Helping Hand
Justin Leverett sat with his teacher, Carol Kreiser, as she asked him what color paper to use in his collage of Harry Potter.
She held his hand as together they tore chartreuse office paper and gave Harry some Andy Warhol-style hair.
Next, Kreiser held a sheet of metallic red paper in her left hand and a sheet of gold foil in the other. When she shimmied the red paper, the slightest of smiles flashed across Justin's face.
Kreiser took the red paper and tore two red circles to make John Lennon-style glasses for the likeness.
Around the art room table, three other students were using tissue papers and other scraps from a cardboard box to create their own art on Oct. 18.
All the students in the room are legally blind and have some other form of severe cognitive or physical disability.
Still, with support from their teachers and a partnership with the Andy Warhol Museum, the students at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children are creating art that will be the toast of an art party this morning at the school tucked north of the University of Pittsburgh in the city's Oakland section.
The school is part of an international movement in October called "Art Beyond Sight," in which museums, schools and libraries work to make art accessible to the blind.
Jillian Pritts, the school's spokeswoman, said the project is important because it makes the public aware that most of the blind have some residual sight.
The school has 175 students; eight are from Butler County.
The students who live the furthest away or have medical conditions preventing transportation can stay in the schools dormitory wing from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon. During the week, the students take part in life-skills classes and participate in activities like bowling.
The students have art classes, many using textured fabric or crafts, all year.
For about a year they have worked with representatives from the The Warhol museum on Pittsburgh's North Side that focuses on the art of the Pittsburgh native and his contemporaries who brought commercialized art to New York City in the 1960s and '70s.
The students who were able visited the museum earlier this year. Since then, the assistant education curator: School and Teacher Program Nicole Dezelon and Artist Educator Brian Lauch, both from the Warhol, visit and help the students work on their art.
Dezelon said for this project they chose to do silk screenings of celebrities. The students voted to use the images of Harry Potter and Raven Samone, songstress and star of Disney's "That's So Raven" TV show.
The popularity of Raven shocked some of the teachers, like Becky Yeagers, who knew her only as Olivia from "The Cosby Show."
Then using a photographic process that degrades part of a piece of material, the museum made screens of Raven and Harry. The frame is hinged to a heavy wooden board engraved with registration marks. The paper is lined up with the marks and the frame is closed.One by one, the older students took turns screening over with the paintings or collages made two days before and earlier that day.When it was Spenser Ramesy's turn, Justin's version of Harry Potter was set between the frame and base board. Lauch spread a line of thick black ink across the top of the screen and then he and Yeagers helped Spenser use a squeegee to pull the ink toward him and over the screen. Where the screen is degraded, the ink seeped through and onto the paper below, painting a perfect image of Harry Potter.Lauch lifted the frame and, before walking the poster board over to a drying rack, held it up for Spenser, a high-school aged student also from the Seneca Valley SchoolDistrict and others at the table to see the contrast between the bright colors and black ink.Kreiser said the students really respond to the colors, even those who don't use speech, like Justin, an elementary-level student from the Seneca Valley.Ryan Seamon, a Mars student set to graduate later in the school year, does use speech to communicate, especially to ask questions.He's full of curiosity and while the students work on art projects asks where classroom visitors are from and what roads they use to get to the city. As he was talking with the visitors, he was able to name the maker of the perfume worn by a woman standing 10 feet away.Ryan is excited to graduate and invites everyone to the event. Students can start at the school when they are 3 and graduate when they turn 21.Judy Shanahon, a school occupational therapist who stood next to some half-completed papier-mâché fairies in the room crammed with student projects, said students like Ryan and Spenser are excited to show off their art.The prints, when dried, were to be installed in huge frames that would be put in the first-floor windows of the school's multi-purpose room. All the decorations needed to be done before the party scheduled for 9:30 to 11 a.m. this morning.The party was designed in the fashion of one of Warhol's famed Factory parties. The Factory is what Warhol called his various studios in New York that welcomed hundreds of guests and a group called the Warhol superstars.While the disc jockey is playing, the students are dancing on the ballroom floor, staff dressed in period clothes are eating and the Warhol impersonator makes his rounds,Justin's collage will be standing out in one of the room's windows.
