WPLN News Archive; News Archive 10/30/03-12/26/03; Anna Jaap Eyes Wide Open (Susan Knowles) 11 3 03

over the past fifteen years as far as in a gap isn't it a living painting colorful monotype sunglass and then transferring them to canvas her subject matter is joyful and lighthearted from bunny rabbits and vegetables to giant deserts on this day her studio is filled with scenes of tuscany since iman buildings some blue purple shadows and great trees a river running by and i'm workin on the colors just filling in bits of color as needed and then once i get them all in place i can go back in their kind of work off of what's they are just things and put in specific pieces that might write in your ear can spot pattern in color have been injured strongest influences from childhood even though she's always had poor vision she began wearing glasses as a toddler and at the time she was four she had three surgeries to correct her business or crossed eyes on a recent fall morning she seated on a tiny chair next to a fellow volunteer conducting eyesight screenings and barrie school head start in nashville

i know i got a call about a year ago from an organization called then one has to see and they wanted a donation for a fundraiser and when the information came across my desk that i cried the first amendment because it reminded me so much of being young and going to the eye doctor and then also of the things that happen in my life recently in the fall of ninety nine emerging in a japanese that her vision seemed a little off and went to get a new prescription it's enough to help at all says she made an appointment with a longtime eye doctor i had asked since that something was about to change in a really big comfortable sweater because i want to feel safe her doctor said she had care acts that were developing very quickly and even surgery might not be enough to fix the

problem frightened to put off the decision to have surgery as long as possible i remember there'd be a time in the morning when i would wake up and i would have a moment you can peacefully in the bed and everything's ok and i am rested and then i remember oh i'm going blind and it would just be sick all over again every morning i finally decided because my vision is doing so much worse than i couldn't work couldn't drive i could hardly write bills for checks or things i need to do that i have no trace the surgical procedure replaces the entire land through tiny incisions doctors removed the old one from its fluid filled sac your new lands to prescription was awful about that time a little packet and they slip in and it unfolds unfold like the flowers that his client's cup of flour and a line that he says the most beautiful thing i've ever seen during the week in between surgery on the other eye she had another revelation everything so brilliant and this guy was like easter egg blue and the grass

was so green and it was just a music i had no idea my color have been affected that much and so walked around for a week being able to compare the two even when the world came back into focus and full color the once in a lifetime glimpse into the void stayed in her mind's eye and a new more somber style began to develop in her art she picked up a sauce stick of charcoal and began drawing close up images of coining vines and pedals and butterfly cocoons think there was a time during the last my side on this point i'm looking at the sky and anxious silhouettes of branches with the car behind them is it's premature i could see although she blames the turkel into soft grace and stains the paper with t to make it look like a geek wallpaper the new pieces are a stark an elegant as wrought iron they represent a major change in direction and she wears a little about finding a new audience but if collector gail hutchinson has any example then jack has nothing to fear

hutchinson discovered jets work on the internet as much as something we look disruptive it's also in qom as much as something isn't comics also in change and i think what her work as says evokes change in parts of change in us without being threatened by it teetering on the disciples says that only prompted an object to become active in fighting boeing is it also left a permanent impression on a work i am drawing silhouettes of branches leaves flowers in sex and unfolding and rubbing so there's a near an inch which as i said think about it is very much like site you know we have it to images that come in that are similar but not exactly the same and there's a balance there to come together and they make one piece on four for national public radio and susan knowles