Recently HBO made a movie about the incredible life of Temple Grandin (played wonderfully by Claire Danes.) It’s such an inspiring story about how Temple, who is autistic, used her talent of relating to animals to design meat-packing plants to be more humane for cattle. Temple is currently a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. But she also speaks around the world about dealing with autism and has written a whole bunch of books about her life. Temple wrote the introduction for this book, Drawing Autism, so I was immediately intrigued. The book has work from over 50 contributors, all autistic, who use art as a way to express how they view the world. Mostly paintings, drawings and collages, there is a wide range of styles, from realistic landscapes, to obsessive cataloguing drawings, to colorful collages. Gregory Blackstone, who I wrote about before is one of the artists featured in the book. Each artist is also interviewed about their work and their very candid answers are refreshing. Pick up a copy of this book here, a portion of proceeds from the book are donated to a selection of agencies that support art and autism.

© Julia Rothman 2007