Creative mom’s love crafts autistic/artistic ‘college’

By MARILYNN ELIE //

A Long Island artist is creating new ways for autistic people to be seen, heard and understood.

Maria Iliou combines art, media and education in Athena Autistic Artist College, an individualized, home-based community group originally created for her nonverbal autistic daughter, Athena. The innovator has since expanded the mission, with a series of autism-meets-art videos produced by Melville-based Drake Media Studios.

Iliou – a self-described “autistic Greek American mom” – started her quest long before the cameras started rolling, before she was even a mother, with her own experiences as a student.

Creative, warm, sensitive, vibrant and a “strong soul,” the artist grew up on Long Island – and struggled mightily with reading assignments and reading comprehension, and especially with putting what she’d read into her own words.

Book reports were difficult. Spoken language could feel abstract. Advocating for herself was challenging. It wasn’t that she couldn’t learn – she just needed to learn differently.

“No teacher had the time or patience to learn how to teach me differently from other students,” Iliou recalled.

It was art – specifically, working with her hands – that began to reveal the abilities traditional education was missing. Iliou learned macramé from a hands-on teacher who showed her the craftwork, starting with two knots. She taught herself additional patterns and began designing her own pieces: plant hangers, towel holders, other handmade creations.

She eventually brought some of her creations to a florist, who saw something in her and began teaching Iliou floral design and horticulture, further creative outlets that allowed the budding artist to work with her hands and express herself visually.

Soon she was painting with watercolors and studying video production. Photography became a passion. There was no carefully mapped-out career plan, but a pattern was emerging: Give Iliou the right tools and room to create, and abilities that were once hidden became visible.

Years after finding her way, Iliou recognized something similar in her daughter.

“As I saw my child’s needs evolve, and her artistic ability, along with my love for art … it allowed Athena Autistic Artist College to be born,” Iliou told Innovate Long Island.

Athena’s interests are wide-ranging. She enjoys photography, storytelling, poetry and drama. Though she is technically nonverbal, she sings. Music and singing have long been viewed as a communicative bridge to nonverbal persons, and Athena especially enjoys creating original songs with Iliou – she’s even won seven New York State School Music Association medals for singing, according to her proud mom.

Athena Autistic Artist College grew from Iliou’s desire to give her daughter individualized opportunities and what she describes as “college experiences.” Determined to focus more on what Athena could do, rather than what she couldn’t, Iliou crafted activities around Athena’s innate abilities and personal development pace.

Art became a form of communication.

Iliou hired an art and drama teacher to work with Athena using activities such as sand play, puppet play, acting out emotions and creating scenes and stories – exercises that encouraged communication and helped build language skills.

Meanwhile, mother and daughter have developed their own processes. For instance, Athena will contribute words and ideas, Iliou will add her own and together they’ll turn the notes into poems, songs and stories – collaborations that allow Athena to express “who she is as an artist,” her mom noted.

Iliou also passed along another skill from her own journey: how to arrange flowers in a vase.

All of these experiences reflect a lesson Iliou learned firsthand: Ability becomes easier to see when someone is given the right way to demonstrate it.

Creativity, she said, can become a voice for someone who doesn’t communicate primarily through words – and it’s one of the primary reasons the innovator pushes back against assumptions about autistic people, particularly those who don’t communicate in conventional ways.

Even a nonverbal person, she noted, can observe surroundings, notice details and communicate in his or her own way – and thrive, Iliou added, when given the right opportunities.

“Open up and really listen to them and what they have to share,” she said. “You will realize how capable they are.”

After successfully helping Athena discover her capabilities, Iliou has focused on helping others along the same path. For more than 20 years, she has organized gatherings for autistic people, creating safe spaces for creativity, connection and shared experiences.

She’s also broadened her own horizons. “Athena Autistic Artist College TV” has been televised on public-access Cablevision, while programming connected to Athena Autistic Artist College has appeared on various digital media.

Drake Media Studios produces the current installments, helping Iliou bring conversations about autism and creativity to wider audiences. But for Iliou, the most important progress still happens closer to home. Athena continues to learn at her own pace – within the past year, for example, she’s learned to recognize numbers on a digital clock.

This milestone brought her mother enormous pride, and reinforced Iliou’s thoughts on both parenting and development, which she says doesn’t need to follow established timetables.

“Embrace your child with love,” Iliou noted. “Age has no limits.”

What began as a way to give her daughter a taste of college continues as an opportunity to encourage other autistic people to recognize their own talents – and to use their abilities to “achieve greatness.”

From the rest of the world, the mother asks only one thing: When meeting Athena for the first time, try to see beyond the autism.

“Athena is gifted,” Iliou said. “A beautiful, loving soul.”