A cut-out newspaper article, written by Andrienne Clark, describes an original theatrical production titled “The Human Museum,” a production created and performed by students at Fitchburg State College, along with guests from Edge Hill University College in Ormskirk, England. Three months in the making, in downtown Fitchburg at the Americulture Arts Festival in the spring of 1997, their first of many performances came to life.
The article begins with an introduction of the real-life story that formed the basis for a scene in one of the productions held on campus in the Weston Auditorium. When a man asks a young woman with a hearing impairment to dance, she doesnot hear him; he quickly loses patience and walks away. Had that man waited a few more moments for the young woman to adjust her hearing aid, perhaps he would have gotten the opportunity to dance with her, made a connection, and who knows what could have happened because of his patience. The lack of patience, however, lost him that chance. Professor and theater coordinator Kelly Morgan stated that “many people miss out on opportunities because of their impatience with the disabled,” and the scene portrayed proved that to be true. The able-bodied tend to be hasty, always in a rush. Those who are differently-abled have had to learn to take experiences slower, grant themselves the time they need to adapt to situations.
The production serves to bring awareness to commonly unnoticed or dismissed issues. An adamant subject of the play is the discrimination against those who are disabled. Everyday, the less-abled are underestimated and underappreciated. It is not, however, just people with disabilities that these performances stand up for, but people of different sexualities, gender, and race. Time spent creating predispositions for those we may not understand and discriminating against them due to those predisposed opinions is time wasted. We should not waste the precious time we have on this Earth diminishing each other; we should be accepting and welcoming.
Impressively, the “Human Museum” was put on a total of five times and each time it brought a different social issue into the eyes of the audience. Professor Morgan states that the impact he’s witnessed these productions make are “always the same, and there is always more than one.” After watching this production, “the audiences ignorance is well exposed.” Frequently I have personally witnessed the existence of the ”if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist” mindset, and that, I believe, is what he could mean through the use of the informative play series. The “many epiphanies” the professor sees throughout the crowd is proof of the ignorance of those among us towards the social injustices in the world.
In the scene called “The Blind Doctor,” “a medical doctor ignores his patient who is in a wheelchair, and directs all his questions to the patient’s companion.” This is the truth about the lack of acknowledgement and respect towards the disabled. To dismiss the patient entirely, talking to their companion as if they were a caregiver is unnecessary. Disabled does not mean incapable. The disabled tend to not get the same chances as those around them simply because it may take them a little longer to do what the able-bodied consider "easy: tasks. They may have to do these things differently, but they are not unable. Disability is not a weakness, and differences are not debilitating.
My favorite statement made by Professor Morgan is “everything is based on fear, but we cannot always look at fear as a bad thing.” Fear comes from ignorance. Humans are afraid of what we do not know. If we as a society understood fear for what it was, perhaps we could use it to inspire others to become further educated and have more of an open mind rather than propelling ourselves away from the disabled and isolating them entirely. As a society, we must discover how to learn from those who are different from us. We tend to avoid and isolate those different than a societal norm due to a lack of understanding or fear based solely on what we think we know or perhaps what we don’t know at all. This fear, this lack of willingness to learn, prevents us from actually getting to know how special and capable these people are. People with disabilities are human beings, who have well-earned their right to be treated like anyone else in receiving recognition and acknowledgement.
Morgan, Kelly. Personal interview. 1 Nov. 2019.
This cutout of a newspaper article written in 1997 also includes a picture of a former Fitchburg State College student, Andrea Gorton. She was a freshman in the special education major. The newspaper article explains her involvement in a school production. Due to lack of information that the text has given me, I also had an interview with Professor Kelly Morgan. Morgan was very helpful with information about Andrea and the theater department’s history.
Andrea was very passionate about performing, as well as creating an equal learning environment for everyone around her. She was known for standing up for equal rights. She was also passionate about change on campus. Andrea was deaf and used American Sign Language for communication. Starting off college she wanted to participate in theater, she knew it would be a challenge, but it didn't stop her from trying new things. After all, she was already managing her homework, C.E.S., and teaching sign language in the sign language club. She was given the opportunity to be in the play Thornwood. The performance is about a school teacher going through some struggles of his own and his group of diverse English students performing Hamlet. Andra was cast for the role of Stephanie.
The Director, Morgan, guided Andrea throughout the entirety of the play, such as helping her with her cues and explaining everything in sign language. Kelly, along with different playwrights, made adjustments as needed to ensure Andrea could perform to her best ability, using physical cues like touching the face to make sure she knew when to perform. After a while, she knew what to do without the cues due to how many times they practiced.
Not mentioned in the article, but this was Morgan’s first time directing a play at Fitchburg State and took around six months to rehearse and then three months of performance. They switched off casts every weekend to keep the audience intrigued. Although Andrea was deaf, the cast and the audience never saw her as a burdenl they viewed her as a positive addition. Larry, a blind character in the cast, was not respected the same as Andrea was. With his disability it was harder to navigate himself around in the play and also around campus. He would not be notified when campus construction was going on. People would tease him and treat him completely different then others. Larry was also one of the students performing in the Hamlet play so he was very important to the cast.
Having two casts for this play made the audience’s appreciation different. Once the deaf community figured out that there was an added deaf character they knew they had to share their support. After seeing the performance they felt so empowered and believed that a person that had full hearing would not portray the character as well. They thought the play would not be as powerful.
An important message that came from the re-interpretation of Thornwood was that the director wanted people to have a moment of realization when they watched the play. Before seeing this performance a lot of people did not know what to expect. Communication between characters proves that deaf people can express their emotions and feelings like hearing people do. Using different facial expressions such as raising eyebrows gives more personality to a character. People are very ignorant about the deaf community because they lack information. Another point is that when people see a person with a disability, they could be afraid of confrontation. They are unaware of how to communicate or the reaction they could get, which could really hinder someone from creating a friendship. Some people choose to completely ignore someone that's different, but with this play they emphasized the fact that they are just another character and human being.
This artifact contains the inspiring story of a man making a difference for blind children. Martin Eichinger is an American sculptor from Michigan. His father was an influence for him, being a graphic artist but his biggest inspiration was his 7th grade art teacher. Eichinger did post graduate work in sculpture at Michigan State University after studying design and anatomy at Ferris State University. He also studied classical sculpture in Europe. Although he is very familiar with anatomy, he does not consider himself a figurative artist. He refers to himself as a narrative artist and tries to portray art that is emotional and mythic: “I want my sculptures to be mythological in that they speak to others who, like me, are formulating new values and are looking for a new sense of meaning in art and in life" (citation?).
Eichinger accomplished portraying meaning in his art for others in a sculpture at The Michigan School for the Blind in October of 1981. The artwork is located on the west side of the school campus near the Athletic Field. He wanted people to understand why he dedicates his life to art: “by sharing story and emotion through the human form I feel connected in a deeper way, both with the people who view it and, perhaps most importantly, to the sculpture I am working on. I feel that my artwork is complete once I sense that it has entered someone’s life in a meaningful way" (citation?).
On October 14th, 1981, children at the school for the blind was able to feel the sculpture called “Aqueous.” On and inside the "Aqueous" is braille so the children were able to “interact” and partake in viewing the work in some sense. Braille is a form of written language for blind people. Characters are represented by patterns of raised dots. Eichinger stated that he is interested in having his sculptures say more about us as a people, about our spirits or our aspirations. For a child who is blind, it is important for them to know they can still have hopes and dreams even though their life may be challenging on a daily basis. The same goes for those with any type of disability. The "Aqueous" sculpture is very accessible so even children in wheelchairs can go inside of it. The sculpture is smooth on the inside and rough on the outside. It is described to look like a curving ocean wave.
The artifact shows an image of "Aqueous" on the top right. It also explains how Eichinger was inspired to do his sculpture because of a play The Miracle Worker. The play is about Helen Keller having a breakthrough (in ?). Although Eichinger has seen the play many times, it still has a deep impact on him. He explained how the play made him feel in the article saying it brought tears to his eyes. There is a meaningful relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher, which Eichinger says shows the meaning of the Michigan School for the Blind. Another reason he created the sculpture was because of a former graduate student of the school, Jerome Jackson. Jackson told his experience as a child at the school and how he would climb a fallen tree in the yard. He said it became so many things in his imagination. Eichinger thought of using his sculpture in the same sense for children’s imaginations. Using braille for the sculpture made it so the children could still use their imaginations but also understand the reality of it.
There was controversy over why Eichinger wanted to spend his money on an outdoor sculpture considering how fast it could get ruined because of weather changes. Despite this he went through with the sculpture. He spent hours upon hours of experimenting with different materials such as fiberglass and moulded rubber. He came to multiple problems while going through the process of building the artwork but had engineers and other specialists to help him. A big part of his process was trial-and-error. As he was going through the process of creating "Aqueous," he was in search of a poem to go along with it. Later on at a museum in Boston, a woman (who? and how is she related to Fitchburg?) came up to him and recited a poem that his artwork reminded her of. The poem is:
Mother of all, and mother of me;
Boundless bosom that is the sea,Hold me close, your ocean child,
Child of the sea, by thee beguiled.
This poem was perfect (how?) for his theme of "Aqueous."
https://www.jones-terwilliger-galleries.com/Artist_Entry/openeichinger.html https://wooarts.com/martin-eichinger/nggallery/image/martin-eichinger-sculpture-wooart s-com-02/
Art is something that is universal and can be appreciated by anyone, regardless of their background. However, art can have restrictions for some people, specifically referring to people with disabilities. People who are blind cannot appreciate all the art that is made, so sculptor Martin Eichinger thought of a creation that could be appreciated by not only people without disabilities, but also people who are blind and other people with disabilities. This sculpture, "Aqueous," a multisensory sculpture, was created by Eichinger and contains a poem written by a former WWII nurse by the name of Isabel Demmon. It came to life in 1981 at the school of Lansing’s Cumberland elementary school for disabled children, most of whom are blind.
Martin Eichinger, an architect, built this sculpture with the intent to help the children with disabilities and include them, but also to educate people about disability and to help bring everyone together as a community. Disability art refers to sculpture or any kind of creative work that explores disability in some context. It is created by people with or without disabilities, with the purpose in mind to reach out to the audience and include everyone in the community. The major importance of this is the fact that disability art provides much needed access to those with disabilities, such as wheelchair ramps and braille, like the "Aqueous" sculpture. This is important because it can expose the marginalization and social mistreatment of disabled people and teach us how to include them.
An important aspect behind this sculpture is how it helps form a base of support for the emergence of disability culture, which means that we as people disabled and non-disabled are more alike than we think and we can take so much away from that. The superintendent of the school, Nancy Bryant, felt this sculpture was necessary so that all her students could have equal opportunity to explore their imagination and themselves. After talking to a graduate from her school, who described climbing a fallen tree as a place for endless imagination, she knew that every child should get that same opportunity to explore for themselves. The sculpture itself and the poem created by Isabel Demmon, a Fitchburg native, for this art piece helps us see the movement towards self-determination and the reshaping of the public's view of disability.
The "Aqueous" sculpture is built to mimic a wave, and is accessible by everyone, including people who use wheelchairs, to get into to get a tactile experience. The "Aqueous" sculpture incorporates braille and many different textures for sensory purposes for the visually impaired. Throughout the sculpture there is braille in forms of poems for the children to read. Throughout the sculpture there is braille in forms of poems for the children to read. Braille, which is used for communicating with disabled people, usually the visually impaired, is a set of tactile symbols. Each symbol is based on a mixture of three rows and two columns. Many of the symbols have many meanings, which is determined by the context of the surrounding symbols.
Martin Eichinger’s incorporation of braille and other textures in this sculpture and many other disability art pieces is important for many reasons. Worldwide, there are over 285 million people that are visually impaired, 39 million being blind and another 246 million having low-vision impairments. Blindness is a disability that exists more often than one might think, and it affects many people on a global level. 10% of those who are blind can read braille, so with incorporation of braille into art and other everyday objects, we can help increase that statistic. This is important because people who are blind aren't getting the education they need, or the accommodations necessary to thrive. As important as it is for any child to learn how to read, children who are blind should be no different, which is why learning braille is important.
With sculptures like this one, not only is it helping people with disabilities, but it also enlightens many people who are not disabled and allows them to be fully immersed in the complexity of it all. It allows us to learn more about the disabilities themselves, and see that these people are not more different than anyone else. An another example of an exposure to disabilities is a festival called the "Blind Creations" conference in England; at this conference you can find many exhibits that pertain to disability. Some of these include a sculpture carved from concreteand an exhibit that is a sculpture that says “seeing red” spelled out in braille. Both of these, which are similar to the "Aqueous" sculpture, help the disabled experience art and also also educate everyone about disabilities and the different ways we can communicate through art. Some other art pieces include the Koru Gate, Go, Vision and Braille art. Some other art pieces created for those with blindness and vision disabilities include the Koru Gate, Go, Vision and Braille art. They all incorporate tactile art to be enjoyed by everyone. Disability art is made to include everyone and make every person who experiences it feel like they're accepted.
These artifacts, which are from a scrapbook about Martin Eichinger, his sculpture, and Isabel Demmonn's poem, bring forth their contribution in helping those with the disability of blindness and vision impairment. The main intention and vision for the "Aqueous" sculpture was to make accessible art for everyone and help give those who don't normally have the opportunity to explore their imagination through art to do so. It also allows for a community to come together and explore each other's differences and learn more to bring everyone closer together. Isabel Demmon's service to the country and the general public by being a nurse opened up the door for her to reach out to those with disabilities and help them without the use of formal medicine long after becoming a nurse. Her concept of the sculpture and her work led to inclusiveness of a community and created an opportunity of learning and love for the children and adults associated with the project and the disabled community itself as a whole, which was a very big step forward for those excluded due to disability.
“Aqueous” is the name of a sculpture created by Martin Eichinger who used Isabel Demmon’s idea of incorporating braille into a sculpture to support disability. What sets this sculpture apart from other sculptures is the fact that "Aqueous" is made with a multi-textured surface with braille engraved along it. Along the side of "Aqueous" is a braille engraving of Fitchburg native Isabel Demmon’s short poem: “Child of The Sea.” This unique way of creating the sculpture makes it perfect for visually-impaired people to experience the sculpture even if they cannot see it. Not only is this sculpture perfect for the blind, but its large, curved form is big enough to allow someone in a wheelchair to roll in. Eichinger was inspired to create this piece by a scene in the movie The Miracle Worker, where Helen Keller connects the sign language word for water with the substance itself. "Aqueous" is easily accessible to everyone, no matter what disability they may have.
"Aqueous" was the main attraction at the “Very Special Arts Festival” at the Michigan School for the Blind. At the festival, over 600 children with physical and mental disabilities were able to explore different art pieces including this one. Demmon read her poem that is engraved on "Aqueous," and the children were allowed to explore the sculpture. This festival was a great opportunity for children with disabilities to experience art in a different way that they may not have been able to before.
"Aqueous" and the "Very Special Arts Festival" as a whole are prime examples of how art therapy can benefit not only children, but anyone struggling with a disability. Art therapy, which can be defined as using visual arts in a therapeutic way, has proven to have major improving effects on motor and cognitive functioning as well as overall quality of life. This is not restricted to art that is tangible, such as sculptures or painting, but it can also include art such as music, dance, and drama. Art is used as a way of self expression and helps people interact with others through their craft. This can be very helpful for someone dealing with a disability who may feel they are alone or misunderstood otherwise.
Art therapy has also been proven to help decrease symptoms of mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety, which tend to go hand in hand with disability or are disabilities themselves. A person with a physical or intellectual disability has been proven to be more at risk for a mental illness. In contrast, mental illness can even lead to someone having a disability in some cases. Disability and mental illness are very well connected. Art in any form is an effective way to deal with unconscious feelings that may have been hidden or suppressed otherwise. You are allowed to express your emotions in a different way, which can be extremely beneficial for someone dealing with emotions they cannot or do not want to express verbally. Dealing with mental illness and disability can cause emotional, mental, and physical stress for a person. Art is a way of relieving stress and can be very relaxing. Art therapy is an overall relaxing and emotionally expressive way to manage mental health.
Along with allowing self expression and helping with mental illness, art has also been extremely helpful for cognitive and physical development. For someone with an intellectual disability, the quality of the education is extremely important. Studies have shown that hands-on, abstract ways of teaching are most beneficial for students who struggle with intellectual disabilities. Art can be used as a hands-on way of teaching students with these disabilities and has proven itself to be extremely beneficial to special education students. The typical use of notes and assessments is difficult for those with disabilities to retain the knowledge. Rather than assessing students using tests, teachers with not only students with disabilities, but students who may just have trouble learning in that way, can use a more creative approach to assessments, such as projects. Projects are a way for students to express their knowledge on a topic in a creative way and have room to express themselves. Research in neuroscience has found that the use of arts in young children helps with cognitive development. Due to the fact that each area of the brain has its own designated job, some areas respond specifically to the arts. By exploring different forms of art, a person can increase the development of this area of the brain. For example, drama and theater arts stimulates neural networks that are characteristics in spoken language and emotions. The use of arts is a contributor to cognitive development as well as physical development.
Arts can be used to improve both gross and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills, which include bigger movements such as walking, running, and reaching can be improved with activities such as dance and musical theater. Fine motor skills, which are our smaller movements such as moving fingers, toes, and the mouth to talk can be improved with activities such as drawing or painting. Someone with a physical disability such as Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis, who may struggle with these gross and fine motor skills, can benefit from art therapy in all of its forms because of the motor skills these activities promote and enhance. Dance is a prime example of art as a way of physical therapy. Dance helps promote development of coordination, motor control, and rhythm. A young child with a physical disability can benefit from a dance class because they are still learning and developing their motor functioning, so being in a class where that is the main focus can help them improve skills that may be difficult for them due to their disability.
Art has proven to be an extremely beneficial form of therapy for people who may be experiencing any form of disability. It can also be beneficial for someone who does not have a disability, but may just need a way to express their emotions and relax. Art therapy is not restricted to only making art directly, but being able to interact with art has many benefits. This is mainly seen from the interaction the students at the Michigan School for the Blind had with the "Aqueous" sculpture.
“The Arts as Therapy: What Are the Benefits of the Arts as Therapy?” The Arts as Therapy: What Are the Benefits of the Arts as Therapy? | National Rehabilitation Information Center, naric.com/?q=en%2FFAQ%2Farts-therapy-what-are-benefits-arts-therapy.
“Creativity and Recovery: The Mental Health Benefits of Art Therapy.” Resources To Recover, 12 Mar. 2019, www.rtor.org/2018/07/10/benefits-of-art-therapy/.
“How the Arts Develop the Young Brain.” AASA, www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=7378.
“Learning Disabilities and the Arts.” LD OnLine, www.ldonline.org/article/30031/.
Leeper, J D, et al. “Mental Disorders among Physical Disability Determination Patients.” American Journal of Public Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 1985, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646140/?page=1.