[accessibleimage] Bronze relief map designed for school for the blind

Detroit Free Press, Michigan
Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The world at their fingertips

By SUSAN AGER, FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Kalamazoo sculptor's bronze relief map designed for school for the
blind 

To see the vastness of the world, those who are blind must touch it.

Michael Donenfeld, whose vision is 20/20, has created a topographical
map of the world in bronze that is ready for their hands.

They will trace their ancestral homelands with their forefingers. They
will span the oceans with their palms outstretched.

Donenfeld's map is 3 by 5 feet, as big as a kitchen table. The
Himalayas rise an inch above the plains. The island of Singapore, off
China, is the size of a pinhead. And the equator is notched to
distinguish it from the other raised lines of latitude.

Says Donenfeld, a 51-year-old artist: "These are real subtle things
only blind users of the map could understand."

But he understands them, too, because for a quarter-century he has
volunteered his artistic eye and sensibility to help those with cloudy,
limited or no sight to experience art, both making it and appreciating
it.

Why? Nobody can fully explain his motivation, not even Donenfeld,
except that the Michigan Commission for the Blind Training Center sits
about two miles from where he lives in Kalamazoo.

He says it just "dawned on" him -- an expression he uses often -- that
he could be useful. Since the 1980s, every Thursday evening, he has
taught hundreds of students how to sculpt or draw or turn pots, even
when only one person shows up.

"With one person," he says, "you have time to answer every question."

A friend, a fellow artist who is totally blind from a hunting accident,
says it's simply part of who Donenfeld is. "His whole existence is aimed
at beauty and the spirit and helping," says Paul Ponchillia, who runs
Western Michigan University's Department of Blindness and Low Vision.

"He's a gentle person, open and truthful," his friend continues, "and
you don't have to look into his eyes to know that."

Two-and-a-half years in the making, the 170-pound map hangs on a wall
near the cafeteria at the school.

It is the state's only residential school for people 16 and older who
are legally blind. By that definition, a person must stand 20 feet from
an object to see it as clearly as those with perfect vision can from 200
feet.

Or a blind person's field of vision is 20 degrees or less -- like
looking through a knothole in a fence -- compared to the comparable 180
degrees.

These are people whose vision is too poor to read a newspaper or drive
a car; about one in 10 can see nothing at all. Each year about 300
students pass through the school, learning skills that allow them to
travel, cook and take care of themselves independently.

Director Melody Lindsey is excited about the new map, which she
believes will get lots of use, especially as events unfold in nations
her students will want to locate.

She imagines hurricane season, for example, when students will use
their fingers to find a storm's source, feel out its path and recognize
how vulnerable Florida might be, "sticking out in the middle of the
ocean."

Some of the students, of course, know exactly what the globe looks
like. They lost their sight recently, but their memories are strong.
Others went blind quite young or quite long ago. The big bronze map on
the wall will help them remember, for example, where Iraq is in relation
to France or realize how far their ancestors traveled to reach America.

Already, with an early version of the map, one woman traced Saudi
Arabia, where her son serves in the military.

Finding their place
This is the moment when the seed of the map was planted in Michael
Donenfeld's imagination:

Seven years ago, he hosted at his 120-year-old home a pizza party for
blind adolescents attending a one-week art camp near Grand Rapids at
which he teaches sculpture.

Among the children were six from Ukraine, near Chernobyl. All had lost
their sight in utero due to radiation from the 1986 nuclear plant
explosion near their homes. None had ever seen an animal, a flower, a
human face or a map of the world that holds those delights.

Two boys, 12 years old, sat on his green futon sofa.

He handed them a small relief map of the world, cast in plastic, that
he bought in a bookstore for $25 to help his students learn geography.

The boys reacted in a way he'll never forget.

"They were, like, gone for an hour with that map. 'Where is this?'
'Where are my fingers now?' They were international students who had
traveled over an ocean to get here, and we showed them where they had
come from and where they were now.

"It dawned on me how vital a map of the world could be for the blind,"
something bigger and sturdier than that flimsy plastic one.

For months he wrote grant proposals. He had some experience, having
raised $3,000 for an earlier hanging sculpture for blind people.

That one is an 8-by-8-foot outline of the state of Michigan, composed
of ceramic tiles sculpted with icons of our state, including a clump of
cherries, a deer hoof print, a sumac flower and even a moose tooth. It
hangs just past the front door at the Kalamazoo school, and it's known
casually as "The Faces" because set into it are the cast faces of 22
blind students.

How much money did he make off that first effort?

He chuckles. "Let's just say that, by the time all the processes were
done, and done by the highest standards I have for myself, my materials
were paid for -- and that's all."

This time, for the map of the world, he's doing better, netting about
$5,000. That amount represents about an eighth of his annual income,
picked up here and there from sales of paintings and classes he teaches
in Michigan and Hawaii, where four years ago he bought a one-bedroom
condo for $115,000. He also rents his places when he's away and jointly
owns with his family some rental units in New York City.

For the map, he raised $24,000 from the Michigan and Kalamazoo arts
councils, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and four private
foundations.

Mapmaking

He contracted with a company in Seattle, Rauda Scale Models, that has
made about 120 relief maps for museums and visitor centers, including
the one at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Experts at Rauda used
a computer, a laser and his specifications to cut the map Donenfeld
envisioned into a dense foam material.

Afterward, working on the screened front porch of his home, he made
many corrections to the blue-gray foam map, using his own tools and some
that his mother used to make jewelry.

He carefully nicked out of the foam the 15 biggest lakes of the world.
Utah's Great Salt Lake is missing, though, because it fell right where
Donenfeld affixed a braille label for North America.

He added islands the computer had left off, including Kodiak Island off
Alaska, where his beloved friend, Paul Ponchillia, spends summers, and
Singapore, which he considers politically significant. Also added:
islands off the west coast of Africa from which slaves were shipped to
the New World.

He reshaped Michigan, which the computer had stretched, so it looked
more like our familiar mitten.

And he changed the texture of all the landmasses to better distinguish
them from the smooth oceans. "Now the land has a tooth to it, a
grittiness," he said, "but soft enough that it doesn't scratch you, sort
of like a terry-cloth towel."

Last December, he left Michigan, as always, for a quiet winter in Hilo,
a sleepy town on the Big Island of Hawaii. There he teaches art to a
blind group that calls itself Out of Sight. He paints watercolors of the
sea that he sells from galleries back home. And he casts masks of the
faces of friends in hot lava he collects -- glowing hot -- by hiking
onto volcanic fields before dawn.

Before he left last year, he first paid North American Van Lines $1,000
to transport his foam mold of the world map to the famed Shidoni Foundry
in Santa Fe, N.M.

Midwest foundries had called it too difficult to reliably cast in
bronze, as it's mostly only an inch thick and prone to break. For
$6,000, Shidoni promised it could succeed -- then had to recast because
the first attempt broke.

Shidoni is in the countryside outside Santa Fe, amid a garden of
sculptures cast there. Like any foundry, the building is noisy, dirty
and industrial, with very high ceilings and big sliding doors to open
for cool air. Bits and pieces of many sculptures lie about in different
stages of a complex 10-step process called the lost wax method of
casting bronze.

That process uses liquid rubber, plaster, silica ceramic and wax to
create a mold into which, finally, the bronze is poured at 2,000 degrees
like orange, molten taffy. Donenfeld's map was cast in two pieces and
welded together, its seam running invisibly now through the heart of
Africa. In a room at the foundry built of concrete blocks, with two
inches of dust on the floor, the entire piece was sandblasted to remove
errant flakes and perfect its texture.

Donenfeld returned to Santa Fe in May, on his way back to Michigan from
Hawaii, to watch the final step: the application of a patina. Without
it, bronze looks dull, like pewter or very pale gold.

"I thought I'd be applying it myself," he said, "but they said, no, sit
back and direct -- and bring a bag lunch."

So he did, lunching that day on plain tofu. He's been a vegan for 25
years, eating no meat, fish or animal products, including eggs and
cheese, although he's not a stickler. He drinks no coffee or alcohol
and, at 5-feet-6, weighs just 104 pounds.

He also lives by Buddhist principles, seeking full awareness of each
moment, meditating and doing yoga each morning at dawn. He teaches
weekly meditation classes in Kalamazoo. And, for many years, he gathered
friends at each full moon to share poetry and songs.

He possesses a tangible serenity, unrattled by the ups and downs of his
map project. He watched calmly as a stranger at the foundry held two
blowtorches to his bronze map before brushing it with chemicals that
gave it a classic brown-green patina.

Finally, it was rubbed with a bowling-alley wax to make it shine.

It's ready for the hundreds of hands and thousands of fingers Donenfeld
hopes will touch it, now and till long after he's gone.

Under construction

The map was hung on the wall last week, on brackets similar to ones
used to hang a sink. But it's not complete. Donenfeld will ask many
blind people what kind of key they want in order to make sense of the
map.

He needs answers to questions like these:

Should every country in every continent be listed, off to the side, in
braille?

Should the braille be mounted on the wall at an angle, so viewers'
hands feel more relaxed as they read?

Some of those who are blind cannot read braille. What should an audio
key to the map say?

The map and its keys will be unveiled to the public and the student
body of the school sometime over the Labor Day weekend. Already
Donenfeld is sensing change in himself.

"It's a strange feeling," he says, "perhaps like after you've climbed
Mt. Everest -- Oh! Now what? -- I anticipate an emptiness which is not
as exciting, not as challenging, but which is a fertile void" for
growing new ideas.

He thinks other schools for blind people might want to duplicate his
map, at less than $6,000 apiece, plus his expenses. He likes the idea of
becoming a traveling teacher, visiting schools in other states and
countries, and remaking his map of the world for them.

And, he wants to continue lightening his footprint on the Earth. He
drives a 12-year-old Ford pickup but more and more often bicycles to his
destinations in Kalamazoo. He also wants to do more work for the school
for the blind, as well as for a day-care center where he introduces
children to art.

Never married, he says, "If I feel connected, I don't feel isolated."

When the foundry shipped back his bronze map, it also sent what's
called the "mother mold," a heavy rubber imprint of the original, in
Martha Stewart green. That mold can easily give birth to more maps.

Donenfeld built a crate to safeguard it from harm and then had what he
thought was a brilliant idea.

The crate, with the mold inside, is now the foundation for his green
futon, where two blind boys enchanted by the span of the globe inspired
him to cast the world in bronze.

For information about the MCB Training Center in Kalamazoo or the
bronze map of the world, contact director Melody Lindsey, 269-337-3848.
Contact SUSAN AGER at 313-222-6862 or ager@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.freep.com/features/living/ager5e_20050705.htm

Other related posts: