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Touch - and see Clay helps visually impaired teens feel world around them
Oozing clay, their hands cling tight. "You know how, when Italians go like this and say, 'Ma-ma mee-yah!'?" asks Vickie Allen Shea. She squeezes Christina Ewiak's gooey hands into a pinch above the spinning potter's wheel. "That's how you hold your fingers." Christina can't see. But she has trust in the teacher and faith in herself in this moment, surrounded by friends who are being every bit as brave. Fingers pinched, she stares ahead and dips a hand down into the wet, spinning pot. There's silence, then giggles. "It tickles!" the 16-year-old blurts out, as the pot spins around, grazing her fingertips. "C'mon, you scaredy-cats -- it's like touching wet sand!" Christina's laugh -- and the link in her mind's eye to a memory -- are just what Dorothy Yucha-Seth had hoped for. Joy. Connection. And a growing sense of how hands can see when eyes do not. "Pretty cool, huh?" says Yucha-Seth. She moves closer to Christina's voice in the hum of potter's wheels and the chatter of teenagers in this class for blind and profoundly visually impaired kids at Allen Stoneware Gallery and Pottery Studio. Yucha-Seth, director of children's programs at Vision and Blindness Resources-Erie Center, has brought her students here for the after-school sessions because she knows that clay is unique. Working it draws on all the senses. Blind herself since age 7, when a gun accident caused sudden and catastrophic vision loss --"Both eyes, poof! Gone," she says -- Yucha-Seth long ago developed faith in the power of sensory experience. "It was the worst of times," she says of coping with her loss. But strong and loving parents nudged her along. Didn't coddle her. "There was nothing my mother said I couldn't do." So she became brave. Life takes shape Through a residential program near Pittsburgh for blind and visually impaired children, Yucah-Seth learned to read. She learned about art and music. She learned to swim. Later, she learned to travel independently and to do research. At one point, she learned to throw clay on a wheel. It was a carnival of sensation. She remembers the cool, fresh-rain smell of it. The sloshing of water to keep it wet. How it took strength and concentration to make it yield. The way you worked at that --losing yourself, leaning into it --to give it shape. And how it rewards you by holding that shape as a cup or a bowl or some other three-dimensional object. But there's an added dimension to working with clay. It's the power of touch. And touch is a lifeline for those who can't see. "Clay is a very tactile media,"says Yucha-Seth. "And when you're visually impaired or totally blind, your tactile sense is heightened because you have to use your hands for everything in everyday life." Touch yields information. It builds spatial awareness for those who can't rely on their eyes to see what's around them. That, in turn, boosts confidence and mobility -- things Yucha-Seth wants these kids to have, in spades. To that end, she seeks to hone that tactile sense in her students, whose vision ranges from seeing blurred shapes, to narrowed, pea-sized bits of the world, to nothing at all. Yucha-Seth wants them to become as used to seeing with their hands as she is. Hands-on experience It has been a struggle. "When I first took this job (in 1999), they didn't want to get dirty at all. I'm talking food prep and using their hands to find stuff when they drop it," says Yucha-Seth, who runs the after-school program and summer classes at VBR. But slowly -- and especially since Yucha-Seth and Linda Hackshaw, associate director of development at VBR, won grant money in 2005 to pay for clay sessions at Allen Stoneware -- her students have become more at ease exploring with their hands. On the potter's wheel, that ease throttles to exhilaration. Hannah Green, 11, is tempted to race on her first try. "Slow your wheel down," advises Yucha-Seth. "That's the tricky part. Now, feel how the clay is working up?"  Nearby, guided by potter Joe Moosman, Stephen Hiegel presses down on a chunk of clay. Slowly, he draws up a wall. "Wow, look how wide that is! What a riot," says Hiegel, 18. His field of vision is roughly 4 percent of normal. What he sees is something like looking through a pinhole. Moosman lifts his own hands away, and the rim of the pot is left whirling between Hiegel's thumb and forefinger. "I love how it feels," he says, his face crinkling in delight. "I love that feeling when it dries," says Christina, rubbing a splotch of clay on her arm. Creating with clay "is wet and it's cold and it's fun," she'd told her mom, Teresa Ewiak, after a recent class. Christina has been steadily losing vision since she was 2, says her mother. Just in the past year, though, she's lost most of what remained. That's been hard. And so the joy of the pottery sessions are a lift -- a kind of therapy -- for Christina and her mother, says Teresa Ewiak. "She loves coming here,"Teresa Ewiak says as she waits at 5 p.m. one Monday to take Christina home. "Last week she said her bowl was too big, but that it was OK. And she's right. There's no perfection. It's pottery." It's pottery and it's art and it's fun and new. It's being with people who are a lot like you, creating cool stuff. Or messing up and laughing and having everything turn out OK anyway. For that reason, the classes have been an emotional shot in the arm when these kids can really use it. When life itself might seem like it's spinning out of control. "A lot of them are going through the process of losing their sight. And they're teenagers, which is a big liability in itself. They have a lot of trouble expressing what is happening to them," says Yucha-Seth. "This is freedom for them. ... Working with clay is a great way to express inner emotions." Clay makes an impression Clay is endlessly malleable. It absorbs pain, boredom, thoughts, whims, despair and dreams. But it gives something back. Not just a bowl for cereal or fruit. Something more concrete and lasting: a richer emotional life, stretched imaginations. And a laugh or two, if you have friends to explore it all with. One week after learning to work the potter's wheel, the group is pressing clay into molds shaped like faces. Shea places a finished face into Rachel Straneva's palm. "This one looks funny. Like an old person. No -- like someone who's real religious," says Straneva, 20, running her fingers over the stiff hair and dour lips. "Shh! We're in church," whispers Yucha-Seth, in a playful tone. That draws snorts of laughter from Straneva and Christina Ewiak, who are busy passing faces back and forth. Friendship is no small thing. Especially to kids who can't mingle as easily in school hallways, play on soccer teams, drive cars. "These kids are isolated and alone, not seeing," says Hackshaw. "In their schools, most likely they're the only one." In pottery class, lots of bonding takes place, says Hackshaw. They talk, they laugh, they feel better about themselves. "Being here makes them feel accepted," says Teresa Ewiak. Working with clay also offers up something lasting from each moment of discovery. When Tylor Austin comes to class on March 13, Moosman guides him to a table. There his hand-built vase, soap dish and two wheel-thrown pots are displayed. They're hard and pink now, having been fired in the bisque kiln. Today they'll be glazed. Tylor, 12, picks up the smaller pot. Through powerful glasses, he peers in. "Cool," he whispers, more to himself than anybody. What does he like best? "The way it feels." His fingers work the edge of the bowl, then move inside. Then his face breaks into a grin. A thought comes spinning back: the wheel, the clay and how it yielded to his touch. "Just the way I put my hand down here to make this." JOAN BENSON-CACCHIONE can be reached at 870-1737 or by e-mail. BY THE NUMBERS Sources: National Eye Institute; Vision and Blindness Resources -- Erie Center A sampling of clay pieces created by those enrolled in the Blind Children Experience Visual Art: Using the Other Senses to Create Pottery course will be displayed during an upcoming fundraiser for Vision and Blindness Resources --Erie Center. The event, Wine, Chocolate and Art, is scheduled May 6 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Tom Ridge Environmental Center, near the entrance to Presque Isle State Park. Other pots and sculptures will rotate through a number of area locations from June 1 through Aug. 31. Venues include the Ridge Center as well as Blasco Library. Working with the Arts Council of Erie, VBR secured funds in 2005 to launch the pottery class project for students who are blind or have profound visual impairments. The $2,500 project grant, awarded through the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program, was paired with an additional $500 from the Lions Club of Erie. The money funded a pilot project in 2005, as well as weekly after-school sessions in 2005 and 2006 for two groups of students enrolled in the Children's Experience Program at VBR. The classes have taken place at Allen Stoneware Gallery and Pottery Studio, 2602 W. Eighth St. For more information about the May 6 fundraiser, call Linda Hackshaw at 455-0995, Ext. 304. |
