is this you?

- Me?

- Yeah.

- Not you.

It's - Me and you.

Yeah.

I love, I did not know that was us.

I'm just a little guy.

Oh, yes.

Prominently placed.

I like it.

Yeah.

Everybody.

- Yes.

- Well, and Stacey Jean.

Ooh girl.

Yes.

Me, Stacey and Cardin started dating what, like three years ago now?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So that was a love connection that happened at our tables.

Oh yeah.

Always thinking ahead.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, - I like art because it, it's my favorite thing to do here.

I do paint and I do canvases and I do some metal.

I like to draw and I like to, and with my friends moon, she always help me do some art.

Every boy he's my friend.

- The, the drawings and the illustrations are so raw and beautiful and kind of universally awesome.

And there's this feeling to them, it's kind of mysterious to me.

But how that's manifested is that we have a color palette.

It's very bright, juicy colors.

So we have like the rainbow and just as bright as we can in each spectrum.

And then we use black chunky lines to remember the early, the first drawing that somebody did.

So we often use Sharpies and we replicate that feel as we get larger in different works.

The artists in residence are the ones who put it together like an orchestra leader.

And then we just do that pattern of this collaborative effort, color, black line finish.

And it, it does read far away as passion works.

Fascinating.

- Well all like doing everything.

And I enjoyed every minute of it.

I've done a lot of things I never thought I do.

Like being in the Homecoming parade was a great time.

Halloween Parade, which is a riot, doing a lot of good drawings and enjoyed myself, have fun.

One day Nancy approached me, said, you wanna try to draw something?

And that's been a year and a half later.

There you go.

I never learned how to draw in high school.

I learned to use crayons and paint and how I'm very, very talented people of this town is like very appreciate what I do.

One of my drawings got bought from a lady from Lum and I was very happy about that.

My coworkers are all great except the one that terrorizes me, but she's just real.

She's the one of them sitting inside right there.

I get along with everbody here.

I mean, if something happens to me, they all start worrying about me when I have my, I broke my shoulder, everybody, people was coming to the hospital happy for me if I worried about me.

And I'm very proud of it and I love it.

I just wish the very special lady in my heart would she been huge.

My mom, she will be very happy if she sees this.

She would be very, very happy.

My brother is very proud of me, so I am very happy what I'm doing.

I pray don't even this place anytime soon.

- I see changes all the time.

Just seeing folks grow as artists.

I can think of several artists off the top of my head that when they started here maybe had apprehension about like drawing, but now they're jumping in, making full paintings from start to finish.

This is a place where there's opportunity to really grow in one's practice among anybody that comes through the door.

Here.

It becomes an example of what is possible when you have these inclusive spaces that really celebrates individuals for their specific interests and talents.

Community's huge.

It's how we've gotten this far as a species and we have to come together and lean on one another and inspire one another and work together.

So I feel like doing that with a sense of radical inclusivity really just helps build stronger relationships and connections.

Our tagline is to - Inspire and liberate the human spirit through the earth.

Fashion works was not designed, created, or maintained by people who studied disability.

They're people who studied opportunity.

But I always remember that people who are educated with, you know, to study disability issues, they're often studying what doesn't work.

Artists are focused on what can work.

- So the collaborative nature of art making is something I really value and something I didn't really have experience with prior to working here.

And it just really produces really rich work.

Having so many folks working on like a singular piece that's super cool and everybody's voice can be heard and kind of that, yeah, visual evidence of people coming together.

- We have no limits.

It's we can, we can do anything we want and, and we can respond to to community need.

And so once we have the experience of connection, purpose, and belonging, we will thrive.

Creating a structure to invite people in to be less isolated is something we can do.

- This been amazing.

I never saw I be able be in this place and she said, I have no regret.

Could I love it?

Do you love it?

Yeah, - I love it.

It's really good.

Like I wanna see art everywhere, good food, good art, like music and build a, a community that's just a riot.

Awesome thing to live in.

- I see the future of passion works just growing and becoming this like hub of art, making larger entity, I guess, where it pulls more and more folks in from Mi Ann Farr and inspires people to maybe bring our mission into their community.

- The thing is, is this a movable model?

It's was born and bred here in Athens, Ohio, but it has been invited across the country and internationally and I love that something like this can incubate in Athens and our, our mission is to share what we've learned and we have some really big plans for the future and we're not afraid.

And it's just really exciting and I'm, I'm just looking forward to our community.

I'll, I'll get in on the action.

- Feeling good about that?

- Yeah.

Nice.

What - Up High, down low.

How no gets me every time?

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