School for the Blind teams up with local artists to teach visual arts

By Katie Potzick

When most people experience art, they do it with their eyes.

In fact the very name visual art implies the need to view it, but what happens if you’re blind? The Kentucky School for the Blind (KSB) has answered this question by not only helping its students experience art but by offering them an exciting opportunity to create it. KSB consists of 40 students in grades K-12 who have varying degrees of sight.

For the 2007-2008 school year, KSB has teamed up with the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Craft to bring in local artists to work with the students.

John Roberts, director of instruction at KSB, got the project started by contacting Dane Waters, the director of education at KMAC to discuss creative ways they could work together to help KSB students meet core content learning goals for the art section of CATS test. The test measures academic achievement and is required for all students in Kentucky. The art section of the test includes questions on color and tone and other art concepts that normally sighted people take for granted but which come as a challenge to the visually impaired.

Together they planned a curriculum that includes projects in 5 different art mediums: stone carving, print making, puppetry, ceramics and fiber arts. To teach these projects, the students would be working with local artists who are part of KMAC’s artist in residence program.

The artists working with the students face the challenge of communicating a new way of creating and experiencing art that does not rely on the eyes. So far three projects have been completed. The first project the students undertook was stone carving led by artists Al and Penny Nelson. The students began the project by drawing pictures based on their lives at KSB such as playing sports, attending class and living in the dorms. Once the pictures were transferred to limestone, the students were taught to carve them with hammers and chisels. These pictures were placed in a time capsule that will be opened in ten years.

Waters commented on the fact that the students were very good with clay and hands on projects since touch is one of the main senses that they possess and that can be capitalized upon for creating art. In fact, tactile approaches to creating the art work such as using raised lines and special printers that make raised images have been the main method for the projects. Waters went on to say that many of the students were “very talented.”

Waters implied that overall the pairing has been a successful experience for both the KSB and KMAC and remarked that, “this has been a tremendously enlightening experience for the artists.”

KMAC’s Artist-in-Residence program places professional artists in elementary, middle and high schools to provide students with an in-depth, hands-on art experience. For U of L students interested in additional information about KMAC’s in school programs, contact Director of Education, Dane Waters at 502-589-0102 or danewaters@kentuckyarts.org.