[Nfb-history] Fw: [accessibleimage] The Blind Artist and the Volvo

[Robert Jaquiss]

Hello List:

     Below is a link to a New York Times article giving more information on 
what Volvo was doing with a blind artist.

Merry Christmas,


Robert

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lisa Yayla" <fnugg at online.no>
To: <accessibleimage at freelists.org>; 
<art_beyond_sight_learning_tools at nfbnet.org>; "Access to Art Museums" 
<artbeyondsightmuseums at nfbnet.org>; "Art Beyond Sight Advocacy" 
<art_beyond_sight_advocacy at nfbnet.org>; "Art Beyond Sight Educators List" 
<art_beyond_sight_educators at nfbnet.org>; "Art Beyond Sight Theory and 
Research" <art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 10:07 AM
Subject: [accessibleimage] The Blind Artist and the Volvo


> Hi,
>
> Excerpt from The New York Times article
>
> link
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/automobiles/13BLIND.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/automobiles/13BLIND.html?hpw
>
> Regards,
>
> Lisa
>
> "IN September, shortly before Esref Armagan, a Turkish artist, was 
> escorted into Volvo’s design studio in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he would 
> be the first person from outside the company invited to encounter the 2011 
> Volvo S60 
> <http://autos.nytimes.com/2009/Volvo/S60/288/3358/316957/researchOverview.aspx?inline=nyt-classifier>, 
> he said, “I promise not to look.”
>
> Then Mr. Armagan smiled — he is, after all, blind.
>
> The moment is captured in a new promotional video — posted on Volvo’s 
> Facebook 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
> page and on YouTube — documenting how the automaker commissioned a 
> painting of the S60 by Mr. Armagan, who is filmed running his hands along 
> the vehicle’s exterior before rendering sketches, and, finally, the 
> painting.
>
> Filmed in a documentary style, the five-minute video — done by the Euro 
> RSCG 4D advertising agency in Amsterdam and the Great Guns production 
> company in London — is a novel approach for a teaser campaign.
>
> Automakers previewing new or overhauled models often release photographs 
> of the cars obscured by shadows or draped in cloth. Here Volvo likewise 
> offers tantalizing close-up glimpses of the vehicle as the artist touches 
> it, but the video turns out to reveal less about the S60 than about Mr. 
> Armagan.
>
> “I didn’t start out to be an artist, I just wanted to learn about the 
> world around me that I was living in,” Mr. Armagan says in Turkish in the 
> subtitled video. “Feeling around with my fingers has completely erased my 
> blindness. It’s as if I see like anyone else.”
>
> The avuncular Mr. Armagan, who is 56 and wears Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, 
> was born blind and impoverished, according to a biography on his Web site. 
> The self-taught artist’s work has been exhibited in Turkey, the 
> Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
>
> .......
>
> “Esref is the blind person who has the largest set of perspective drawing 
> skills to come to light,” said John M. Kennedy, a psychology professor at 
> the University of Toronto at Scarborough, who has done research over three 
> decades on how the blind draw.
>
> Some blind artists have drawn from two-point perspective, capturing two 
> surfaces of an object, which in the case of a box means being able to draw 
> it at eye level while facing a corner. But Dr. Kennedy said Mr. Armagan 
> was unusual in his ability to draw from a three-point perspective, 
> capturing that same corner of a box, but from above or below."
>
>