Molly Joyce’s Prescriptive Opens at Curb Appeal

This past March 2023, Sandy Guttman and her partner Todd Garon opened up a new art gallery in their apartment called Curb Appeal. Guttman, who has a Masters in both Museums and Exhibitions Studies and Disability Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago, wanted to open up an apartment art gallery that focuses on showcasing disabled artists in an accessible environment.

I was able to attend Curb Appeal’s inaugural open of Molly Joyce’s exhibit Prescriptive. As a second year graduate student in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, I have learned about disability aesthetics and explored different ways artist can make their work accessible to a variety of accesses needs, but I have never been in a space that so eloquently pulled off meeting different access needs as Joyce, Guttman, and Garon were able to do at Curb Appeal. Joyce’s exhibit, Prescriptive, features quotes from interviews that Joyce conducted about disabled people’s thoughts on different topics such as care, control, cure, and interdependence. Joyce then created a soundtrack to accompany each topic. The finished products are black videos with white open captions. The top of the screen has the interview question (i.e. “What is interdependence for you?”), while the bottom of the screen captions quotes from different disabled people’s responses. You can find videos from Prescriptive here.

The art gallery provides a relaxed atmosphere, with a variety of chairs of different sizes that can be moved for wheelchair access. Curb Appeal has a ramp that can be installed for visitors who need it to access the art gallery, as well as a large bathroom that is wheelchair accessible. Masks are required to be worn inside to help keep the environment more accessible. The opening night featured a talk between Guttman, Joyce and sound designer Andy Slater, who is currently working with Joyce on creating sound descriptions for Prescriptive. Additional access needs were provided for this interview, such American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) captioning that visitors could access through the use of a QR code.

Curb Appeal’s upcoming exhibit will be featuring the work of 2022 3 Arts/Bodies of Work Resident Genevieve Ramos. Ramos is a disabled Mexican-American painter whose work focuses on femininity, empowerment, and political awareness. Ramos’ upcoming art exhibit showcases the work she has been working on as a Bodies of Work artist. The paintings will feature four disabled femme artists. Ramos hired a photographer to photograph these activists and has since been working on portraits of these disability activists. In addition, Ramos interviewed these disability activists. Excerpts from these interviews will be made into a zine. The paintings, copies of the zine, and a documentary about Ramos’ artistic process will be available to view at Curb Appeal. The exhibit’s opening day will be Saturday June 10th and the exhibit will run for approximately 6 weeks.

When curating, Guttman wants transparent conversations with the artist to make sure that both the artwork and the gallery space is as accessible as possible. Guttman has been working with Ramos to explore ways to make her art accessible for disabled people. Guttman will be making image descriptions for all four paintings as well as making recordings of these descriptions. Ramos will be adding captions to the documentary and is exploring how to include audio descriptions within the documentary.

After the exhibit at Curb Appeal, Genevieve’s paintings will be permanently installed at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability Culture Center. Guttman hopes to create accessible material that can travel with the art. The image descriptions and recordings of these descriptions will be available along with the artwork once it moves to the Disability Culture Center.

Em Peacock is a second year graduate student in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. In their free time, Peacock enjoys exploring Chicago and learning more about the disability arts and culture scene in Chicago.