For the past several years, island caregiver Joy Nelsen returned home from work with a handful of facial tissues. Ever so carefully, she would unfold and then iron each tissue to reveal tiny markings or doodles covering the delicate surface. She eventually amassed and archived hundreds of tissues — the first drawings created by her client, Pat Keating, who was born 72 years ago with the neurological condition known as autism.

Now, an exhibit of Keating’s artwork will be on display Thursday to Sunday at Island Paper Chase, before being relocated to Vashon Community Care for an opening on First Friday, June 2.

Nelsen has been Keating’s caregiver for the past six years, patiently helping her client learn ways to manage the barrage of sights, sounds and complicated social interactions that easily pass by someone without the extreme sensory sensitivity of Keating’s condition. Keating never leaves the house without her “survival things” — dark glasses, earphones, something soothing to touch, something to stare at, a pen and tissues. Once the items are collected, the daily routine begins with a stop at Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie and Minglement.

“We’d sit there, and she’d get into the groove of expressing herself with a pen, and it calmed her way down,” Nelsen said. “For years she had a soft Kleenex in a palm of her hand, and she doodled. After a few years, I tried offering her tissue paper. It was slow going to get her to use different textures. I cut out her doodles, pasting them down, so now I have an archive.”

From doodles on tissues, Keating moved on to copying photographic images freehand, at one time drawing 5,000 lighthouses, and is now on to landscapes anchored with a horizontal line instead of floating in mid-air.

Her show, “I Am Pat,” is a visual journal of discovery and expression. And along the way, islanders helped soften the fear of social interactions by contributing images to her journals.

“Now she has such energy of wanting to express herself,” Nelsen said with evident enthusiasm. “She is using color and going at it.”

Nelsen, whose background is in art therapy, said she’s been drawn to autistic people since she was a child and enjoys encouraging them to find an outlet for their challenges through art. She watched as life events became reflected in Keating’s work.

“When she had shingles, her art showed it,” Nelsen said.

After Keating was hit by a car on Vashon a while back, she decided she couldn’t walk anymore and could only doodle on tissues. Nelsen’s work was to provide daily encouragement combined with valuing Keating’s doodles

“As I started to show her that I was honoring her efforts, she got that she could walk,” Nelsen said.

Keating’s show at Paper Chase will open on the 98th birthday of her mother, Heron Keating. Nelsen credits the island for supporting both mother and daughter with “community love.”

In return, she hopes the show will help reveal the “mystery of the woman in the dark glasses, in the hat, whom everyone has lovingly tolerated.”