[Artbeyondsightmuseums] Art Beyond Sight Month

[Lisa Yayla]

Forwarding from Art Beyond Sight

The full alert can be found at the following address
http://www.artbeyondsight.org/change/aw-emailalerts.shtml


THE EIGHTH ANNUAL ART BEYOND SIGHT AWARENESS MONTH

On Exhibit
Hove Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton, England
Touching Art Touching You: Blind Art Permanent Collection

Touching Art Touching You breaks traditional barriers by actively encouraging visitors to experience art through touch and other senses. The exhibition is designed to challenge the notion that sight is essential for creating and enjoying exceptional art, and includes paintings, sculptures and installations from the Permanent Collection of BlindArt. Visitors to the exhibition raved about the show, calling it "mind bending" and telling reviewers that "touching the work added another dimension to the usual event of looking at art."
BlindArt is dedicated to making the visual arts accessible to visitors with sight loss. The nonprofit organization promotes contemporary works by visually impaired and sighted artists by showcasing them side-by-side, challenging the public to tell the difference. All works in this exhibition are made accessible to a diverse audience through touch, audio description, and large-print and Braille labels.

For more information on the Museum, Gallery, and Collection, visit
http://www.blindart.net/permanent-collection

Written by Drew Smith

News Reel
Going Blind
Joe Lovett, Director

Joseph Lovett founded Lovett Productions in 1989 after ten years as a producer at ABC News 20/20. Concentrating on health and social issues, the company has produced more than 30 hours of prime time television specials in the past 19 years. Individuals who are visually impaired are featured in Going Blind, making it a unique documentary film that increases public awareness of sight loss and low vision issues that seriously affect 37 million people worldwide. The documentary film director is one of those 37 million  he has glaucoma, and over time, Lovett has been confronted with the challenge of increasingly impaired vision. His loss of sight prompted him to create Going Blind, and he began to talk with people who have also experienced visual impairment in a wide variety of ways. The personal significance of the topic for Lovett marks a transition for him as a director. "This is the first film where the issue was my own. You always want to be honest in your reporting, but with myself as a subject, I was particularly conscious of my tone," he says.

In making the documentary, Going Blind, Lovett interweaves his personal story with those of others he meets along the way  some, strangers he encountered on the street. In the process documenting the lives of his subjects, the director found that the people he talked to had a deep affect on him personally.  In particular, Lovett noted that "meeting Jessica Jones right at the beginning of the project was life changing. The way she deals with life so fully and her perspective on things really helped lower my anxieties. Her comment that 'You learn to use what you have' was a big 'Aha!' moment for me."

All of the individuals in Going Blind have a starkly different take and message on the challenges of vision loss from that of the others. What is Lovett 's message? To follow the advice of Steve Baskis and understand that "sight loss is a challenge that can be met with the right training and technology."

Going Blind will open in New York City at the Quad Cinema (13th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) on October 8th and will run through World Sight Day on October 14. For more information or to order the film, visit http://goingblindmovie.com/synopsis/index.html.

Interview by Drew Smith


OUR NEXT ISSUE WILL INCLUDE INFORMATION ON PROJECT ACCESS: A NATIONAL DATABASE OF ACCESSIBLE ARTS INSTITUTIONS.

-Scanned by Exchange Hosted Services-