Archive for the 'Art Beyond Sight' Category

Making Sense of Art

This October marks our tenth year of participation in Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month! Coordinated by Art Education for the Blind, Inc., Art Beyond Sight is dedicated to art education for people with vision impairment and to building an inclusive society for promoting access to all. Each October, the Dallas Museum of Art hosts hands-on activities, gallery discussions, art-making experiences, and artist demonstrations that focus on ways to experience art using senses other than vision.

Artist John Bramblitt joins several Art Beyond Sight programs throughout the month of October to talk about his process as a blind painter, and he leads workshops that include adaptive techniques for people with disabilities. Be sure to check out our full schedule of events to discover the variety of ways you can experience art using all your senses!

Emily Wiskera is the Manager of Access Programs at the DMA.

Sensing Sight

It’s Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month, and we have lots of great programs happening at the DMA throughout October that focus on visual awareness, including a number of opportunities to meet and work with artist John Bramblitt. John is a visual artist who lost his vision in 2001. Check out the month’s activities here, and meet John in the video below.

Kimberly Daniell is the PR manager and Adam Gingrich is the marketing administrative assistant at the DMA

A Weekend of Celebration

This weekend we welcomed our newest neighbor to the Dallas Arts District, Klyde Warren Park, with two days of activities and free general admission to the DMA. On Sunday, October 28, we also celebrated ancient Mexico through our free Family Celebration, which took place during the closing celebrations of Art in October. We even held some of our programs at Klyde Warren Park. Below are a few pictures from the day’s events. Be sure to visit The Legacy of the Plumed Serpent in Ancient Mexico before the exhibition closes on November 25!

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Sense Art: Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month

October is Art Beyond Sight Awareness month and our Family Experiences and Access Programs throughout the month are all about exploring works of art without using vision. How might we do such a thing? By using our other senses! During Art Beyond Sight programming, you might:

HEAR John Bramblitt talk about his works of art and his process of painting as an artist who is blind. In the galleries, spend time imagining how a work of art might sound during one of the ABS programs.

SMELL textured paint as you use your fingers to paint a raised line drawing during a blindfolded painting workshop. Or, you could visit Arturo’s Nest in the Center for Creative Connections to smell spicy notes of cinnamon in one of the sensory bins.

FEEL raised dots as you learn how to write your name in Braille to make a work of art in our family workshop with artist Leslie Ligon. Use your sense of touch to feel mystery textures hidden in a tactile box before drawing it with lines you can feel!

Imagine what you might TASTE while exploring still lifes with food in the European galleries or stretch your mind to imagine how different colors would taste in the Contemporary Art galleries.

Join us throughout the month of October to SEE art without vision!

Amanda Blake is the Manager of Family Experiences and Access Programs.

The Dallas Museum of Art offers Dallas kids’ activities

The Dallas Museum of Art is a wonderful place for families to share experiences together and offers more than 700 programs for children and their families every year.  From a 2-year-old visiting the museum for the first time, or a 75-year-old showing his grandkids his favorite work of art, to a visitor with autism learning that she too can appreciate the Museum – we have something for everyone at the DMA. And if you’re under 12, you can always visit the Museum for Free! Watch the video below to see all of the different ways you can experience the DMA as a family.

Let’s Celebrate the Arts

On Saturday we were excited to launch Art in October in the Dallas Arts District with a free admission day of activities and even an exhibition sneak peek.

 

Art in October

 

There are so many wonderful cultural events happening every day in Dallas, and especially in the Arts District, that we need a month to celebrate them all!  Here at the DMA we hosted a delegation from Dallas’s “Sister City,” Dijon, France–five Michelin-starred chefs and one sommelier–outside our Flora Street Entrance.

 

Chefs from Dijon shared some amazing dishes with visitors.

 

 

Some delicious French food prepared by our visiting chefs from Dijon.

 

For four hours they prepared and offered samples of food and wine  from Burgundy, the land of The Mourners.

 

Visitors enjoying a free sneak peak at "The Mourners"

 

Inside, we had performances throughout the day, including spoken word pieces by Booker T. Washington students, flash mob dances, and an appearance by the Plano Senior High Chamber Singers in full medieval dress (see them again on the October 15 Late Night).

 

The Plano Senior High Chamber Singers

 

 

Masterpieces in the works at the Space Bar in C3

 

Your Museum staff happily joined in on the fun, even grabbing a few bites of escargot panini along with our more than 4,500 weekend visitors. We can’t wait for the rest of the Art in October celebration!

Finger Painting

Imagine visiting the Dallas Museum of Art to see your favorite painting by Claude Monet or Jackson Pollock. Now imagine how you might experience those works without your vision. How would you “see” them? That’s exactly what I did at a workshop with artist John Bramblitt, and this is what visitors to the Museum’s Center for Creative Connections will have a chance to experience in October when John rejoins us as the Artist of the Month.

John as our guest artist during a summer camp this year.

October is Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month, organized by Art Education for the Blind to make art and culture a part of life for adults and children affected by sight loss. At the DMA, we’re planning some cool programs for kids and adults with vision impairment, but we’ll also repeat a family workshop that I took with John that shows how we can make art using our other senses.

John leading a family workshop last October.

Always passionate about art, John didn’t begin to paint until he lost his sight almost ten years ago while in his late 20s. His work is intensely personal, taken from real people and events in his life. And his art-making workshops are unique, spanning the gap between beginning and professional artists, and including adaptive techniques for people with disabilities.

DMA campers learning more about John's method for sightless painting.

He’s developed a method of sightless painting that centers on the textures of paint in order to distinguish the color of it. When I worked with him, we mixed flour into the red paint, birdseed into the yellow, and sand into the white, and added nothing to the blue. We put on a blindfold and were asked to imagine what we would be painting, to “see” it first in our mind’s eye. Then, touching the colors and using our fingers, we painted.

The texture of the paint lets the families know what color they are using.

This workshop, and many more exciting hands-on activities with John, will be held at the Museum during October. For more information, visit http://www.dm-art.org/Family/AccessPrograms/index.htm . To learn more about John Bramblitt, visit www.bramblitt.net.

Amanda Blake is Manager of Family Experiences and Access Programs at the Dallas Museum of Art


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