[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Exhibit encourages blind, sighted to see with their hands

[Shelley L. Rhodes]

The Seattle Times
Monday, June 20, 2005

Exhibit encourages blind, sighted to see with their hands

By Jack Broom, Seattle Times staff reporter

Now showing

"Touching Art," noon-4 p.m. tomorrow-July 2 (Tuesdays through Saturdays), 
Jacob Lawrence Gallery, School of Art, University of Washington. Presented 
with the Washington State Department of Services for the Blind. For more 
information, see www.dsb.wa.gov or call 206-685-1805.

Running her hand along a black roll of fabric, Deng Kong wasn't quite sure 
what to make of it.

"The first time I put my hand on this one it felt like a person's leg. And 
then the second time I came over it felt like tree trunks."

Feeling the same material, Mark Adreon was captivated. "It was soft and you 
wanted to touch it and kind of get into it. ... It's very inviting and warm. 
... You do want to curl up on it, actually."

Kong and Adreon have two things in common. They were both on the jury for an 
art show opening tomorrow at the University of Washington's Jacob Lawrence 
Gallery. And they are both blind.

You won't find any velvet ropes, warning signs or vigilant docents keeping 
you away from the artwork at this exhibit. Not only is it OK to touch the 
pieces, it's encouraged.

Even if you have sight, you might want to slip on a pair of blindfolds 
provided and run your hands, as Kong and Adreon did, along and into the 
black polyester-stuffed Lycra rolls and pink round puffs of "Sporadic" by 
Chad Downard.

Or slide your fingers across the glazed clay "Untitled Head" by Andrea Hull.

Or feel the buzz of small plastic fan blades on "Hive" by Ben Hirschkoff or 
the 16 cool, smooth faces that make up "Déjà Vu" by Susie Lee.

Those four were judged best of the submissions in "Touching Art," a 
collection of work by present and former UW art students designed to be 
appreciated by blind as well as sighted visitors.

The goal is to "put 'blind' and 'art' in the same sentence" and challenge 
the commonly held notion that art has no role in the lives of the blind, 
said Adreon, business-relations manager for the state Department of Services 
for the Blind, which is co-hosting the show with the UW School of Art.

"The empowerment approach here is to sort of de-victimize blind people and 
say, 'Why not? You can appreciate art. Art should be part of your life,' " 
said Adreon, 50, who lost his sight eight years ago when an illness damaged 
his optic nerves.

The UW will show the pieces by a dozen student artists for two weeks. The 
top four, purchased by the Department of Services for the Blind for $500 
apiece, will then be permanently displayed at the agency's headquarters in 
South Seattle.

The idea for the exhibit stemmed from an observation by a client of the 
department, who noted that the office features work by blind and low-vision 
artists, but that those pieces, primarily photographs, can't be appreciated 
by the blind people who pass by them every day.

Adreon approached the UW School of Art with the idea of having student 
artists create work to be enjoyed by sighted and blind people.

"Art is part of our culture," Adreon said. "It's part of the historical, 
cultural expression. And blind people should be and should want to be part 
of all that."

Timea Tihanyi, who teaches sculpture, helped spread the word among artists. 
"We saw it as an interesting opportunity and a challenge. For people who do 
sculpture, working with tactile materials and making artwork that is very 
physical is an important consideration."

Each submission had to be something that could hang from a wall. The key 
limitation - taken from the Americans with Disabilities Act - was that the 
objects could be no more than four inches in depth, so that people walking 
by would not run into them.

Adreon, who has a long-standing appreciation of art and design, met with the 
participating artists and urged them not to just make objects that a blind 
person might identify, but ones that could be more complex and engaging.

"I told them the expression can go beyond, 'Oh, this is a flower.' It can 
actually say something like, 'This is a tortured flower.' "

An eight-member jury, including three members who are blind, selected the 
top works last week.

"Hive" is one of the more inventive creations. It's a four-foot-wide bright 
yellow and orange panel of wood and wax in a honeycomb pattern. Scattered 
around the piece are 12 round indentations about the diameter of a golf 
ball. Behind those, small motorized fans are activated by a motion sensor, 
so a person who touches them feels the slight buzz of the fan's turning 
blades.

"Untitled Head" is a smooth form of a human face made of clay coated with a 
liquid-glass glaze. Its creator, graduate student Andrea Hull, 29, said, "I 
really like the smoothness of the pieces and I hoped they would respond to 
that."

Hull's work was one of the favorites of Kong, 41, a customer-service 
representative at the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, which helped sponsor 
the show. She ran her fingers slowly down the piece, noting the high 
forehead and high cheekbones, the smooth skin, the detail in the ears and 
the fact that the lower lip seemed chapped.

Graduate art student Susie Lee, 32, made her piece, "Déjà Vu," a bit of a 
puzzle. It includes 16 plaster-covered foam faces, projected at different 
depths and angles. Only the careful observer will note - by touch or sight - 
that for each face, there's another one exactly like it.

Sighted people who choose to first "view" the objects while wearing 
blindfolds will gain an insight not just into the artwork but into the way 
blind people perceive the world around them, said Adreon.

"What happens when you lose one of your senses as an information source is 
you have to rely on your other senses that much more heavily," he said. 
"You're going to be forcing your mind to start reading that piece of artwork 
though your hands. It will take your mind into a place that is going to be 
way uncomfortable at first but the more a person would get into it ... 
they'll start feeling things they would have never noticed if they had just 
looked at the piece of artwork."

The variety of pieces submitted by the UW students, including pieces in 
fabric, ceramics, metal, wood and other media, appeared to take full 
opportunity of the possibilities presented, but Adreon said he hopes this 
show is just a beginning.

"The idea here is to try to create some stimulation for some artists to say, 
'I'm going to try that.' And challenge artists to actually develop this into 
a real art form so that that experience can grow and develop."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom at seattletimes.com

CAPTION: Deng Kong, who is blind, uses her hands to explore Andrea Hull's 
"Untitled Head," made of clay coated with liquid-glass glaze, at the 
University of Washington exhibit "Touching Art." ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE 
TIMES

AUDIO: Deng Kong on "Untitled Head" (:36, MP3)

CAPTION: Mark Adreon examines the black polyester-stuffed Lycra rolls and 
pink round puffs of "Sporadic," by Chad Downard. ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE 
TIMES

AUDIO: Deng Kong on "Sporadic" (:20, MP3)

AUDIO: Mark Adreon on "Sporadic" (:31, MP3)

CAPTION: Art-show jurors Deng Kong, left, and Mark Adreon. Adreon works for 
the state Department of Services for the Blind, co-hosting the show.

CAPTION: Deng Kong, a customer-service representative at the Seattle 
Lighthouse for the Blind, was on the jury for the "Touching Art" exhibit 
opening tomorrow at the University of Washington's Jacob Lawrence Gallery.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002340411_blind20.html


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