[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] 2 artists and car ralley

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Two articles about 2 artists and links two articles about a car ralley. 
David Tineo gives also an audio talk about his works. Links from page of 
article
Best,
Lisa

ralley

http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=238641&cat=Sports

ralley

http://www.gujaratglobal.com/nextSub.asp?id=764&cattype=NEWS

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060119/ENT/601190315/1006

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/112438

Artist makes his mark despite attack’s effects

By Dave Lavender

The Herald-Dispatch

January 19, 2006

HUNTINGTON -- Surrounded by stacks of colored Sharpie markers, Mike 
Fiffe looks up from his latest art work.

"From now on, I'm signing my name Dotman," Fiffe says as a grin first 
sneaks across his face before he bursts into a full roll of laughter.

The artist now known as Dotman has his first art show called "Miracles 
Happen" now hanging at Java Joint, a coffeehouse, restaurant and bar at 
1555 3rd Ave., through the end of January.

The show, which features 15 8X10 pieces and two poster size pieces, 
couldn't have a better title.

In November 2001, Fiffe was beaten severely by three men outside of a 
nightclub.

Although the beating resulted in a severe brain injury that has put 
Fiffe in a wheelchair and has made it difficult to speak, it couldn't 
steal his rebel artist spirit.

Legally blind and able to use only one hand, Fiffe first turned to 
poetry, which came streaming out after he started the slow road of recovery.

"Poetry -- it's too easy," Fiffe said while sitting at his art table.

Ken Epperly, Fiffe's legal guardian, said Fiffe wrote more than 5,000 
poems, stacks and stacks in manila folders.

Epperly said one day Fiffe wanted to start drawing again.

Before the incident, Fiffe said he drew typical teenager stuff, dark 
inked-up tattoo-like art filled with skulls and such.

Spurred on by a stream of music that ranges from heavy metal to 
Christian to classical, Fiffe now produces more abstract art that's 
sometimes black and white and sometimes colorful art pieces filled with 
geometric objects, dots and patterns.

Fiffe draws for most of the day on work days in the break room at Magic 
Makers Costumes, the national costume supply house owned by Epperly and 
Ken Fox.

"I'll find a pattern and one little mark and just go," Fiffe said.

He may work for two or three hours on a piece, and if he doesn't like it 
-- there's the trash can.

"I'll pitch it and start again if I see one of those little mistakes," 
Fiffe said.

As his zest was reawakened for his art, Epperly said he thought about 
asking Fiffe's longtime friends Jason Arthur and Amber Clifford (the 
owners of Java Joint) if they would hang one of the more than 200 pieces 
of art works he has created.

Jason and Amber did one better. They made him the artist of the month 
for January at Java Joint.

Fiffe said the exhibit has already brought a lot of joy. One of the art 
works has already sold, and he's already had strangers come up at the 
coffeehouse and compliment his work.

"Eventually, I would like to do some painting," Fiffe said. "With my 
vision, I know it will be hard to be neater."

That said, he wants you to know those framed dripping words of "Miracles 
Happen" is supposed to look that way.

"I wanted it to be like spray art or graffiti. It's a drip -- not like 
me," Fiffe said, smiling.

artcile 2

Published: 01.22.2006

As the light fades

His murals illustrating struggle hang all over town. Now, Tucson's David 
Tineo faces the struggle of his life.

By Tom Beal

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Tineo on view at 2 galleries

Two exhibitions of David Tineo's art open this week.

Galeria La Sirena

- 2905 E. Broadway

- Friday through Feb. 17

- Opening reception with the artist: Friday, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

- Regular hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed 2-3 
p.m. for lunch); Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- The gallery has donated the Tineo pieces in its collection "to benefit 
David in his fight against massive vision loss." Other works by Tineo 
will also be exhibited.

Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery & Workshop

- 222 E. Sixth Street

- Saturday through Feb. 25

- Opening reception with Tineo and other gallery artists: Saturday, 7 to 
10 p.m.

- Regular hours: Friday and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.

- A special collection of Tineo's work will be shown in conjunction with 
the exhibition "Tesoros" (Treasures), celebrating gems, minerals and 
other treasures with work by members of the cooperative gallery and 
invited guest artists.

On StarNet

Post your thoughts on David's life, his work and his impact or ask 
questions of David on the Starnet bulletin boards.

This forum will also feature additional comments by reporter Tom Beal, 
photographer A.E. Araiza and Starnet online producer Jorge Ribas.

Click here to post

"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but 
what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen."

Pablo Picasso

David Tineo paints best in early morning. Midday, there is too much 
light for eyes that see so little.

Tineo, Tucson's most prolific muralist, has achieved a measure of fame, 
but riches were never in the equation. To keep painting, he cut corners, 
scrounged materials, stretched his dollars and his own canvases, 
slathered craft paint on cheap surfaces.

He says the process is the important part, a point he made dramatically 
when he filled the walls and ceiling of Raices Taller art gallery with 
his images, then painted the walls white again. The art is still there, 
he says. You don't have to see it.

You don't have to see.

This is what David Tineo tells himself today.

That philosophical attitude could change as his world darkens. In the 
meantime, Tineo, 50, is struggling to keep his vision clear as his eyes 
cloud over.

His style is evolving. He has never fully challenged himself as an 
artist, he says, and maybe these limits will help him create something 
new, different, better.

He is legally blind now and his doctors don't know what is causing his 
macular degeneration, damage to the rods and cones on the back walls of 
his eyes.

These things are usually genetic and Tineo has inexact knowledge of 
medical history on his father's side. His father deserted the family 
when David was 11, leaving his mother, who spoke only Spanish and hadn't 
yet attained citizenship, to raise seven children.

His upbringing prepared him for an artist's life, he said. "You have a 
place to live; the bills are paid; you have transportation — you're all 
right."

Free to create

Above the painted door of his studio — a mural-covered shed behind his 
mother's house west of Downtown — is the slogan "Nomás Dios y el Artista."

"Only God and the artist" share the moment of creation, and Tineo has 
shared it again and again, inside restaurants and outside public 
buildings, on walls and ceilings and thousands of canvases.

After three decades, some of his public work has been covered over or 
demolished.

The intentional obliteration of one of Tineo's murals brought artist 
Maurice Grossman to the verge of tears. Tineo filled the walls and 
ceiling of Raices Taller gallery with painted stories of 40 people in 
September 2000, only to whitewash them when the exhibit ended.

"It was like painting over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and saying, 
'Oh, well, it's here for a month just for the pope's birthday,' " said 
Grossman.

Some of Tineo's temporary work has endured.

The monumental mural on the north wall of the Tucson Museum of Art, 
painted by Tineo and Antonio Pazos in 1992 to celebrate an exhibit of 
Chicano art, was slated to hang for three months. It remains, faded but 
still dramatic, 13 years later.

Glare and frustration

At Kino Hospital, where his murals cover three walls of the cafeteria 
courtyard, the light is too bright when we visit them. Tineo can't read 
the inscription he left in the corner. "Basically, it says, 'Art heals.' "

"It is frustration when I look at it and I cannot enjoy what you're 
seeing now. I only see glares of bright light. I cannot handle the 
difference in contrast of light and dark right now, but I do know it's 
being enjoyed. It's being appreciated."

Whatever the cause of Tineo's vision loss, it is not a condition that is 
reversible without advances in medical science, said Dr. Richard Ober, 
chief of ophthalmology for the Southern Arizona VA Healthcare System. He 
re-examined Tineo, an Army veteran, on Wednesday.

The left eye is better than the right. they test at 20/200 and 20/400, 
respectively. The cones, which control "straight-ahead vision," seem the 
most affected. The hope is that his eyesight will stabilize, leaving 
Tineo with the limited, mostly peripheral vision he has now.

There's no need to create metaphoric ironies for the story of David 
Tineo. A visual artist is losing his sight. It is a very private 
struggle that has already sent him to the hospital once during a 
stress-induced episode that mimicked a heart attack.

The public artist

It is also a public event because Tineo may be the best known artist in 
Tucson. He has agreed to let us follow him this year and tell in words 
what he has already painted.

Tineo has spent his life documenting Latino struggles, successes and 
cultural accomplishments while living the life he documented.

There are Tucson artists with more fame in art circles, but none whose 
work would be so recognizable, especially to the children who have 
painted along with him.

Those brush strokes on the murals at UPH/Kino Hospital and in schools 
across Southern Arizona and as far away as Colorado come from an army of 
kids in art education programs.

You have seen his work while dining at El Charro or El Parador, while 
walking across the University of Arizona campus, attending an event at 
the Tucson Convention Center, touring the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 
visiting your children's schools or catching a flight at the airport.

Tineo was restoring his earliest works, the murals at El Rio 
Neighborhood Center, when his deteriorating vision stopped him. The 
murals he began painting there in 1974 are a melange of symbols that 
celebrate his heritage and scenes that specifically depict the struggles 
of his neighbors, his people — "La Raza" — to build a neighborhood 
center and carve out a park from the city golf course.

Salomón Baldenegro, who helped lead demonstrations at El Rio and was 
among those jailed for occupying the golf course in 1969, said Tineo's 
murals are as important as the political struggle.

"They convey history and pride," said Baldenegro, who teaches about the 
Chicano mural movement in his class at the University of Arizona. 
"That's why they're such assets to our community."

As Tineo restored his El Rio murals last spring, he fought a bright, 
sometimes painful light at the center of his vision and found himself 
losing balance atop the scaffold. He had to abandon the job and give up 
teaching at Pima Community College.

He continues to paint, and is painting more than ever.

"I think it's because he feels he's running out of time," said his 
21-year-old daughter, Adreana Wickberg.

The artist at work

Tineo builds canvases by memory and instinct, using the space between an 
old desk and an equipment locker to measure the boards for sawing, 
keeping his fingers just outside the arc of his hammer as he listens for 
the sound that tells him whether he has bent the nail or driven it true.

He paints in early morning, with soft light coming through the high 
windows on the south and an open door to the north, augmented by a 
single bulb in a shadeless lamp.

His plastic bottles and tubes of acrylic paint are laid out where he can 
grab them without looking. His palette is a styrofoam meat tray, his 
paints and brushes bought at Wal-Mart or, occasionally, on sale at an 
art supply store.

He works rapidly, the canvas already outlined with a woman's form in 
four different movements. "This paint fights me. There's very little 
elasticity in these cheap paints," he says.

"This is called 'Jade Mask.' It's a representational-movement kind of 
thing; I'm not really concerned here about style. I like to work and 
kind of feel the body parts and the movement while I paint.

"I see colors but my blue fields are off a little bit sometimes. I lose 
more time trying to find my colors than I do painting."

The model represented four times in this canvas was the subject of 
several portraits. "I had to get this close" — he holds his palm about a 
foot from his face — "to see her features."

The gesturing forms take shape as he quickly dips his brushes in a 
series of blues, greens, reds, wiping them on his jeans. He takes a 
brush dipped in black and stabs at the faces in quick motions and they 
take on different moods.

"It's the states of emotion ... this is contemplation ... this is deep 
thought .... this is, 'Eh, I don't really care about him anymore,' and 
this one, 'Ah, he's finally gonna make some money.' "

He's talking about himself. He has never made much money on public art 
projects. He has worked as a counselor, as resident artist at schools 
and as an art instructor at Pima College, but mostly he just painted.

It was hard on his wives and his two children, he says, but he had to do 
it. "Since age 3, the only thing I wanted to do was paint."

He signs his last name in black in the upper right corner: "Tineo — the 
five letters my father gave me."

the five letters

my father gave me

Follow David Tineo's fight to maintain his vision as his sight fades in 
this occasional series of articles throughout the coming year.

On StarNet: Post your thoughts on David's life, his work and his impact 
at forums.azstarnet.com/

and view an audio slideshow of his work at www.azstarnet. com/slideshows/

Tineo on view at 2 galleries

? Two exhibitions of David Tineo's art open this week.

Galeria La Sirena

- 2905 E. Broadway

- Friday through Feb. 17

- Opening reception with the artist: Friday, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

- Regular hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed 2-3 
p.m. for lunch); Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- The gallery has donated the Tineo pieces in its collection "to benefit 
David in his fight against massive vision loss." Other works by Tineo 
will also be exhibited.

Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery & Workshop

- 222 E. Sixth Street

- Saturday through Feb. 25

- Opening reception with Tineo and other gallery artists: Saturday, 7 to 
10 p.m.

- Regular hours: Friday and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.

- A special collection of Tineo's work will be shown in conjunction with 
the exhibition "Tesoros" (Treasures), celebrating gems, minerals and 
other treasures with work by members of the cooperative gallery and 
invited guest artists.

On StarNet

Post your thoughts on David's life, his work and his impact or ask 
questions of David on the Starnet bulletin boards.

This forum will also feature additional comments by reporter Tom Beal, 
photographer A.E. Araiza and Starnet online producer Jorge Ribas.

"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but 
what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen."

Pablo Picasso