Beginning this week, visitors who are blind or visually impaired can access detailed verbal descriptions of selected paintings at the Memorial Art Gallery via cell phone. After reading Amy Mednick describe her experience writing these, call 585.627.4132 to experience them yourself.

—Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss, Director of Education

For the past year, I have been working with the Education Department of the Memorial Art Gallery to write verbal descriptions of paintings for visitors who are blind or visually impaired. The Gallery envisioned that these descriptions would be recorded and accessible through cell phone, allowing a blind or visually impaired individual to visit the Gallery with a sighted friend or relative and experience selected artwork together.

As a journalist by training, I found the prospect of writing detailed, objective descriptions of artwork an intriguing exercise. I had not yet grasped how painstaking, yet exciting and gratifying, it would be to study a work of art in such detail and describe it in written form. Before the first of many extended and intimate visits with selected paintings, I was introduced to the guidelines for writing verbal descriptions published by Art Beyond Sight. Art Beyond Sight defines verbal description as a way of “using words to describe the visual world,” which enables “persons who are blind or visually impaired to form a mental image of what they cannot see.”

My first assignment was a 19^th century American painting by Lilly Martin Spencer, Peeling Onions. In my first sitting with the cook in Peeling Onions, I realized immediately that to paint a picture verbally I needed to deconstruct how a sighted person tends to experience a painting. Sighted viewers tend to experience and internalize an artwork in an intuitive, holistic, and personal way. With this exercise, I needed to return to my early training as a reporter and to re-tune my observational skills. I found it difficult to balance wanting the listeners/viewers to “see” precisely what a sighted viewer would—down to the last grape or dress pleat—and, yet not overwhelming them with too many intricate details.

After I described five paintings, we toured them with Rene LaTorre, of Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired-Goodwill, and Lisa Helen Hoffman, an expert in audio description, who gave us helpful input on details and structure. Ruth Phinney, of Reachout Radio, then arranged for Anita Nicoletta to record these descriptions, and generously donated the recording and production time at WXXI.

Now, a year later, the paintings I have described have become my “old friends.” I continue to write descriptions and, currently, might be seen with my laptop intently staring at the intricately etched images on the Gallery’s 16^th century suit of German armor.

—Amy Mednick

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