As a blind artist, Ketra Oberlander explores the tension between what's practical and what's possible.

"I don't have any business deciding what I can't do," she observes, "people cheat themselves out of all sorts of opportunities because they think they can't do something. Well, what if they can?"

What if?

Working in oils and acrylics, Ketra investigates spiritual potential  and infinite variety in her exuberant paintings. Despite her limited visual acuity and color perception, she captures the spirit of creation in her work.

To learn more visit Ketra's personal site, droolingcat.com.

Charles Blackwell's deep appreciation of American jazz music helped him adjust to his vision loss.  Incorporating the jazz aesthetic into his art, Charles perceives blindness as an asset in his painting. He uses  his fingers or the bottom of a brush, or even three colored pencils at one time, relying on the tactile sensibility and the emotional experience of the music to guide his visual interpretation. A nationally recognized artist, Charles was the Featured Artist in the prestigious 2009 Insights exhibition at San Francisco City Hall.

Joan, hearing impaired since a young child and a cancer survivor, expresses her visual metaphors of human behavior and humor through her symbolic patterns and forms.  She finds joy in detail and color of her mark making processes. She works in painting, drawing, sculpture and video animations.  She often works with other artists on collaborative projects and mentors artists to find a sense of self in art.  She hopes that others will see the playfulness and hope in her work and that art is a language that all understand through opening our hearts.  She lives and works in colorful San Antonio, Texas with her husband John and four mischievous cats.

Joan hails from Chicago and received her BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA at the University of Texas.  Exhibiting since 1981, Joan has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and beyond:  the National College of Arts, Lahore Pakistan where she was a visiting lecturer;  Parsons Paris School of Design Gallery, Paris France;  Artoteek Scheidam Museum, Holland, McNay Art Museum, Jones Center for Contemporary Art and Broadway Gallery in New York City. She has won many grants and honorariums, including a Fulbright Scholar Award to Pakistan (where she fell in love with textile designs there) and a Pollock Krasner Award in 2005.  In 2009 Joan was an artist in residencr in Delft, Holland at Foundation id11 Flatlands.  Her work will be in a 2010 exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute International in “Revealing Culture.”

Hannah Lake makes her own happiness designing through the chronic pain  from multiple spinal cord injuries. Unable to  hold her arms up for prolonged periods, her studio's paints and  potter's wheel sit  locked in time, like a museum of her life before  the auto collision. From bed Hannah now designs digitally, focusing on  form and color.

On good days Hannah tends the busy home of her active family. On bad days, she retreats to the world of design, where creating thoughtful compositions distracts her from "managing" chronic pain. Work she creates as a refuge delights teen/tween active girls who connect with 
the modern, ebullient mood.

Hannah holds two degrees from USC, received in 1986 and 1989. She ran her own private consulting and fundraising business prior to disability.  Hannah has been married 20 years, with two boisterous girls, two dogs and two cats.

Ralph Mindicino sacrificed his right leg to bone cancer at 14. The prospect of a long recovery mired in pain and boredom had a transformative effect on him:  creating imaginary worlds provided escape and relief from the harsh realities of the physical world. Mindicino’s journey of rehabilitation and psychic healing concluded with an outlook on life forever informed by the experience. He has continued to explore his art ever since and has enriched the lives of thousands of others through his work.

His work has toured the U.S. and received the prestigious Wynn Newhouse Award 2009.

Mindicino studied fine art at the State University of New York in Fredonia and Stonybrook, acquiring skills in bronze and steel sculpture, pottery and oil painting.  He worked as a bronze finisher for Joel Meisner Co. (now Elliot Gantz & Co.) in the 1980s. For the past 25 years, Mindicino has been working in the television broadcasting industry. 

Lorna Ritz captures the landscape of her sweet life in dramatic, passionate gesture. Recurrent cancer and the damage from its treatments (surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments) have resulted in Lorna's intermittent, sharp pain and limited mobility. Despite a lifetime of health obstacles, Lorna creates: abstract works and stunning landscapes that have accumulated in her impressive fine art resume, including several Guest Critic terms at the Vermont Studio Center and thrice receiving the Pollock-Krasner Grant along with a Kittridge Fund Grant from Harvard University. Lorna lectures and exhibits internationally.

"The worst part of the paralysis is, no matter how much joy I experience, I can't smile," confides Enid Swift, a talented designer who has dealt with her confounding neurological syndrome by focusing on the joy she can create through artistic self-expression.

Designer Enid Swift doesn't quit. Her military career was cut short by a rare neurological disorder that has compromised her daily life. Despite disability, her can-do personality directed her back to the creative expression through art she enjoyed as a child and she now focuses on the elements of design to bring order and stability to an increasingly distracted world. Her patterns offer a contemplated foundation on which to build entire lines.

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