| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
| ...seeing through deaf eyes... |
| In honor of the 135th anniversary of its founding, Lexington School for the Deaf proudly sponsors this exhibit, "Seeing Through Deaf Eyes", to share the talents and accomplishments of fourteen artists from the Deaf community: Chuck Baird, Morris Broderson, Susan Dupor, Paula Grcevic, Oleg Golovushkin, Paul Johnston,Mary Kielbus, Tony Landon McGregor, Betty Miller, Rita Straubhaar, Ann Silver, Orkid Sassouni, Charles Wildbank, and Alex Wilhite. These artists work in a range of artistic media and their work reflects a broad spectrum of contemporary approaches and themes. They have achieved recognition and professional stature while affirming their deafness as a powerful source of their visual Some of the work in this exhibit addresses themes and issues of Deaf life explicitly while some do not. Our intention is to show the unity, diversity, and variety of our experience. There is a unique art arising from Deaf culture: it is called Deaf View/Image Art, or De'VIA. This art "uses formal art elements with the intention of expressing innate cultural or physical deaf experiences." These experiences may include "deaf metaphors, deaf perspectives, and deaf insight in relation with the environment." De'VIA art began to take root in the United States in the late 1960's as a result of the breakthroughs of the Civil Rights movement when Deaf people began to reject the shame of the disability construct and reclaimed their cultural pride and heritage. De'VIA work explores the history and oppression of Deaf people, the beauty and artistry of sign language and the joys it inspires, the frustration of communication barriers, and the anger at the stigmatizing of deafness by educational, medical, and audiology establishments. Susan Dupor and Chuck Baird explore the psychology of living in two disparate worlds. Susan Dupor's paintings express the powerlessness that some Deaf children experience at the hands of their hearing, non-signing families as well as the educational and medical establishments. Drawing his inspiration from a powerful dream, Chuck Baird paints his lifelong struggle to fuse the dichotomies of the hearing and Deaf worlds into a cohesive identity. Photographers Orkid Sassouni and Mary Kielbus are keen observers of Deaf life. Ms. Sassouni's photographs document the beauty and natural expressiveness of sign language during social gatherings. She finds a special relationship to her subjects by documenting thier "pride, their energy, their most important tools in communication, their thoughts and how they define or see themselves in any situation." Mary Kielbus' photographs are spontaneous yet astute portraits of people in the Deaf community. She captures their humanity. A haunting and melancholy sense of time informs the work of Oleg Golovushkin; the photographs of his native St. Petersburg show the Russian city's grandeur, history, and wealth of architectural detail. The richly textured wood-burnt gourds of Tony Landon McGregor express his love and deep knowledge of two cultures: the Deaf culture and the Southwest Indian cultures. On his gourds, he combines Native American emblems with American Sign Language symbols and handshapes into a unique Southwestern De'VIA art. Some artists in this exhibit use the language of abstraction. Alex Wilhite overlays and surrounds radiant color-fields with hard-edged geometric architetural elements to create a visual music. Paul Johnston's semi-abstract watercolors of whimsical, dancing cityscapes have a lyrical line and rythmn. He also paints the beauty of hand gestures, likening them to visual poetry. CONTINUED TO NEXT PAGE: CLICK HERE Home |