Austin Massengali was all smiles as he created a colorful mural with vibrant green paint outside the Town Center of Aurora on Saturday.
But his 10-year-old hand never touched a brush.
A pole with a paint roller extended from the front of his wheelchair, and it spun out wild designs as his younger sister pushed him over the 20-foot square of construction paper.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Austin’s mother, Michelle Massengali, who watched from the sidelines as her son smiled and squealed in excitement. “It’s nice to see children like Austin do a typical activity, and see people walk by admiring what they’re doing, not looking at them as different.”
Austin and other special-needs children added their personal touches to the mural and got their first chance to showcase work at Aurora Public Schools’ “Festival of the Arts.”
“The art festival is usually where every school wants to show their best work,” said Wendy Pfaffhausen, an art teacher at Elkhart Elementary School. “This is an opportunity for these kids to participate.”
Pfaffhausen, who coordinated the event, said the idea came when she attended a conference on disabilities and saw innovative equipment that helps people with limited movement or motor skills draw or paint.
The kids used wheelchair or standing push rollers wrapped in designs they made out of foam.
There were also pogo poles, which use a spring and angled handle so children with difficulty gripping can use the stamp with ease, Pfaffhausen said.
“To give them a standard paintbrush or a marker is hard for them to control, but by giving them something like this, they can enjoy the act of creation,” Pfaffhausen said.
Staff writer Julianne Bentley can be reached at jbentley@denverpost.com.
