[accessibleimage] articles art

excerpt The art of a hero
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/entertainment/299123,6_5_NA16_HEROES_S1.article

What's really amazing is that Sale doesn't actually paint.

"I'm color blind," he said. "I can't paint."
To simulate something that looks like painting (which he frequently uses for some of his comics work) Sale uses an ink wash technique that produces a largely black-and-white image. He dilutes the ink to produce subtler gray tones. 

article

Museum Offers Tour Allowing Blind to Touch Artwork
March 11th, 2007 @ 4:42pm
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- With blue latex gloves on their hands, blind visitors were treated to a hands-on tour of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
The special event allowed sightless visitors to touch a statue of French King Louis XIV and tap a statuette of a stone mason to hear the hollowness of the bronze.
"This is a chance to feel what everybody else gets to see," said visitor Matthew Barnhill.
The museum played host to tours for 40 blind visitors Saturday, allowing for the first time a hands-on exploration of its exhibits.
Kira Larkin, vice president of the Utah Council of the Blind, called it an advancement for the blind in a world so often characterized by "No touching" signs.
The museum's accessibility coordinator, Jenny Woods, hopes to make the touch tours a more common occurrence at the museum.
"It's a slightly different way of experiencing art," she said. "But it's certainly a great way to experience art." 

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=977240



article




http://www.themonitor.com/onset?id=638&template=article.html

Local artist fuses tattoo art, pop art and graffiti
Travis M. Whitehead
March 9, 2007 - 10:22AM
Marcus Farris EDINBURG — When Marcus Farris takes a day off, chances are he’s indulging his creative bent in a variety of styles.
Farris, 35, describes his art as “generally somewhere between what you would call low brow influence and popular art, a mix of readable images and text.”
Farris, who is legally blind, but can still see well enough to draw at close range, hasn’t let his condition slow him down. He is the head of art education at the University of Texas-Pan American; he said his subject matter ranges pretty freely according to his varying inclinations.
“I just finished a piece the first of this semester that was just simply an adaptation of an old Japanese samurai on kind of a stark background with text running along the side that says, ‘The Trail Ends Here,’” he said. “It’s real simple. Some of it’s real site-specific depending on what the subject matter I’m working with is.”
He draws on a broad collage of influences, from traditional fine art to popular art, underground, graffiti and tattoo flash art.
“For the past two years I’ve been getting my research background in underground and low brow and street art.” he said, “That kind of encompasses everything from turn-of-the-century printmakers to illustrators to the guys that do comic books.”
Farris has managed to create an interesting fusion of pop art and Japanese themes. In the piece “Forget to Think,” a Japanese woman in a blue kimono has her nation’s flag — a rising sun — in bold red colors across her back. Japanese characters run down the side.
The work “Ring Around the Rosie” depicts a young boy looming over a sports car where a pair of hands is raising a broken skull, while a banner with the words “We All Fall Down” flutters around a flower. All of this is created in bold, almost audacious, yet entertaining colors.
Farris’ style also has strong elements of tattoo art. Farris likes to work with tattoo flash art, the name for the pictures people see when they walk into a tattoo shop. This flash art on the wall gives customers a large selection to choose for their own tattoos. The tattoo artist breaks the image down into a line drawing, then colors it in.
“A lot of what I do, I take these line drawings and combine pieces,” Farris said. “I may add text, turn them into a more painterly standpoint.”
Much of his work is taken from images he’s created or from photographs he’s located, readapted and juxtaposed with readable text, he said; obviously, as in “Forget to Think,” the text isn’t always in English. He has friends who “translate everything from Spanish to Japanese to German.”
Artwork is as much a part of him as breathing; he’s been drawing, he said, since he was “about two feet long.”
“Professionally I’ve been working and selling for about 12 years now,” he said. “Like I said, it’s just kind of been a natural progression. I’ve always just kind of drawn and painted. I really didn’t get super-involved in a lot of stuff probably until right out of high school, in terms of focusing on art being a career, something other than a hobby.” 
What motivates him to keep creating?
“Basically I’m kind of just an information and visual junkie,” he said. “Some studies have come out in the last few years that show people look at art for three to seven seconds. Part of my goal is to get you past that seven-second mark. If it doesn’t get you to feel or think something, regardless of the subject matter, you are missing out.” 



article

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/16845437.htm
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: Co-produced with Accessible Arts. Opens March 13; 10 a.m. March 13; 10 a.m. and noon March 14-15; 10 a.m., noon and 7 p.m. March 16; 2 p.m. March 17-18; closes April 1. Coterie Theatre, Crown Center Shops, Level One. Audio description built into narrative of play; non-sighted and sighted each have full access. Most appreciated by ages 10 and up. www.coterietheatre.org (816-474-6552) 


The Country Of The Blind
By Frank Higgins, from the story by H.G. Wells
A Co-Production with Accessible Arts

March 13- April 1, 2007
http://www.coterietheatre.org/


excerpt article http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=901

One Hundred Years of Fortitude

Blind Ambition: Years after losing his vision, Graber continues to make art.
The off-white carpet in Abe Graber’s Gaithersburg, Md., apartment is marked by several splotches of paint. The stains could be the byproduct of any number of paintings that decorate Graber’s walls and occupy his closet, but he doesn’t take note of them. Legally blind from macular degeneration since 2004, the 103-year-old Graber spends most of his days listening to books on tape, napping, and, when he can, making art.
Graber stopped painting when he lost his eyesight, but since last year he has slowly been making art with the help of his 66-year-old son and caretaker, George Graber, as well as hospice workers. “When I lost my sight in my right eye in 2000, I felt so terrible that I couldn’t get over it. Then in the other, it was 20/268. That gave me a little light. It was terrible,” says Abe Graber. “I didn’t decide to stop painting. I couldn’t decide to do any painting.” 



article
http://examiner.gmnews.com/news/2007/0301/Front_Page/022.html

Audio tour opens show to visually impaired
A special audio tour of the Monmouth County Arts Council (MCAC) Juried Art Show will allow audiences with low vision or visual impairments to enjoy a firsthand experience of the art exhibit.
Thanks to the generosity of Community Foundation of Monmouth County, the New Jersey Blind Citizen Association, in collaboration with MCAC, has created and donated an audio description of the MCAC 28th annual Juried Art Show and Sale. Providing the technology to record and edit the audio tour, Tom Brennan of 90.5 The Night was instrumental in MCAC's initiative to enable many more people with sight loss or impairments to enjoy the art exhibit, according to a press release.
"When organizations team up to deliver services to the community, everyone benefits from the experience," said Mary Eileen Fouratt, MCAC executive director. "While the MCAC Juried Art Show has always been an accessible event, this year the show's audio description will be equally engaging for people with visual impairments and anyone who wants a description of the art in the exhibit."
The audio description, which runs about 18 minutes, concentrates on relaying information on the show, juror and artists, as well as the visual appeal of the artwork.
Narrated by Sue Ferraro, an art teacher at Camp Happiness, the audio tour describes not only the visual aspects of the work, but also its emotional context. In addition, several sculptors have granted permission to allow visually impaired visitors to touch their artwork.
"We are pleased to have this opportunity to serve the blind and visually impaired community directly," Fouratt said. "We hope that the audio description will enhance their imaginations and increase their enjoyment of the exhibit."
Listening devices are available at the Monmouth Museum or art enthusiasts can audio tour the exhibit online at MCAC's Internet Web site www.monmouthartscouncil.org/jas.php or download the audio description to their own mp3 player. Works will continue to be on display and available for purchase until the end of the exhibition on March 4.
The Monmouth Museum, 765 Newman Springs Road (Route 520), Lincroft, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. Admission is $6 per person; Monmouth Museum members and children under 2 are free. 

For more information or group visits contact the museum at (732) 747-2266.

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