Northport Public Library displays art by Huntington teen Ruby Larkin, who has a brain injury

Ruby Larkin only knows the outside world through her bedroom windows, her teacher’s lessons and the lengths her parents take to replicate the seasonal landscapes and atmospheres on the ceiling above her hospital style-bed.

Born with an anoxic brain injury, meaning her brain was deprived of oxygen, Ruby, 16, of Huntington, is nonverbal and non-ambulatory. Due to several compounding conditions, including epilepsy, respiratory and gastrointestinal issues and allergies that persist all year long, she hardly goes outside for anything other than doctor appointments, said her father, Ken Larkin.

From the approximately 250 Command hooks stuck to her bedroom ceiling, Ken and Heather Larkin, Ruby’s mother, hang snowflakes, light-up clouds, birds, bugs and anything else they can bring from the outside in to their daughter. These ever-changing interior decorations have inspired art she has made with the helping hand of her in-home teacher, Anne Dayton, over the past eight years.

Nearly 100 works Ruby created, from a paper mosaic snowman, to a cardinal perched in a tree and several abstract pieces painted with foam brushes or household objects, are on display and for sale at the Northport Public Library through Dec. 29. Ruby’s art will raise funds for Angela’s House, a Hauppauge-based nonprofit that houses "medically fragile children" and helps families coordinate care and advocate for equipment to keep their kids comfortable living at their own homes, according to the organization’s website.

As of Wednesday evening, 79 pieces have been sold, raising a total of $2,370, said Heather Larkin, Ruby’s mother, who works at the Northport Public Library. Every year around Nov. 12, Ruby’s birthday, Heather said she and her husband hold a fundraiser to "give back" to Angela’s House, which, among other efforts over the past decade, helped the family acquire a hospital bed for their home.

"I don’t think people know how hard it is to get resources for medically fragile children," Heather Larkin, 46, of Huntington, said. "It's not the same as geriatrics; it's really super tough ... So raising money to have another Angela’s House is always our goal."

Eight years ago, Dayton started working with Ruby three hours a day, five days a week. Their artistic collaboration involved a lot of "trial and error," Dayton said. Since Ruby is nonverbal, the in-home teacher had to adapt to her facial cues and body language.

"She doesn't love it if you stick her whole hand in paint," Dayton, 56, of Huntington, said. "But I can put her hand in a Ziploc bag and we can smear paint like that, she's totally fine with that."

With a paint-dipped implement in Ruby’s hand — be it a brush, a sponge or a Q-tip — Dayton will help guide Ruby’s hand or move the canvas beneath her paint. Ruby often paints a piece of paper, which Dayton then cuts to shape to paste alongside and atop other painted canvases.

Their classroom and art studio is a porch converted into Ruby’s hospital-style bedroom, complete with medical equipment, sterile white cabinets and a Chill-Out-Chair, a more comfortable, adjustable chair with wheels Ruby has sat in while making art since the Make-A-Wish Foundation donated it to the family, Heather Larkin said. The converted porch boasts 11 windows to give Ruby a panoramic view of the outdoors and a ceiling her parents decorate to immerse her in it.

"We made it rain in her room with clouds that have lights in them and crystals so it looks like it's raining," Heather Larkin said. "The cloud would kind of change colors to music. For spring, she'll have bugs and birds and blooms in her room."

For her parents, Ruby’s very first art exhibit and reception, which she attended virtually on a projected screen on Dec. 7, marked not only a celebration of her 16th birthday, but of her journey and those who helped her along the way.

"It was such an emotional, uplifting moment," Ken Larkin said of the gallery reception. "It's just a really great way of celebrating Ruby, her life and that with the right tool set and the right people, you can accomplish things that you wouldn't even really think you could."