The Disability Arts : Bay Area Holiday Gift Guide is back.
Are you looking for a gift for that picky relative? Want something that supports disabled artists? Do you want to show your pride in the disability community?
This is the place to start looking for one-of-a-kind, thoughtful, politicly correct, disability-related gifts.
With December and the New Year drawing near and Kislev off to a good start, the season of gift guides is now upon us. Like many marginalized groups, the disability community has started to publish more and more gift guides showcasing products from artists, artisans, and entrepreneurs with disabilities.
We were inspired by Emily Ladau’s Original Disability Holiday Gift Guide which highlights a variety of goods on sale by independent disabled entrepreneurs worldwide as well as disability orgs worthy of a donation in a special someone’s name. It has yet to be updated this year, 2018, but it’s still valuable. Also showing the way are two yet-to-be-updated guides, Parenting Autistic Children with Love and Acceptance (PACLA) has just released their “annual gift guide and resource for #ActuallyAutistic run businesses, shops, artists, craftspeople, writers & more.” And, Meriah Nichols’ The Ultimate Gift Guide For Supporting Businesses With A Positive Connection To Disability.
And that’s just to name a few!
This year, Disability Arts/Bay Area is throwing its hat in the ring with a gift guide focused on disabled artists and artisans in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Children’s Literature:
A limited number of picture books by author and illustrator Owen Bragg are available on Amazon, including Ketinga the Cat (Volume 1), Victor, and Birthday Surprise.
Leroy F. Moore, Jr., the virtuoso bringing Krip-Hop Nation Worldwide, published his first children’s book in September, Black Disabled Art History 101.
- Bonus: Moore’s recent collection, Black Kripple Delivers Poetry & Lyrics is available from Small Press Distribution, and his music is on Apple Music and iTunes.
*New Addition* For more advanced readers, the middle grade biography, Ed Roberts: Wheelchair Genius by Steven E. Brown is available on Amazon as an eBook and paperback.
- Bonus: Amazon also sells Brown’s memoir, Surprised to be Standing: A Spiritual Journey, and essay collection, Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability Shame to Disability Pride.
Memoir and Biography:
Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People edited by Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project featuring 16 essays by 17 disabled people. All proceeds will go to HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities). HEARD is the only organization in the nation that works to correct and prevent wrongful convictions of D/deaf and hard of hearing individuals.
Poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has received more accolades and recognition for her memoir, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home than we have room to print.
- Bonus: Piepzna-Samarasinha’s poetry collections are also available at the link above.
Georgina Kleege talks back to the Helen Keller mythos in Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller (enter HOLIDAY2017 at checkout for 25% off paperback edition through January 7th). Her previous nonfiction book, Sight Unseen is available as a hardcover and eBook.
- Bonus: Small Press Distribution carries paperbacks of Kleege’s novel, Home for the Season.
Belo Miguel Cipriani has made his acclaimed debut, Blind: A Memoir available in a number of formats.
- Bonus: Cipriani’s short story, Midday Dreams can be purchased as an eBook or audiobook.
Pamela Kay Walker documents her coming of age alongside the disability arts and rights movements in Moving Over the Edge: Artists with Disabilities Take the Leap.
Collections and Anthologies:
Through her imprint Atahualpa Press, Maria R. Palacios currently has five collections of her poetry, essays, and humor in print and available for purchase.
Lateef McLeod’s debut, A Declaration of a Body of Love – Poetry is also available through Atahualpa.
Better known for his work as one half of indietronica duo The Limousines, Eric Victorino published his first collection of poetry, Coma Therapy.
- Bonus: MerchNow sells CDs and LPs from The Limousines.
Playwright Imani Harrington co-edited the anthology, Positive/Negative: Women of Color and HIV/AIDS: A collection of plays.
Films:
Regan Brashear’s documentary, FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement (Best of Festival Short, Superfest 2015) can now be purchased as a home use DVD.
Patty Berne directs the Superfest Award-winning documentary short, Sins Invalid: An Unashamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility. DVDs are currently available for purchase for Colleges/Universities, Community Colleges, K-12 Schools, Public Libraries, and Community Groups.
Crafts:
Elahe Hejazi offers hand-knitted baby gift sets.
Neisha Kobrin creates fleece leashes (or fleashes) for service dogs and pets.
Marguerite Manor has been making potpourri for over twenty years, and also sells custom labels for fiber artists as well as her own fiber art.
Andrea McGinnis sells her handcrafted jewelry through GenDrea and Bohemian September.
Tamar Raine crafts necklaces with polymer clay pendants.
Krystina Wray designs custom and premade wheelchair accessories.
Merch:
Haley Brown sells a 2019 Coping Calendar as well as stickers, prints, a zine, and t-shirts.
Writer and artist Vanessa Castro offers a variety of colorful items at her store, including a calendar, greeting cards, prints, and children’s books.
Lex Kartané’s Etsy store teams with fierce and funny buttons, greeting cards, patches, and zines.
Alana Theriault sells her pointillist drawings as greeting cards and prints.
Fine Art Originals and Prints:
Lee Stone Fine Prints in San Jose sells paintings and etchings that span the late Casper Banjo’s career.
Franky Dolan offers a wide array of sculpture, two-dimensional art, and jewelry, as well as prints of his paintings through Fae Factory.
Suzy Norris sells originals and prints of her paintings and mixed media pieces.
Katherine Sherwood has mixed media paintings available through the Anglim Gilbert Gallery.
Wildlife painter Michael Che-Swisher is represented by a number of galleries nationally, including Nancy Dodds in Carmel.
DisArt/BA founder Anthony Tusler, ATusler@AboutDisability.com, slides in with this late addition: “Any of my photos on Instagram are available for $100 unframed with plain window matte and $150 framed. Photos are silver halide generally at 8 inches by 12 inches, signed on the obverse. Inquire about delivery and shipping. I am in southern Sonoma County.”
Art Groups and Programs:
Reclamation Press has publications by and about disabled people, including in 2019 the second edition of Corbett O’Toole’s Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History.
ArtLifting sells originals, prints, and merchandise by homeless and/or disabled artists. The Bay Area disability arts scene is well-represented amongst ArtLifting’s Northern California artists.
Based in Oakland, Creative Growth Art Center serves as studio, gallery, and representative for artists with disabilities. The Center’s online store offers books and merchandise, but to buy original works, you’ll need to go to their Holiday Show:MORE IS MORE.
Located in San Francisco, Creativity Explored supplies physical, digital, and intellectual space for artists with developmental disabilities to create, sell, and license their work. Purchase originals, prints, and merchandise online.
In the heart of Richmond, NIAD Art Center is “redefining contemporary art” by supporting artists with developmental disabilities. Their online store features original drawings, paintings, ceramics, jewelry, quilts and fiber art, and sculpture.
The Cedars of Marin artists, hand weavers, jewelry designers and craftspeople show and sell their original work at the Artist Within – a Cedars Gallery at 603 San Anselmo Avenue in downtown San Anselmo.
Alchemia, Art Without Labels has the THIS IS ME exhibit that highlights the work of artists and how they see themselves in their life and community at their Petaluma Gallery, 111 Kentucky St. Petaluma, CA.
Whew. That was quite a list. The Bay Area is vast and unknowable, so we’re bound to have missed at least one artist with works for sale. If our list left off your favorite local disabled artist (including yourself), please let us know in the comments. Happy holidays!
updated 12/5/18-AT