| |
|
|
| Title: |
Sight
|
| Description: |
When I was a very little girl, and my sister was even younger, our father would take us to Jackson Park in Chicago, site of the celebrated World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893. Despite the fact that some buildings were still left from that World's Fair and even a replica statue of the Golden Lady, the spot that most excited our imagination there was a place we called the “Echo Tunnel”. This was a small walkway under a bridge where our voices echoed spectacularly. My sister and I would race back and forth, screaming and laughing trying to make the echoes distinct and continual. While it was a normal occurrence for me to run, it was not for my sister, for my sister was blind.
Perhaps the Echo Tunnel gave her a sense of space and the walls confining that space – what now is termed “echolocation”. I've read that some blind people can learn to use patterns of sound to mentally place objects in their surroundings by sending out clicking sounds and listening for the returning echo similar to the way bats and porpoises do. It has been discovered that the acoustic echo information gathered this way can actually be processed in the spatial-visual part of the brain, rather than the part usually interpreting sounds. This means that echos can literally create images.
Thus I have chosen to represent Echo as eyes running through bands of jagged gray and lilac sound waves, eyes reminiscent of the Egyptian Eye of Horus, symbol of protection and health. While there is darkness in a situation in which only sound waves can be perceived and not light waves, just as there was darkness surrounding my sister's disability within our family, there is also beauty and revelation. There is a sparkle in each eye in my bracelet by with a tiny Swarovski bead crystal in the pattern.
This piece is crafted using bead crochet and size 15 beads. The bracelet measures 7 inches and features a white rhodium plated magnetic closure. |
| Public Name: |
Antonia Natale
|
|
