Josh Rychak     Def Art When I first heard of De'VIA, a cross between a government-style acronym and an Italian surname came to mind. As Betty G. Miller and many other artists can testify, De'VIA (Deaf View Image Art) is much more than art by deaf artists. While attending a lecture given by Miller (the second in a series of three deaf-culture events), I began to realize how fundamentally different the deaf experience is from anything I know. My initial confusion at seeing the audience's elevated and twisting hands greet each speaker became embarrassment when I realized how stupid it was of me to wonder at the apparent lack of applause for a deaf person. I was somewhat comforted by the fact that other members of the audience shared my provinciality by performing the "oralist" hand-clap before we picked up on the correct hand-signal. My disorientation was heightened by the apparent "translation lag": all humorous anecdotes were announced by two waves of laughter. The first erupted from the sign-fluent majority of the audience, and then several moments later those of us dependent upon the translator would catch up and get it. Before the exhibition of the art works, I found myself admiring the elegant hand movements of the deaf language. Much more than vocal articulation, signing is a creative form of expression. Each person has a distinct accent -- Miller's signing animated her entire torso, reminding me of an interpretive dancer. Even the actual hand signals themselves fascinated me; each distinct gesture can be as dynamic as a drop of water, and the speed of a skilled signer makes them flow like a waterfall. In observing the movements of those around me prior to the start of the lecture, I was reminded of the elaborate shadow figures my friends and I had created when we were young. Midway through Miller's presentation, the monarch of all manual silhouettes appeared on the screen: a butterfly, outlined in astonishingly unostentatious neon tubing. Proving that even the most beautiful art can be functional, Ms. Miller's buzzing butterfly is connected to her doorbell and flashes when she has a caller. Works exhibited in Miller's lecture ranged from the cartoonishly realistic graphic art of Ralph Miller (Betty Miller's father, also deaf) to Miller and several others' heavily symbolic portrayal of the plight of women within deaf culture. According to the De'VIA Manifesto, art on the deaf experience tends to contain intense colors and contrasting textures, along with exaggerated facial features and deformations. The works shown by Miller exemplify these principles; much of the art incorporates opposing media, such as scientific drawings of cochlear implants, newspaper clippings, and home photographs. The somatic disfigurements painted by the artists are more disturbing. Many of the subjects exhibit overly large eyes, hands, ears, and lips, transforming humans into masked specters, existing on the fringes of the human experience. I found many of these depictions reminiscent of 50's-style Hollywood aliens, which seems justified considering the ubiquity of thematic alienation and isolation in De'VIA. The frequently-encountered locked-hands gesture, which Miller explained as representative of oralist oppression of the voice-less deaf, was most interesting. Miller's difficulty in maintaining a luminescence suitable for the audience to read her signed exposition, while keeping the lights dim enough to enable our viewing of the slides, exemplified the frustration felt by the deaf living in a world suited almost exclusively for the hearing. Not all of the works on display analyze the somber side of the deaf experience. Trees, which I found to be Miller's most moving piece, represents the movement of signing hands with tree branches shaking in the wind. Far from resenting their reliance upon it, those constrained to use sign language apparently share my vision of its inherent beauty and eloquence.

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