Disability: Images and Thoughts

 Please feel warmly welcome to come check out a class this semester that is exploring disability.

I like the art and it conveys a message or messages. I'm useless at visual art except photography but I'm a writer and express myself best in comedy. I thought I may have had ADHD as a child and still do to a certain extent. I'm obsessive about the novel I've written - reading it over and over trying to get it perfect. I can't remember people's names but did a test the other day on pictures of people and scored really high on remembering faces. Keep doing what you think you're good at and to hell with everyone who doesn't understand...

"When my (or anyone's) artwork 'clicks' with some people, even despite its visceral content, we mutually take flight and reach flow through the "windows into the quintessence of the human experience"."

See A Brain State Within Ourselves

YES! Some of your art pictures are.... simply great. hoping to find more of them in the net

I think I should be saddened or something slightly less than frightened (would need to look up a word but I'm being lazy), but I think these images are beautiful....that weird?

YES! Some of your art pictures are.... simply great. hoping to find more of them in the net

God this one is emotionally painful. A 23 year old was stabbed last night and left for dead. I cried when I heard the news grateful is wasn't my son. I first saw abortion in this one, but left for dead at any age is so devasting. Whether it is a physical dead, or an emotional dead; dead is still dead. There are worse things in life than physically dying; Living with abandonment, isolation, oppression...

So sad, but hopeful...I have no community where I reside. Alone is better, but I would want to hold you. Protect you, and keep you safe in spite of your community. I wish you could see you through my eyes...HOPE...UNDERSTANDING...UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

This is the most powerful feeling I have had. I do believe that these disorders are very much misunderstood. I also see in my own life how anything that was once "good" about me, can now be twisted into another reason for my labels...Personally I have diagnosed myself with Alpha Bitch Cind roam!!! I am now working on changing the "BITCH" into "FEMALE". This is how I feel towards the medical community I got stuck with. They are putting an evil spin on who I am, and have always been. It is a perception that is colored with bias! Evil Evil Evil!

I see the wasted potential of the learning area. It's as though it's not worth using the room? Me...Now labeled...they turned off the lights, and shut the door. I feel like "they" have "taken" my potential from me!

"The kingdom of heaven is upon us". Urgency... what am I waiting for? The radio?...music is my calm in the hell I sometimes get caught up in... the skulls are "the after death" looking into the windows of individual souls. One peeper always watchng for a way to be invited into my "life". An unlocked window is all it takes, and the all HELL BREAKS LOOSE... I can always change the radio station...illusion of control over my self? I was told I ABSOLUTELY could not control myself without medication! Well doctor, it appears as though I found my cold day in hell...heehee

The eyes creeped me out. My brain can't seem to put the image with the caption. What I saw was how I feel, outside looking in on a A world that is tortued, but the chair was empty. Eyes watching...Chair waiting for who? The shadow is anyone of us. We are all students here. Until we die there are lessons to be learned. The bars seem like the oppression I feel, the isolation I feel, and the inability to reach into the world, and ease some of the suffering I see. I don't like this painting emotionally, but mentally it is quite thought provoking.

I realized sleep has always been my freedom from the pain of my physical diabilities, AND now I realize the affect my dream thoughts have on my waking mood...They can create a mental road block if not seen for what they are...just left overs...Those feelings don't have to have a bearing on my day.

What I saw is what I have been doing...seeing past what my eyes want me to believe. What I read made me realize that while someone tagged me with a "weakness", my strenths became my focus. Admitting to a flaw removed the pressure to overcompensate...Ahhhh!

My favorite is "Eye in Eye Strengths". Great comment to this work was made by jrlewis: "Mirrors and reflection. Playing with the relationship between parts and the whole."

Wow! Great to see your use of art... Helps me know anouther demention of you...

Keep the faith.

This exhibit is designed to encourage visitors to respond directly to the images, and then to use those responses, both their similarities and their differences, as part of continuing conversation about disabilities and how they are/should be dealt with in our culture. An additional important part of the conversation is the artist's own sense of what the images are about, and the context in which they were created. After posting your own responses to the individual images, see Background for David's thoughts about the images and their creation. And then post here whatever thoughts all this triggers in you about what "diabilities" mean, and how we might think differently about them.