At Friday’s Artists Reception for (This) Ability at Fuller Lodge Art Center, the artists reveal the challenges they faced while creating the art and what challenged their artwork.

Although their explanations are in a binder along with the artists’ biographies, the work in the show stands by itself. The written words just provide a new level of understanding. To many, a wheelchair is a symbol of confinement. In (This) Ability a wheelchair has been yarn-bombed in a rainbow of colors to show those who take their legs for granted, that wheels provide others with the opportunity to be mobile.

The viewer is invited to sit in this wheelchair, to see the world from a different perspective, bringing the viewer into the world of those who sit in a wheelchair day in and day out.

In (This) Ability artists take patrons down a new road by acknowledging and working with limitations, pathological or otherwise – showing that struggles and difficulties are often what make people stronger and force them to forge a unique path.

Trish Ebbert’s show, From The Subconscious, also opened Friday in the Portal Gallery.