[Artbeyondsightmuseums] artist articles

[Lisa Yayla]

excerpt blog
There are many areas of the art world where lack of sight or limited 
vision quite obviously need not be a great impediment to development and 
success. Andrea Bocelli, the famous and popular tenor whose voice is 
beloved around the world, completely lost his sight at age twelve after 
an accident during a soccer game. Twenty year old Nobuyuki Tsujii, the 
Japanese pianist whose playing captured hearts and delighted ears at an 
international piano competition this year, has been blind since birth. 
As in the wider world, there are many aids that can be used to get 
around potential problems, and no one has difficulty understanding how a 
blind person can be a talented musician, for example.
It is perhaps more surprising to discover the relationship between 
sculpture and the visually impaired – after all, much of our ordinary 
experience of a sculpture is visual, both in the making and in 
appreciating it afterwards. Yet a few moments’ thought would be 
sufficient for one to realize that there is a very natural connection 
there – a sculpture has an obvious tactile as well as visual element. 
Visually impaired sculptor Didier Roule 
<http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/accent/226231.php> suggested that not 
focusing on the visual aspect of sculpture actually gives him an 
advantage, because it allows him to be more attentive to other details, 
to feel things through the materials that others might not notice. New 
York’s MoMA usually arranges tours for the visually impaired on 
Tuesdays, and their sculpture garden 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/nyregion/22bigcity.html?ex=1361336400&en=c7af9ea50537b228&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss> 
of course provides an unusual but appropriate place to appreciate art – 
with one’s fingertips. The Louvre actually has a special area designed 
for appreciation by the visually impaired – the Tactile Gallery 
<http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/accent/226231.php>, a favorite with all 
visitors and ages.
http://agoraartgalleryblog.com/visual-art-and-the-visually-impaired/



Please touch: Louvre opens room for blind and visually impaired

PARIS — Signs ask visitors to keep their hands off the art in the Louvre 
Museum. But one special sculpture gallery invites art lovers to indulge.
The Louvre's Tactile Gallery, targeted to the blind and visually 
impaired, is the only space in the museum where visitors can touch the 
sculptures, with no guards or alarms to stop them. Its latest exhibit is 
a crowd-pleaser: a menagerie of sculpted lions, snakes, horses and eagles.
The 15 bronze, plaster and terra-cotta animals are reproductions of 
famous works found elsewhere in the Louvre. Called "Animals, Symbols of 
Power," the exhibit focuses on animals that were used by kings, emperors 
and pharaohs throughout history to symbolize the greatness of their 
reigns..."
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/accent/226231.php

excerpt NY Times article

The Vision to Depict It Their Way

BY the time the effects of Susan Kitazawa’s glaucoma crossed into legal 
blindness in February, they had already cost her a nursing career and 
countless freedoms. But they had also sparked a seize-the-day resolve in 
her and revived a long-buried, if now unlikely, ambition: to make visual 
art.

She had enrolled in a life drawing class near her home here but was 
frustrated that it took a narrower view of drawing, and of vision, than 
she was seeking.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/arts/design/29blind.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1259578803-bCFCG6Scq 
eotphWSxk6mA


slide show NY Times
Art by the Blind
Now in its 20th year, "Insights" is the country's pre-eminent selected 
exhibition of paintings, photographs and mixed-media pieces by legally 
blind artists.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/29/arts/20091129-blind_index.html




http://creativehandicap.free.fr/

Giving you something to see, to touch, to listen to, to taste, to feel, to
understand… Isn’t that the ultimate ambition of Art: offering in a 
communion of
senses?
For the last fifteen years, Sylvie Sanchez, sculptor and founder of the
association Créative Handicap, has devoted her talent to the development of
cultural projects involving people who, despite their handicap, wish to 
express
themselves and share their experience with others.
Through this association, her aim has been to unite artists, handicapped and
valid and to encourage them to exchange their ideas. All artists’ potential
deserves to be known and recognised as such.
Mastering different artistic disciplines and learning jointly elaborated 
training
tools make it possible for them altogether to weave the bonds in order 
that each
one can rebuild one’s self and build together.
A few words about the members (you will be able to discover their works on
the site of Creative Handicap: http://creativehandicap.free.fr ).

http://creativehandicap.free.fr/activites_ch/activites_english.pdf