Hillis Arnold 1906- 1988

I haven't blogged about a great deaf person in a couple weeks. When I opened my book of talented deaf Americans, it was Hillis Arnold's page. I'm glad. I've looked at his sculptures and read about him a couple times now.

He was born hearing in N. Dakota, then became deaf as an infant due to spinal meningitis. As a young child he enjoyed drawing and showed some skill using colored pencils. His earliest memories of sculpting was after a rainstorm when he made animal shapes out of the mud on his farm.

He was raised orally by his parents who worked with him on vocalization exercises after doing farm chores each day. At the age of 12 his family moved to Minnesota, where he was able to attend the Minneapolis Day School for the Deaf. Then he went to public high school and graduated with honors. From there he earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Minnesota. Then he received a full scholarship to the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. Next, he went to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and finally the Chicago Institute of Art.

In 1938, Arnold took a professorship at Monticello College in Illinois and remained teaching there for thirty-four years, while working on art commissions. Of teaching he said, "Communication with my students has never been a serious problem. At our first meeting I tell the students that by the end of the first or second week I will be able to read their lips if they move their lips a bit slower, and that they will understand me as they get used to my way of speaking." Arnold received many prestigious awards and recognitions for his work over the years. Most of it had religious themes and can be found in churches throughout the Midwest. Other works are in schools or downtown St. Louis.

Some of his sculptures incorporated deaf themes. "Because I am deaf, I am a better observer." he once said. One of his deaf sculptures called The Learners is a depiction of a mother practicing speech exercises with her deaf child. Another, called Deaf Given A Voice portrays an eye and an arm with moving fingers to represent how Deaf people use both their eyes and hands to communicate. Though Arnold never learned ASL or even fingerspelling, he was an advocate of Total Communication- the concept of using any and every possible means to communicate with a deaf/Deaf child.

Reading over the articles I found and writing this short sketch of his life, I got a sense that Hillis Arnold considered himself an artist first, not D/deaf first. His deafness was part of who he was, but not his main identity. It seems he was too busy teaching and creating sculptures to think much about his deaf experience. Still he acknowledged his deafness in some of his art when appropriate to do so. I like this about him.

Uzi Buzgalo

Recently I read a blog where two people argued whether deaf culture really existed. One person made the statement that the deaf don’t have their own form of art. The other person listed off some deaf artists and mentioned deaf view/image art called De‘VIA, which can be found at Deaf Art.

I’ve been looking at this site for awhile and I love it. If there’s one argument FOR deaf culture it is art. Deaf artists view and express themselves in space through vivid imagery. An emphasis on hands, eyes, lips and color in addition to common themes of repression pop up over and over, both validating and defining deaf culture. When artists create, they project their experiences and feelings into whatever they’re forming. I know this on a personal level because my mother is an artist.

I often tell the story how as a child I came home to my mom painting at an easel day after day. I used to love watching her drawings come to life on the canvas as she mixed and blended colors, them brushed them ever so lightly or scraped across the canvas to create just a certain texture. It was magical. Like most kids I‘d have a snack and talk to my mom after school before running off to play. Not until I became an adult did I realize she used me as a model in so many of her works. The children in her paintings all had my face.

This week I decided to write about a deaf artist. There are so many. I found a great book called, Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary by Deborah M. Sonnenstrahl. Not all of the artists in this book adhere to De’VIA‘s manifesto, but there have been many, many talented deaf artists in America and all over the world.

I‘ve chosen to write about Uzi Buzgalo because I just really LOVE his work. His colors are whimsical, and his message is fun, and his art makes me smile. (This one to the left looks like a telephone with hands popping out of it. In the background is a television set with flower hands or some such thing. It's hard to tell. I wish this picture were bigger. If one of you out there knows, please explain this!)

He was born in Israel in 1956. Deaf from birth, he went to the Jerusalem School for the Deaf where he learned Israeli Sign Language. He showed an interest and talent in art from an early age and began studying art seriously from about age eleven. Additionally, he loved to dance. As a young adult he joined a professional dance company made up of deaf and hearing dancers, Kol Demama meaning “Sound-Silence,” and he enjoyed traveling all over the world with them. His experiences with professional dance influenced his art style, which has been described as color waves and dots. His agent explains the impression of the dots as “deaf eyes that see in constant motion.” Like many other deaf artists, hands figure prominently in his work.

One of Buzgalo's paintings in the book that caught my eye was called Only Lives In Water. I couldn’t find this on-line. (Too bad!) I’ll describe it. The top portion had a huge fish. The lower third was obviously water. So the fish was OUT of the water. Under the water were so many, many people with arms and hands flailing about. Buzgalo explained this painting. I’ll quote directly from "Deaf Artists In America." When he was a small boy, “he watched his grandmother lay a fish on the kitchen table and the fish’s mouth was still moving. He asked his grandmother whether the fish was speaking. His grandmother told him that it does not say anything and ’it has no voice’ like him.”

Eventually Buzgalo's travels took him to the United States, and he became a US citizen in 1995.