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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/18401/full/18401/now-blind-85-year-old-artist-gets-new-vision-from-memory/ <br /><br /> <b>Now blind, 85-year-old artist gets new vision from memory</b> <br /> Friday, September 6, 2002 | by <p>MARINA KRAKOVSKY </p> <br /><br /><p>Local artist Milli Levin would probably enjoy the San Francisco exhibit in which one of her paintings cur-<br /><br /> rently appears—if only she could see it. Levin, like all the other artists whose work is featured in "Insights 2002," is legally blind.<br /><br /> "I have no retina," says the plainspoken Levin. In the last year and a half, retinal degeneration has caused the loss of her central vision to the point at which, as she describes it, she cannot see her fingernails in front of her. The disease has also drastically dimmed the artist's light perception.<br /><br /> "A room that looks very bright to most people looks to me like it's lit by a 25-watt bulb," she says. And that affects perception of color. The San Rafael resident has trouble discerning reds and oranges, for example, as similar dark hues all just look dark to her.<br /><br /> While some artists in the show seem to have fully accepted their impairment—saying they paint what they see or imagine, or report experiencing heightened feeling in other senses to compensate for vision problems—Levin has not quite embraced her relatively recent condition. The few paintings she has completed since her eyesight began failing—including the one at the exhibit—have been done largely from memory.<br /><br /> The exhibit, on display at San Francisco City Hall through Sunday, Sept. 15, is presented by the Rose Resnick LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a 100-year-old service and advocacy organization. Damian Pickering, LightHouse's director of public affairs, calls this juried exhibition "an opportunity to break down preconceptions about art by sight-impaired people."<br /><br /> While supportive of this idea, Levin feels ambivalent about her participation because she thinks of herself more as an artist than as a blind person. Now 85, Levin enjoyed a long and successful artistic career before she began losing her sight.<br /><br /> "I was a very creative person from the time I can remember," says Levin, who was born in Detroit to a mother from Czechoslovakia and a father from England. Her father died when she was 6, and Levin helped to take care of her two younger brothers.<br /><br /> Living in a modest neighborhood, Levin said she "had no Jewish friends until I got to intermediate school." Her mother did her best to observe the Jewish holidays and didn't allow writing or work on the Sabbath, but "occupied with living day to day, there was no time or money for luxuries like temples."<br /><br /> That certainly changed after Levin married and moved to Southern California. She and her family belonged to the former Laurel Canyon Temple, where her sons "got their Hebrew beginnings" and she belonged to the sisterhood. One of her early projects was illustrating the sisterhood cookbook.<br /><br /> After her children were grown she enjoyed work as a costume designer for the movie industry. She worked in Hollywood for 10 happy years, during which time she also painted in oils and illustrated a series of cookbooks. "I felt I had found my niche," she recalls.<br /><br /> There was just one problem. "The combination of smog and turpentine almost killed me," she says. So after 40 years in Southern California, she and her husband moved to the Bay Area. She also traded in her oils for water-based acrylics, which don't require turpentine, dry more quickly and "produce color that is clearer and brighter," says Levin. During the 20-some years that she's lived in Marin, Levin has displayed and sold her works in galleries, won awards and enjoyed the Bay Area's cleaner air.<br /><br /> Retinal degeneration was the farthest thing from her mind. "We worry about the wrong things in life," she muses. "I never worried that I would lose my sight even partially."<br /><br /> Faced with the news of her illness, Levin experienced initial denial. "I was offended by the title 'legally blind,'" she says. As someone who's enjoyed throwing her creativity into every part of her life, from painting to sewing to cooking, she naturally felt a loss at not being able to read so much as a recipe. "It's all gone by the wayside," she says with a sigh.<br /><br /> And while she's deeply grateful for the help she gets from her family and friends, the loss of independence has been difficult. Everyday tasks like driving or simply reading a phone number are now out of the question.<br /><br /> She has also stopped going to art exhibits. "I feel it's not useless, but too frustrating to go and not see it."<br /><br /> Levin's personal experience may not be typical, but perhaps no one's is. The exhibit's curators have tried to make the show accessible to the visually impaired. Many of the works—not only sculptures and mosaics but even some paintings and photographs—are marked "Touchable." Braille displays and audio commentary also help bridge the accessibility gap.<br /><br /> If most contemporary art rejects the notion of a single objective reality, then Insights 2002 completely shatters the idea. One of the exhibit's many ironies is that these artists who are blind, perhaps more than "ordinary" artists, see worlds that most of us never will.</p> <p> </p>

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