Nothing Peripheral: A Sight Impaired Artist

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Its March now, the frigid artic ice flows that choked the river are mostly melted under the stronger sun.

2014 was a rollercoaster. I traveled and was fortunate enough to be with warm, good people and had two exhibitions in widely distant parts of the world. In May my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. My parents and I waited for further tests. They would come back when I was due to have my opening in Guanajuato Mexico, in a group exhibit there at the Foro Cultural 81. I wanted to cancel the trip, but dad insisited I go. He argued with me, he wouldnt let me miss this opening, despite my sadness and wanting to be near my folks. ”Go ! Go! What, are you kidding? “ I hear his words raisng in tone, even now.

Nori Mizukami went with me, managing to carry his heavy camera gear through airport security, despite every roadblock fate could fling at him, dont ask me how he does it. Nori stayed with my friend Darius and myself at Darius'' home near the Foro. He filmed a lot, made lots of friends, and went dancing, after Darius had stopped being amusing and fallen asleep after drinking a good part of the four bottles of champagne he had bought for my opening celebration. Nori told us stories about the college club scene, which seemed beyond me mainly. The trip was good really, but I was barely hanging on. The only light painting I did, was just to kill time, my heart wasn't there. I was a wreck with worry. Darius dragged me around town, trying to find a pharmacy that sold Laetrile to smuggle across the border, because its illegal as a cancer treatment here.

Remembering Stephen

One of Seeing With Photography Collective’s original and founding artists died recently. Stephen Dominguez hadnt been in good health but I was still shocked to learn of his death at an early age. Stephen was a gentle, thoughtful and caring person, whose character can be understood in the indelable photographs hes left us. Awhile back i posted here some of my thoughts about Stephen, in a post called Two Artists. Please take a pause to briefly encounter him again,and maybe my words can enrich your understanding of his artistic creations etched into negatives.http://nothingperipheralasightimpairedartist.blogspot.com/2011/05/two-artists.html

Saturday, May 10, 2014

The Ruby Bird Portfolio

Sonia Soberats is one of the subjects of Frank Amann's documentary film he's currenlty filming- SHOOTING IN THE DARK.
Sonia invited me, as well as Victorine Floyd Fludd and Hashim Kirkland to join her in shooting some of her light paintings she has planned. It's a series thats autobiographical in nature, and illuminates different memories and points in her life.
We spent a day recently in Brooklyn's Ruby Bird studio workimg on Sonia's ideas, while Frank's very nice film crew expertly scurried round and round us, moving things and adjusting all sorts of unseen aparatus.
Sonia asked me to bring in my easel, brushes and some art work for one of her light paintings, which shows me making a painting of Vicki and Hashim while Sonia sits by admiring the scene around her.
Here's the "Ruby Bird Portfolio". These are light paintings of the work that wasn't put on the walls of the studio set, but remained in my portfolio because they needed strong gaffer tape to adhere to the brick wall, and that would have ruined the delicate paper.
These are light paintings of charcoal drawings. They're not representational often, and some use the slivers, and dimly looming globes of other worldly moons that hover above striped, folded fabric surreally. Who sees the other side, the far side of the moon? Even the most sharply sighted person can't ever see those bright craters and ancient lava beds - a symbol of blindness - a symbol of...nothingness.
Another drawing depicts an x-ray of a Caravaggio painting. X rays are used by art restorers to see beneath the surface, to the underlying, rough structure of a painting's earliest stages.
The re imagaining forces the charcoal drawing into existence again after thiirty years. I dont think I'd have made this series if I hadn't gone to the studio that day, i try to be mindful of opprotunities to make images. I'm not concerned about the purity of any media and in fact its exciting to blend photography and traditional drawing.

Monday, May 5, 2014

"Light Mind" recieces Academy Award nomination!

Jie Yi was just bursting with excitement when she told me the utterly fantastic news...her documentary film "Light Mind" made it past the semi finalists, and is an officially nominated film for none other than the Academy awards! That's the Academy awards. I mean...really! I am so proud of her. The gold, silver and bronze prizes for the Student film award will be awarded June 7.
I wish I could be in NYC to be there with her then, but I'll be in Guanajuato Mexico for the opening of my exhibit there at the Foro Cultural 81. Things are positive lately.
I've taken a break from writing now and have to focus on photography... the new results are in the pervious post.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Untitled Bas -relief Sculpture #3

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Hold the Keys

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Connie and Mike, March 25 2014

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

In Memory of Ben Paige

“Looking at Death”, Benjamin Paige with SWPC members, 2003

Yesterday I learned Ben Paige had passed away after a long illness.

Ben was with the Seeing With Photography Collective for many years. He was a determined photographer who was an inspiration. Ben created many memorable and wonderful images, despite his total blindness. Ben sometimes showed up tired -but full of ideas and enough energy to work, even though earlier in the day, he had to undergo kidney dialysis. You can experience some of Ben's work here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeingwithphotography/sets/72157613359234342/

Read Ben's own words as he relates his experiences with our art group. I interviewed Ben in 2006. "Italics " are my own words.

Pre Digital

At the photography group I belong to, we've been getting rid of excess, while organizing and packing essential props away. An upcoming building renovation requires us to move our location temporarily.

Mark Andres and I spent some time looking through boxes of prints, our old view- camera work. He mentioned he wants us to put together a portfolio of images and writing to bring to various photography book publishers. Mark flipped through the silver prints quickly, and we remembered the incidents, people and events surrounding their creation. The newer people in the group sat around listening to our stories and recollections of SWPC artists, many no longer with us.

So, in that kind of nostalgic mood, I've been browsing through some of my own early work too – all pre -digital, 35mm negative scans. Here are a few. Excuse the dust. All made from about 2003 to 2006.

Whats new?

Glad to be back online after a very long absence due to technical difficulites and replaced wiring. My friend Darius, who has been very busy opening his new " Foro Cultural 81", in Guanajuato Mexico, will be exhibiting some of my work there in June of this year. Take a look at this cultural gem by going HERE . http://forocultural81.com/

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Sunstone Series

A Sunstone is a cut crystal of calcite, used for sea navigation by ancient peoples. When the sun was obscured by thick clouds and accurate direction needed to steer by, a sunstone crystal was held up to the sky. In it's facets, the navigator could discern circles of radiance, lines of polarized light, which cut through the dense overcast, and unmasked the hidden sun behind, allowing an accurate reading of direction for sailing.

The photographs in this ongoing series are like personal landmarks or beacons of navigation, each now mostly obscured by vision loss, and each of these recent photographs contain another image - points of visual imagery re- imagained, and brought into a new, immediate context.

Filming with Nori

Nori Mizukami continues filming his documentery, and yesterday he spent time with me, both of us got to work. I made a number of light paintings which may be used in Nori's film. I suggesttde a close up of an eye, and also, I thought that using a laser pointer would be interesting too, because Nori's film, in part deals with,his own unfortunate experience getting Lasik surgery. Last image of the night here.

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Welcome

"Nothing Peripheral" is essentially an art blog, a journal of images and wotds shuffling back and forth in time. I'm not dutiful to regular or timely posting so, there are kind of large gaps, but whenever I make imagery I just have to show, it'll get here.

Many light paintings are on these pages as well as some writing. Since most of my work now is created using the "light painting" technique of photography a quick definition can explain the photographs you see. A light painting is a long exposure photo putting the camera on a sturdy tripod and in a very dark room or other space. The shutter is left open and the photographer uses a flashlight to paint their subject over a lengthy time period.

Visual artists who have very diminished sight or who are totally blind, are expanding the rich and varied facets of art even further now and I'm fortunate to be a part.

Since so much of my work now is created using the light painting technique, a quick definition could be helpful. Basically a camera is on a steady tripod and in a very dark room or space the shutter is left open and the artists subject is painted with the light shining from a flashlight.

I began light painting in 1997 with the Seeing With Photography Collective here in New Yprk City.

Contact me eonradius@yahoo.com

At the Light Painting World Alliance websites, you'll find the phrase “Night is Canvas” . Night is no ordinary word for me, I suffer from night blindness. It's a powerful, often frightening word, separating me from the able bodied, putting me in the folder labelled "Unable"- legally blind, asking for help to cross the street. Night, and its draining, light-less hardships, needn’t be only that. After all, the other part, “canvas” is what matters more in the end.

I belong to a group of photographers based in New York City called the seeing With photography Collective. Many in our art group are blind or sight impaired, like myself. We create and exhibit light paintings.

The very nature of our visual limitations can provoke any viewer or perceiver of these images...Is less, more? What is seeing?

Night is often our permanent reality too, as sightless people. I myself am nearly blind, but see a little too, now and then, so I stand in two realms. Every cast shadow, each building entrance, robs me of sight.

I'm desperate for light really, any light, any scrap of stray, ineffectual photon, I feel the desperation -my dying retinas ravenous to see, like an emaciated, skeletal dog will gnaw and scour the air off the alley.

From the context of blindness, the word “ light” glows with particular, symbolism beyond its physical nature. It glows with reflected and diming echoes morphing with sighs and regrets at its intolerable loss, its hopes, its whispered paradises....of incandescent agility and certainty. Light's abandonment lingers like afterglow, we swallow hard, loosing spectacle, comparison, choice and pleasure.

To speak of light, we speak of its opposite nature too, embedded and not apparent. A dual part barely recognized, yet always there lurking, frowning and nodding within - the dark.

Our group originated from a photography class for blind and sight impaired students. Mark Andres, our teacher, taught us the technique of light painting in 1997. Mark was interested to learn what we would make of the technique as it involves using the mind in a place where we all were equally in the dark. It wasn’t about capturing a decisive moment, as much as constructing something. There was resonance with the technique, and we as a group, haven't put down our flashlights yet.

There are a variety of people who shoot light paintings but can't see. Some have little background in photography or any visual art media, some enjoyed photography for the usual reasons before loosing their eyesight. Others were actively involved in serious image making for a very long time, and found there an artistic outlet to explore.

Some in our group see nothing, though many have some remaining, but minimal vision. A few see well, even what's termed “normally”.

When I was told there was an actual photography class for blind and sight impaired students back in 1993, I remember I was surprised, a little sceptical, but beaming with happiness because others had understood that making visual art and not seeing were not mutually exclusive. I felt like a connection was made between two threads that had been re- attached. Two electric wires that needed to join, finally did in that bland basement classroom at the VISIONS Blind Services Organization, where we work.

At first it sounds improbable, but just at first. Like some new rhythm, some unfamiliar but absorbing thing.

Memories play a part in our group's imagery, but they aren’t the sole theme by any means.

Sunshine and faces, that funny red chair, costumes, picnics and monsters, movies and night clubs, cartoons and sports events, ancient frescoes and scary subway rides, and countless other memories of the world of light, all reform before our flashlights.

Despite sight loss we all have memory and ideas to explore in our mind's eye long after our biological eyes give up on the act and art of looking.

We re- create them again, different maybe, not duplicates, not snapshots, but works that bring out that memory or theme with the perspectives all shifted, energized, sparkling.

The light painter's dark frame invites all photographers to come and illuminate. I think it must be hard for any photographer to resist the urge to try one given the chance. Its darkness is very familiar territory, our default color, our resigned dark velvet blindfold that we can't tear away. We run our hands around the frameed out scene, through the central spaces, feeling fringes and walls,,touching whats on the other side of the camera’s viewAnd shine our little flashlights on that night canvas, painting with light...quivering fabrics shaken and moved around firey beings amid Interstellar jewels.

The light paintings aren't made quickly, they take a few minutes and our models shift a little, droop a little over time. The laughs ensue at the results, three eyes, squashed noses, pinheads, people morphed into squat statuettes and ghostly elfs.

Mostly its a collaborative effort when we work, but more experienced artists can work independently too. And focusing? That’s done by a sighted assistant but does a film director focus their own motion picture cameras? The minor things like focusing are a different story from the major things like ideas, composition and lighting, that are done by the sightless, sighted, or sight impaired photographer.

None of this is surprising of course, as a visual artist I understand it.

The blind photographers will also direct where each person, object or background area is, and how all should be positioned, so again, the creative control is left to the photographer, the sighted assistant just letting them know things like what's in, or not in the camera's frame.

There's struggle, there's the battle against the dark. I sense this in our work, but, maybe it’s my own internal projection. We light-less, enact on some level, a very core, very primal encounter that's a universal archetype - the struggle of light over dark. It's mainly subconscious and maybe not fully realized, even by we who make the work,. Archetypes can work well as form, as far as art goes, I think.

And there's defiance in that frame too - the flashlight as weapon in this effort, this determination to hold on, and not go quietly into the darkness.

Some have said our imagery can be nightmarish or sad, and that's sometimes so.

Yet there's an enorous variety of themes and styles found among our member's work, fashionable runway stylizations, Biblical tableaux, happy partying and old Master re-enactments are all here, cheerfully hued, non angst- ridden enough to be hung comfortably above a living room sofa.

Comparing our group's work with other light paintings, I see a difference but I’m not sure what it is. I don't see us as being fixated on pretty lights or special effects, just for the sake of prettiness or coolness that you forget a minute later. They seem simpler, but still visually nuanced and raw simultaneously.

We sometimes teach workshops and I recall some photographers who had a difficult time letting go of their light meter mind -set, and stared at me in sceptical disapproval when I said the timing was a matter of experience. It was sort of fun being a guy with a white blind cane walking into things, and giving lessons on how to make photographs. You get used to these sorts of things really.

In a way taking images with out seeing is a significant reorganization of expectations.

A blindfold can work great as a teaching tool. We use them with the sighted students. Many really are thrilled to be blindfolded, and smile, and grope around, saying “Wow” and getting goose -bumps feeling things, and just delving into their other senses that are mainly ignored in the photography studio. But other photographers have quite a hard time letting go.

By deliberately shutting out light itself, and briefly inviting in the harrowing, dreadful fear of any visual artist, blindfolding touches on certain elements of psychology and creativity that are good to be aware of.

Donald Martinez, a sighted member of our collective, sometimes closes his eyes when he makes a light painting, to distance himself further from the tightness, the crispness and control, the domination of light upon the mind.

Human nature doesn't want to relinquish feedback from our efforts, our ears from our music, our taste from our cooking, yet some can never have the full visual assessment of their work that eyes provide.

How does the blind photographer know what they have made? Those who can see describe, and become the eyes ...providing the scope, the tone, and narrative that will form the structure of the new creation, glowing unseen on the camera's digital screen and glowing too in a different way, in the internal mind of the unseeing artist.

Lately the work of blind and sight impaired visual artists is becoming more widely known. It’s a new facet in the cultural legacy of art.

What do we have to offer the world of light? Maybe we can act as a sort of mirror. One that reflects your views, maybe shifting and nudging cozy presumptions.

I've no confident theory to pre

sent on the nature of blind photography. For me, and many in the Seeing With Photography Collective, it’s an experience to be lived, dim and flickering sometimes, loud and warm at others.

Without light... voices take on an expansive, rich meaning. Ideas loom more directly. There's less distraction by visual clutter. Working in the dark with my group causes me no gut-churning dread, no dizzying loss.

Something memorable happens creating imagery in the dark, with the dark, the dark as our supportive friend, all of us sighted or blind together, thinking, trying, laughing, describing, listening...weaving something.

Light is essentially indifferent, angled into the lens of an eye or cold camera, we give it meaning and arrange its context. In the intertwining of sighted and not sighted, one thread describing another, eventually we all must close our eyes in sleep, lightless sighted and blind alike, and all our dreaming eyes understand and gaze, and see.

IGHT IS CANVAS