Karen Wheeler doesn’t let muscular dystrophy curtail her artistry

What strikes you about her prison is how utterly pointless a prison can be.

It's made of her body. It's incapable of containing her.

This inmate has wings.

"The doctor told my parents I wouldn't live past a year," says Henderson artist Karen Wheeler, 55, born in Kansas with spinal muscular atrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy. "Of course, the doctor died. Hahahaha!"

That giggle-laugh. Curbed by physical weakness, it's more an echo of a laugh that would otherwise be a full-throated roar from the depths of this small, impish woman with withered limbs in a motorized wheelchair. Had she the strength, that laugh would blow you back in your chair.

Little devil, too.

"I like to mess with people, I'm terrible," she says with another giggle (her conversation is peppered with them), recalling a moment at Sunset Station -- she plays blackjack there and enjoys her friend Todd Kerns' band, the Sin City Sinners -- when visitors got off a bus and one elderly man kept staring at her from the corner of his eye.

"He walked back and forth in front of me, so I started going alongside of him. He walked faster and I went faster and he's looking at me like, 'What's she doing?' People were looking at us like we were together and he was trying to get away." (Cue the giggles.)

Muscular disease notwithstanding, this woman -- as she'll be the first to say and we'll confirm -- is a little nuts. "That's my whole power, that they don't expect it. They think I'm sweet but they don't know me. That's my job here on Earth, to break in the weak. We're all in this together, right? And they are welcome to play with me, too."

Think she's constrained? You should be this busy. Ex-prez of the Vegas Artists Guild. Member of the Governor's Council of Developmental Disabilities. Exhibitor at libraries, the College of Southern Nevada, and other venues around town, as well as in Reno and Arizona. "Wish You Were Here," an exhibit of her art featuring the unveiling of "Easter Island," her newest work, will take place at 6 p.m. Friday at D'Arte Designs POP-UP Gallery, part of First Friday.

"She's a wonderful person and a great artist," says fellow Las Vegas artist Roberto Rico. "I think she's underappreciated. A piece of art takes her a long time (she manages two to four a year). Her work, almost everything has a joke in it, titles like 'Marsupial Soup.' With her condition, most people would just be vegetating, watching TV, enjoying checks from the state. But she does a lot of work. She stays strong."

Wheeling around her Henderson home in the back row of a gated apartment community, her parakeet, Spanky, chirping away, Wheeler points out the eclectic array of memorabilia and wall-hangings, from her fixation on the Beatles (Julian Lennon owns her portrait of his dad, John) and the Moody Blues to her portrait of pal Kerns.

Describing her watercolor work as "a cross between surrealism and photo-realism," Wheeler paints not only portraits, but a range of subjects from the humorous and somewhat subversive (a chimp and Ronald Reagan in a piece titled "Bonzo Goes to Washington") to, especially, animals.

"I'll do people or animals, and people cry because it looks alive," she says. "I have to be better than a camera. I don't want to do just a reproduction of a face. That's the problem with a lot of portraits. I put something into the eyes. There's a life. It's like I put air in them, oxygen."

Each Wheeler work contains a hidden rose, representing the artist. "It's my symbol because I'm based in reality," she says. "A rose is beautiful but it has thorns. It's like life. If people accept my artwork, they accept me because the rose is there -- I'm there."

How does she paint? Slowly but surely. A small holder on her chair supports her hand, suspended by rubber bands -- she keeps a wad of them with her -- a device she concocted after painting in oils and using ACE bandages that would deteriorate, leaving her limp arm to fall into the substance. "It also helps me eat," she says, adding that she was aided by a woman she met at a show in California who created a black elastic brush holder that keeps it on her finger.

"It was a struggle," she says of creating the piece she will exhibit Friday, which was halfway completed before the woman sent her the holder. "Painting the green Easter grass was repetitious and my hand would give out and I would drop the brush. I thought, 'I'm never going to get this done.' I was losing patience and energy." Buoyed by the gift, Wheeler finished the piece.

Another Wheeler admirer is respected local arts activist Brian Paco Alvarez. "Look at what she's done against all odds," Alvarez says. "Her artwork is so heartwarming. When you look at her and talk to her and you're next to her and get a sense of her energy, it makes you think life isn't so bad. She's an inspiration. I wish everyone knew who she was."

Should you learn anything from Wheeler, it's that attitude is everything -- including overcoming other people's. Though eventually graduating from California State University with a master's degree in art in 1981 (with a 4.0 grade-point average), she encountered some shortsightedness at a junior college.

"Because I was always this severely incapacitated, some teachers didn't know how to deal with me. It was fear-based. They thought I'd have a seizure in their class," she says, remembering one instructor who tried to keep her out of class. "I sent her a note and also sent it to the director of the handicapped center and it went in her job file," Wheeler says. "I graduated in spite of her."

Determined as she is, Wheeler is not unmindful about the progression of her disease. "My condition always gets worse, so every painting is more of a struggle. It's slow so I don't see the increments until there's something I can't do, like my fingers can't go together to grab things. I think, 'Gee, I used to do that last year.' "

Depression does afflict her, she says, but ultimately improves her painting, as opposed to, say, drinking her pain away. "I couldn't do that," she says, another stream of giggles pouring out.

"I can't open the bottles!"

Should Wheeler's muscular dystrophy eventually destroy her painting method, she says, "I'll just have to find another way to do it. I'm very stubborn. I am Cancer the crab. I grab on and don't let go."

See that wheelchair-bound blackjack player at Sunset Station? Don't stare. You'll be trailed by a small, determined woman wheeling right alongside you.

Having a hell of a laugh.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@review journal.com or 702-383-0256.