[accessibleimage] museum, craft, art

Hi,
Museum links, article about a traditional craft and a story of an artist.
best,
Lisa

http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/default.asp?ArID=154612

http://www.etaiwannews.com/showPage.php?setupFile=showcontent.xml&menu_item_id=MI-1123667573&did=d_1138265940_8721_FCCD87FE3A257C2310544395DD956DC34DEFB62D_7&area=taiwan&area_code=WW000

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/29/a_chaotic_shortened_life_set_free_by_art/

Blind embrace art at museums with 'touch tours'
1/28/2006 1:46 PM
By: Associated Press

The Umlauf Sculpture Garden <http://www.umlaufsculpture.org> in Austin is among programs at more than 100 museums nationwide that attempt to do what once was thought impossible: make art accessible -- even visible -- to those with little or no sight.

At the Umlauf, visually impaired visitors can listen to an audio guide that instructs them where to reach, what to feel for, and the history behind the piece.

At the Nelson-Atkins Museum <http://www.nelson-atkins.org> of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, participants first feel pieces of slate and marble -- the materials of which the works they'll feel are made.

At the Museum of Modern Art <http://www.moma.org/education/moma_access.html> in New York, where touch tours have been available since 1972, those without sight can lay their hands on masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin.

Art museums first began to make their collections accessible to those without sight in the early 1970s, though with major museums like the Nelson-Atkins only now implementing such programs, the spread across the country has been slow.




Though 80 and blind, man is still a master in art of cane weaving



2006-02-01 / Knight Ridder

Revelle Lee weaves an intricate chair seat.
Six layers of strips go up, down, across, diagonal and somehow form evenly spaced rows of holes. Wooden pegs hold the cane strips in place.

Lee uses his fingers and a filed-down spoon handle to maneuver 30-foot-long pieces of cane, the skin of a rattan palm plant. He nearly finishes a row, then SNAP! A strip breaks.

"Durn," says Lee. "You're supposed to cuss when that happens. But I'm going to fix it by tying it together."

He swiftly ties a knot, seamlessly blending the broken piece into the weaving.

Lee is known by architects, designers and furniture-store owners throughout the Midwest for his fine skills in caning and rushwork, the ropy strands often found on the seats of old rocking chairs. The geometric consistency of his work amazes people, because he can't see what he is creating. "I can feel it," says Lee, who is blind. "I just know when it's right and when it isn't."

Architect Eric Piper has hired Lee to cane chairs for his downtown office and to rush chairs for his dining room at home. That was about a decade ago and they've held up well. "He's that unique craftsperson you love to find," Piper says. "It's amazing he's still doing this at age 80." Lee runs his shop from his brick home in Independence, Missouri. He greets customers in the garage, which serves as a mini showroom. Some chairs there are old, ornately carved wood pieces; others are modern with sleek chrome curves. All have Lee's handiwork in the caned seats and backs.

Lee takes the stairs from the garage down to the basement, his workshop. It's also filled with chairs. He remembers the names of their owners and their styles by touching them. Rolls of cane are tucked in corners and shelves around the dark, unfinished space. Lee gets around by slowly shuffling and occasionally waving his hand for objects in front of him and next to him.

Three men work for him part time. They do the furniture refinishing, painting and shipping for out-of-town customers. Russell Moore does most of the rushwork so Lee can concentrate on caning.

"He taught me everything I know," says Moore. "I've learned from him that every piece of furniture is different and that you have to be patient to get work done the right way."

Lee was born outside Harviell, Missouri, near the Bootheel and attended public school through the fourth grade. He received a vague diagnosis of "optic nerve trouble" and was pronounced legally blind. What he could see four feet ahead of him was equivalent to what most people could see at 700 feet.

In 1936 at age 11, Lee began attending the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Louis. He was hyper and unhappy being away from his family. He received "inferior" grades in geography, history, spelling and reading. Then he started caning, receiving "superior" marks in the subject. "It calmed me down," Lee says. "It changed my world."

Lee found out that caning a chair takes eight to 10 hours. At one time cane chairs were more popular than upholstered ones. A good-quality cane seat could last 25 to 30 years before needing repairs, often outlasting fabric.

During the Depression, caning was considered a "blind trade" along with broom making and piano tuning. Students relied on their tactile and audio senses to expertly learn these skills.

Repairing cane furniture became Lee's financial salvation. Through contacts at the school, he earned spending money for clothes. His mother died when he was 15 and soon his father moved to California, leaving Lee to fend for himself. The money he made from caning sustained him. "I came of age feeling like an orphan," he says.

Lee graduated from the school in 1945 and received a special certificate for his work in handicrafts. He earned an extra fine-arts credit because of the "artistic nature and quality of his work," according to school records.

Lee married Bertie Miller, a woman he met at school; she also was blind. He opened a caning shop in a 13-by-21-foot space in 1948 in downtown Kansas City and kept the store for several years. He and his wife had their only child, Stephen Lee. Family members openly wondered whether their child would be able to see, which he can.

"My parents always were able to get around well," says Stephen Lee, an executive at Cerner Corp. "But we all relied on each other. I started going to the grocery store and writing out checks when I was a young kid."

The elder Lee worked on an assembly line making soda vending machines for Vendos for 25 years. As he had since childhood, he kept caning to earn extra money.

"It's an amazing old skill," says Jan Cummings, a professor who teaches furniture history and oversees Johnson County Community College's interior design program. "It's only known by a handful of people."

Indeed, not many people cane for a living these days. Blind students haven't learned caning in years, says Tom Culliton, assistant superintendent for the Missouri School for the Blind.

"There haven't been many handicrafts taught since I came here in 1969," Culliton says. "Education for visually impaired students has moved away from that and into practical technology, especially computer skills. A lot also go into massage therapy."


article



SOUTH END
A chaotic, shortened life, set free by art
By Jan Brogan, Globe Correspondent  |  January 29, 2006

It's every artist's dream to have at least one show before she dies.

Jane Grieve got her dream -- almost. She selected 10 paintings for an exhibition at the South End Branch Library, saw them framed, and gave the show its name: ''Out of the Cold." She died two days before its Jan. 3 opening.

And yet, this is a story not about irony but of inspiration.

Grieve arrived at the Pine Street Inn last February physically ill, legally blind, and homeless. She was 54 years old, suffering from diabetes and complications from open-heart surgery.

She had been disabled and living on a fixed income for many years, according to her son Frank Acker, the eldest of her four children. In California, she had rotated among her grown children's homes. A year ago, she became determined to move back to the Boston area, where she had grown up; she wanted to live on her own.

She ended up homeless.

Amazingly, through that experience, Acker says, ''her whole world opened up."

Grieve had spent a life struggling with ''chaos and abuse," says Mary Washburn, a social worker at the Pine Street Inn. She'd had four children by the age of 21, and after a difficult marriage fell apart was consumed in raising her children alone. This was complicated by a heart attack at age 40 that left her disabled and legally blind. But with all her children grown and self-supporting, Grieve came to Boston ''determined to transform herself."

Enter JoAnn Rothschild.

Rothschild is a respected abstract artist in Boston, the first recipient of the Maud Morgan Prize, now awarded annually by the Museum of Fine Arts. She teaches art every Tuesday afternoon at the Women's Inn at the Pine Street Inn.

''This is art, not art therapy," she emphasizes. ''I don't even think I believe in art therapy. I believe in painting."

Although Grieve already had a background in art and introduced herself as a painter, Rothschild recalls that initially she was much like any other new student: quiet, serious, and eager to please. ''They paint pleasant images. What they think you will like."

But Rothschild believes that good art is about being accurate in an emotional sense, not about pleasant images.

''Once Jane understood that, she took off," says Rothschild. ''It was an unfurling of emotional directness and visual clarity."

The new art bore no resemblance to Grieve's earlier paintings, which were more representational. Grieve had found her style.

Soon, she was painting four or five works a day and built an inventory of more than 50 paintings. ''And it's not like she was whipping them off. She had high standards," says Rothschild.

Grieve was also getting her life together in other ways. She moved into her own place, a single-room occupancy on Beacon Hill. Always helpful in class, she began to fill in for Rothschild, teaching at Pine Street when Rothschild was absent.

Acker says he believes that his mother's introduction to abstract art allowed her to release ''a difficult past" that had been bottled up inside her. ''She was liberated. Set free." He adds, ''She used to call me in California and say that finally her life was exactly what she wanted it to be."

But by last fall, Grieve's medical problems had intensified and she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was about this time that Rothschild, who knew Grieve's dream of having an art show, took action.

Rothschild contacted Kate Sullivan, president of the board of United South End Artists, which organizes the art shows at the South End Branch Library, and sent her computer files of Grieve's paintings for review.

Usually the artwork chosen for the library's gallery must go through a jury process, in which three people with no association to the artist review submissions and make the final decision. Because of Grieve's prognosis, Sullivan decided to bypass this process. ''JoAnn is very respected artist in the Boston community," says Sullivan. ''If she says it's good, it's good."

The two women worked with librarian Anne Smart to put a rush on the show, so that it could open in early January. But this was not an act of charity. Sullivan wants to make that clear. Her organization represents more than 250 artists, including many professionals. The South End Branch Library ''is a serious gallery," she says, and Grieve's work earned a show based on merit alone.

As Grieve's illness grew worse, her four children came back East and moved their mother into a one-bedroom apartment. They celebrated Christmas, and framed their mother's art to get it ready for the show. Says Acker, ''She tried to hold on for the opening, but she couldn't do it."

Still, ''something really special happened to my mother," he adds. He credits Rothschild, whom he calls ''an amazing person," and the United South End Artists organization. ''It took an incredible group of people to do this for her."

Her children selected several paintings to take home to California when the show is over. One of Grieve's last wishes was that proceeds from any sale of the remaining paintings be donated to the Pine Street Inn's art program.

''Out of the Cold," a collection of 10 abstract paintings in watercolor by Jane Grieve, will be on exhibit at the South End Branch Library through Feb. 11.



© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


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