[Artbeyondsightmuseums] Dale Chihuly glass and students, VSA , Laurie Rubin, Bramblitt

[Lisa Yayla]

Laurie Rubin paints with the colors of music
Mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin dreams in vivid color --- though she's been 
blind since birth.
Yellow? That's the scent of ripe lemons and the warm sun glinting off 
her cheeks as a child in Encino. White is the crunch of snow and the 
feel of frothy shaving cream oozing between her fingers. Silver is the 
cool silkiness of chrome.
And brown? That's the sound of B-flat. It reminds the singer of chocolate.
"I always joke that part of me can sense color from maybe having had a 
past life," Rubin says. "When people say silver or purple, I understand 
what they're saying."
Rubin's new memoir, "Do You Dream in Color? Insights From a Girl Without 
Sight," not only touches on her complex relationship with the color 
spectrum, it chronicles her against-all-odds rise from musical prodigy 
as a child in the San Fernando Valley to accomplished international 
opera singer 
</topic/arts-culture/genres/opera-%28genre%29-01011000248.topic>.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-laurie-rubin-20121106,0,7557350.story

APH Insights 2012, the annual international juried art competition for 
visually impaired artists that is sponsored by the American Printing 
House for the Blind, is having a public showcase for the artists' work 
at the Galt House today through Saturday.
The displays are during the 144th annual meeting of the trustees of the 
printing house organization. This is the 21st year for the competition, 
which features 82 works by artists from across the United States.
Participants range from pre-school children to senior citizens and 
include professional artists, as well as hobbyists and school art 
classes. Entries cover a wide range of subjects in a variety of media, 
including painting, drawing, sculpture and photography. For information 
about the show, visit www.aph.org 
<http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTIxMDExLjExMTI2ODMxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDEyMTAxMS4xMTEyNjgzMSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MTk3MTYzJmVtYWlsaWQ9c3NoYWZlckBjb3VyaWVyLWpvdXJuYWwuY29tJnVzZXJpZD1zc2hhZmVyQGNvdXJpZXItam91cm5hbC5jb20mZmw9JmV4dHJhPU11bHRpdmFyaWF0ZUlkPSYmJg==&&&111&&&http://www.aph.org/>.
APH InSights Art
http://www.aph.org/museum/insights.html
article
John Bramblitt, the blind Painter who "sees"
... Instead, Bramblitt is planning to return to UNT for graduate school. 
And he *had his first flying lesson this summer* as part of a long-term 
plan to use colored smoke to create abstract art in the air.
*"I'm obsessed with painting," he says. "In expressing myself, 
connecting with people, it's become the way I see the world."*
http://www.qualitativelife.com/cristalina/2011/03/07/john-bramblitt-the-blind-painter-who-sees/

article
Meet Main Line Art Teacher Patty Papatheodore
Meet this non-traditional teacher from the Main Line Art Center Patty 
Papatheodore
http://haverford.patch.com/articles/meet-main-line-art-teacher-patty-papatheodore

blog
A lesson in Realistic/Abstract Portraiture for a blind student
http://arteducationdaily.blogspot.no/2011/03/lesson-in-realisticabstract-portraiture.html
article
Exhibit at Blue Star explores light, visual perceptions

.... Then, six or seven years ago, Cunningham-Little began to develop 
her own vision problems.
"That's what you see with cataracts; you see haloes of light where 
nothing is defined," says Cunningham-Little, pointing to a work in 
"Breathing Light" called "Cataracts."
It's a blue wash of rectangular light, with an elongated white-hot slot 
in the center, captured, almost like a light painting, inside a white 
wooden box that acts as a frame.
"I view these works as sort of painterly," she says.
But creating them is more technically demanding than applying paint to a 
canvas. Cunningham-Little describes a time-consuming, labor-intensive, 
close-work process involving meticulously cutting layers and layers of 
diffracting and colored film, which will be backlit by different shades 
of neon inside the 10-inch-deep box.
Another work, titled "Slit" --- inspired by medications doctors 
prescribed to improve her vision --- brings to mind a glowing 
pharmaceutical capsule, while "Corona," with its hot red center and 
rings of lavender, orange and gold, is like staring into the sun. Not 
surprisingly, it comes from real life, too, energized by the artist's 
volunteer work on archaeological digs in West Texas, where "that sun is 
really something."
All of these trippy, multidimensional works --- and especially "Blue Dot 
for Meditation" --- seem to breathe and pulse and shape-shift before our 
eyes. Conveniently, wooden benches have been placed in the darkened Blue 
Star gallery for maximum enjoyment. It's a very participatory art 
exhibition.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/visual_arts/article/Exhibit-at-Blue-Star-explores-light-visual-1316506.php
news video and article

Blind Kids Can Paint with New Invention

A blind artist in Louisiana is using a special technique to help teach 
blind children to paint.
Ricky Trione lost his sight 11 years ago, but he didn't let that stop 
him from painting.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2011/April/Blind-Kids-Can-Paint-with-New-Invention-/

His glass menagerie
... In 1976, a car accident on the outskirts of London left him blind in 
his left eye, with permanent damage to his left foot and ankle. Glass 
blowers need both eyes for depth perception. Three years later, a 
body-surfing accident dislocated his shoulder, making it even harder to 
deliver what he envisioned.
He turned in a new direction: toward the age-old system of glass blowing 
with a team. As the artist in charge, he became a choreographer, not 
dancer, an architect, not builder.
"Once I stepped back,'' he has said repeatedly, "I liked the view.''
At this point, his career took off. Henry Geldzahler, then curator at 
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, acquired three of his "Navajo 
Blanket Cylinders'' for the museum. The patterning of Navajo trade 
blankets inspired fat orbs with a lovely and loose patterning....
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/04/03/mfa_exhibit_finally_gives_colorful_artist_dale_chihuly_his_moment/?page=2
article news video
Visually impaired students get unique art experience

"It really grabs you and with so much color", says glass artist Dale 
Chihuly.

He is renown for his unique take on blown glass. Dale Chihuly's hot shop 
Seattle studio team churns out some of the most whimsical and inspiring 
glass shapes in the world.

"If you feel the surface you will feel it is like a pineapple," Chihuly 
tells a groups of students.

On this day, the artist is in Boston helping a group of blind and very 
low vision students see his work.

"Well I have never done anything like that before," says Chihuly.

It isn't very often that anyone might be offered the chance to feel what 
a piece of fine art looks like.

"Incredible, incredible. Like nothing you ever felt before? Nothing no 
nothing," says student Renzo Rios-Nino.

Chihuly's through the looking glass is now open at the Museum of Fine 
Arts in Boston. He himself has a vision problem, having lost an eye in 
car accident several years ago. It has not slowed him, an inspiration to 
the kids.
http://www.necn.com/04/06/11/Visually-impaired-students-get-unique-ar/landing_arts.html?blockID=498784&feedID=4214

/No Limits/ between artists and the community
For 33 years, the nonprofit VSA arts of Georgia 
<http://vsaartsga.org/index/about_us> has focused on making art 
accessible to Georgians who are disabled and/or living with low incomes. 
"We facilitate the donation of more than $2 million dollars worth of 
ticket stock from 130 venue partners to the constituents of more than 
400 agency partners serving more than 100,000 people per year," says 
Executive Director Elizabeth Labbe-Webb.

http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2011/04/02/no-limits-between-artists-and-the-community