DRAWINGS BY YOUNG ALABAMA ARTIST
ACCEPTED BY MDA ART COLLECTION

"Walk at Your Own Pace"

TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 16, 2003 — Two drawings by Mallory Parton, 11, of Talladega, Ala., have been accepted by the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Art Collection. Now in its 12th year, the Collection features artwork by people from across the country with neuromuscular diseases.

“Walk at Your Own Pace” is a colorful marker drawing of a young girl walking, with only her legs, shoes and the bottom of her dress showing.

“Spring Is Here” illustrates the life-affirming quality of spring with its sunshine and peaceful bugs resting on flowers. Mallory, a sixth-grader at R.L. Young Elementary, loves to draw bugs and flowers.

Mallory has limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, which affects voluntary muscles, mainly those around the hips and shoulders.

"Spring Is Here"

“We welcome Mallory Parton’s work into the permanent MDA Art Collection,” MDA President & CEO Robert Ross said. “Her contributions to our Collection will undoubtedly delight all who see them as they travel to galleries and museums as part of special exhibits of the Collection.”

The new additions by Mallory will be displayed at MDA’s national headquarters in Tucson, Ariz., and will also be included in MDA Art Collection traveling exhibits. 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 some 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.

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 clinics for northern Alabama adults and children affected by neuromuscular diseases at the University of Alabama Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham.

The Association’s programs are funded almost entirely by individual private contributors