Artist Statement: Spreading Awareness of Deaf Culture

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Poster

I chose to do a poster for my first genre because I felt that it was the best way to spread awareness about Deaf culture to the general public as a non-internet platform. The internet is a great way to spread information, but not everyone is as invested in it as others. There are also so many different things on the internet that the message I am trying to get across could easily be lost, or missed amongst everything else. Creating a poster is an easy way to avoid the clutter of the internet, but still get my point across clearly and effectively.

The process of composing this genre wasn't difficult, but somewhat time consuming. I had the idea in my head to put a statement on the poster that would bring clarification to a common misunderstanding many hearing people have about deaf people. I looked through some previous poster campaigns that had been made to spread awareness about deaf culture, and while looking through some of them, I remembered a pet peeve my American Sign Language teacher from high school had whenever she went to the doctors. Many times when she went, and told them she was deaf, they would bring her a wheelchair. She would get upset about it because she is only deaf, not paralyzed, and she could clearly walk since she walked into the building. This got me to thinking about how many hearing people view deaf people as incapable, or disabled. While deaf people do have a disadvantage of not being able to hear well, or at all, they are still fully capable and can do almost everything a hearing person can do. That’s when I came up with the idea to do the statement, “Deafness is not a disability”, for my poster. Once I thought of the statement, I had to think of some way to make my poster unique to the message I was trying to get across. I decided to draw hands fingerspelling the word “deafness” on my poster to draw in more attention. American Sign Language is such a beautiful and unique language that is used by deaf people, and since it is so different compared to other languages, it is easy to catch people's interest with it. It took me over an hour to do the hands since hands are some of the hardest things to draw in my opinion. Underneath each hand I wrote the letter that it was singing so that people that don’t know the ASL alphabet would be able to read it. Then underneath that I put the words “is NOT a”, the word “not” being in all caps to stress the importance of the statement I was making. I also colored the word red to stress the importance even more. Then underneath that I put the word “Disability” with the symbol for deafness next to it (an ear with a dash going through it). It is hard to believe for me, but some people do not know what being deaf means, so I thought that putting the deaf symbol on the poster would help for even more clarification on what my message was. Lastly, I put the question, “Want to know more about deaf culture?”, and then, “Go to: http://ler17d.wixsite.com/deafworld” to connect the poster to my next genre.

I ended up putting my poster in a few places around my hall, and had plans to put it up by the two main dining halls on campus, however, it started to rain and I did not want it to get ruined. I put it by the door to get into the center building of Salley Hall where people go for events, or to get to the front desk, and then by the vending machines. I also put it by the door to get into the actual dorm building (Salley Hall is split into three buildings). These three spots are places that people of Salley Hall see/walk by everyday so it would spark a lot of interest. Another benefit of this spot is that if people are going into the dorms, they will most likely have time after seeing the poster to go check out the website. If it was put up somewhere like the union, or classroom buildings, people might see it, but they would most likely be going somewhere to do something and forget about the poster and the website.

My audience for this genre is the most broad out of the three. Since I am simply trying to spread awareness of a topic, my audience is the people living in Salley Hall and (assuming I was able to put the poster by the dining halls) anyone who goes to Seminole Dining and/or Suwannee Dining. While my hope is that anyone who sees the sign will go to the website, I know that isn’t always the case, but still, the more people that are able to see the poster, the better. Not everyone may be interested in learning about Deaf culture and Sign Language, but the statement itself is still important on its own. More people need to understand that deafness is not a disability.

Website

The reason I chose to do a website is because there is so much that can be done with a website. Since my topic/goal for project three is to spread awareness of Deaf culture, I thought a website would be the best way to have all of my information in one place for people to be able to see. You can have many different pages and graphics, it is easy to customize, and it is easy access for just about anyone with internet access. I was considering doing a social media platform before I decided to do a website because it is truly a great platform to use to spread awareness on a topic, however, I felt that I wouldn’t be able to get all of my information across with just twitter, or instagram (those were the two I was considering). I also felt that the website allowed me to be a little more creative with getting my information across.

The process of creating my website took the longest out of the three genres because of everything I wanted to have on it. I used wix to create the website since I am familiar with how to use it, and it lets the user do a lot of different things to personalize their website. It took some browsing and going back and forth, but I settled on a more simple template. I felt that If I made the website too “busy”, it could be confusing, or difficult for people to navigate. Once I chose the template I started to work on what menu tabs I wanted to have at the top, the pictures, and the title of the website. I decided to have the title be “Deaf World” because I wanted my website to show all the different aspects of the Deaf world. I wanted to have the informational part of it where hearing people could learn about the basic culture and language, and I wanted to show the more emotional side of things by having real life stories of deaf people and their experiences with being deaf. Setting up the basic template took some time. I tried to incorporate a lot of graphics that were based around Deaf culture and ASL, but when it came to the main screen it was hard to find a picture that fit the template so I picked a picture with people all together. I liked the picture because even though the people are most likely not deaf, I felt that it showed togetherness and unity which is something I want to to happen between the hearing and the deaf world. The four menu tabs I created were “Deaf Culture”, “Sign Language”, “Community”, and “More”. Under the “Deaf Culture” tab I incorporated a lot of what I had in my research essay about how to become a successful ASL interpreter. I talked about how deaf culture is very close knit, how they value their sense of community, how they are very open about their lives, how they are very animated and expressive, and more. I then included the links to the sources I used  so if people wanted to find out even more, they had some places to go look. Under the tab “Sign Language” I included graphics that showed how to sign the alphabet, as well as graphics that showed basic conversation signs. I also included links to two different websites that are reliable in teaching how to accurately sign signs as well as how to sign in proper ASL word order. While the “Community” tab is the most underdeveloped, the reasoning for having it is my favorite. It is a place where people, or I, could post things that relate to the Deaf community. It could be inspirational stories, artwork, poems, videos, etc. It is made as a space where deaf culture can be shared by actual deaf people, or hearing people that show an interest. The Last tab, “More”, is very simple, it is just links to even more websites with more information on different things involving the Deaf community. I has links to interpreting websites, and places to look for different deaf events happening in your area, and more.

This genre is posted online for anyone to see. The link of the website can be shared and is available to anyone and everyone interested, however, as of this moment, the link has only been shared on the poster(s), so the current audience is people that have seen the posters and are interested in learning more about Deaf culture and/or Sign Language. I kept the website looking simple because it is easy and quick to learn the about basic information I want to get across. However, if they would like to learn even more, I included the links so that they would have the recourses to do so. The goal for the website in the future would be to reach a bigger audience by use of social media and other platforms, but starting out, the target is FSU students that are interested in learning more about the topic.

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Poem

I chose to do a poem more out of personal preference than if I thought it would fit with my genre, however, I was able to connect it with the website which worked out well. I love to write poetry. I think it is such a fun genre because it can hold so much meaning and there is so much freedom when writing it. There aren't many rule to follow when writing poetry so I feel it is a great way to show my creativity. I have written a lot of poems both through school and on my own.

Before even writing the poem, I looked up other poems written by deaf people for inspiration. I originally wanted to write in the perspective of a deaf person, but since I am personally not deaf, I decided to write from the perspective of a hearing person watching a deaf conversation. I chose to write it about an argument between two deaf people because that is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating things to watch being signed. Even though there are no words being said, it still feels like the argument could be heard from miles away. When two deaf people argue, their hands move at lightning fast speeds, and their facial expressions are truly terrifying. While an argument in Sign Language isn’t the most beautiful thing about the language, it is still part of the language! I wanted to capture that image for people to see. When most people talk about ASL, they talk about how unique and beautiful the language is, how the use of hand motions for signs is remarkable. I don’t disagree with what is being said, but I liked that I was able to capture another side of it that most people don’t get to see.

I ended up posting it on the “Community” tab of my website for people to be able to read. The audience for my poem is the same as my website. It is for anyone wanting to learn more about Deaf culture, or wanting see what Deaf culture is like. More specifically it is for the FSU students that saw the posters and took an interest in looking through the website. The poem is a great addition to the website because it shows the outside perspective of a deaf argument that most people never actually get to witness.