Artist Antonio Davis and his wife, Juanita Butler.

Artist Antonio Davis and his wife Juanita Butler share life’s joys, struggles and surprises.

Victor Hilitski / Sun-Times

Artist Antonio Davis’ multihued life: a tragedy, a love story and the Obama Foundation

An art exhibition coming to the Bridgeport Art Center features an eclectic mix of photos and artwork, including a piece by this Chicago man who’s faced hardship, lived a great love story and seen success that led to meeting the former president.

Artist Antonio Davis is working to complete a painting for an art exhibition opening this month at the Bridgeport Art Center titled “Some People” (Every) Body.

“This multidisciplinary project examines the ethics, people, processes and systems that constitute the maintenance of, and barriers to, health for human beings,” the center says of the show.

“The photographs, art and essays in this exhibition reveal what it is to be fully human — birth, adolescence, family, compassion, athleticism, friendship, conflict, strife, mental illness, harm, survival, marriage, parenthood, illness, injury, empathy, intimacy, disability, overcoming physical limitations, end of life and love.”

Paintbrush carefully clutched between teeth, Davis, who is quadriplegic, paints methodically with his mouth. At times, he spends entire days in the art studio in the two-bedroom condo in Uptown he and wife, Juanita Butler, share.

She doesn’t disturb him. After 21 years of marriage, she knows the routine.

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Davis, 44, has been disabled since he was 19. He was hanging out with his cousin, when a gang member who had a dispute with the cousin unleashed a hail of bullets at the two.

It was Oct. 21, 1994. His cousin, Michael Davis, 26, was killed. The murderer went to prison.

“I was shot in the chest eight times,” Davis says. “I woke up days later to be told I would never be able to walk again and actually never be able to pick up a penny or a quarter because my hands were paralyzed, too.”

That began his journey. From the hospital, he went back home to his single mother, who struggled to care for him, then to a nursing home — Atrium Health Care Center, in Rogers Park. He was 21.

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Davis had been a standout basketball player and an equally gifted sketch artist at Prosser Career Academy.

But life got hard, he says, and he lost interest in school, dropping out his senior year to run the streets with his cousins. That was the beginning of his troubles.

After he was shot and moved to the nursing home, his mother fled Austin, the West Side neighborhood where he grew up, to try to keep her other son, six years younger, away from the streets.

Antonio Davis had been a standout basketball player and an equally gifted sketch artist at Prosser Career Academy. But life got hard, he says, and he lost interest in school, dropping out his senior year.

Antonio Davis had been a standout basketball player and an equally gifted sketch artist at Prosser Career Academy. But life got hard, he says, and he lost interest in school, dropping out his senior year.

Victor Hilitski / Sun-Times

“When I first got there, I wasn’t able to sit in my wheelchair for no more than four or five hours a week,” Davis says of being in the nursing home. “I couldn’t feed myself. I couldn’t dress myself. I couldn’t lift myself into my chair.

“But, after about a year, I was able to sit up for eight hours at a time, push myself as far as a block. So I was getting physically stronger and mentally, too, because I was able to leave the nursing home and go outside without fear. It’s a mental hurdle you have to overcome, to go outside, because you’re vulnerable and feel like anything can happen to you.”

Then came another fateful day. Butler was visiting her father in the nursing home. She saw Davis at the reception desk.

“For some reason — to this day, I know it was only God — I saw this young man who didn’t seem like he should be in a nursing home, walked up, grabbed the back of his wheelchair and spun him around,” Butler says.

“I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I live here.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, we’ve got to get you out of here.’ ”

It turned out that Davis was Butler’s father’s roommate.

“When she spun me around, I was in shock, but her spirit just enveloped me. It was so pure, as if she was glowing,” Davis says, his voice softening as if transported back.

Five months later, Butler did get him out of there. The couple moved into the Nathalie Salmon House, a multigenerational, affordable-housing development in Rogers Park.

On June 27, 1997 — as Butler notes, “one year to the day we met” — they were married.

“I just knew we were supposed to be together,” Butler says.

They were happy, feeling they’d met their soulmate. Butler was his rock, Davis says.

A friendship turned romantic for artist Antonio Davis and his wife of 22 years, Juanita Butler.

A friendship turned romantic for artist Antonio Davis and his wife of 22 years, Juanita Butler.

Victor Hilitski / Sun-Times

But one can’t foresee life’s curves. Butler started getting sick. Back and forth to doctors yielded a diagnosis of lupus. She got sicker.

New diagnoses followed: systemic sclerosis, a rare lung disease; polymyositis, a degenerative muscle disease; rheumatoid arthritis; hypertension; diabetes; and, recently, Raynaud’s phenomenon, with diminished blood circulation tied to changes in temperature.

“It’s been really challenging because I take 32 pills a day. My husband now takes care of me. He told me to stop working in 2004. He’s been the breadwinner since,” Butler, formerly a pediatric dental assistant, says with so much love.

That was around the time Davis was introduced at a disability expo to the group Mouth & Foot Painting Artists, USA. It’s a cooperative founded by polio survivor Erich Stegmann in 1957 to help painters with such impairments sell their work.

“I was trying to paint and draw with my hands, but that didn’t work out too well,” Davis says.

Through MFPA, artists like Davis are able to maintain their livelihoods. Many have achieved international recognition for work produced with brushstrokes made with the use of their teeth or toes.

Davis received an MFPA scholarship and attended Art in the Square, a since-closed North Side art school, for five years.

“I went from a novice painter to full-fledged professional,” he says. “I paint in oils, and my subject matter varies — from portraits to landscapes to wildlife and still life. I work for MFPA. They publish our work for greeting cards, calendars, prints, illustrated books. I’m doing OK.

CHRON_100319_7.jpg

Antonio Davis’ work has garnered widespread attention. He was featured on CBS News nationally last December and on Steve Harvey’s show in February. Through the group Mouth & Foot Painting Artists, USA., artists like Davis are able to maintain their livelihoods.

Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times

“I promised her, before she turned 40, I’d buy her a home,” he says of his wife.

“And he did,” Butler says. “He bought our condo by the time I was 37.”

Davis’ work has garnered widespread attention. He was featured on CBS News nationally last December and on Steve Harvey’s show in February.

And he gained a very high-profile fan last year: former President Barack Obama, whose portrait Davis painted.

“His assistant called us and said, ‘Obama would like to meet you,’ ” Davis says. “And on the designated day, he flew out and met us at the Stony Island Arts Bank. It was great.”

“Yeah, but you’ve seen how I run my mouth, and I’ll tell you I was totally tongue-tied,” Butler says. “I couldn’t even open my mouth until Obama was about to leave, and I said, ‘Wait a minute!’ And I dug into my purse and grabbed my husband’s business card and said, ‘Can you give this to Jay-Z?’ Obama starts cracking up, laughing.”

“He told me, ‘You got a hell of a promoter!’ ” Davis chimes in.

From that moment on, the two have been regularly invited to Obama Foundation events, and both Davis and Butler are featured on the foundation’s website. Next month, the two are scheduled to participate in career day at Michelle Obama High School in Park Forest.

Since meeting former President Barack Obama last year, Davis — who painted a portrait of Obama — and Butler gained a very high-profile fan.

Since meeting former President Barack Obama last year, Davis — who painted a portrait of Obama — and Butler gained a very high-profile fan.

Victor Hilitski / Sun-Times

And Davis continues to paint, preparing his entry for the “Some People” (Every) Body exhibit running Oct. 18-Nov. 15 at the Bridgeport center, 1200 W. 35th St. It’s an image of a broken spinal cord that evokes the broken health care system.

He and his wife surely have the “barriers to health” to which the exhibit flyer refers. But spend just a moment with this couple and you wouldn’t know it. Theirs is a love story, traversing all that the exhibit flyer specifically notes are the hallmarks of a full life.

“When I fell in love with him, at no point did I ever think, ‘What am I doing falling for a man in a wheelchair in a nursing home?’ ” Butler says. “My only thought was: ‘How could I know that someone this beautiful is here and not react?’”

“No matter any obstacles that you face in life, you can overcome them with the grace of God and perseverance. You just have to believe in yourself,” her husband says.

“I feel like Antonio hasn’t even reached where he’s supposed to be,” his wife says. “I see so much in him, and I know that even greater is yet to come.”

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