“Wow, you’d never know these artists were disabled!”

This is the exact sentiment that should not be expressed when viewing “Revealed, the Myth of Disability,” at Windward Community College’s Gallery ‘Iolani. And yet the show’s title argues that artists facing mental, physical and emotional challenges should not be held to a different set of standards when it comes to experiencing or assessing their work.

This is a very tricky path to negotiate for two reasons: We are all disabled by varying degrees of ignorance and prejudice, and we live in a society that elevates and celebrates the exceptional, the “genius.” In between is the ongoing struggle to practice and implement the inclusiveness of our democratic ideals.

Judith Kim’s “The Koolau” is a mixed-media work that uses red and green fibers to evoke the textures and topologies of the celebrated mountain range, and color washes of blue, green and tan to render qualities of foliage, rock and weather. Kim achieves a

seductive impressionistic depth that invites one to identify where she might have stood to get this view.

Is it beside the point to note that she has optic atrophy and cannot see the world in the same focus as a “normal” person? In this and many other examples in the show, it becomes clear that not being able to successfully articulate an artistic expression (with all of its hidden levels of technical and conceptual mastery) is a disability that many of us are struck with.

If Kim “cannot see” and yet produces imagery that does not belie her condition while transcending our own abilities to do so, what does it say about “artists” who face no physiological challenges and yet create works that clearly demonstrate a kind of blindness that reveals other limitations of ability?

Hold that thought, and consider the sculpture of Sayoko Kay Mura. In Mura’s “The Special Recital,” a woman in a fantastic muumuu patterned with night sky, fern and anthurium has her arms thrown wide as she sings with her eyes closed and heart open. In front of her is a rapt little girl in a polka-dot dress, her green eyes alert. She is surrounded by a motley crew of eyeless monsters. What is going on here? Would your engagement with the work be altered if you knew that Mura suffered from rheumatoid arthritis?

Here, we risk the sentiment of awed pity or a false humility. There is a built-in measure against “normal” people that in its most honest form makes us recognize our own limitations. Art-making is a challenging and productive dimension of this moment, and not just because most of us with full use of our hands and senses could not sculpt Mura’s figures, throw Kurt Tateishi’s pots, paint like Donald Okimoto, or create any of the fabulously transcendent woven fiber butterflies produced by students in the Honolulu Museum of Art School’s We BeWeave program.

I am not a fan of didactics on the gallery walls because they can sometimes disable the viewer by over-explaining the work. In this show, sharing the stories of the artists provides a degree of insight that goes beyond a rough comparison of lives and abilities. In statements, the artists discuss the therapeutic (and I would argue spiritual) value of making art, and not just in a vague sense of rehabilitation, but in concrete terms of pain relief, mental focus and altered states of awareness.

How, in the most democratic sense, do these artists differ from those who use alcohol, drugs or personal struggle as alchemic fuel to achieve a greater intensity of experience and aesthetic expression? We might argue about choice versus fate here, but these artists would probably reject that kind of sociological debate. They negotiate catastrophes, hereditary disorders, emotional and social trauma, and the side effects of medical treatments. Art is, in a sense, who they are and how they become.

If you’ve never tried to make art, let this show inspire you to find out what you might have to say, no matter what state of ability you bring to the moment.