Beyond Roy G. Biv
It’s something that is most often done when we are children. We use our paint covered fingers and draw absentmindedly, make messy pictures for our parents, or take to the sidewalk with chalk. As we get older, art begins to rise in complexity. Colour blended seamlessly, intricate detail crafted with great care, impeccable creations that appear highly life-like and that invoke deep emotion from their audiences. But is that what art is? Is art something that is crafted with impeccable detail and precision? Or, is art something that is just out of reach when one goes to look at it? Something that keeps audience guessing and digging deeper to discover what is behind it? I believe it is the latter. I believe art is is any medium which invokes a response within its audience such as drawings, paintings, sculptures, writing, music, etc.
As a young child, I was not allowed to participate in elementary art classes, unless necessary. Whenever possible, my support team would try to find an alternative assignment for me so that I could simply learn the material that was required to be learnt, as they thought my art was simply scribbles and doodles. However, as a result of this, I missed out on vital skills and opportunity to be creative and playful as a child. For instance, when my sighted classmates were colouring in a map of Canada, I simply had to memorize the provinces. Thus, I now do not know what our country looks like and how it is arranged.
Contrary to this however, I did have some support workers who got creative themselves and introduced me to accessible art! I had a few support staff who would outline pictures using a hot glue-gun so that I could colour it in, as well as putting braille labels on a regular box of crayons. This is an easy adaption if you have a blind child who is eager to colour. Simply purchase any coloring book and outline it your self using a glue-gun or puff paint.
As I got older, my passion for art still lingered, but as art classes became more optional, it was just something considered as off my list of electives, along with writing and woodwork. Sadly, all things I leaned heavily towards. Although I am currently studying writing, the belief back in my High School days was that there would be no way I could finish a fifty-page book of my own creations. However, all it took was more support staff and teachers who were willing to get a little creative themselves.
After being convinced by a Social Studies teacher to just sign up for the elective and ignore what society had drilled into my brain, I somehow got myself registered for an art elective with a teacher who was just as eager to have me in her class. This class had the largest impact on me, as this is when I learned what two dimensional items looked like. As someone who is always touching items which are three dimensional, I was confused at how on paper my creations looked much more squished and were only partially visible from one angle. This led to an experiment where my SEA took a mug and showed me one can see different angles of it depending on how it was placed. This was impactful for me, as being blind does not often give me the opportunity to understand how the sighted visual field works.
Along with this, my art teacher got extra creative when I had to do projects involving paint. We ended up putting in different seeds in different colours of paint so that when I scattered them on my page, there were also different textures. This is a great way to have blind or partially sighted children interact with different paints as well as give them some more sensory experience while painting. This also allows them to understand how their colours blend and which is lighter, and which may be darker.Another way of doing this is using different coloured and textured material, which is what I did for another assignment in this class, which involved creating the different colours of the Canadian and Indian flags. The final portion of this class was sculpting, which I highly enjoyed. One assignment required us to create three bowls which could fit inside of one another. This was a very tactile assignment as I got to mold and score the clay using my hands. Along with this, I was given different textures of material once more, which I could press into my clay for an extra tactile effect and further design creation.
The second sculpting assignment was adapted for me as the rest of my peers had to draw different kinds of fruit. So, my job was to sculpt different types of fruits. This assignment really made me think, as I had to think about every texture a fruit item was, just as my peers had to think about all the different spots on a piece of fruit. I had great enjoyment in being a perfectionist and making sure the stem of my apple was curved just right, and that the texture of my grapefruit came out perfectly. For extra sensory detail, my teacher had the brilliant idea of creating little chunks of clay and putting them in my fruit so that once it was baked and glazed, my fruit had a one of a kind jingle when I gave it a shake. I ended up creating various types of fruit and putting them in a glass bowl for aesthetic effect.
Although I had little exposure to art as a child and only ended up taking an art elective the last year of my high school career, it was one of the highlights of teaching me about accessible art. Since then, I have learned about various artists who have disabilities including sight loss and have had the pleasure of checking out their pieces as a part of Blind Beginnings programs. I am still working on becoming more involved with the art community and increasing my confidence in understanding that my art does not need to resemble a perfect and realistic piece of work. In fact, I have a friend at university who has been convincing me to take a post-secondary art class, which I might very well do some day and see how I can make it just as meaningful to me. One thing that I have learned is that when teaching someone art, teachers must think like artists in that moment as well, as adapting is simply thinking outside the box and creating an angle no one has come up with before.
by Harjinder Saran (Jinnie)