A Premonition
Silent Premonition &
The Art of Navigating Change
A DISTINCT PAINTING WITH A HIDDEN MEANING
It was the Summer of 2017 when I created Silent Premonition — although at the time it was just a nameless piece that came to me from that same mysterious place all art comes from. It’s a diptych painted in stark white and black, unusual for me. I’m usually reaching for bright colors in the studio, but this painting called for a different approach.
At the time, the painting seemed like any other. Perhaps it looked different than others. Perhaps it contained an impulse I didn’t quite understand. But it was a painting. As an artist, this came as no great surprise. Painters paint, and et voilà, here was another.
It was a few days later, on August 4th, that it happened. Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSHL), it is called.
July 2017 – In my former studio, just a couple of weeks before waking up to severe sudden unilateral hearing loss. Ironically, here I am, wearing headphones, utterly unaware of what was coming next – one of the most challenging battles I’ve ever fought.
I had no conscious idea that I was about to experience complete hearing loss in my right ear. There was no warning from a stern-faced doctor. There was no inkling, no gradual build-up of pressure or slow march of deafness. In a few days I went from finishing this strange, stark painting to the pain and shock of SSHL.
As I look at the painting now, the once mysterious choices — the bleakness of the palette, the tortured body of a tree with its sagging fruit of human parts, the moonlike form hanging in the sky that now announces itself as a cochlea — appear as a premonition. A catastrophe waited in the wings, and I had no idea. But something did, and it told me through my painting.
The tree being used as a metaphor for the human body is not so unheard of. And seeing it now, years after the painting and the hearing loss, I see yet another premonition. Not just of a catastrophe but something that grows after.
Trees are sturdy beings. Some can live for hundreds of years, but none of them can walk. That means that trees have developed into some of the most resilient organisms on Earth. Their circumstances make them capable of adapting to a wide range of catastrophes, and still they grow and bear fruit and spread their leaves to drink in the sun.
In the last two decades, we’ve also discovered that trees are giving organisms. Where once we saw the plants in a forest fighters locked in brutal competition, we now understand that trees are involved in a complex, cooperative exchange. Saplings that grow under well established trees thrive. Underground networks made up of tree roots and mycelium spread nutrients and messages of warning below the forest floor.
As my journey unfolded after August 4th, 2017, I slowly changed from a tree bearing a physical trauma to once again becoming capable of giving, cooperating and creating.
Silent Premonition will always connect with me. It is a message from my work that interweaves so completely with my story as a human being. It reminds me of both the importance of an artistic practice in my own life as well as its role in the lives of others. Art can give solace to those who need it, express new perspectives to those ready to see and hear it.
And, just maybe, it can tell you about a great fire ahead and how to grow in the seasons after.
‘SILENT PREMONITION’
FIRST TIME EXHIBIT / DEBUT
FEBRUARY 26, 2021
Press Release from RIT/NTID Dyer Arts Center:
We’re thrilled to announce the opening of “This is Not Normal: Deaf Modernist Sensibilities,” an exhibition that showcases Surrealist and Modernist art by deaf and hard-of-hearing artists.
Using dreamlike imagery and unusual pairings of images to challenge artistic tradition and comment on aspects of modern life in order to increase social consciousness, the artists contributing to this exhibit are influenced by a broad range of artists from Salvador Dali to Man Ray.
This exhibit includes more than 60 contributions from 16 deaf and hard-of-hearing artists who comment on everything from global issues--such as climate change and environmental degradation--to deaf-specific issues, such as mysterious barriers that appear for seemingly no reason.
This exhibit will open on Friday, February 26th, 2021 with an online reception via Zoom from 7:00-8:30 p.m. (Eastern).
Head to https://airtable.com/shr7ra2VeqHmfqABw to register; once you’ve done that, you’ll get an e-mail with the details you need to attend the reception.
ABOUT THE CENTER
The Joseph F. and Helen C. Dyer Arts Center at NTID houses several state-of-the-art galleries that showcase artworks created by current students, alumni, and artists who are nationally and internationally renowned. All of these artists are deaf, hard of hearing, and/or allies of the Deaf community.
The center also hosts art-related educational activities such as lectures and demonstrations, and serves as a multi-use facility on the campus of Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. The center is unique among other galleries on campus for its permanent collection of works by deaf and hard of hearing artists.
Thanks to a leadership gift from the late Joseph and Helen Dyer, long-time supporters of NTID, the center opened in the fall of 2001.