The holiday break was an important period to recharge, but also to compile some material for the zine that I hope to create for this realize project.
I spent a lot of time talking to my parents, siblings, and friends in the community about their stories and interactions with people on the spectrum. In particular, talking to my parents about the issue was enlightening. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on their perspective, but one thing that my mom brought to my attention was the issue that started off these investigations: permanent housing. My brother has gone through many different phases where he has been entranced by one thing or another. The phobia of losing the house and car because of a slightly atypical understanding of object permanence was what I was exploring in Investigate. There is a possibility that I found this interesting because it had a clear narrative arc, with an origin story of Katrina and the resolution of a permanence of family. However, the unceartantiy of spaces is something that is pressing in the ageing community of people on the spectrum, particularly in Louisiana, our home town.
There isn’t a lot of infrastructure in place for nonverbal people on the autism spectrum in New Orleans. In fact, throughout my childhood, my family struggled to find a place where my brother could go to school. Because New Orleans’ school system is mainly made up of charter schools which are privately run and publicly funded, they get ‘to choose’ to an extent the type of childrent that they will admit. And, not all schools have to provide programs for children with severe special needs. After a lot of shuffling, and after my broher was kicked out of a lot of schools that were mainly geared to provide services for people with Down Syndrome, my parents found a school. However, they have to pay out of their own pocket for my brother to go there.
Now, he is 21, and past classic school years. But, he will never be able to live on his own. So my parents were discussing the possibility of going in with some other parents in order to create some sort of fund to start a house for the ‘harder’ populations of people with autism. This sort of gave some traction to why I want to tell and illustrate these stories.
There is a lack of resources and a lack of uncertainly for a lot of people like my brother. There is also a lot of guilt for siblings and parents who know that they can’t necessarily take care of one of these individuals on their own forever. Ultimately, I am hoping that a publication like this, or some of the stories and illustrations could serve as a means to raise awareness for these issues.
I also spent a lot of time with my brother. I asked him to draw a couple of things for the zine, to which he responded with a couple of doodles. He goes through different phases where he will draw a lot or a little. There is evidence of the period where he did draw all over our house, though, so I took some images from there.
The images are a little bit coded. I don’t know what all of them refer to, but for a while, it seemed like he just liked holding a pen in his hand. Though there is some evidence that he draws from observation. The squares in the last panel look like windows. To me, it is a little like looking at the frequencies crisscrossing in his brain. All of the marks refer to something, but I just don’t have the ability to decode all of them.
I also took a lot of pictures of Matthew in his natural environment: his room.
I took pictures in the moments of calm and breakdown.
I also had my mom take pictures when he made us laugh.
Overall, this time at home was a good reminder of why exactly it is important to tell this and other stories similar to my own. And, it made me grapple with the ways that I could incorporate Matthew’s voice as well as those of the people who talk about him in a way that happens to be accessible to me.
RCA Graduate Diploma 