The Everson Museum’s new ‘UNIQUE’ exhibit shines a spotlight on artists with disabilities

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Piercing eyes and a vague outline of a woman surrounded by black and yellow abstract imagery decorate the cover of this year’s edition of “UNIQUE” Magazine. The cover’s artist, James P. McCampbell, lives with severe anxiety, and his love for creating art gives him both a passion to focus on and a conduit to work through his mental health.

“I call (anxiety) ‘The Thing’ … It’s like a monster. It’s like a natural disaster sometimes,” McCampbell said. “Some people, they don’t have artwork, they don’t have music, they don’t have something like that.”

“UNIQUE” is a program put on by ARISE, a nonprofit agency in Syracuse that works to help people with disabilities live independent lives. Each person who submitted art to “UNIQUE ” lives with a disability, and their work is featured in a magazine as well as being shown at the Everson, alongside its other summer exhibits, from Aug. 18 to Sept. 24.

While ARISE started as a civil rights organization before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, the “UNIQUE” magazine has been running for the past 23 years. Tim Mahar, an organizer for ARISE, said the program humbles him and that he is honored to work with such courageous people.

Mahar attended the opening reception for the exhibit on Aug. 17 and found himself fascinated by McCampbell’s journey of using art as a coping mechanism. Deep into their conversation, both were cut off by the staff at the Everson who had to inform them that the museum had closed for the night.

“This (exhibit) to me is much more impactful because many of these artists’ voices aren’t normally heard in many cases,” Mahar said. “So this work is extremely powerful and beautiful. It’s magnificent.”

Like Mahar, patrons of the Everson are excited for the show each year because of the “magical” experience of walking through the exhibit, said Steffi Chapell, an assistant curator at the Everson.

“The power of art is that it helps us view the world in different ways … it helps us understand each other a little bit better,” Chapell said. “(This exhibit) gives our visitors to the museum a chance to experience artworks and to learn about people that they probably wouldn’t get to otherwise.”

The exhibition begins as an open call for artwork for both literary and visual pieces in January. This year, ARISE received close to 50 pieces of artwork, and around 40 are shown in “UNIQUE” in addition to several honorable mentions.

Chapell has served as a judge on the “UNIQUE” jury panel for five years in a row and finds the role difficult but rewarding. She said that this year she noticed a step away from work centered on the pandemic and a return to work about family, friends, loss and life.

“It’s a hard thing to do because, of course, it is subjective, and so something that you love someone else might hate,” Chapell said. “It’s less about what you like and don’t like and really looking at the mechanics of the artwork.”

This year’s reception was incredibly moving, Mahar said, as the artists and their families came to see the artwork unveiled for the first time. Artists stood in front of their work and signed print copies of the magazine, he said.

“That night, dreams come true. Dreams come true for family and dreams come true for the artists,” Mahar said. “If you’re there and you don’t feel anything, then I guess you’re stone cold.”

Through showing his work to other people at events like “UNIQUE,” which he first submitted to in 2015, McCampbell has seen his artwork and personal confidence develop. He said although artists try not to rely on external validation, being selected by ARISE did give him optimism.

“It is a big deal when you’re doing artwork and in any capacity or any other circumstances that winds up in a museum,” McCampbell said, listing famous artists with disabilities. “I’ve seen work here, Van Gogh works, Andy Warhol, John Michael, Andrew Wyatt. I mean, the list goes on.”

McCampbell said it was a pleasant surprise to discover that his artwork was chosen for the cover at the opening reception. At 44 years old, he has been an artist since he was 2 and has an associate degree in fine arts at Onondaga Community College as well as an associate degree in photography at Syracuse University.

The process of creating the cover art began with collecting reference images online to create a collage and then editing and adapting that image combining traditional and digital media until he had a finished product. He said he is intrigued by the combination of the surreal, the abstract and the figurative elements of art and how they can work together.

“In order to create an image like that, I suppose you have to have a pretty realistic inner world, and usually that’s achieved through isolation, and there’s been times when I’ve been isolated,” McCampbell said. “You start to travel inside yourself. So I think that is reflective of some of the visual potency of my work.”