Art « DeafROC

Entries categorized as ‘Art’

Exploration of Science Fiction Exhibit, September 19th

September 12, 2008 · No Comments

Hi friends, colleagues, and family,

I just want to inform you the upcoming exhibit of my visual art work titled “Exploration of Science Fiction”, made possible by the Strategic Opportunity Stipends grant. It will be displayed from Sept. 2nd to Sept. 29th this year. The opening will be on Sept. 19th at 5 pm. I also will perform my ASL poetry along my own composed electronic music, focusing on science fiction-related issues (virtual reality, discovery of extraterrestrials, technological advancements, and etc.) in the gallery. Come join the fun. Spread the word to anyone as much as you can.

Peace,
Eddie Swayze

Categories: Art · Events · RIT/NTID

NTID Plans Auction of Art by Deaf Artists

April 11, 2008 · No Comments

ARTWORKS BY DEAF ARTISTS AVAILABLE AT LIVE AUCTION

Dozens of photographs and original artwork done by distinguished artists locally and across the country will be up for bid during the “Art by Deaf Artists” auction at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

The auction is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 25 in the Dyer Arts Center, in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Building at NTID. Proceeds will benefit the NTID Endowed Scholarship in Visual Arts Disciplines.

A preview reception is scheduled from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Artists include Jackie Schertz, Chuck Baird, Paula Grcevic, Rita Straubhaar, Guy Wonder and others.

The event will be hosted by Alan Hurwitz, CEO of NTID and Vice President and Dean of Rochester Institute of Technology for NTID, and his wife, Vicki.

The event will be interpreted.

Tickets are $25, or $40 per couple. The price may be applied towards successful bids.

Registration deadline is Wednesday, April 23, 2008. Contact Jeannette Vargas at (585) 475-6836 V/TTY or jvargas@ntid.rit.edu.

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Categories: Art · Events · RIT/NTID

April 17th Arts Event to be Interpreted

March 21, 2008 · No Comments

Arts & Cultural Council Presents
Community Collaborations: Across Borders Rochester

Successful community collaborations can have enormous benefits to the individuals and organizations involved, and to the community as a whole. But for a collaboration to be successful you have to have the right partners and the right project—and a commitment to the success of the collaboration as a whole.

Across Borders Rochester, a model collaborative effort developed by Memorial Art Gallery and Nazareth College Arts Center to showcase the diversity of Latin American and Latino arts and culture, has all these elements. It was conceived as a way to tie together related events and exhibitions at Nazareth College Arts Center and at the Memorial Art Gallery, but quickly grew to a year-long, community-wide promotional effort, including over 35 events and exhibits at participating organizations across the community, including Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, George Eastman House, Rochester Museum & Science Center, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.

The Arts & Cultural Council is pleased to have Debora McDell-Hernandez, Memorial Art Gallery’s Coordinator of Community Programs and Outreach; and Rachel DeGuzman, Nazareth College Arts Center’s Marketing and Publicity Manager, speaking about the future of Across Borders, and about other models for community collaborations at our April Networking Event. They will also talk about the next phase of Across Borders which will showcase arts and culture from the eastern hemisphere.

Community Collaborations: Across Borders Rochester
Thursday, April 17, 2008
5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester
277 N. Goodman Street
Rochester, New York 14607
RSVP to Leah Buttery: 585.473.4000, extension 222; lbuttery@artsrochester.org

ASL interpreting services provided. Wine and cheese will be served.

This event is part of the Arts & Cultural Council’s Cultural Diversity Initiative and was planned with considerable input and participation from the Arts & Cultural Council’s Cultural Diversity Advisory Committee.

Categories: Art · Events

High Falls Film Fest Event to be Interpreted

March 10, 2008 · 2 Comments

An Evening with Rochester High Falls International Film Festival

Festival season is fast approaching—film festival season, that is! The 2008 Rochester High Falls International Film Festival will take place April 30 – May 5, 2008. Join us on Wednesday, March 12 for an evening with the festival’s Executive Director, Rosie Taravella.

Ms. Taravella will talk about the film festival’s past, present and future; and will share a DVD retrospective of past festivals. In honor of Women’s History Month, Ms. Taravella will talk about women in entertainment, sharing stories of her own experience in the business. Wine and cheese will be served.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Arts & Cultural Council – 277 N. Goodman St., Rochester

Free for Arts Council members; $5 for others

*** ASL interpreting services will be provided ***

RSVP (585) 473-4000

For more information about this and other networking events, or to RSVP, contact Christy Post at 473-4000, extension 206 or via email at cpost@artsrochester.org.

Categories: Art · Events

Guy Wonder Returns to Rochester as RSD Artist in Residence

March 3, 2008 · No Comments

Memorial Art Gallery will host a special event with Mr. Wonder on March 15th.

Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD) welcomes renowned artist Guy Wonder to the school’s Deaf Artist in Residence Program, February 28-March 13, 2008.

While in Rochester, Mr. Wonder will share his talent, skills and knowledge with RSD students in their art, wood shop, and special topics classes. He will be working with RSD preschool through 12th grade students and lead them through a Deaf View/Image Art, or De’VIA*, project, resulting in an original artwork to be placed on permanent display at RSD.

Following his artist residency at RSD, on Saturday March 15, at 1:00 p.m., Mr. Wonder will lead an American Sign Language (ASL) storytelling program at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG), on University Ave., in Rochester.

The program will be based on selected artworks from the MAG collection that lend themselves well to ASL storytelling. Free and open to the public, this special event will be voice interpreted. Families are encouraged to attend, particularly those with deaf and hard of hearing children and adults, as well as families with hearing children and one or more parent who is deaf or hard of hearing.

About Guy Wonder

Guy Wonder says that he is a man under the influence of life. As an artist he is very aware of the shape, form and color of each day and what it has to offer. This he says has ultimately shaped and colored his work.

A 3rd generation Deaf man, Guy Wonder was raised in a Deaf family and attended a residential school for the Deaf in Vancouver, Washington. As an adult, he was in the very first class of deaf college students to study at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, established at Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY, in 1968.

Over the years Mr. Wonder has also been associated with Gallaudet University, where he was commissioned to create a sculpture for The Deaf Way, an international conference held at the university in 1989. He also designed stage sets for the California Sign Rise Theatre.

Mr. Wonder, who resides in Cathedral City, Calif., serves as a board member for Deaf Media and Deaf Counseling, Advocacy and Referral Agency (DCARA). He was the Artistic Director for Visual Arts of “Celebration: Deaf Artist and Performers” in 1991 and 1994. He lectured and had led tours at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York and has taught children and adults at the Oakland (Calif.) Museum Project.

He has built rustic furniture, designed major window displays and home furnishings displays for Bloomingdale’s, renovated homes in the San Francisco Bay Area and designed gardens. Most recently, he has taught workshops and led gallery tours at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

The DVD program Guy Wonder: stories & artwork (2003) by John Lee Clark and Raymond Luczak presents Mr. Wonder in an autobiographical context. Through funny and poignant stories, Mr. Wonder shares his experiences about growing up in a Deaf family, becoming an artist and making a name for himself. A tour of his artwork is presented also.

* De’VIA represents the persona and perceptions of an individual based on their experiences as some one who is Deaf and an artist. As an artistic style, De’VIA uses formal art elements with the intention of expressing innate cultural or physical Deaf experiences. These experiences may include unique Deaf metaphors, Deaf perspectives and Deaf insight in relationship with the environment (both the natural world and Deaf cultural environment), spiritual and everyday life. (Source: www.DeafArt.org)

Source: RSD website

Categories: Art · RSD

Do We Care About Arts Accessibility?

February 18, 2008 · 2 Comments

By Tom Willard

I am very concerned about the lack of accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the local arts and cultural community, and I am interested in forming a committee of like-minded people to investigate this situation and propose some solutions.

Recently, I searched for keywords such as “deaf” and “ASL” and “interpreted” on the websites of Rochester’s major galleries, museums and other cultural institutions. The results were pretty bleak. “Interpreted upon request” was sometimes seen, but on most websites deaf people were not mentioned at all.

It is a far cry from when we were running Deaf Artists of America (1985-95) and educating the Rochester community about the needs of its deaf and hard-of-hearing citizens. It has gotten so bad that the Arts & Cultural Council virtually forgot about deaf people when planning this week’s Perspectives on Accessibility conference.

It is obvious that despite Rochester’s reputation as a deaf mecca, we are being ignored by the arts and cultural community. When I look at the D&C’s Weekend section or City Newspaper, the list of events seems like “for hearing people only.” At one time, we had Lights On! Deaf Theatre, but now our choices are limited to what NTID offers, because virtually none of the local groups do anything to reach out to the deaf audience. I’ve read of theaters in other cities that offer open captioning and it makes me wonder why none of Rochester’s theaters can do the same thing.

So I’d like to get a group of people together to discuss this matter. First, we have to decide if we accept this status quo. Perhaps we have no interest in becoming involved in local theater and arts events. Perhaps we view them as “hearing things” and prefer to stay within our own deaf world. If so, that would be good to know before making further efforts. If not, the question becomes, What do we do about it? I have some ideas, but I’d like to know what others think.

When I drove past the George Eastman House recently with a deaf friend who likes photography, I asked her if she had ever been there. She said no. It did not surprise me, as we deaf people do not get a welcome vibe from these institutions. Instead of the reactive approach of being “willing to provide interpreters” if asked well in advance, I wish they would be proactive and provide accessibility as a matter of course, and reach out to the local deaf community with flyers in places where we gather and postings on DeafROC.com and emails to leaders of various organizations and groups.

They don’t do this because they don’t know how, and they don’t know how because they don’t bring in any deaf staff or volunteers to educate them and offer them access to our community. So again, the question becomes, do we want to do anything about it? One could view it as a form of ongoing and entrenched discrimination, but perhaps we have grown to accept the situation and don’t care anymore.

What do you think? Feel free to leave comments, and if you’d like to be a part of this proposed committee, please send an email by clicking HERE.

Categories: Advocacy · Art

NTID/RIT Deaf-Themed Literary Contest

January 14, 2008 · No Comments

NTID/RIT is seeking literary art works about the Deaf experience. Top winners and honorable mentions will have their works published in an NTID/RIT Literary Arts website.

Categories include ASL Literature and Deaf Literature:

– ASL Literature – works performed in American Sign Language and about the Deaf experience (Narratives, poetry, Folklore: abc/123 stories, form-driven stories, etc.)

– Deaf Literature – works written in English and about the Deaf experience (Plays, fictional short stories, English poetry, and non-fictional memoir/narratives.)

Jurors will review submissions based on the following criteria – works must:

– reflect the Deaf experience
– be original and exceptional
– not have been published before 2006
– be finished / complete works
– be submitted by March 1, 2008

DEADLINE / DUE DATE: Must be submitted on-line or postmarked by March 1, 2008

No more than a total of two works can be submitted regardless of category(s). Winners will announced May 1, 2008 and awarded cash prizes (1st place - $400, 2nd place $200)

Go to http://www.rit.edu/litcontest for application form and more details. Submit application form and work(s) on-line or mail to:

Deaf Themed Literary Contest
c/o NTID’s Department of Cultural and Creative Studies
Rochester Institute of Technology
52 Lomb Memorial Dr.
Rochester, NY 14623-0887

– From Joan Naturale at RIT Library

Categories: Art · RIT/NTID

Deaf Art Items for Sale on eBay

October 4, 2007 · No Comments

Remember Deaf Artists of America? DAA was active in Rochester from 1987 to 1995 and had an art gallery in downtown Rochester for four years (1988-92). When DAA became inactive, several items were donated to other nonprofit organizations, including the Rochester School for the Deaf. But some items have been in storage all these years.

It is time to find new homes for these items. Two dozen artworks, magazines and collectibles are now available on eBay. Proceeds will be used to provide new programs and services to the Rochester deaf and hard-of-hearing community. (Stay tuned for more information.)

The current auctions end this weekend, so don’t delay. If you want to see what is available, please click HERE.

More items will be put up in the near future and the same link should work when the new items are listed.

Categories: Art

A Shameless Plug for My NTID Show

October 3, 2007 · 3 Comments

I don’t plan to use this blog to talk about my own stuff. Really. But how often does someone get to have an exhibit at NTID? I was honored to be asked to share my exhibit, The Wondering Years, in the Dyer Arts Center and pleased to be told by gallery director Bob Baker that the exhibit has been extended through Saturday. (It was scheduled to close last week.)

The Wondering Years is a collection of photographs mostly dating from the late 1960s to late 1980s showing my slow progression from a hearing 8-year-old to a deaf 22-year-old. In recent years I had a chance to look through my old photographs and I realized that the pictures I took, and the pictures people took of me, offered visual indications of what it was like to slowly lose my hearing.

I was prompted to assemble this exhibit last Fall when Miami Dade College asked me to have a one-man show. I was fortunate to have the help of Diane Plassey Gutierrez, who owns a business making high-quality digital prints for artists.

It is rare to see deafness in photographs, aside from stereotypical blurry sign language movements. But I also tried to place my gradual hearing loss in a historical context by including photos of the things around me, such as when I photographed Presidents Carter and Reagan when they visited Rochester. It was not my intent but the photos were historically accurate when they showed Carter as a little man lost in the crowd and Reagan as strong and bold in the spotlight.

I hope you get a chance to see the show before it closes Saturday, and there are three other exhibits you can also see:

Sign Truth to Power, photojournalism exhibit by Stacy Marie Lawrence, through October 27.

A Retrospective of the work of Lee Ivey, through October 27

Ozark Flux: A Fusion of Labor From a Midwestern Wood Kiln, through October 8. Closing Reception on Monday, October 8.

To learn more about the Joseph C. and Helen F. Dyer Arts Center at NTID, visit http://www.ntid.rit.edu/dyerarts/

– By Tom Willard