[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] garden, art, pottery, photography, seeing machine

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Sending a few articles.
Regards,
Lisa

Subjects: garden, color-blind artist, art exhibit, seeing machine, 
pottery, blind photographer exhibit at Kennedy Center
http://www.leedstoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=39&ArticleID=1571815

Garden for the blind wins gold medal for designer Tracy
By Hannah Postles
GARDEN designer Tracy Foster from Leeds has won a gold medal at the 
Gardeners' World show in Birmingham for her revolutionary £3,000 seaside 
garden for the blind.
Tracy, of Gledhow Wood Grove, teamed up with the National Talking 
Newspapers and Magazines – a charity who record publications for the 
blind – to design the 'Sea Hear' garden, which won top prize in the 
small gardens category at the National Exhibition Centre show.
The professional gardener, who has a degree in Plant Biology and a 
diploma from the Institute of Garden Design, wanted to raise awareness 
for the charity and to show that people with restricted or no sight can 
get just as much enjoyment from a garden as anyone else.
"When I first started thinking about the show I was going to explore the 
theme of relaxation, so when the National Talking Newspapers and 
Magazines got involved I took things from there," she said.
"It has been a challenge but I wanted to create the relaxed feeling you 
get when you are on holiday on a beach, and at the same time, recreate 
the sounds, textures, the scents and even the taste that you get in a 
seaside garden."
The small garden, which is enclosed on two sides by sandcastle-like 
wall, is fronted by a shingle beach of shells, pebbles and driftwood 
that crunches undefoot. Aromatic herbs and seaside-smelling plants, 
including one which gives an oyster-like taste, were hand-picked and 
prepared by Tracy.
The garden enthusiast, who has worked professionally for four years, was 
helped by Leeds-based company Garden Concept and local artist Julie Pope.
17 June 2006



article abstract
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/county_courses/article/0,1375,VCS_2316_4784134,00.html
Sardisco taught art for nearly 40 years but first and foremost 
considered himself an artist. He made a name for himself with his strong 
sense of color, an irony for a man who was color blind.

Gallery showcases all artistic types
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060619/NEWS01/606190345

Gallery showcases all artistic types

By Peggy Kreimer
Post staff reporter

 From across the room, the painting looks like a baby playing in a 
bucket, but up close, the baby is asleep in a war helmet filled with oil.

It's an artist's statement on war and peace, and the artist wouldn't 
have had the confidence to show it if macular degeneration wasn't 
stealing his sight.

"I have a disability, and I was very insecure about my work," said Wayne 
Hambrick of Evanston.

When Jackie Baumgartner, who runs the Art Beyond Boundaries gallery in 
Cincinnati, first asked Hambrick to consider showing his work, he told 
her "No."

"She told me the gallery is for artists who have disabilities," said 
Hambrick. "I thought, I won't be alone."

The gallery opened in December, and the latest display shows just how 
not alone Hambrick is.

He originally felt more comfortable knowing fellow artists also were 
dealing with physical, mental or medical disabilities. The latest show, 
called "Changing Perceptions," combines work of artists with and without 
disabilities.

Nothing in the show tells viewers which is which.

The gallery is a project of the 29-year-old Center for Independent 
Living Options, which works to break down barriers of attitude and 
architecture that prevent people with disabilities from being fully 
included in the community.

The latest gallery show is an example of that that mission, said center 
director Lin Laing.

The art stands on its own, even if some of its artists don't. Some 
artists use wheelchairs. Some need crutches. Several have various 
degrees of blindness. Some have medical conditions that get in the way 
of full employment. In many cases, those conditions just serve to 
enhance the power of the paintings, sculpture, quilts, mixed-media 
mosaics and pen-and-ink drawings.

Gallery volunteer Robert Wallace led an impromptu tour of the show this 
week.

A large glazed pottery basket, with glass-like clay slabs creating a 
naturalistic landscape dominates a display shelf.

"That artist is totally blind," said Wallace. "The shape, the texture is 
everything."

A spare pen-and-ink portrait brings the ample form of a man to life. It 
doesn't matter if the artist was sitting in a wheelchair or on a stool 
when he sketched it.

Wallace's own work is on the walls. An oil and acrylic nightscape called 
Mondnacht (midnight) has a dark, ambiguous feel, with a yellow moon that 
seems even brighter when Wallace reveals the color is augmented with a 
touch of mustard. Suddenly, the painting is not as dark as it seems - 
much like life, said Wallace.

A disabling illness knocked him out of the job market several years ago, 
but his art, which had been a private pleasure, has given new purpose to 
his life, he says. The gallery, both exhibiting and volunteering, has 
been truly a lifesaver.

He created a mosaic from bits of broken glass and castaway trash 
collected from the riverbank and titled it "Fragments."

"You can take what no one wanted and make something beautiful," he said.

Covington artist Carolyn Anne Reed-Hanks has been treated for an 
emotional disability and relished the chance to participate in a show of 
artists with and without disabilities.

"I have been with and without disabilities over and over my long life," 
she said with a laugh. Her watercolors and collages are whimsical and 
vibrant studies of everyday objects - oil cans, peppers, and glass bottles.

Betty Nola of Covington had polio as a child and took up watercolor 
initially because the equipment was easier to carry than oils and solvents.

She's exhibited her landscapes and seascapes in galleries in Virginia. 
An Art Beyond Boundaries show was her first gallery showing since moving 
to Kentucky 18 months ago. She's not in the current show, but expects to 
be in the next show in August.

Most shows in the gallery season will be reserved for artists with 
disabilities, but the open show may become an annual eye opener, Laing said.

Laing stresses that Art Beyond Boundaries is an art gallery.

"The people who show are established," she said. "They may not have 
shown their work before, but they're not students, they're not people 
who just started painting. ... This show gives them an opportunity to 
exhibit and market their art alongside fellow artists who are not 
disabled, and it gives the public a totally different view. It makes 
them stop and think."


excerpts article
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060523_vision_restored.html

"With her good eye, Elizabeth Goldring can distinguish between light and 
dark and see hand movement, but not individual fingers. She cannot 
recognize faces or read.

Goldring is an artist, a poet, and a senior fellow at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Her vision 
loss doesn't make any of these activities easier. She started losing her 
vision about 20 years ago. Today, after several surgeries, she has 
limited vision in her right eye, but is blind in the left.

Now Goldring and a team of eye doctors, fellow researchers, and students 
have produced a "seeing machine 
<http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=060523_vision_machine_02.jpg%E2%88%A9=Elizabeth+Goldring,+foreground,+looks+into+%27seeing+machine%27+to+take+a+virtual+tour+of+a+gallery+using+a+joystick.+Her+assistant,+Jackie+McConnell,+is+at+right.+Credit%3A+Donna+Coveney>" 
that allows the visually challenged to view the face of a friend, access 
the Internet, and "previsit" unfamiliar buildings"

"Although still in the early stages of development, there is potential 
the machine could deliver real-time images to its user. Goldring has 
already successfully experimented with hooking it up to a video camera. 
But packing the whole contraption into a wearable, portable device could 
be especially difficult."

"After miniaturizing the SLO and developing her own "visual 
language"—consisting of short words that incorporate graphics and 
symbols to convey meaning and make the image easier to see and read—the 
next step was to offer the experience to others who could benefit."

article

http://www.bransondailynews.com/story_print.php?storyID=1272
Wedekind is an anomaly in the world of professional potters.

Not because his bowls, pots and vases display the meticulous perfection 
of a professional, combined with an artist’s eye for beauty; and not 
because he works the potter’s wheel like a master.

No, Wedekind is unique in the field of pottery because he is blind — and 
he has no hands.

At the Welcome Home 2006 vendor village at Mansion America, Wedekind 
works his potter’s wheel, forming what will become a bowl.

He stops to sign a vase that a pair of tourists have purchased. He takes 
a short break behind the tent and smokes his pipe.

And he does it all with a swift, confident familiarity.

Wedekind, 57, is himself a veteran who suffered a devastating injury as 
a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam.

He was lucky to be alive, but the injury cost him his hands and eyes — 
as well as causing serious injuries to his head and left leg. He said he 
got into pottery at the urging of his grandmother, who was a ceramist.

“I told her, ‘Are you crazy, I can’t even dress myself,’” he said.

However, the seed was planted. He also said there was little else he 
could do at the time.

“When I came home four months after my injury, the VA just couldn’t come 
up with anything for me,” he said. “I couldn’t do the things blind men 
usually do; and I couldn’t do the things amputees usually can do. If I’d 
had this injury in Korea, I wouldn’t have survived, so I was a new thing 
for them.”

Wedekind began taking classes at Kansas State University in his home 
town of Manhattan, Kan.

In 1969, he had surgery, known as the Krukenburg amputation procedure, 
to separate the two bones in his left arm, which allowed him to grasp 
objects.

It worked well enough for him that he had the same procedure performed 
on the other arm in 1973.

He said opening his forearm requires the same muscles as lifting his thumb.

“It took me a while to learn, because nobody knew,” he said.

He said the procedure was necessary for him, and has been performed on 
other blind amputees, because a person needs to be able see in order to 
use prosthetics.

“With two prosthetics, you can’t feel anything,” he said. “I’d be 
breaking things; I’d hurt people.”

Wedekind spent four months in Vietnam. He said he doesn’t mind talking 
about the injury that so altered his life, but that there’s not much to 
talk about. He said he doesn’t know exactly what happened.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. “The Marines believe I encountered a 
booby trap, but that’s speculation.”

Wedekind lives in Westmoreland, Kan,. a suburb of Manhattan, Kan., along 
with his wife, Diana, of 17 years. Diana, also an artist, collaborates 
with her husband on painting and glazing all his pottery. They have 
seven children and seven grandchildren.

Wedekind said this is not his first trip to Branson.

“I came here in 1972 to Silver Dollar City,” he said. “It’s changed.”


article
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/5/prweb389780.htm

Local Artists Win International Competition, Will Transform the Kennedy 
Center

/Kurt Weston, Clovis Blackwell to exhibit at John F. Kennedy Center, 
Washington D.C./

Sacramento (PRWEB) May 25, 2006 -- In another flourish of ongoing 
progress, Alice Parente executive director of Very Special Arts 
California, is pleased to announce board member, artist Kurt Weston, 
Huntington Beach, and artist Clovis Blackwell, Thousand Oaks, as winners 
of the international contest “Transformations”. The jury, made of top 
tier art experts from around the nation, selected Weston and Blackwell 
from a pool of over 300 international artists. Winners will exhibit 
their work at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts, Washington D.C. 
from June 5-29th. As a further honor, Weston’s work was selected as the 
artwork for the exhibit’s publicity pieces. Weston, Blackwell and 
Parente will travel to Washington D.C. next week to attend a VIP 
reception and view the exhibition.

VSA arts national organization initiated its competition to communicate 
the influence of change, education, perception and disability. The 
competition helps VSA arts to “better communicate our story” said 
Parente “our artists communicate their passion, and in doing so they 
invite visitors to consider the transformations in their lives, and how 
art transforms”.

The distinguished jury panel included: Amy Horschak, educator in the 
Department of Education at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Stacey 
Schmidt, independent curator, most recently the associate curator of 
contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Ramon Terleckyj, vice 
president for artistic planning at the John F. Kennedy Center for the 
Performing Arts; and Jeannine Chartier, executive director of VSA arts 
of Rhode Island and artist.

With over 15 years as a legally blind photographer Weston, who uses 
traditional photographic techniques to produce powerfully moving and 
thought provoking images, proved the ideal artist to promote the 
exhibit. “I am truly passionate about my art and advocacy”, enthuses 
Weston, “this exhibit will raise the profile of VSA arts and has the 
potential to change visitor’s pre-conceived notions of blindness. This 
is exactly what I am about”. Weston has achieved great results through 
his work, and his advocacy for the visually impaired community. In 
September 2005 he coordinated and curated Shared Visions at the southern 
California College of Optometry. His work has also been featured at the 
Berkley Art Museum and San Francisco City Hall.

For more information on the exhibit and national tour, visit 
www.vsacalifornia.org <http://www.vsacalifornia.org>
VSA arts is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by 
Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to create a society where all people with 
and without disabilities learn through, participate in, and enjoy the 
arts. VSA arts provides educators, parents, and artists with resources 
and the tools to support arts programming in schools and communities. 
VSA arts showcases the accomplishments of artists with disabilities and 
promotes increased access to the arts for people with disabilities. Each 
year millions of people participate in arts programs through a 
nationwide network of affiliates and in more than 60 countries around 
the world. VSA arts is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for 
the performing arts.





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