Blind Artist Vision: blog by Stella De Genova
Many of my fondest childhood memories involve making things. With Grandma, it was making homemade fettuccini and ravioli; with Mom, it was Christmas cookies and, of course, cutting out paper snowflakes with my brother; and for my solo hobbies, coloring and drawing.
I was the happiest kid in the world whenever I got a new box of crayons. I learned how to outline my coloring book pictures and then started shading them. When I saw that my 2nd grade teacher had a framed painting that she did herself, I decided then that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up so I could also have paintings to hang on the walls. In time, I moved on to graphite pencils and through drawing and shading, I practiced making my illustrations look as realistic as I could. (I am sharing some of my earlier drawings in this post.)
I took all of the art classes I could in high school and then took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art, picking up more information and skills. Although I got married and had 3 kids and did not make art my career, I continued drawing whenever I had time and shared my love for creating art with my children. At that time, I was still able to see hues and the slightest of color differences. My peripheral vision was already altered so getting the right perspective in my drawing was difficult to accomplish and I was never able to draw in dim lighting since I was born with “night blindness.”
With my grandkids, I try to do art projects when we can. For the 2-year old, there might not be a finished masterpiece but it’s the joy he gets from participating. And the 6-year old prefers to draw and paint numbers and words more than pictures of things but it’s fun watching him get into it.
I truly feel that the process can be more important than the finished product. When I had to stop working at my full-time job due to my vision loss, I joined a support group at Second Sense. They were so welcoming that I became a volunteer there for 5 years. During that time, I teamed up with a writer, Jeff Flodin, and together we brought art and writing workshops to the visually impaired and blind clients at Second Sense. None of the clients were professional artists or writers but they thoroughly enjoyed participating. What gave me joy was watching people come into the workshop quiet and leery that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish making a piece of art or write something others would want to read. By the time we finished a project, everyone was talkative and excited to share their finished project. It never mattered how aesthetically pleasing it was or how well written it was; what mattered most was that the people opened up and shared a little bit of themselves.
And for me, my life has been a learning process for my art and after all of the chapters up to this point in my life, I finally feel comfortable with the finished product. Under the instruction of pastel artist, Julie Skoda, I’ve learned to better understand working with pastels, layer color and find my own style. Even as my vision worsens and I can’t differentiate the colors in my own painting, I enjoy the process of creating something all my own just like when I was young. The only difference is that now I get excited about new pastel sticks instead of a box of crayons.
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