[accessibleimage] FW: Artist incorporates braille into her pieces

 

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Subject: Artist incorporates braille into her pieces

The Desert Sun, California USA
Friday, April 27, 2007

Artist incorporates braille into her pieces

By Richard Guzmán

CAPTION: Judith Lepuschitz touches a part of her painting which incorporates 
Braille. Jay Calderon, Desert Post Weekly

Beauty of Braille

What: Artwork by Judith Lepuschitz
Where: The Courtyard Gallery, 26-120 Ridgeview Drive, Idyllwild. 
Info: 951-659-2774

With her eyes closed and both hands placed on a painting, Idyllwild artist 
Judith Lepuschitz explains one of the ways her work is meant to be "seen."
She slowly moves her hands across the canvas, carefully feeling the texture and 
shape of the abstract piece.

"I'm inviting (people) into another world, not just through their eyes but 
through their senses," she says.

It's not often that a painter invites her audience to place their hands all 
over her artwork.

But Lepuschitz is focusing her work on reaching out to those who have no other 
way to appreciate art but through touch.

Her work combines braille with shapes like circles and triangles to create 
pieces that can be "seen" by blind people who use their hands to explore every 
inch of the canvas.

Titled "Good Vibrations," her latest collection is on display at The Courtyard 
Gallery in Idyllwild.

"For me the exiting thing is that through the braille world I have opened up 
myself and invited people to touch the paintings," she says.

"Whether you read braille or not, it's an experience to put your hands on a 
painting and be able to trace the way an artist works."

For the blind and those who work with them, it's exciting to have artwork that 
is accessible to their needs.

"How often can you go and touch paintings," asks Ingrid Olsen, creative arts 
coordinator for the Braille Institute in Rancho Mirage, where Lepuschitz has 
displayed some of her work.

"Art is essential," Olsen says. "It makes them (blind people) feel good to be 
included in the sighted world, to be able to touch art and experience it."

Lepuschitz got the idea for her paintings after a friend commissioned a piece 
from her.

"She was older and when I was doing the sketches I realized she could not see 
them very well."

"I wanted to make a painting that would be meaningful for her so I started 
looking at what kind of three-dimensional work I could do," she says.

Using Braille, Lepuschitz spells the words that inspire that certain painting.

One painting reads "Inhale," another says "Forgive," a third says "Exhale."

Lepuschitz is not the only artist whose work can be experienced by the blind. 
Sculptures are particularly appealing to those who have limited sight because 
they can touch the work.

Some galleries also allow clients of the Braille Institute to touch paintings 
while on private tours, Olsen says.But there are few painters like Lepuschitz.

"It's unique, you don't see it very often," Olsen says.


http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070426/LIFESTYLES0104/704250332/1050/lifestyles01


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