Artist With Disabilities Realizes Dream

Larry Costello’s graphic artwork, which he categorizes as “fairly abstract, occasionally realistic,” is compelling in its own right, good enough to be featured at the Westhampton Free Library throughout the month of January.But what adds a degree of impressiveness is that Mr. Costello orchestrates his art pieces entirely with his nondominant right hand. And that hand, like much of the rest of Mr. Costello’s body, is partially paralyzed.

“The fact that he gets the pictures he gets is kind of like a miracle,” said Carlo Calo, Mr. Costello’s friend and community integration counselor.

“I amaze myself,” Mr. Costello, an Oceanside native, added.

In 1979, then-24-year-old Mr. Costello was driving home from a wedding he attended after work in upstate New York, where he taught art and communication skills to students with disabilities. He had recently obtained a special education teaching degree from Dowling College in Oakdale after a brief stint in advertising design. The work was fulfilling. Art had always been of particular interest to Mr. Costello and to relay that interest for the betterment of others remains a considerable point of pride today.

Mr. Costello fell asleep at the wheel and hurtled into a lake, nearly drowning. Luckily, he survived, but not unscathed. Mr. Costello suffered a chronic traumatic brain injury. Much of his body is either partially or fully paralyzed. He relies on an electric wheelchair to move around, his speech is severely impaired and he has considerable memory trouble.

“For him, the past is like yesterday,” Mr. Calo explained.

Mr. Costello spent the next 33 years living in a nursing home and rehabilitation center. At first, he was not sure how he would continue to make art, if at all. But he proved resourceful.

“My brother told me, ‘You can’t draw!’ I’d put a brush in my mouth and do it,” Mr. Costello said, adding that he began reintroducing art into his life by gradually increasing the complexity of his mouth-painted, abstract works. “Then he would be quiet.”

Eventually, he was put in contact with nuns from Molloy College in Rockville Centre, who introduced Mr. Costello to the computer program Adobe Illustrator. To use it was arduous. He could operate the computer only with his nondominant right hand, forcing him to retrain his already limited motor functions. But the program opened a world of creative potential. He was determined to learn. Soon he shuttled over to the campus twice a week to hone his craft.

“It was a godsend,” Mr. Costello said of Illustrator. “I said to myself, I’m going full-fledged right-handed.”

About six years ago, Mr. Costello’s brother and mother bought him his own personal Macintosh desktop. He took full advantage. It was common for Mr. Costello, despite limited mobility and memory lapses that obstructed his creativity, to spend eight hours a day on Illustrator refining his art pieces.

“When he’s doing his work and he’s having a problem with it and something goes haywire, he has the patience of a saint,” Mr. Calo said. “He never gets frustrated. He never gets angry.”

Mr. Costello cites his time teaching art to students with disabilities as the source of such patience. The virtue has gotten him far. Three decades ago, it was inconceivable to others that he would create art in any medium again. Since then, Mr. Costello’s artwork has been featured throughout Long Island, including at the East End Arts Council in Riverhead and with the Disabled Artists Guild at the Port Jefferson Gallery.

To be shown in the Hamptons in particular, however, is a lifelong dream of Mr. Costello, one realized this month. And his work is scheduled to reappear alongside that of other Long Island artists at the Westhampton Free Library in June.

“The Hamptons is a place for me where you can truly escape,” Mr. Costello reminisced. “The wild life, the busy life. There was always a party to go to.”

While merely talking about being showcased in Westhampton Beach “lights him up,” as Mr. Calo put it, Mr. Costello has had some recent misfortune. His computer broke about a year ago. The lack of Adobe Illustrator is more than a creative blow; the routine of using the program aids with Mr. Costello’s memory, Mr. Calo said. And, perhaps more importantly, art is Mr. Costello’s source of agency. It is how he defied the expectations of others, and he is quick to flaunt his work to anyone who inquires.

“One of the goals in the counseling process, the overarching goal, is art, because art is such an important part of his life,” Mr. Calo said. “It’s helped his sense of self, his self-awareness, his self-esteem.”

Terry McEntee, a librarian at Westhampton Free Library, setup a GoFundMe page at gofundme.com/computer-for-handicap-artist after meeting Mr. Costello this month, in hopes of raising the $1,450 needed for a new desktop and software.

Mr. Costello moved out of the rehabilitation center and into his own apartment five years ago, a move he had predicted on his communication board, which he jokingly refers to as his Ouija board—only to be told by the facility’s workers that it was an impossible hope. But, three decades later, Mr. Costello’s prediction was proven true. And that is in part due to the perseverance he cultivated through his digital art.

“At first I couldn’t concentrate, or draw as I wanted to,” Mr. Costello said. “Through the Macintosh computer, I learned to take my time.”