Grounds For Sculpture Gets "Hands On" with Fall / Winter Season 2008

As part of a continuing effort to make art accessible to everyone, including the blind and visually impaired, Grounds For Sculpture introduces "Please Touch" exhibits, closing the distance between art and it's audience by allowing guests to touch the sculpture.With the opening of Fall/Winter Season 2008 Exhibition, on display until April 26, guests are invited to don white gloves and touch works by artists Allan Houser and Michael Naranjo, learning respect for the art and enjoying a new level of accessibility in the process. Also new this season, the entire Michael Naranjo exhibit will be made available in Braille format, including labels and books on the artist, especially significant as Naranjo himself is an artist who is blind.

Allan Houser was fascinated by art from other nations and of other times, but has always been proud of his Native American heritage.  As a student of Dorothy Dunn at the Painting Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School, Houser learned of flat planes, forms of color and Indian subject matter, including the simplest of sculptural non-representational images.  His work communicates power and dynamic sophistication.  In Inspired Visions, his work, whether stone or bronze, exhibit a nuanced volumetric presence

In Visions of the Mind, Michael Naranjo's sculptures are unlike most artists' work, in that they have the added dimension of touch.  Naranjo, who was blinded by a grenade in Vietnam, uses his fingers and hands model his narrative pieces; sculpting tools are useless for him as he cannot see or feel the end of such instruments.  Having made special arrangements to "see" - by touch - masterpieces in the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Naranjo has been inspired over the last 38 years to create expressive, simplified shapes that unite to form a subject that tells a story.  Each story is different, each story is stirring, and each evokes great emotion through a suggestive of the viewer's strong mental image - this perceived whether by sight or touch.