As an artist, Becky Trochinski says she doesn't especially like talking about her work -- at least in an interview setting, anyway. Lucky for us, her work pretty much speaks for itself, and loudly, at that.

She's a multi-media art teacher at Bradley Tech High School, a recent recipient of a M.A. in Cardinal Stritch's accelerated visual studies program, a proud mother of an 11-month-old and also suffers from muscular dystrophy, a condition that keeps her body weak and bound to an electronic wheelchair.

Her work, she says, is a visual representation of what her life feels like, and this Gallery Night, 16 of her evocative photographs are in an exhibit called "Who I Am -- Not How I Am" at IndependenceFirst, an organization that offers services to people with disabilities at 600 W. Virginia St., 6th floor.

"Some people are uncomfortable with my work because it's the body, it's the human figure, but it's not always portrayed as beautiful," she says. "It's often contorted because of the disability that the body has. You're going to see a nipple, a scar, a spine that's curved at 70-degree angle, feet that are blue and swollen."

Trochinski says she prefers her in-your-face approach to photography because it's the most accurate way she's able to express what it's like to feel her disease make her body become weaker with time, to experience the uncontrollable changes she's going through.

"My art expresses the death of my body. There's an image of my back -- I've had two scoliosis surgeries, my back is deformed -- in which I wanted to create the visual of what it felt like to have my body turn into concrete -- heavy and sometimes unmovable."

But for as dark as her work can sometimes be, she says she is not angry or bitter, and that her art primarily reflects the acceptance of her limitations that she's come to embrace over time. You can see this optimism in the details of her pieces -- fuscia flowers, tangled trees and butterfly's wings give her images a sense of freedom

"If you meet me, I'm not angry at all. It would be great not to have to deal with this, and that's always a hope I have, but for now I know that I am going to be in a wheelchair forever so I had to come to an understanding of what I'm capable of doing. I have a lot of idea and things I could create, but physically, I'm not able to. I really wanted to build a concrete sculpture of my body, but right now it's just not possible. Someday I'll try to get that one. I always like a challenge, that's my life. It's an adventure."

"Who I Am -- Not How I Am" at IndependenceFirst is Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. and is, of course, wheelchair accessible.

Gallery Night & Day is this Friday and Saturday, Oct. 20 and 21. For a full list of activities, see link below.

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