Art of the Eye II: An Exhibition on Vision April 9 to June 27, 2004 Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature, University of Richmond Museums, and Upper Commons, Boatwright Memorial Library On April 9, 2004, Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature, University of Richmond Museums, opened Art of the Eye II: An Exhibition on Vision. The exhibition will be shown concurrently in both the Lora Robins Gallery and Boatwright Memorial Library (Upper Commons on the second floor). The approximately forty works of two- and three-dimensional art on display were created by ten American artists who are visually impaired due to a variety of causes, including diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, and retinal detachment.
Exhibition curator and artist Scott Nelson states that Art of the Eye presents “works of art that effectively challenge our understanding of how we see the world around us.” Highlighting the impact of visual impairments on artists’ feelings and perceptions, the exhibition offers viewers the rare opportunity to witness the variety of visual activity that continues even after the loss of sight. Nelson writes in the exhibition brochure, “What we normally perceive to be the undesirable effects of restrictions, impairments and handicaps, we now see as viable creative forces.” Employing their imagination, dreams, visual memory, and at times their remaining available sight, these artists continue to create works of art; their subject matter includes portraits, abstractions, cityscapes, and still lifes. The variety of media includes painting, photography, sculpture, and works on paper. Carmelo Gannello’s artwork in particular is informed by his own experience with retinal detachment, which causes floaters and blood corpuscles to be suspended in the fluid of his eyes. These floating objects appear in Gannello’s prints and paintings as circles and halos that become integral parts of his compositions. In his artist’s statement, Gannello says that he paints directly from what he sees, creating works that are literally the art of his eye. Unlike Gannello, Flo Fox captures what she cannot see using an auto-focus camera attached to her motorized wheelchair. Born with vision in only one eye and subsequently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis that has impaired her good eye to the point of legal blindness and has limited her ability for movement, Fox activates the shutter of her camera with a rubber bulb clenched between her teeth. Her photographs included in this exhibition pertain to the subject of reflections and the notion of seeing something that exists only in the eye of the individual viewer. Also included in the exhibition are works by Lynette Denney, Patrick Farley, Dan Girouard, Tara Arlene Innmon, Jon Leverentz, Scott Nelson, Don Pearson, and Mary Solbrig. An exhibition brochure published by Delta Gamma and featuring text by the curator Scott Nelson is available for sale at the museum. Art of the Eye II was conceived and developed in 1997 by the Delta Gamma Foundation with additional support from the Houston Delta Gamma Foundation and Lions Club International. The exhibition is the sequel to Art of the Eye, also developed and travelled by Delta Gamma from 1986 to 1990. The exhibition’s presentation at the University of Richmond Museums and the University’s Boatwright Library is made possible in part with the generous support of the University’s Zeta Gamma chapter of Delta Gamma.