[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] links Pope, art, hiking, exhibition,

Sun Apr 3 03:43:35 CDT 2005

Hi,
Links to articles- sculptor Michael Naranjo meeting with the Pope, 
exhibition, two about bird models,exhibitions. Have included a couple of 
articles where art and the blind are just mentioned in passing, thought 
they might be of interest to some.
Regards,
Lisa

Ellen Gallagher; Alexander Ross; 'Model Modernisms'
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/arts/design/01gall.html?
unsure of this article, the phrase "art for the blind" is used, but 
unsure if this is used literally or not. If not could be perhaps 
interesting for how ideas ie art and blind, enter the common understanding.

Pope, full article, excerpt follows link address
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_local/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19858_3670526,00.html

excerpt from article
The sculptor
Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor Michael Naranjo remembers the day - April 
13, 1983 - and he remembers the pope's touch.
"He has soft hands. That was the first thing: How soft his hands were 
and gentle and warm," Naranjo said. "It was an incredible honor to go 
there and hold his hand."
Naranjo and his wife, Laurie, spoke to the pope briefly in Rome after 
presenting him with a crucifix Naranjo made.
"He was, I guess, all the things you think a pope should be: a very 
gentle, warm, sincere individual," Naranjo said.
But Naranjo also remembers the pontiff's reach and generosity. Armed 
with a photo of his meeting and a letter of introduction from the 
Vatican, the sculptor, who is blind, was able to travel to museums 
around Italy and explore by touch the great works of Michelangelo and 
others.
"The photo and a letter of introduction opened so many doors," he said.
Naranjo is not a Catholic, but he has saved a rosary given to him by the 
pope. Although he treasures it, he also believes it should be used in 
the spirit it was given. So every once in while, he lends it to trusted 
friends to use in church.

Wizenberg gives wings to avian art
http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=5945

Blind artist has an exhibition for first time
http://www.thecourier.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&story_id=382923&category=general%20news&m=4&y=2005

hiking, map
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_64799.asp

Art exhibit examines symmetry
http://www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/29/4249544ce4c35

Decoy show isn't just for the birds
Leonard said Merritt was a blind resident of the island who was a carver 
and "just an excellent individual and great in his craft."
http://www.delmarvanow.com/easternshore/stories/20050330/2100206.html

art
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050401/ENT01/504010362/1046/ENT

Plucky and artistic, he has a vision
http://www.hindu.com/lf/2005/04/02/stories/2005040203520200.htm

picture Chinese dancers perform the dance 'thousand-handed Goddess of 
Mercy' of dancers from China's Disabled People's Performing Arts Troupe
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050326/ids_photos_en/r1161832641.jpg

Chinese dancers perform the dance 'thousand-handed Goddess of Mercy' 
during a show in Sanya, south China's island province of Hainan, March 
25, 2005. The dance was presented by 21 deaf and mute dancers from 
China's Disabled People's Performing Arts Troupe. The troupe, 
established in 1987, is an amateur mass art troupe composed of visually 
impaired, audibly impaired and physically and mentally challenged 
people. Picture taken March 25, 2005. CHINA OUT REUTERS/China Newsphoto

Blind artist has an exhibition for first time
Saturday, 2 April 2005

AT 91, Ballarat North's Evelyn Waddell is as proud as any artist 
exhibiting her work for the first time.

Ms Waddell, who has not painted in more than a year because of failing 
eyesight, is lining up her work alongside that of her son, Bruce, and 
grandson, Nicholas.

The "Waddell Cubed" exhibition will open on Thursday, April 5, at The 
Foundry Gallery in North Fitzroy, and will be displayed for two weeks.

Ms Waddell has been painting for more than 40 years, but it became a 
full-time hobby after she retired aged 70.

She is pleased to show three generations of work in an exhibition together.

"I'm overwhelmed actually," she said.

"It's something I never ever dreamed about."

Despite being frustrated because her eyesight no longer allows her to 
read or paint, Ms Waddell feels she has done well from life.

Grandson Nicholas is a fine arts student at the Centre for Adult 
Education and has had work displayed before.

"We all do different styles," he said.

"My father does works on paper, gran does watercolours, and I do abstract."

His father, Bruce, said art was an important part of their lives.

"Art's always been a big part of our lives and it's the first time we 
have acknowledged that by exhibiting together," he said.

Students who are Blind Or Visually Impaired To Visit Cumberland Trail
posted April 1, 2005

Approximately 40 Hamilton County students who are blind or visually 
impaired will have the opportunity to do something they rarely get a 
chance to do - go for a hike in the woods - on April 6 (rain date – 
April 8).

Hamilton County Schools, Exceptional Education: Visual Disabilities has 
partnered with American Hiking Society, Tennessee State Parks, the 
Cumberland Trail Conference, Reflection Riding and the University of 
Tennessee at Chattanooga to make this trip possible. The event will 
start at approximately 10 a.m. and last until 1 p.m.

This field trip has been planned to get the children outside to enjoy 
nature, and to learn about the natural history of the area. The trail 
chosen for this event is a paved segment of the Cumberland Trail located 
on Leggett Road in Sale Creek. This paved portion of trail allows 
individuals with mobility issues to have access to the great outdoors. 
This trip will provide the students with a multi-disciplinary outdoor 
educational experience.

Before the event, participating students will receive a CD teaching them 
the songs of 18 common birds found at the field trip location. This 
program was developed by Jeffrey Hunter of American Hiking, and 
engineered in the studios of NPR Music 88 on the campus of the 
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). The UTC Environmental 
Research and Mapping Facility created a detailed map of the field trip 
site. This map is being used by the Hamilton County Schools Department 
of Visual Disabilities to create a tactile map and a large print map for 
the students. The tactile map will allow the visually impaired to “feel” 
the trail, the parking lot, Rock Creek, and other features with their 
fingers. The map will also identify obstacles and hazards found along 
the trail.

Several activities have been planned for the day. The students will 
start out as teachers themselves by instructing local volunteers in 
sighted guide techniques. The students will also plant native plants 
along the trail in a natural landscape design. Representatives from 
Reflection Riding will be on-hand to assist the children with this 
activity. Reflection Riding generously donated most of the plants for 
this event. The children will then have an opportunity to walk the 
length of the paved trail. The day promises to be educational and fun 
for all involved.

According to Pam Hudson, Director of Exceptional Education, “We are very 
excited to develop partnerships with local and state organizations that 
resulted in making this field trip a reality. This is going to be a 
great opportunity for these students to be a part of an innovative 
educational adventure that will most certainly have a lifetime impact. 
Our hope is that this field trip will inspire those students and their 
families and friends to continue to utilize, enjoy and learn by 
experiencing the many natural areas that are becoming accessible to our 
students.”

Generous funding for this event has been provided by the Public 
Education Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, 
Reflection Riding and several local Lions Clubs. Signal Mountain 
resident and local Landscape Architect Karna Levitt donated her time and 
expertise to assist with the event.

For more information, please contact Jeffrey Hunter at 
JHunter at AmericanHiking.org.

**
**
*ART IN REVIEW*
Ellen Gallagher; Alexander Ross; 'Model Modernisms'
*By THE NEW YORK TIMES *

Published: April 1, 2005

Ellen Gallagher: 'DeLuxe'
Whitney Museum of American Art,
945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street,
Through May 15
Some people have trouble with Ellen Gallagher's work. Is it the 
combination of prettiness and politics that make it suspect? I reacted 
that way to her collage pieces in the early 1990's, with their Agnes 
Martinish grids peppered with bug-eyed racial caricatures. The idea 
seemed too neat, too ingratiating. It let art-world racism off the hook 
by delivering an indictment of it, if that's what it was, as an 
easy-sell package.
Then the work grew and changed, not the formal mechanics so much as what 
Ms. Gallagher did with them. Her first show at Gagosian in Chelsea was 
really fine. Antagonizingly slippery, it was a monumental riff on "Moby 
Dick," and specifically on the chapter titled "The Whiteness of the 
Whale," Melville's obsessive, visionary, punched-out, raplike paean to 
the color that is all colors and no color, the color of sex, sin, light, 
race, God, blankness, the end. Ms. Gallagher's paintings, with their 
filigrees of drips and spatters, their sperm-shaped forms, minstrel 
references and built-up, Braille-esque surfaces got it all. It was great 
American painting, painting for the blind.
The 60 new prints from the portfolio titled "DeLuxe," produced by Two 
Palms Press, are even more intensely tactile, which focuses attention 
right off on their formal complexity, drawing as they do on a dozen 
different techniques from straightforward etching, to laser-cutting and 
tattoo-machine engraving. Only a little later do you realize that the 
themes of race and gender embedded in the earlier work are here pulled 
right to the surface, as they were in her Gagosian show last fall.
Most of the prints are based on advertisements for hair-styling, 
skin-lightening and feminine hygiene, all found in 1950's and 60's 
issues of African-American magazines like Ebony and Sepia, in the days 
before Black Power. Like most advertising, they play the personal 
transformation card, telling you how you can look better, act better, 
smell better, be better, which really means not be offensive, which, 
naturally, you are.
In Ms. Gallagher hands, these ideals of beauty turn grotesque, but with 
a kind of celebratory élan. White face and black face are 
interchangeable. Eyes are gouged out or pop out. Black hair turns into 
blond hair that sits on the prints' surfaces like cake icing or chewing 
gum. Commerce is about consumption? O.K., eat this. It's plastic? Eat it 
anyway.
Racial politics is "out" at the moment in art, and with the Basquiat 
show at the Brooklyn Museum the art establishment is suddenly sounding 
terribly self-congratulatory: you see, we put him there, right at the 
top. "Subversive" is the acceptable new term for "political," and, of 
course, it can mean anything or nothing. I thought of Ms. Gallagher's 
early work as "subversive." What you would call these new prints in the 
Whitney show - organized by David Kiehl, a curator at the museum - I 
honestly don't know. But with a virtuosic flash they sure are dissing 
something, and spreading the acid in many directions. HOLLAND COTTER

Art exhibit examines symmetry

BY BEN PITTARD
March 29, 2005

The imperfections and flaws of the human form often go unnoticed in 
today&#8217;s world.

But &#8220;Beautiful Mutants,&#8221; the latest art exhibit by Mark 
Mothersbaugh, seeks to expose them.

Mothersbaugh, film composer and leader of the musical group Devo, began 
his obsession with art at an early age. As a child, he discovered that 
he was severely nearsighted and was declared legally blind.

Upon receiving his first correctional lenses, he was offered a new view 
of the world, which in turn inspired his infatuation with art.

His latest exhibit comprises 20 new works, all of which feature 
photographs Mothersbaugh manipulated into symmetrical images.

The first stop on the &#8220;Beautiful Mutants&#8221; tour is the Temple 
Ball art gallery in Carrboro.

&#8220;This is the first full solo show of 2005,&#8221; said Michael 
Pilmer, project manager for Mothersbaugh Visual Art projects.

&#8220;This is the first time these images have been shown. It&#8217;s a 
special show in a lot of ways.&#8221;

Temple Ball owner Rick Ramirez said the exhibit brings several things to 
the community.

&#8220;It brings diversity of art and perspective,&#8221; he said.

&#8220;It brings the work of an internationally known composer. Art 
isn&#8217;t his main thrust, but it&#8217;s obviously a deep passion, 
and this represents that well and brings that little spin.&#8221;

Mothersbaugh said one of the reasons he chose to tour North Carolina was 
a lack of symmetry.

&#8220;It&#8217;s a lot like Ohio in the sense that the people there 
tend to be somewhat asymmetrical &#8212; on close examination, nowhere 
near what you&#8217;d find in a snowflake,&#8221; he said.

He went on to compare the people of the Tar Heel state to potatoes 
&#8212; &#8220;lowly&#8221; vegetables that also are staples of 
everyone&#8217;s diet.

That, he said, was part of the idea behind his new project.

&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to prove that the asymmetrical nature of mankind 
is the mask that he hides behind,&#8221; Mothersbaugh said.

&#8220;If you look at half of a face and split it so you can really look 
at it, you can see more of what a person really is. You can see that 
people are asymmetrical and what they put on for you every day.&#8221;

Ramirez echoed that theme.

&#8220;I think the symmetry that&#8217;s represented with the human form 
is beautifully disturbing,&#8221; he said.

Mothersbaugh said his original inspiration for the &#8220;Beautiful 
Mutants&#8221; project came during a photography project in which he 
used mirrors.

&#8220;The shots would take a long time to set up, but I was looking for 
a way to do human Rorschach prints, a way to look at the human face and 
body to make something familiar yet abstract, whereas Rorschachs are 
abstract yet familiar.&#8221;

The exhibit will also feature the first of new compositions written by 
Mothersbaugh specifically for the gallery showings.

&#8220;Beautiful Mutants,&#8221; which opened March 11, will run through 
April 8 at Temple Ball.

Contact the A&#38;E Editor at artsdesk at unc.edu.

The Hindu, India
Friday, April 01, 2005

Plucky and artistic, he has a vision

By S.S. Kavitha

HE KNOWS only the colour of darkness, but his fingers play with others to
liven up his pictures. He cannot see but can draw pictures, which become 
the
cynosure of all eyes.

He is G. Kanagaraj, a visually challenged student of Al Ameen Higher
Secondary School.

The student has brought laurels to his school and teacher by bagging the
first prize in the state and district-level painting competitions conducted
by the Department of Forests for three years consecutively.Born in
Ammapatti, a small village near Sivakasi, Kanagaraj was a normal child till
the age of four when chicken pox pitched a scared Kanagaraj into a world of
darkness.

He came all the way from Ammapatti to study with normal students through 
the
help of an integrated educative implementation committee sponsored by
Upaharmadurai.

P. Shanmuga Sundaram, drawing master of the school, motivated Kanagaraj to
draw and trained him for a year to draw line drawings using Braille. The
teacher would brief him on the arrangement of the colours and Kanagaraj
would use his fingers to paint the picture. Now, he is being trained to 
draw
pictures of human images.

"I owe a lot to my drawing master, P. Shanmuga Sundaram, the resource
teacher, S. Rajendran, the correspondent, L. Latif Sathar, and the
principal, R. Basheer Ahamed Khan," Kanagaraj said.

Disability notwithstanding, he completed his schooling. He eagerly waits 
for
sponsors to help him pursue his higher studies and participate in the
national-level painting competition.

His goal is clear. He wants to become a teacher, possibly a drawing 
teacher,
to help blind students because he wants to prove that they too could be
artistic. Not wanting to waste his summer holidays, he plans to draw at
least 100 pictures and organise a one-man show in Madurai.

Mr. Sundaram praised Kanagaraj's conviction and single-minded persistence.