Arts for All Gallery presents
SEEING IS BELIEVING: Blind Video, a multi-media installation project led by noted Atlanta artist Angela Willcocks. The exhibition opens Tuesday, August 19 and will continue on view through Friday, September 19, 2003.
The project was conceived and designed, and has been led by Ms. Willcocks, a local visual artist with numerous exhibition and teaching credits. In leading this collaborative effort, her core idea has been to generate opportunities for people with visual impairments to explore art as technology, offering the visual and technological medium of video as a contemporary art form relevant to and meaningful for people who are blind or visually impaired. The visual and auditory elements of video, and the technology of digital editing, provide a community that normally is supplied with arts & craft orientated activity with an opportunity to broaden our notions and definitions of art ?for peoples with disabilities?. The video camera provides a form of interpretative seeing, and seeing each other?s vision of the world ? through the lens of the camera - helps us to understand one another?s emotions, ideas, and interpretations of the world around us. Such collaborative exploration can help facilitate greater understanding among communities of differing individuals, as well as generating stimulating and provocative art works.
Willcocks has collaborated with a small, hand-picked group of individuals who are visually impaired, from Atlanta and surrounding communities. Some have been blind from birth, while others gradually lost their vision as adults, and one is both deaf and blind. From corporate office to art studio, these intrepid individuals offer us a chance to see the world from their perspective. The artists collaborating with Willcocks include: Dickie Cannon, Patti Edwards, Mark Gasaway, Melissa Imtiaz, Peter Tolly and Lise Wilson.
Arts for All Gallery, a program of VSA arts of Georgia, will host a Meet The Artists reception on September 4th, 2003, from 5 ? 9 p.m. The reception is part of the monthly First Thursday downtown artswalk, which is always free and open to the public.
