A Matter of Vision

As I wrote in the prior post, I have been thinking about how to express the topic of vision in the sketchbook project. I am to fill 3 or 4 pages and then consider some repeating feature that is carried throughout to create a sense of flow. Then I send it off to other artists to add their creativity to the remaining pages. I must confess to being too intimidated to mark directly in the accordion fold moleskine. Instead I decided I should at least start sketching outside of it and see if I come up with anything I can use and glue it in later. It is beginning to take shape and I thought it was far enough along to share with you here.

As you may recall my theme is vision and I am basing my material on the experience of my friend who has macular degeneration and has learned how to manage within its constraints quite competently. On my last visit she showed me how she reads her mail and I took some pictures as source material. Now I began to sketch an image of her as she read, one round magnifier on her glasses lens, pressed up against another on the page she was reading. In this fashion she is able to read brief information.

I have been thinking about my conversation with her when we last went out to eat and I was startled at her perception of me picking up chopsticks. "You can use those?" she questioned to which I had replied, "You can see them?" Often movement or contrast gains her attention and I have to remind myself that legally blind isn't totally blind.

Since this sketchbook is mine, I thought I'd put my own image at the beginning. I had my husband take a picture of me holding chopsticks with the quizzical appraising glance I had turned towards my friend when she asked her question. I am picturing a pattern of chopsticks falling from the sky in the blank space in front of me. I'd like to include some text that tells a little of her story and the exchange which prompted the portrait.

I had printed out the image of my eye from my eye doctor, quite otherworldly in orange with the inner eye in yellow, a sun around which all orbits. I cut out the image of my friend and of me and began to arrange them on the page as I imagined them, although the page is actually four folds that unfold into one or can stand alone. I wanted her against the background of the eye with the yellow sun out in space as if she were an astronomer examining the universe. I also wanted some space at the bottom to include text. I decided to continue the background of the eye behind my figure to unite the pages. In front of me I cut out chopstick forms from the print of the eye and placed them in the open space. I will write out our exchange in a delicate ink pen and perhaps continue with text next to her figure.

I am also thinking that the form of chopsticks cut out of the same color as the eye, scattered throughout the sketchbook will provide a unifying theme that others can incorporate into their own artwork.

With it laid out I can begin to weigh other decisions. I may add some paper to round out my figure so it isn't cut off by what was the edge of the paper and create more of a sense of flow between the two figures. I also am considering whether to add ink to my figure as I have used it in the other. Every artistic creation is filled with many such small decisions and it is often surprising how one seemingly minute decision can pull it all together.

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The Inner Eye

I haven't written recently of the Jewish Artists' Lab because I've been writing a separate blog for the group. It is a little different in style, more focused on sharing specific content, a bit less my own ruminations. Meanwhile I've been thinking about what I hope to work on for the Artists' Lab exhibition on the theme of Light later this year. 

I may try on more than one idea between now and then and will have an opportunity to explore some ideas through a sketchbook exchange. The project will involve trading a sketchbook between artists at labs in Minneapolis, Madison and Milwaukee. I am thinking the sketchbook project will allow me to test out ideas in perhaps a less finished form or at least on a smaller scale. I have to decide on a theme for the one I initiate and will respond to themes of four other artists. All themes will relate to light in some fashion.

Now what I am contemplating is vision. My friend has macular degeneration and is legally blind. I hang out with her a lot and we've talked a lot of her "handicap" as she puts it. I am also awestruck with the way she moves forward despite it. She has become my role model for how you deal with the challenges that ultimately befall each of us. As her friend I've had an opportunity to consider vision through her eyes. When I went to Poland with her she knew the city streets on which she grew up even though she couldn't see them. She talked of seeing in her mind's eye. So that's a kind of vision.
When she lost her vision, for a time she also lost her vision of her life as she had known it. She told me that life became worth living again when she discovered the Library of Congress had books on tape. Suddenly she could read again. My scope expands to loss of vision, both literally and a vision of how one imagined one's life, then regaining a vision of a renewed and different life.

I also think about magnified vision, how she translated her father's memoir from Yiddish with the help of a magnifying machine, one letter at a time. Again there are two kinds of vision, the vision she held of this book published and the act of using her limited vision to translate it.

I am always trying to gauge the extent of my friend's vision. Recently I took her to lunch and as I manipulated chopsticks, she said, "You can use those things?" To which I replied, "You can see those things?" She seems to notice movement or contrast, but can't see my face. I kneeled down and looked up."Now can you see me?," I asked wondering if I became non-central vision if it might help. "Not clearly", she replied. When I recently had my eyes examined they took a picture of the eye, an orange globe with blood vessels like tree limbs, actually quite beautiful. In the middle there is a yellow light. While I am sure there is some technical term that strips away the mystery, I like to think of it as the inner eye. I looked up macular degeneration and there was the image of how it looks in a diseased eye, still quite beautiful, but now with the result that central vision is destroyed and peripheral vision remains. I can see a painting with the central portion blurred out.

It dawned on me that the place where I had my eye exam might have a photo of my eye that they could share with me and sure enough they did. Now I need to contemplate if it might work as a background for other imagery on this theme. How I depict it in a cohesive and pleasing way remains to be seen, but my starting point is always a many layered idea.

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