Colorfully Illustrated Spoke Guards Add Artistic Expression to Wheelchairs

Illus­tra­tion is every­where ya’ll, even in places you would­n’t sus­pect. For those with lim­it­ed mobil­i­ty, it affords them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express them­selves. Izzy Wheels is a shin­ing exam­ple of this; they adorn wheel spokes with col­or and pat­tern­ing to bring anoth­er dimen­sion to oth­er­wise ordi­nary chairs.

Cre­at­ed by Izzy and Aib­he, two sis­ters in Ire­land, Izzy was born with a spinal con­di­tion called Spina Bifi­da. It left her par­a­lyzed from the waist down. “Grow­ing up,” they write, “it [had] always frus­trat­ed her how few options were avail­able for her to per­son­al­ize her wheelchair.”

While Aib­he was in her final year of art school, she cre­at­ed a solu­tion to Izzy’s wheel­chair woes. Aib­he pro­duced eye-catch­ing spoke guards for her sis­ter’s chair to reflect her “bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty.” The project even­tu­al­ly grew into a larg­er endeav­or that aims to change the way we think about wheel chairs:

Our mis­sion with Izzy Wheels is to chal­lenge neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions with wheel­chairs and let users cel­e­brate their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty by per­son­al­iz­ing their source of inde­pen­dence. We want to show the world that wheel­chairs can be so much more than a med­ical device, they can be a piece of artis­tic self expression.

Izzy Wheels empow­er wheel­chair users to make a state­ment about them­selves, it makes a per­sons wheel­chair into a friend­ly object rather than some­thing pure­ly func­tion­al. Hav­ing styl­ish wheels on your chair that match your out­fit or show off you inter­ests imme­di­ate­ly address­es the chair and opens con­ver­sa­tion. Our tag line is ‘If you can’t stand up, stand out!’

Now, Izzy Wheels offers a vari­ety of col­or­ful illus­trat­ed covers—many of them are by illus­tra­tors I’ve fea­tured on Brown Paper Bag. The designs are beau­ti­ful, and it seems like it’d be hard to buy just one. Luck­i­ly, each of the discs are sim­ple to install, so Izzy Wheel wear­ers can change them as often as their wardrobe.

See the entire selec­tion in the Izzy Wheel online shop, where part of a pur­chase is donat­ed to the Spina Bifi­da Hydro­cephalus Ire­land.

Izzy Wheels uses illustration to add another dimension to wheelchairs. The colorful spoke guards allow wheelchair users the chance to express their personalities.

 Izzy and Aibhe

Jess Phoenix (on Brown Paper Bag)

Paula McGloin

Jane Newland (on Brown Paper Bag)

Kiki Ljung

Karol Banach

Zebu

Maser

Loulou & Tummie

Mary Lou Faure

Alma Del Valle

Bodil Jane (on Brown Paper Bag)