Fine Art + Paintings + Sculpture + Furniture + Photographs
GAIL TARANTINO SIGHT UNSEEN
Art That Incorporates Braille
Reception April 26th, 2008, 2-4pm
Exhibit April 26th through June 25th, 2008
Born in Boston, Gail now lives and works in Emeryville, California as a visual artist and art educator. Her work is influenced by oral and written narratives. She is working with ideas that have a relationship to sensory experience, the act of observation and the rhythmic and musical aspects of language.
Short Wave Radio, 2006, Acrylic on Canvas, 48" x 48"
Artist Statement:
The influence of oral and written narratives, my ongoing bent for storytelling, how language shapes image-making and extracting essential moments from an experience are what trigger an idea. Recent work charts the biographical lifting of memorable experiences between a blind and sighted pair of siblings. The stories told were simultaneously poignant, funny and sad. What part of his- story is fiction?
The transcription and tedious reproduction of the 6 cell dot involves a process that straddles spheres of differing sensory domains; the anecdotal nature of the compressed text paired with braille. Curiously, this interest began with a simple question to an unsighted individual tapping away on his braille writer. "How do you think about color? The immediate response was that he favored blue because he liked the sound of the word. The text and its braille transcription play with ideas about perception, the construction of mental images and one's ability to be sighted in mind. The musicality of language and its rhythmic potential are also considered with the intent to weave together text, context and texture.
