Annotated Bibliography Fall, 2023

For my Big Idea Lesson Plan assignment, I chose to focus on Sydney Walker’s question: “Disruption in artmaking is a key strategy for countermanding conventional, obvious, and stereotypical ways of thinking.”

This ideology connects to my foray in the aspect of the disability arts movement, and in turn, it impacts how disabled individuals can extend their creativity and overcome common stereotypes and misconceptions. Disability Arts involves a myriad of ideologies and thought processes and can be connected to the aspect of disability justice. Since a large number of disabled individuals are either unemployed or under employed, the aspect of disability arts proves to be significant due to expression, using disability as a springboard for change and positive philosophy, as well as overcoming the widely accepted claims and misconceptions of disability. Hambrook (n.d.) cites numerous instances throughout history within the disability arts movement, the earliest reference of this genre dates back at least 6,000 years ago when a group of South African cave people painted a hunting scene with one amputee included in it.

My lesson plan involves the exploration of challenging my own artistic perceptions and beliefs simultaneously as I research the following disability artists: Rora Blue, and Lisa Bufano. Rora Blue is a Nevada based, gender nonconforming artist who focuses on incorporating audio, text, and color into their work. They implement a combination of colors to convey numerous emotions, and with these colors, text, and webart, they overcome the typical perspectives of a disabled individual.

The disability arts movement is further explained by Ruth Gould (n.d.) in her article “Disability Arts – A Catalyst for Change.” Art often takes the viewer/participant into new comprehensions. That is our aim. Unless you live with a personal experience of disability, you probably rarely think about the impacts of disability beyond the medical condition or diagnosis. In today’s society we all need to have places where our reality is mirrored, affirming our position in society. This is not always easily available with disability. One of the founding figures of the disability arts sector, Vic Finkelstein wrote: “Disability culture must arise out of the spontaneous desire of disabled people to share our feelings, experiences and desires, our loves and hates, our pleasures as well as our sufferings, amongst ourselves. In other words, we have to make the choice that we want to identify ourselves as disabled people. We have to be willing to express our separate identity. There can be no disability culture without this freely made choice.’

Lisa Bufano was a double amputee artist who believed that a disabled body could be rendered as beautiful if it is portrayed in a positive perspective. She lost both of her legs and most of her fingers due to a staph infection, and prior to her accident, she concentrated on sewing with textiles. Andrea Shea (2013) quotes Bufano in her article:

“I want to be seen as attractive and beautiful and sexy like everyone else,” Lisa eventually told me. “But I think that in my artwork, for me, it’s trying to find some comfort with being everything a human can be.”

My project involves a combination of typical stereotypes viewed as common place within the disability community through the use of digital art software. I intend to create a combination of stereotypes, but at the same time, I will demonstrate that these perspectives must be challenged through the positive philosophy of disability. In other words, I will focus on two stereotypes within the disability experience through digital perspectives, and my end result will create an effect similar to the metaphor of shattering the everyday obstacles of disability. The entire process of creation is open-ended and has no specific endpoint. I decided to conceive this notion from Walker’s big idea of the delay process and not wishing to immediately end the project without an already determined result.

Initially, I focused on two key stereotypes relating specifically to blindness, and the other pertained to how the disability community is seen through the lens of another individual communicating with the specific individual. For instance, it is commonplace for someone who may not be familiar with the disability community to not face the disabled person directly. Worse than this, when there is a friend, family member, or personal care assistant with them, the former individual will not direct the conversation toward the disabled individual and instead say: “What does he/she want?” This stereotype is most definitely dehumanizing and creates a sentiment of brokenness and loss within the disabled individual. The person who isn’t familiar with the disability community may not think much about this, but the disabled individual will perceive it as a lack of understanding by the other human being. This stereotype also creates a sense of dependence and the negative perceptions that disability illustrates. Within our society, we are typically forced to perceive disability as a binary: A typical medical condition that must be fixed because, as a community, those with disabilities that accomplish tasks differently in comparison with the non-disabled community are not as intelligent, independent, capable, efficient or engaged with the world around them. Also, we can underscore the latter reasoning behind the barriers and challenges surrounding disability. Society has placed invisible and visible “glass cages”, surrounding everyday actions, so in order to complete a specific task, the disability community must consider how to eliminate these obstacles one at a time.

The second stereotype involves the blind community specifically. Society believes that the typical appearance of a blind person should be that they wear sunglasses. This definitely isn’t the case. Blindness, like most other disabilities, is based upon a spectrum or continuum of vision. In other words, a large percentage of blind individuals have some usable vision, such as myself. Some can discern only light and shape, or light and darkness. Others can discern human forms, colors, landscapes, enlarged text, and more. For me, my visual acuity is approximately 20/200 so I can perceive objects, people, and other elements approximately from 20 feet away. The reason for some individuals for wearing sunglasses is to cover their eyes, since they may have received prosthetics, or they are sensitive to large amounts of light.

Those who are totally blind, cannot perceive any visual stimuli, but this does not mean that their visual cortex or imaginative creativity is lost. Typically, totally blind individuals, have memories from a former time when they had vision. This all depends on their age, onset of disability, etc. They may be blind from birth, such as in my case. I’ve always had the same amount of usable vision up to this point, and when I was four months old, went from a fully sighted individual to a blind individual. This was due to too much oxygen I received in my premature birth. I was born three months early.

In my own drawing, I combined the notion of fire on the left with a tree at the bottom of the image separated with grass on the extreme bottom portion. On the far right side, I drew a cage that is breaking apart through an invisible force of nature or the metaphorical and physical power that we as a disability community can exert on others with and without disabilities for the greater good of society. Finally, I drew a line connecting the two clip art pieces to my drawing to demonstrate that these stereotypes must be eliminated as we process the advantages that the disability experience offers.

After considering my initial drawing and feedback from one of my other cohort members, I decided to use the ideology of stereotypes and disability arts to reflect what transpires when we as a community embrace the arts and disability in a positive light. I’ve used my research of big ideas, the two aforementioned artists, as well as my own disability-related perspectives to challenge and shape my art making process. I used the metaphor of a bridge to connect the disability and non-disability communities together. There is a rising sun in the center of the image with clouds surrounding the sun. In the foreground, a bridge can be discerned with several individuals standing on the bridge. Half of them are disabled, and the other half are not. There is a rainbow connecting the two sides of the bridge, and the rainbow spans the entire length of the bridge. This metaphorical symbolism represents the transformation between understanding stereotypes and later, eliminating them entirely. Most significantly, this is what transpires as I influence the disability and non-disability community through my artwork, researching, teaching, and disability advocacy. My final image involves a similar artistic rendering, but instead of drawing the actual abstract image, I used a combination of AI image generation for my prompt, as well as Adobe Stock figures. I placed three disabled individuals on the bridge to represent a variety of disabilities, and the AI, non-disabled individuals are standing near the disabled individuals.

The reason for deciding to create artistic representations of my project prior to “teaching this lesson to others” and having them create their own project is because I was unsure of the actual steps and strategies surrounding this lesson plan. When I ask participants to complete this project, I will provide them a brief background of the disability arts movement, as well as the artists I previously researched. This will allow them to gain a basic understanding of the philosophy of disability arts and also the necessity for positive aspects of disability. Participants will begin by thinking of two key stereotypes within society. These could either be disability related or a wide array of other factors including race, gender, economic status, power, and more.

Some engaging questions include the following: How does your lived experience impact your role within society and the community in which you live? What stereotypes impact you most on an individual basis and why? How can these stereotypes be altered and challenged to reflect society’s perceptions of minority communities? What aspects from the disability arts movement can you incorporate in your own life as a minority community member or otherwise? Why do you think this movement is significant, and discuss an example that can connect with this movement. In other words, when disability culture is embraced, the disability community doesn’t need to stray away from two separate identities. They can address them fully and without fear or uncertainty.

All participants will create their projects from any type of art medium they wish, whether this is a physical or digital artistic perspective. They will consider two key stereotypes or challenges to include in their work and go one step further by exploring how these obstacles can be eliminated. Prior to them beginning their projects, I will share my own artworks with them, so they understand the expectations of the assignment. Once they have completed the projects, a few participants will share their finished work with each other and explain what they did, as well as their reasons for the specific project.

References

‌Blue, R. (n.d.). Rora Blue. https://www.rorablue.com/ 

Gould, R. Disability Arts – a catalyst for change | British Council. (n.d.). http://Www.britishcouncil.org. https://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/culture-development/our-stories/disability-arts

‌Hambrook, C.(n.d.). A History of Disability- From a disability arts perspective. Disability Arts Online (DAO) 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2015.1037950

Shea, A. Remembering Lisa Bufano, A Dancer Who Found Beauty In Amputation. (n.d.). http://Www.wbur.org. https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/12/24/lisa-bufano-remembrance

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