Car-less and Visual Literacy

Walking into town on Dayton Yellow Springs Road


I haven't had a car all week so I've been doing a LOT of walking every day, and really enjoying it .The nice thing about living in a village is that everything is within walking distance and you get to notice and enjoy things that one normally sees in passing.
Our village was voted one of the "top ten coolest small towns in America" by Budget Travel and I would say for good reason. I listed a few of them on the Yellow Springs Arts Council Blog.

Meanwhile back in the studio, NOT!
Haven't got much studio work done. I seem to be in a bit of a funk and not wanting to get my teeth into anything, YET at the same time itching to start on a few ideas.

It is NonStop Festival Week and so I went to listen to
Deborah Curtiss give a talk on the subject of her book (Visual Literacy) and her work.

To explore the subject further here is a link to the International Visual Literacy Association.

"“Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.”

In layman terms, as described on Wikipedia, "Visual literacy (or, as it is colloquially known, visuacy^[1]) is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. "

Here is an interesting article talking about visual intelligence and the importance of teaching it.