Elizabeth Newell brings her magical world to life in opening of the Awesome Gallery

From the outside, the newly launched Awesome Gallery looks like any industrial construction warehouse.

Inside, however, artist Elizabeth Newell has created a wondrous exhibition that opens her long-secret magical world to anyone fortunate enough to pass through.

Newell, who has autism, has never before shown her art publicly, and she said she was overwhelmed the first time she stepped back to take in the space, which is currently overflowing with a mix of paper mâché sculpture, knit yarn creations and playful watercolor illustrations – the bulk of which feature frogs, an animal toward which Newell has long held an affinity. “Frogs are quite sensitive to their environment,” said the artist, whose exhibit kicks off with an opening reception at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14. “They do not wear armor or anything like that, but they’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs, so they’ve learned how to survive and adapt, which I think makes them quite wise.”

Working around the room, the exhibit unfolds like a fairy tale deeply rooted in Newell’s life and experiences, where even the illustration of a single flower in a pot reverberates with bottomless meaning. “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower,” Newell said. “And I feel like that’s true for a lot of autistic people, and for myself, because for a very long time I felt like I was broken, and I couldn’t understand why my flower wasn’t growing, because I so badly wanted it to.”

Upon entering, visitors are first greeted by a mirror and a series of diorama-like boxes spelling out the word love, which Newell described as an essential kick-off to “a journey of self love and self reflection.” A sculpture of the Frog Prince follows, accompanied by a quote from author Roald Dahl: “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” 

“And I think that’s the key for getting into my world. If you believe in magic – and not wizards and stuff but that’s pretty cool, too – but the magic of beauty and friendship, then you’ll be able to see more in the art than just pictures.”

This idea reverberates throughout the work on display at the Awesome Gallery, created by Awesome Company founder and owner Jacquie Mahan as a means to further highlight the work being done by autistic or neurodivergent artists, surfacing in fantastical illustrations of frogs dancing, navigating stormy waters by paper boat and confronting a night sky illuminated by stars, all of which have roots in the real-life challenges faced (and overcome) by Newell.

“A lot of the world is dark and stormy, and sometimes you feel completely lost, so you look to the stars to try and hold on to every bit of light you can to help find your way through,” she said. “And when you do that, you start to find more beauty in the world.”

This incremental growth is evident in the progression of the images, with a later painting depicting a frog swimming in more serene seas. “And then those oceans that almost drowned you get calmer, and the sky gets brighter, and you learn how to swim,” Newell said. “So, even if the storms come again, you know you’re going to be okay.”

Rather than a self-contained story, though, the exhibit plays like the first in an ongoing series, ending with cross-stitched potted flowers accompanied by the text “Keep growing…” “Because you always have more to go,” Newell said.

Mahan launched Awesome Gallery, in part, for autistic and neurodivergent artists to have a more easily accessible space in which these revelations could unfold, describing the gallery as a natural outgrowth of the Awesome Company, a screen-printing business that employs adults on the spectrum. 

“I want to keep finding platforms for autistic people to feel valued, feel respected and feel safe, because those are the things that aren’t really available to them in the neurotypical world, which is the world that most of us live in,” said Mahan, who previously owned and operated the now-defunct Short North art space Mahan Gallery, launching the Awesome Company in 2016 owing to her experiences with an autistic family member. “What I realized is, when you’re an autistic child becoming an autistic adult, your world can get very small. And I’m not sugarcoating it, because it can be almost tragic. School ends at [age] 22, and you can go right back into your mom’s basement. You have no more school to go to. You have no more support groups. There’s just this huge nothingness. … And it breaks my heart, because you see these really amazing people who were doing well at 17, and now they’ve regressed at 25.”

Mahan said there are nonprofits that do great work in the autism realm, but too often this assistance is temporary, with places offering job training or unpaid internships and then shooting people back into the larger world absent ongoing support. With the Awesome Company, she hoped to build a place that “could catch people and keep them,” introducing one autistic employee, Brent, who has been with the company all eight years it has been in existence.

In opening the gallery, Mahan first connected with Newell via Columbus on the Spectrum, a nonprofit focused on building community and creating opportunities for neurodivergent people, drawn in by the artist’s warmth and relentlessly creative nature. 

Newell, in turn, credits Mahan and Awesome Gallery with providing a space that has accentuated her sense of belonging, describing the flood emotions that overcame her when she first saw her work presented together in this way.

“It’s like maybe you’ve been searching for your home for a while, and you know it’s out there and you’ve been gathering all of these pieces.” she said. “And the world’s been so hard for so long, but then you open the door, and you feel like you can rest. And I feel like I can sit down for a moment. And I think for the first time it feels very safe, and that’s a very new feeling. Most people have understood me, and they haven’t seen [the magic], and that has been quite lonely. But I don’t feel lonely anymore.”