Visited the Radcliffe exhibit "Calm. Smoke rises vertically." One of the features of this work by Wendy Jacobs, include some of WPA architectural models designed for tactile teaching about architecture for the blind. Kim Carlson, Hansel Bauman, and Wendy Jacobs all spoke about how we all acquire or sense of place in space. The exhibit is free, open to the public, and includes vibrating walls and a live-streaming weather report as well!
Advisory Board Meeting, Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Boston MA.
At the Pioneer Valley Ephemera Society show a few weeks ago, we picked up a 1902 Springfield Home for Friendless Women and Children pamphlet and a friend asked if "Friendless" was a common term. In mid 19th c. New England, it was a vernacular adjective describing women who were single, poor, sometimes widowed, sometimes immigrants to the US, sometimes internal migrants traveling to find work, sometimes in dire straits related to alcohol or other vice related circumstances. Sometimes they were with children, sometimes they were fleeing domestic violence, often they were looking for employment. In Boston, an organization that helped homeless women recently let out of jail was called the Home for Repentant Women.
Screening Becoming Helen Keller's Hour One Rough Cut at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York City to discuss how best to do Outreach when the work is completed. An mixed crowd- staff, advocates, writers and artists.
All week we worked on details to ready the initial iteration of the Becoming Helen Keller web presence. Opening date, likely to be November 1, 2016.
Over the weekend we attended a talk at Ferrin Contemporary, where Justin Rothshank discussed his work and the collaboration he has with his wife Brook Rothshank. The exhibit called Know Justice includes "dinnerware" for all 44 Commanders' In Chief and commemorative plates for all the contemporary Supreme Court Justices. Thinking about how will the country heal the great divide that this election has forged, we talked about public art as a vehicle to reconsider with lightness how Americans emerged from confusing periods in the past. We also discussed some Helen Keller project bling ideas! Mass Moca, North Adams MA.
Work-In-Progress Screening, HSC Foundation, Washington D.C.
Work-In-Progress Screenings, Two discussions with groups of Gallaudet University students and faculty, sponsored by the Schuman Center for Deaf Documentary Studies.