The Crazy Mountain Lady Photo Gallery

Resist the rubber gloves and the hands that wear them!
by Darla A. Thompson

Click here for Darla's video: Deaf Mind and Two Rubber Gloves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPI1T3fc4qk

Our Hands do have soul!

Let me show you my wonderful ASL friends

The Hands and the Face!

Heh! Aren't they nifty!!?! 

Well, I think so too! 

Let's check more photos down the scroll. 

Photography by Ali Tyler, 2006.
Scultpor by Darla Thompson




Now, this piece was my second one. I used the stoneware clay. I contribute this to the protests of Gallaudet University. Last fall when Gallaudet University went through torment by J.K. and I.K.J., I was so stirred up. I wanted to establish a piece that will tell a story about the protest. I decided to form this piece. When the students were arrested, I was enraged and that gave me the fervent emotions, and I put that into my work. I have thought about Gallaudet University all the time when I mold this clay. I finished the clay with Green Dragon glaze, it didn't turned out the way I wanted it to be, that was fine with me given that this work was my first ones. This semester I plan to build many more with similar ideas of this piece. When I have the better one, I will post it up here.

UNITY FOR GALLAUDET!








VICTORY FOR GALLAUDET!!

Red Hot Lipstick!

Click here! Dats Vlog. Captions and post thoughts of 

Darla A. Thompson

And this one, too please click!



I took the sculptor class and this project was my final one. My project was to decide on a found object or objects that relate my assignment content and I had to develop a way of interacting with the found objects that would gain the depths, contents, and meanings. I had to avoid follow re-conceptualizing an everyday object’s content. I had to increase the meaning from that object other than what it is made for; for example, if I picked the word “Happy,” I have to think of an everyday object such as flower or balloon then design these object to my own interpretation like a balloon party with a lot of clown hats, or apply some flower vases on the top of the shelf. So my classmates were given a word each. One had a “Melancholic”, other one had a “Dismal”, and another one had a “Pliable”. I had to be blindfolded when I picked a word from a hat, and my word was “Submissive.”

I decided to apply “Submissive” to a lipstick.

I painted the words “can you read hand(s)?” with a hot red lipstick pigment on two 20 feet long white roll-apace papers then put them up in a narrow "hallway" walls. Then I put a lipstick in the end of this narrow hallway with a bright light on the top of the red pigment. The lipstick pigment was carved into a hand shaped of “Fuck You”.

The class was large (30 students). On the critic day, I made my classmates and my professor stand in the narrowed hallway. Naturally, no one in the class knew how to use ASL or finger spellings.

I had a letter prepared and gave it to my interpreters, for them to speak my letter to the class for me. (I really wished I filmed that day!) But I will just put my letter on this blog and let you read this letter.

Hello everybody,

Before I say anything here, I want you all to know I really enjoyed coming to this class and I appreciate this class very much. Above all I am thankful for your patience with me as the Deaf person in the class. Also I am grateful for my interpreters, you all were great!

Ok, my theme is “Submissive”. This is something that everybody may have experienced daily however I like to try and let you all experience “Submissive” from my side.

I am often asked this question “Do you read-lips?” or “Can you read lips?” That is something I really despite because there is no other excuse than say, “No, I can’t’ submissively.

(Note: I had my classmates and the professor standing in the hallway between my two large lipstick stained papers, listening to my letter.)

In my world, I don’t have to be subjected to say “I can’t” because my mother and my father themselves are also Deaf. I graduated from California School for the Deaf in Fremont, in Bay Area, and I had so many wonderful memories there. My life was much normal as any other kids. And today, I live among my deaf people; in fact I live in that world every day since I born, like 24/7.

It is just happened that I was born Deaf, and naturally I could never be able to learn to speak properly. It is like asking a blind man if he could see, or asking a black woman if she can become white. If I talk, I don’t even have the confidence to use my voice. However, the fact is, I DO sometime understand lip-reading. BUT I could never trust myself to understand what you say because I do not want to misunderstand anything.
When I am asked if I could read lips and I say yes, this person would start talking to me in slow motion. I would feel stupid. I would give her my response that I understand her then she would talk faster, and faster. Nothing would be understood. I’d feel lost. This situation constantly occurs and ends up messy for both of us, the speaker and me. Since then and now, when anybody asks me if I could read lips I would rather to say no, that is kind of docile, eh?

Nevertheless in this “no-no win” situation, I still feel I an the concept (or image) of submissiveness when someone asks me if I could read lips. Frankly, I, at all times, feel pissed and disgusted, not at the person, but at the formation of the today’s idiocy by thinking that every deaf person should know how to do whatever the hearing people are supposed to do. Truthfully, I will never have the confidence that I could understand what anybody is saying without lucid sign language interpreters or captions to help me. I know in every heart of Deaf persons, even if they could talk, or could lip-read; they feel the same as me.

And now for “Can you read hands?” My argument here is that I feel everybody is able to learn how to finger spelling, or even to learn how to sign. And even understand ASL through other Deaf people’s hands. Yet, I think the new signers tend to avoid that. I am aware the fact that it is not because they don’t want to, but it is hard to understand ASL. I am aware of that.

(Note: The classmates had been standing in three long lines and it was so funny, they could’t see my lipstick in the end. They kept on worrying about sticking their shirts to the lipstick-stained papers.)

My letter continued…

Just imagine: If this planet never experiences any sound from voices, and everybody is using hands to communicate, that would be boldly cool, especially in my Deaf eyes. There would be no phone ringing, there wouldn’t be cell phone drivers out there endanger my life, there wouldn’t be any need to buy iPod, or MP3 players, I wouldn’t have to miss any kind of TV shows if there is no closed captions, I would be able to go to the movie theatre without wondering if I could understand the story. I wouldn’t have to suffer loud annoying noises from strange kind of music or voice (I can always feel the vibrations, at all times). Now you are the only person on this planet that is handicapped; you can HEAR! If you were being asked by this question over again every day, (I mean even at the simple locations or commences area such as the gas stations, fast food restaurants, post offices, schools, police stations, and even hospitals!) Everybody would ask you the same question, “Can you read hands?” And you know you can’t trust yourself with signing, or that you could really understand any of the sign languages, or gestures. And you are trying your best to explain your situation or trying to make them understand that you can hear. That is the submissiveness I feel every day. I got to obey everybody submissively that I should learn how to read lips, or know how to talk.

Therefore, my proverb to the question “can you read lips?” is “fuck you, you don’t know how to read hands.”

I wrapped the platform in the Cling-Away Wrap for the protection from the “lips world” as an irony.

Any question?”