HARLEY-DAVIDSON ARTWORK HELPS MDA ART COLLECTION ACCELERATE TO 300 PIECES

"Have Wheels, Will Travel"

TUCSON, Ariz., August 2, 2003 — A Laramie, Wyo., woman with Lou Gehrig’s disease has donated the 300th piece in the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s nationally renowned Art Collection. The Collection, now in its 12th year, has accepted “Have Wheels, Will Travel,” an acrylic painting by Katy Hinckley that celebrates her love of the open road.

The painting depicts various wheels Hinckley, 47, used on a motorcycle trip she and her husband, Peter Hegg, made to Las Vegas early this year. They include the wheels from her folding wheelchair/stroller and those from the couple’s Harley-Davidson 2003 Heritage Softail Classic and 2002 Sportster motorcycles.

Since the Collection’s inception in 1992, selected works — all by people affected by neuromuscular diseases — have appeared in more than 50 exhibits nationwide, from the Los Angeles Children’s Museum to the Cork Gallery at New York’s Lincoln Center. When not on the road, all the works are displayed at MDA’s Tucson, Ariz., national headquarters.

It’s fitting that the Art Collection’s 300th piece boasts a Harley-Davidson theme, since this year marks the 100th anniversary of the company, a longtime MDA national sponsor.

“We’re deeply honored to mark this milestone in our Art Collection with Katy Hinckley’s imaginative work,” MDA President & CEO Robert Ross said. “Not only will her painting help draw attention to the amazing abilities of artists with ALS and other neuromuscular disorders. It will also help us celebrate our friends at Harley-Davidson.”

Hinckley was a lecturer on communication and journalism at the University of Wyoming when she received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) in January 2002. She and her husband decided it was time to get serious about the adventure trips they’d talked about taking “someday.”

This spring they drove from Laramie to Las Vegas, and hit the road with the stroller folded and carried on the back of one motorcycle.

“We put the bikes on a trailer and the wheelchair on the bike and hauled them all to Vegas where we spent four days touring the countryside,” she explains.

The Collection was established in 1992 to focus attention on the achievements of artists with disabilities, and to emphasize that physical disability is no barrier to creativity.

The permanent Collection comprises 300 works by artists aged 2 to 82 and represents all 50 states. Each artist is affected by one of the neuromuscular diseases in the MDA program.

Selected art from the Collection has been exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art; Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center and Forbes Magazine Galleries in New York; Tucson Museum of Art; Bishop Museum in Honolulu; Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center; Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art; Los Angeles Children’s Museum; JFK Center at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Fresno Metropolitan Museum; Duluth Art Institute; Capital Children’s Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn, Mich.

The culmination of the Harley-Davidson anniversary celebration will be a party in Milwaukee, part of which will be televised during the opening night of the 2003 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon Aug. 31-Sept. 1.

Hinckley and her husband hope to be in attendance.

ALS is a progressive disease that causes the disintegration of motor neurons, resulting in the weakening of voluntary, or skeletal, muscles and leading to eventual paralysis. Hinckley uses the wheelchair/stroller for mobility.

MDA’s ALS Division leads the worldwide research effort to find causes of, and cures and treatments for, ALS, one of the more than 40 neuromuscular diseases in MDA’s program. The Association is also the nation’s leading provider of services for those with the disorder.

MDA is a voluntary health agency working to defeat neuromuscular diseases through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive services, and far-reaching professional and public health education. MDA maintains a clinic for Laramie area adults and children affected by neuromuscular diseases at the Children’s Hospital in nearby Denver.

Hinckley receives care at the MDA/ALS Center at the University of Colorado in Aurora.