Art made by mentally and physically disabled people is usually characterized as childlike, naive, distorted, curious.

However, a different perspective can be gained if you ask yourself a big question while viewing the show at the Carnegie Center by Minds Wide Open Art Center students.

The question is one put by artist Kenneth Hoppins to Minds Wide Open founder Bruce Burris: "Does this seem unusual to you?''

Hoppins fills sheets of paper with handwriting mostly. He asks himself ponderous questions and speaks to specific but unnamed others in his soul-searching works. He wonders about God and death, he asks others why they treat him the way they do and how they expect him to act, he ruminates about suicide and smoking and his parents' divorce.

Looking at his work solely in terms of these issues, is it "unusual''? Or do we all have these same or similar thoughts about just such issues and feelings at times? There is nothing particularly jarring or even terribly unusual in expressing what is expressed -- until he gets to the parts about having hallucinations. But even then he realizes what he sees are hallucinations. If you were hallucinating, wouldn't you ask yourself why you are seeing unreal visions?

Hoppins' script varies erratically from section to section in each composition, and sometimes it is unreadable. Sometimes different-colored inks are used for visual effect and emphasis. Is it far-fetched to stop looking at the work as separate from similar mainstream art forms? Can we or should we see these particular works as scrolls full of calligraphically rendered information?

Possibly yes. Possibly no. Yes because no art should be evaluated  according to a stigma attached to it. No because most of the art in this show has to do with communication between disabled individuals and the world we all live in.

Don't look at it as art made by people more disturbed than the average joe or whose motor skills are not as flawless as they might be. As art, the works of all six artists are expressive, distinctive, communicative.

Take Linda Little's One of a Thousand Baskets. It's an ink drawing full of patterning and confident design, so simple yet so well-realized and lively. There doesn't seem to be anything accidental about it. You might never know it was drawn by an institutionalized individual if you hadn't known going into the show.

Ralph Reynolds' repetitive flags, tepees, military chevrons, lists such as 1. war 1940; 2. war 1941; 3. war 1942; 4. war 1943; 5. war 1944; 6. war 1945; 7. war 1946 are like a 1980s graffiti artist's sketches, though perhaps a bit more orderly, or a post-post modernist's skewed take on recent history. If they were being done by a master's degree candidate, I'll venture that many university professors would suggest only that the artist use better papers, enlarge the size a bit and use Prismacolor pencils for archival durability.

Much of the work is done with felt-tip markers or cut-rate materials, not only because Minds Wide Open doesn't have enough funding to provide better but also because the artists are physically incapable of doing something like bronze casting. That doesn't make the content any less viable or fascinating. And the content is what should be considered.

All of the included works invite scrutiny. Forget looking at them as oddities.

All of the work was made at Minds Wide Open art center in Victorian Square, where the six artists put in a number of hours on a weekly basis. Other artists in the show are Carol Steele, Beverly Baker and Myrna Hamkins.

Published Sunday, August 15, 1999, in the Lexington Herald-Leader