[accessibleimage] Hope McMath,photography Israel,10 year old artist,Partho Bhowmick,Benodebehari Mukherjee

Hi,
The latest edition of TacNews is out. Excellent edition. If you aren't subscribed contact Ann Gardiner at anngardiner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Also available online at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~pss1su/intact/index.html
Link to article/photos to Disney on Ice production, photo exhibit in Israel, a young painter, article about Partha Chatterjee and from another list information about Seeing in the Dark: Photography by the Visually Impaired Centre for Photography as an Art-Form and article about Hope McMath and The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. 
Best,
Lisa
Visually impaired children from the Green Bay area visit with skaters, cast and crew members from Disney On Ice - Mickey & Minnie's Magical Journey inside the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007. Photo by Evan Siegle/Press-Gazette 

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=U0&Date=20070215&Category=GPG01&ArtNo=702150802&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=1
article

Blind photographers turn to cameras to share their world

Thursday, February 8, 2007
TEL AVIV, Israel: Reaching above her dark glasses, Riki Fritsh held a compact camera to her forehead and snapped away at a group of passengers boarding a bus.
Most of the travelers were caught off guard by the camera's flash. But they were even more surprised to learn that Fritsh is blind.
Fritsh is one of nine blind photographers featured in an exhibition at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
"When people see the photos, they are proud of me," said Fritsh, 50, who has been completely blind since birth. "They can't believe that I took these pictures."
Organizers said one of their goals is to let visitors see what it's like to be blind.
"When we follow the things that they decide to shoot, it reveals their world to us," said Iris Shinar, one of the group's instructors.
Some of the photos in the exhibit are out of focus. Some don't show the subjects' faces, but all provide candid glimpses into the lives of the photographers.
One photo shows a darkened apartment and another shows the blurry image of the artist in an ornate mirror. A sultry woman — the girlfriend of one of the photographers — lounges on a couch. A 90-year-old grandmother takes a nap in the afternoon sun.
An annual exhibit of blind photographers in Tokyo inspired Shinar and fellow photographer Kfir Sivan to start their own program in Israel. They hope similar programs will start in other countries as well.
Several groups exist worldwide for partially blind and otherwise disabled photographers, but completely blind photography is still quite rare, said Shirley Britton of the Disabled Photographers Society in the United Kingdom.
"There seems to be a lot of people who are partially sighted," Britton said. "But I don't know if a completely blind person could really do photography."
Shinar and Sivan weren't sure how it would work either. Before the class started, they experimented by blindfolding themselves and taking pictures to see what would work. They discovered that holding the camera to the forehead, like a third eye, was the best way to stabilize and aim the camera.
They found volunteer participants from the Herzliya Center for the Blind, near Tel Aviv, and started teaching. Since last March, they have been teaching the group on a volunteer basis, providing the students with cameras, film and other supplies. The classes covered composition, fundamentals, and a history of photography, among other subjects. The results impressed even the instructors.
"Every week Riki brings me a roll and in every roll there are winning shots," Shinar said.
Since she started photographing people on her bus route Fritsh, 50, has become well-known and several people call out to her by name as they board. One bus passenger even asked her to be the official photographer for a party at local nursing home.
"At first, it was a bit odd," said Shira Yehzkia, an 18-year-old passenger whose grandfather is also blind. "But I get really excited to see blind people do things that are not regular for them."
While some might be skeptical that a blind person can create visual art, professor Gerald Pryor, head of the photography department at New York University, said the concept makes sense.
"They see the world with their bodies," Pryor said. "They sense the world in a different way, and they can manifest that world in a photograph."
The art, however, doesn't just share the artists' world, Shinar said, it also helps the artists themselves connect to the people around them.
Shinar said some students like to document their travels and activities for their grandchildren. One woman photographed her Passover feast preparations for more than 30 family members.
The exhibit closed on Tuesday after a three-week run that attracted crowds of more than 400 people. Shinar said the class will continue. 

"We can't stop now," she said. "We are like family."
__

On the Net:
The photos can still be viewed online at http://www.theblindphotographer.com. 

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/09/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Blind-Photographers.php
article


 Artistic touch


   Blind student doesn't let disability affect painting
Skyler Murphy feels the colors he paints with. He likes shades of orange and red, blues and browns.
At first glance, the 10-year-old Rogers student seems to be just another student who enjoys-painting. 

But this award-winning artist doesn't see the canvas he's-painting.
Blind since the age of 4, the result of an automobile accident, Murphy doesn't let the disability affect his zest for life -- or art. 

"I like to paint and color with crayons at home," he said.
Murphy recently learned he'd won the grand prize in the statewide Helen Keller Art Show.
He competed against other visually impaired and blind students from across the state.
He named his painting "Braille," explaining that the multi-colored acrylic painting had lots of texture, which he formed by using various brushes.
His painting hosts an added dimension of a second brightly colored canvas attached to the larger one.
"It has depth and color, and I'm sure it was one of the more unusual pieces in the contest," said his art teacher, Sonya Skipworth.
Murphy placed first last week with a different painting in his school district's art competition.
Through the Helen Keller Art Show, 20 works of art are selected for a year long traveling art display around the state. Murphy's "Braille" was among them. His painting went on to win the Patty Johnson grand prize award.
Murphy will be featured in the Helen Keller Parade in June and in various venues throughout the festival week.
Lisa Moses, Skyler's former vision teacher who now works for the University of Alabama in-Birmingham as a research assistant professor in the school of optometry, says Murphy's painting will become a part of the permanent art collection at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia.
Moses described Murphy as a hard worker who "loves school more than any student I've ever taught."
"He's a people person, and he has visual memories that come-out in his artwork," Moses said. "Art is truly his favorite mode of expression."
Murphy holds the edge of his canvas as he paints in order to keep his place with his brush. 

Skipworth said Murphy's enjoyment while painting is obvious.
"You can see it on his face that he absolutely loves to paint," Skipworth said. "You can tell that art makes him happy." 
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070207/NEWS/702070336/-1/COMMUNITIES


article
from another list
Seeing in the Dark: Photography by the Visually Impaired Centre for Photography as an Art-Form, Piramal Gallery Sat. 17th to Sun. 25th – 11.00 am to 7.00 pm (except on public holidays) ‘Seeing in the Dark’ is an exhibition of photographs taken by photographers with varying degrees of visual impairment, ranging from partial to total blindness. Various tactile, audio clues, visual memories of sight, the warmth of light, cognitive skills and intuitive abilities are used by the visually impaired to create mental images before they decide to take a picture. The exhibition is the culmination of photographs created at the workshops of photography for the blind initiated by Partho Bhowmick in association with the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind, Mumbai. The first exhibition of its kind in India, ‘Seeing in the Dark’ celebrates the human spirit of self-expression and redefines the common notion that “to see is to photograph and to photograph is to see”. Visually impaired visitors to the exhibition can access the photographs using a combination of touchable raised photos, Braille notes, visual aids and descriptive tour. 

article
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is presenting Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum, on view until March 18, 2007. The Cummer is one of only five stops in the United States for this exhibition, which is organized by the American Federation of Arts and The British Museum. Temples and Tombs is made possible, in part, by the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation Fund for Collection-Based Exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts.
The exhibition comprises nearly 85 pieces from shortly before the Third Dynasty, about 2686 B.C., to the Roman occupation of the fourth century A.D. The collection explores four aspects of ancient Egypt: the king and the temple, which represents the divine in everyday Egyptian life; objects preserved from the lives of artists and nobles; statuary from temples and tombs; and finally the tomb and the significance of death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt. This stunning collection showcases a variety of items, including sculpture, relief, papyri, ostraca, jewelry, and an assortment of funerary items.
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, located on the St. Johns River in the Riverside Avondale historic district in Jacksonville, FL, is the second largest art museum in Florida and is noted for its collection of more than 6000 masterworks of American and European paintings, beautiful historic gardens in the European style and an outstanding collection of Meissen porcelain. Art Connections is the museum’s nationally renowned interactive learning center where visitors experience art through all senses.
Hope McMath is Director of Education at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens and has 11 years of experience in museum education. During her time at the Cummer, she has designed and implemented programs that bring arts opportunities to over 50,000 students and adults annually. She is the Site Director for the local VSA Arts affiliate. In this role she has been responsible for creating a nationally recognized art festival for over 2000 students with profound disabilities and Women of Vision, a program bringing art making and literacy to a group of women who are blind and visually impaired.
Hope has written successful grants to support programs in arts infusion, school partnerships, youth and family initiatives, arts in healthcare, and disability projects. Due to her efforts, the Cummer was awarded the first Disability Access award from the city of Jacksonville, and has been recognized by the Council for Exceptional Children. She was named Museum Educator of the Year for the state of Florida in 2003 by the Florida Art Education Association and the Art Educator of the Year by the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville in 2005. In addition, she was recognized with the National Community Service Award by VSA Arts in 2005.
Most recently Hope received the national Art Education for the Blind Community Service award for her efforts in making art accessible to children and adults who are blind and by Arts for a Complete Education as the Doris Leeper art educator of the year. She is also a working artist whose relief prints, etchings, and monotypes are exhibited and collected throughout the Southeast. 
http://www.artscapemedia.com/podcasts/archives/2007/02/hope_mcmath_dir.html


article

Versatile genius

PARTHA CHATTERJEE
Benodebehari Mukherjee's art came out of a grand detachment and an awareness of nature's cycle. 

Benodebehari Mukherjee.
PROFUSE use of superlatives is usually considered immature journalism. Exceptions, however, need to be made occasionally, as in the case of the massive, awe-inspiring retrospective of the works of Benodebehari Mukherjee (1906-1980) held from December last week to February 11, curated by Professor Gulam Mohammad Sheikh and P. Siva Kumar, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Jaipur House, in New Delhi.
Benodebehari and Ramkinkar Baij were two pupils of Acharya Nandlal Bose who rose to greatness. A nationalist artist and teacher, Bose had an uncanny eye for talent. When he headed the Kala Bhawan at Shantiniketan, the pastoral university founded by Rabindranath Tagore in rural Birbhum in West Bengal, he realised immediately that his most `problematic' students were also the ones who were highly likely to make a mark. 



PICTURES: S. SUBRAMANIUM

Nature study, of flower and grass, 1921, with red as the dominant colour.
Benodebehari Mukherjee came from a large family that valued learning. He was highly myopic in one eye and blind in the other. When he was 15 a doctor pronounced him fit enough to draw and paint and his guardians admitted him to Kala Bhawan, Shantiniketan, far from the bustle of Calcutta (now Kolkata) where the family resided. A fellow-student, the eccentric Ram Kinkar Baij, impecunious and a barber by caste, discovered by Ramanand Chatterjee, editor of Modern Review, was destined to become a painter-sculptor of international reckoning.
In the retrospective, two works done in 1921 signal Benodebehari's burgeoning gift: one a vertical nature's study of flower and grass with red as the dominant colour and the other an austere, black-and-white ink-and-brush landscape on buff paper, of the huge, undulating landscape known as the Khowai. There was, even at the tender age of 15, an "inner eye" that was privy to the secrets of nature and drew a fine but clear distinction between the truly beautiful and the pretty, which on the surface was more attractive. His art had been invested with high seriousness even before he was 30.
This Five-foot-by 60-foot mural was done on the outer wall of Kala Bhawan at Shantiniketan in 1972 after he lost his only good eye in a botched cataract operation. With the help of a couple of assistants he completed the mammoth assignment using touch with a prescience not always allowed by sight.
A tempera on paper of an old bridge in a rural setting, seen from below, is one of his earliest memorable images. Amongst the most enduring ones is a vertical tempera called "The Tree Lover", stylised, even trying, but ultimately beautiful. There is a distinctly oriental flavour to his work. He had learned much from Japanese and Chinese art. Tagore had invited to Shantiniketan Count Okakura Kommura, the aesthete who wanted to build an artistic bridge between Japan, China and India. Benodebehari benefited the most from his presence and visited Japan in 1937 at the Count's initiative.
Benodebehari had also learnt much from his own artistic inheritance - the sculptures and frescoes of ancient India, Mughal and Rajput miniatures, not to forget the rich folk traditions of his native Bengal. His knowledge of Western art, and indeed world art, was truly impressive. Some of it can be seen and heard in his conversation with an off-camera Satyajit Ray in the documentary "The Inner Eye", when details from the fresco in Hindi Bhawan, Shantiniketan, on the lives of medieval Indian saints are shown and discussed. "The Inner Eye", made in 1972 for Films Division, is the only documentary on Benodebehari.
picture text 'Seated mother and here children,' in temperea on cloth. Natured is the well-spring of Benodebehari's creativity even in his figurative works.
Indian artists, mostly from Bengal, were attached to nature and thus amply rewarded. Benodebehari, his teacher Nandlal Bose, Sailoz Mukerjea and Gopal Ghosh made superb landscapes, both with and without people. Nature is the well-spring of Benodebehari's creativity even in his figurative works; an example, amongst very many, is that of a mother, who is seated, and her children, in tempera on cloth. His feminine figures, mostly in tempera on paper, cloth and board, appear to be like flowers in bloom.
The ghats of Benaras, an ink-and-brush work. His black-and-white colour tempera works on Benaras, usually as seen from a top angle, probably for reason of convenience, reveal a compelling design sense, a grasp of the inner dynamics of a place. Cubism as pioneered by Paul Cezanne and perfected by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris was the product of a heavily industrialised, materialist society where war, mass destruction and conquest were a part of an economic agenda. In the Orient, war and pestilence were seen as a part of nature's cycle. Hence, despite untold suffering in China, Japan and India, there were no art works like Picasso's "Guernica" and Juan Miro's "The Reaper", now sadly lost. This is not a critical observation but a droll one.
picture text:"Watercolour on Napelese Paper''. His exquisite flower studies in watercolour and pen and ink revealed a mastery of cadence and harmony, a visual expression of ideas musical.
Benodebehari's art came out of a grand detachment and an awareness of nature's cycle of sukha-dukha-chaitanya-moksha. The subtle transformations and manifestations of nature's moods can be seen in all his works - figurative landscapes and city views such as the ghats of Benaras. There is also a sophistication of vision that is indeed rare in 20th century art, Eastern or Western. His black-and-white and colour temperas of Benaras, usually seen from a top angle probably for reason of convenience, reveal a compelling design sense, a grasp of the inner dynamics of a place.
Although he did faces, even portraits, including a few of himself, he was without vanity in his treatment, in contrast to most Western artists doing the same kind of work. The face, or even the figure, for him was the mirror of the inner being of a person, but with one proviso: he understood the need to maintain a safe distance from his subject in order to understand. A black-and-white crayon drawing of a male face highlights this idea, similarly a three-quarter pen-and-ink female figure in profile.
picture text:Tempera on paper of an old bridge in a rural setting seen from below, one of his earliest memorable images.
He left Shantiniketan in 1948 for Kathmandu, where he became the director of the National Museum. A profusion of watercolours and sketches followed. In terms of details, variety in technique and observation of the land and its people they were invaluable, at once traditional and modern in sensibility and approach. His Nepalese experience was to find its finest expression in a fresco done in Vanasthali Vidyapeeth, Rajasthan, in 1950. In terms of colour and figure grouping, it had both grandness and simplicity.
On his return from Nepal and his subsequent Rajasthan fresco, he went to Mussoorie, a hill station overlooking the Doon Valley. He set up an art school there and pursued his theories of an ideal art education, which as a matter of course embraced the crafts. This approach then was considered revolutionary as there was a schism between what was regarded as `art' and that which was practised supposedly for utilitarian reasons, `craft'. Lack of financial support led to the closure of his school, but not before he had painted some haunting pictures of the mist-draped mountain country. His pen-and-ink drawings, too, were telling in terms of mood and technique.
picture text An Austere, black-and-white ink-and-brush landscape on buff paper of the huge undulating landscape in Shantiniketan known as the Khowai.
His experience of Japan in 1937-38, where he met artists such as Toba Sojo, Sesshu and Sotastsu, all of whom he admired, and his own exhibition on Tokyo bore fruit, and how, in his Mussoorie productions. There was an inner fire in them. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were also exquisite flower studies in water colour and pen and ink that revealed a mastery of cadence and harmony, a visual expression of ideas musical.
He created, occasionally, striking images in oil, either on cloth or on Masonite board. He preferred matt finish to the natural gloss of the medium. His sunflowers stay in memory, as do his village celebrations in the folk style of the Garhwal Hills. Oil was never the favoured medium in Swadeshi Kala Bhawan and an acquaintance with it was supposed to round off one's art education! Only Ram Kinkar worked in oils at some length in Shantiniketan.
picture text His pen-and-ink drawings were telling in terms of mood and technique.
Benodebehari's range and versatility was immense. He did some really witty collages with coloured paper, found objects and newspaper clippings. They were proof of his ability to appreciate life's absurdities with a laugh. That there was so much mischief in so quite, even so austere, a person always came as a surprise. Another example of it is his 1942 fresco depicting life on the campus in Cheena (China) Bhawan, where observations and wry wit merge seamlessly. His sense of composition and colour and effortless placement of people in a given space make the work a joy to behold. When, in 1957, a botched cataract operation lost him his only good eye, he was only 53. Undeterred by blindness, he went on being an artist doing drawings, paper cut-outs, small clay figurines and, in 1972, a five-foot-by-60-foot mural on one of the outer walls of Kala Bhawan in coloured tiles, depicting vignettes of people at play and work. He had laid out the grand plan through cut-outs and then ordered tiles of the right shape and colour, and with the help of a couple of assistants completed the mammoth assignment, using touch with a prescience not always allowed by sight.
picture text An ink-and-brush work. His experience of Japan in 1937-38 and his own exhibition on Tokyo bore fruit in his Mussoorie productions.
Benodebehari Mukherjee's approach to life until the end was celebratory. His panoramic scrolls on paper, silk and cloth, his revelatory murals and landscapes, and drawings and paintings of people were a great source of pleasure and his approach to the human face or figure or landscape was the same. He was not interested in photographic resemblance. His quest was an inner harmony in people, objects and spaces.
picture text An oil-on-Masonite-board work of village celebrations in the folk style of the Garhwal Hills. He preferred the matt finish to the natural gloss of the medium.
His frescos and mural are in a state of utter neglect in Shantiniketan and need to be looked after urgently. His heritage is too precious to be lost. Gulam Mohammad Sheikh and P. Siva Kumar deserve the gratitude of the entire nation for putting together this exhibition. 


http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=20070223000106500.htm&date=fl2403/&prd=fline&;

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