Eastern Panhandle Artist’s Intricate Illustrations Grew From Classroom Interest, Support

Paintbrush in hand, Antonia Capriotti is busy at work at a kitchen table in Ranson. Today is Wednesday morning, which is when Capriotti joins Gary Bergel — an artist himself, and a professor at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College — for one-on-one art instruction.

Capriotti pulls out a storybook and flips to a page depicting the panels of a roof. She begins painting over it in green, as if using art to retell the story from her own point of view.

“When a human being starts unfolding creatively, they will use materials differently than a trained artist,” Bergel said, seated beside her. “Antonia, you can’t predict how she’s going to use a given art material.”

Capriotti has Autism, and was one of the first two students to receive a specialized curriculum for her Autism in Jefferson County Schools.

“We didn’t have a place for her to go, and that’s when the program was started,” said Capriotti’s mother, Terri White. “Her aide had to hold the pencil in her hand and help her to write.”

Capriotti began to draw the things she learned about in school. That is how her mother and teachers began to realize Capriotti had a knack for art.

“She loves Paul Bunyan, and she took a crayon … and she dotted [an outline] of Paul Bunyan, the whole thing,” White said. “Someone saw it, and they said, ‘Well, that’s pointillism.’”

Caproptti has some difficulties communicating verbally. But discovering art in the classroom helped Capriotti later take classes at Blue Ridge CTC and Shepherd University, introducing her to people like Bergel.

“In my classroom, I don’t view any human as not creative. I believe we were conceived creative,” Bergel said. “Your creativity will be different than mine.”

Capriotti’s unique artistic perspective has caught the eye of her community, too. From March to April, more than 20 of her illustrated pieces are on display at the South Jefferson Public Library, located in the nearby neighborhood of Summit Point.

Each colored-pencil drawing crowds the page with bright, intricate shapes. One piece, entitled “100 Mermaids,” depicts faces stacked from the bottom to top edge — some connected to bodies and mermaid tails, others left afloat in flowing, yellow hair with seashells tucked inside.

And Capriotti’s path to higher education offered encouragement to her mother, too. As a first-time college student herself, White said entering the classroom with her daughter felt like something they were accomplishing together.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but the same year that she took her college classes there and got credit was the same year that I took my first classes there for credit,” White said. “So I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we both did it at the same time.’”

Along the way, Bergel says Capriotti’s growth has not been limited to her art skills, either.

“At first, she really [almost] did not speak,” Bergel said. “But by the end of our time and semesters together there, if you walked in … she’d come out and poke you in the chest, just like she did here this morning, and say, ‘What’s your name? What’s your favorite Walt Disney movie? What’s your favorite musical piece in that movie?’”

Antonia Capriotti’s exhibition at the South Jefferson Public Library will be on display during library hours through the end of April. For more information, visit the library’s website.