I’ll tell it to you now because it has direct bearing on this artwork I’ve done for you. One of his stories that I illustrated became my favorite. Bob asked me to illustrate some of his teaching stories that he used in his “Emotional Repair” seminars. Over the course of working on that project Dr. Bob Hoke, a psychiatrist, and his wife Penny bought some of my fine artwork and commissioned me to make a companion piece to the one they bought. Still college was expensive so I also sold my fine artwork and freelance illustrated every chance I could.Īt one art exhibit Dr.
My books (zines really) were popular with some of the kids and not so popular with some adults.Īnother element of my inner world: Fast forward to the mid 1980’s: I went to the University of Oklahoma on art scholarships and I was working as a graphic designer/ photographer. The school-yard bullies became the villains in my books. In the process of growing my “subscriber list” I learned that other kids didn’t see themselves in books either. I traded my little books with my grade-school classmates for pencils, erasers and crayons. I began making small hand drawn books and learning about creating stories, and drawing people and action as realistically as I could. Where was the action? The adventure? The fun? I decided to create my own storybooks with my own characters.
While I appreciated the librarian finding the book my 8 year old self found Helen Keller to be terribly old-fashioned. The book was slightly above my reading level and it only had a few black and white photographs – but I read it anyway. One librarian finally came up with a book on Helen Keller. As an 8 year old kid I asked the school librarians and the public librarians for books with deaf people in them. So, for my grade-school self, books were my link to the wider world. Television was not closed captioned back then and I didn’t become aware of subtitled movies until I went to college. Here are parts of my inner world that I pulled from:Īs a Deaf kid growing up in Oklahoma in the 1970’s I didn’t know any other deaf kids – or even any deaf grownups and I didn’t see myself, or any deaf people in any of the storybooks. When Amanda contacted me about possibly doing this for you I began thinking of what parts of my inner world might be relevant for this project. To create this piece, I consulted both my inner world and the external real world of the WSU Vancouver campus. I’ve created an art piece for you titled “Heroes’ Journey”. Thank you, Amanda, Sky and Washington State University Vancouver, for asking me to create something to help you celebrate Dis(covering) Ability – and diversity today! Speech (roughly) for Oct 4 th Dis(covering) Ability event by Sue Clancy 22 x 30 inches – Ink, watercolor, color pencil and acrylic – framed
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