Nancy Rourke

Last updated

Nancy Rourke
CitizenshipUnited States
Occupation(s)Artist and advocate

Nancy Rourke is an internationally known Deaf artist and ARTivist, with a focus in oil painting. Her pieces carry the themes of resistance, affirmation, and liberation, with stylings falling under 'Rourkeism' and 'Surdism'. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Life

Rourke grew up in San Diego with both her parents. Her mother was from Michigan, and her father belonged to the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians in the Kumeyaay Nation. The family only learned she was deaf at six years old, and she credits her main form of expression before and then after this discovery was art. Her schooling focused on oralism, and Rourke was not educated in ASL until college at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She received a BFA in Graphic Design and Painting (1982) and a MFA in Computer Graphics and Painting (1986). Two of her greatest inspirations were Jean Michel Basquiat and Jacob Lawrence and their work in the civil rights movement. [1] [5] [6]

Career

Rourke's career began with a variety of graphic design jobs, at companies such as Xerox, 20th Century Fox, and Microsoft. [6] After 2009 she became a full time artist with a focus on Deaf View/Image Art after she began to explore deaf culture. She additionally works to bring Deaf View curriculum into schools for deaf children. She hosts retreats, galleries, and works through several artist-in-residencies in schools nationwide. [1] [5] [7] [8] [9] Some of her experience also pertains to assisting deaf inmates who did not have access to interpreters or video phones in prison, and creating programs to expand their artistic abilities. [9]

In 2014, she published "Nancy Rourke: Deaf Artist Series." [1]

In 2019, she has been awarded the Laurent Clerc Award by Gallaudet University's Alumni Association to recognize a deaf person for "his or her outstanding contributions to society." [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Sign</span> Sign language, used particularly at international meetings

International Sign (IS) is a pidgin sign language which is used in a variety of different contexts, particularly at international meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congress, in some European Union settings, and at some UN conferences, at events such as the Deaflympics, the Miss & Mister Deaf World, and Eurovision, and informally when travelling and socialising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallaudet University</span> Private research university for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Washington, D.C., United States

Gallaudet University is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first school for the advanced education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the world and remains the only higher education institution in which all programs and services are specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students. Hearing students are admitted to the graduate school and a small number are also admitted as undergraduates each year. The university was named after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a notable figure in the advancement of deaf education.

Dorothy "Dot" Miles was a Welsh poet and activist in the deaf community. Throughout her life, she composed her poems in English, British Sign Language, and American Sign Language. Her work laid the foundations for modern sign language poetry in the United States and the United Kingdom. She is regarded as the pioneer of BSL poetry and her work influenced many contemporary Deaf poets.

Simultaneous communication, SimCom, or sign supported speech (SSS) is a technique sometimes used by deaf, hard-of-hearing or hearing sign language users in which both a spoken language and a manual variant of that language are used simultaneously. While the idea of communicating using two modes of language seems ideal in a hearing/deaf setting, in practice the two languages are rarely relayed perfectly. Often the native language of the user is the language that is strongest, while the non-native language degrades in clarity. In an educational environment this is particularly difficult for deaf children as a majority of teachers who teach the deaf are hearing. Results from surveys taken indicate that communication for students is indeed signing, and that the signing leans more toward English rather than ASL.

In the United States, deaf culture was born in Connecticut in 1817 at the American School for the Deaf, when a deaf teacher from France, Laurent Clerc, was recruited by Thomas Gallaudet to help found the new institution. Under the guidance and instruction of Clerc in language and ways of living, deaf American students began to evolve their own strategies for communication and for living, which became the kernel for the development of American Deaf culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Cogswell</span>

Alice Cogswell was the inspiration to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet for the creation of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deaf education</span> Education of the hearing-impaired

Deaf education is the education of students with any degree of hearing loss or deafness. This may involve, but does not always, individually-planned, systematically-monitored teaching methods, adaptive materials, accessible settings, and other interventions designed to help students achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency and success in the school and community than they would achieve with a typical classroom education. There are different language modalities used in educational setting where students get varied communication methods. A number of countries focus on training teachers to teach deaf students with a variety of approaches and have organizations to aid deaf students.

Mongolian Sign Language is a sign language used in Mongolia. Ethnologue estimates that there are between 9,000 and 15,000 deaf signers in Mongolia as of 2019. Mongolian Sign Language is widely used in areas where the Mongolian diaspora has immigrated. Such locations include California, Houston, and Charleston.

Russian Sign Language (RSL) is the sign language used by the Deaf community in Russia and possibly Ukraine, Belarus and Tajikistan. It belongs to the French Sign Language family.

Chuck Baird was an American Deaf artist who was one of the more notable founders of the De'VIA art movement, an aesthetic of Deaf Culture in which visual art conveys a Deaf world view. His career spanned over 35 years and included painting, sculpting, acting, storytelling, and teaching.

The Laurent Clerc Award is an annual honor bestowed by Gallaudet University's Alumni Association to recognize a deaf person for "his or her outstanding contributions to society," and specifically to honor their achievements in the interest of deaf people. It is named for Laurent Clerc (1785-1869). It has been given to notable scientists and inventors, such as deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht, to honor his contributions in developing the teleprinter and an acoustic coupler for the early computer modem. It is awarded by Gallaudet University's Alumni Association through its Laurent Clerc Cultural Fund.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Sun Kim</span> American sound artist

Christine Sun Kim is an American sound artist based in Berlin. Working predominantly in drawing, performance, and video, Kim's practice considers how sound operates in society. Musical notation, written language, American Sign Language (ASL), and the use of the body are all recurring elements in her work. Her work has been exhibited in major cultural institutions internationally, including in the Museum of Modern Art's first exhibition about sound in 2013 and the Whitney Biennial in 2019. She was named a TED Fellow in both 2013 and 2015, a Director's Fellow at MIT Media Lab in 2015, and a Ford Foundation Disability Futures Fellow in 2020.

Betty Gloria Miller, also known as Bettigee was an American artist who became known as the "Mother of De'VIA".

Regina Olson Hughes (1895–1993) was an American scientific illustrator in Botanical Art. Born February 1, 1895, in Herman, Nebraska, she became fascinated with the world of plants and flowers. Her parents were Gilbert and Johanna (Sullivan) Olson. At age 10, she contracted scarlet fever and her hearing slowly diminished until she became fully deaf at age 14. In order for her to communicate with her peers, she relied on lip reading and written notes for business work. Hughes retained her speech skills and continued to speak fluently throughout her adulthood. She became proficient in American Sign Language when she enrolled in Gallaudet University.

Constructed action and constructed dialogue are pragmatic features of languages where the speaker performs the role of someone else during a conversation or narrative. Metzger defines them as the way people "use their body, head, and eye gaze to report the actions, thoughts, words, and expressions of characters within a discourse". Constructed action is when a speaker performs the actions of someone else in the narrative, while constructed dialogue is when a speaker acts as the other person in a reported dialogue. The difference between constructed action and constructed dialogue in sign language users is an important distinction to make, since signing can be considered an action. Recounting a past dialogue through sign is the communication of that occurrence so therefore it is part of the dialogue whereas the facial expressions and depictions of actions that took place are constructed actions. Constructed action is very common cross-linguistically.

Deaf View/Image Art, abbreviated as De'VIA, is a genre of visual art that intentionally represents the Deaf experience and Deaf culture. Although De'VIA works have been created throughout history, the term was first defined and recognized as an art genre in 1989. In 1989, a group of nine Deaf artists gathered at Gallaudet University shortly before the Deaf Way arts festival was being held there. Led by Betty G. Miller, known as the Mother of De'VIA, and Paul Johnston, these artists created a manifesto detailing what De'VIA is and what it includes. Since its official designation as a genre, De'VIA has helped to introduce the Deaf experience to the artistic world and give a new platform to the Deaf community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drago Renteria</span> Transgender man

Dragonsani "Drago" Renteria is a deaf Chicano transgender man, CEO of DeafVision, founder and executive director of Deaf Queer Resource (DQRC) and long-time resident of San Francisco.

Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) is a private day school serving deaf and hard of hearing students from birth through grade 8 on the campus of Gallaudet University in the Trinidad neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Alongside Model Secondary School for the Deaf, it is a federally funded, tuition-free demonstration school administered by the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University.

Mervin "Merv" Donald Garretson was an American educator, leader, and deaf community rights advocate. His works were primarily directed towards changing mainstream opinion about deaf culture and about the deaf community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallaudet Memorial</span>

The Thomas Gallaudet Memorial is a sculpture by Daniel Chester French located on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., United States. The statue depicts Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet siting in a chair and Alice Cogswell standing at his side.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Nancy Rourke". Deaf Art. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  2. ↑ Fleischer, Flavia S.; Garrow, William G. (2016). "Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity ed. by H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray". Sign Language Studies. 16 (2): 295–298. doi:10.1353/sls.2016.0004. ISSN   1533-6263. S2CID   146391333.
  3. ↑ "Nancy Rourke: Deaf Artist Series | Harris Communications". www.harriscomm.com. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  4. ↑ "Artists with deep roots in De'VIA art movement featured at RIT/NTID Dyer Arts Center". RIT. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Painting the Deaf Experience (Nancy Rourke)". wordgathering.syr.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  6. 1 2 "Guide to the Collection of Nancy Rourke works of art". library.rit.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  7. ↑ Nikolaraizi, M. (June 15, 2006). "The Role of Educational Experiences in the Development of Deaf Identity". Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 11 (4): 477–492. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enl003 . ISSN   1081-4159. PMID   16777925.
  8. ↑ Krentz, Christopher (2016). "Teaching Deaf History to Hearing Undergraduates". Sign Language Studies. 17 (1): 85–88. doi:10.1353/sls.2016.0026. ISSN   1533-6263. S2CID   152136371.
  9. 1 2 Breck, Arabella (September 28, 2015). "Deaf 'Artivist' Brings Color to Columbia". University Wire– via ProQuest.
  10. ↑ "Clerc Award". www.gallaudet.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.