[accessibleimage] Exhibit encourages blind, sighted to see with their handsRe: Artists, Oregon State University fine arts student Sara Lindsey and Hy Snell

Hi all,

Below is a newspaper article about an art exhibit in Seattle, Washington,
USA. I haven't been to it yet. Hopefully I will  have time to go next week.
I will write about my impressions afterwards.

Best regards,

Sylvie Kashdan

Exhibit encourages blind, sighted to see with their hands

By Jack Broom

Seattle Times staff reporter

Seattle Times, Monday, June 20, 2005

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display'slug=blind20&date=20050620&query=touch%2Bart

MP3 Links for Listening to Deng Kong and Mark Adreon discuss the "Touching
Art" artwork and exhibit are on the Seattle Times web site.

Photo: Art-show jurors Deng Kong, left, and Mark Adreon. Adreon works for
the stateDepartment of Services for the Blind, co-hosting the show.

Deng Kong, a customer-service representative at the Seattle Lighthouse for
the Blind, was on the jury for the "Touching Art" exhibit opening tomorrow
at the University of Washington's Jacob Lawrence Gallery.

Running her hand along a black roll of fabric, Deng Kong wasn't quite sure
what to make of it.

"The first time I put my hand on this one it felt like a person's leg. And
then the second time I came over it felt like tree trunks."

Feeling the same material, Mark Adreon was captivated. "It was softand you
wanted to touch it and kind of get into it.... It's very inviting and
warm.... You do want to curl up on it, actually."

Kong and Adreon have two things in common. They were both on the jury for an
art show opening tomorrow at the University of Washington'sJacob Lawrence
Gallery. And they are both blind.

You won't find any velvet ropes, warning signs or vigilant docents keeping
you away from the artwork at this exhibit. Not only is it OK to touch the
pieces, it's encouraged.

Even if you have sight, you might want to slip on a pair of blindfolds
provided and run your hands, as Kong and Adreon did, along and into the
black polyester-stuffed Lycra rolls and pink round puffsof "Sporadic" by
Chad Downard.

Or slide your fingers across the glazed clay "Untitled Head" by Andrea Hull.

Or feel the buzz of small plastic fan blades on "Hive" by BenHirschkoff or
the 16 cool, smooth faces that make up "Déja Vu" by SusieLee.

Now showing

"Touching Art," noon-4 p.m. tomorrow through July 2(Tuesdays through
Saturdays), Jacob Lawrence Gallery, School of Art,University of Washington.
Presented with the Washington StateDepartment of Services for the Blind. For
more information, see

www.dsb.wa.gov

or call 206-685-1805.

Those four were judged best of the submissions in "Touching Art," a
collection of work by present and former UW art students designed to be
appreciated by blind as well as sighted visitors.

The goal is to "put 'blind' and 'art' in the same sentence" and challenge
the commonly held notion that art has no role in the lives of the blind,
said Adreon, business-relations manager for the stateDepartment of Services
for the Blind, which is co-hosting the show withthe UW School of Art.

"The empowerment approach here is to sort of de-victimize blind people and
say, 'Why not? You can appreciate art. Art should be part of your life,' "
said Adreon, 50, who lost his sight eight years ago when an illness damaged
his optic nerves.

The UW will show the pieces by a dozen student artists for two weeks. The
top four, purchased by the Department of Services for theBlind for $500
apiece, will then be permanently displayed at the agency's headquarters in
South Seattle.

The idea for the exhibit stemmed from an observation by a client of the
department, who noted that the office features work by blind and low-vision
artists, but that those pieces, primarily photographs, can't be appreciated
by the blind people who pass by them every day.

Adreon approached the UW School of Art with the idea of having student
artists create work to be enjoyed by sighted and blind people.

"Art is part of our culture," Adreon said. "It's part of the historical,
cultural expression. And blind people should be and should want to be part
of all that."

Timea Tihanyi, who teaches sculpture, helped spread the word among artists.
"We saw it as an interesting opportunity and a challenge. For people who do
sculpture, working with tactile materials and making artwork that is very
physical is an important consideration."

Each submission had to be something that could hang from a wall. The key
limitation --taken from the Americans with Disabilities Act--was that the
objects could be no more than four inches in depth, so that people walking
by would not run into them.

Adreon, who has a long-standing appreciation of art and design, met with the
participating artists and urged them not to just make objects that a blind
person might identify, but ones that could be more complex and engaging.

"I told them the expression can go beyond, 'Oh, this is a flower.'It can
actually say something like, 'This is a tortured flower.' "

An eight-member jury, including three members who are blind, selected the
top works last week.

"Hive" is one of the more inventive creations. It's a four-foot-wide bright
yellow and orange panel of wood and wax in a honeycomb pattern.Scattered
around the piece are 12 round indentations about the diameter of a golf
ball. Behind those, small motorized fans are activated by amotion sensor, so
a person who touches them feels the slight buzz of the fan's turning blades.

"Untitled Head" is a smooth form of a human face made of clay coated with a
liquid-glass glaze. Its creator, graduate student Andrea Hull,29, said, "I
really like the smoothness of the pieces and I hoped they would respond to
that."

Hull's work was one of the favorites of Kong, 41, a customer-service
representative at the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, which helped sponsor
the show. She ran her fingers slowly down the piece, noting the high
forehead and high cheekbones, the smooth skin, the detail in the ears and
the fact that the lower lip seemed chapped.

Graduate art student Susie Lee, 32, made her piece, "Déja Vu," a bit of a
puzzle. It includes 16 plaster-covered foam faces, projected at different
depths and angles. Only the careful observer will note--by touch or
sight--that for each face, there's another one exactly like it.

Sighted people who choose to first "view" the objects while wearing
blindfolds will gain an insight not just into the artwork but into the way
blind people perceive the world around them, said Adreon.

"What happens when you lose one of your senses as an information source is
you have to rely on your other senses that much more heavily," he said.
"You're going to be forcing your mind to start reading that piece of artwork
through your hands. It will take your mind into a place that is going to be
way uncomfortable at first but the more a person would get into it ...
they'll start feeling things they would have never noticed if they had just
looked at the piece of artwork."

The variety of pieces submitted by the UW students, including pieces in
fabric, ceramics, metal, wood and other media, appeared to take full
opportunity of the possibilities presented, but Adreon said he hopes this
show is just a beginning.

"The idea here is to try to create some stimulation for some artists to say,
'I'm going to try that.' And challenge artists to actually develop this into
a real art form so that experience can grow anddevelop."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Other related posts: