Visual art made accessible, part 1

I’ve written here before about people trying to make visual art accessible to those of us who can’t see. I know they have good intentions, but I think they try too hard. It’s called visual art for a reason: you need your eyes to take it in.

Every piece of art tells some sort of story, however, and when you think about it, the creation of every piece of art is a story in itself. Rather than jump through hoops to let people who are blind touch visual art or use our other senses to take it in, how about simply telling the story of how the work was created? People who are blind can appreciate a good story, and those with vision will benefit from learning the backstory as well.

This past month two visual artists I know sent me wonderful stories about their work. I’ll tell you about one of them today, and introduce you to the other one in my next blog post.

Steve Wierzbowski is an architect who lives in our apartment building in Chicago. When he’s not designing buildings, he enjoys bike-riding along Lake Michigan and stopping here and there to draw a sketch. This past year Steve teamed up with a couple other artists — one works in video, and the other is a musician — and the three of them collaborated on an entertaining video about Steve, his bicycle, and the creation of two drawings.

You can see and/or hear Steve tell the stories behind his sketches in the “Two Sketches” YouTube video below. Whether you can see or not, you’ll learn a lot from “Two Sketches,” I promise.


 

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