Dunn Quite a Lot

Guess what? Turns out I can do a blog post this week. And next week. Yay for me!

As I think I’ve mentioned at least once in the last week, I am back in Queenstown to continue work on my photo story about Q-West Gallery. While I’m down here I am interviewing artists who work and exhibit at Q-West Gallery. I’ve done two interviews so far and I have found that there is a great amount of depth behind the artists here. So much so that I felt I had to write about it. But I don’t want to rabbit on too much because, well, photo story. So what to do, what to do?

I think I’ll talk a little bit about James Dunn (He prefers Jim, and I know he’s going to be reading this, so there’s this evil little voice in the back of my mind saying ‘call him James!’. But I’ll defer to the fact that he’s bigger than me and call him ‘Jim’).

Now there is a hell of a lot about Jim that I can talk about. I can talk about the fact that he is a blind sculptor and quilter and wood carver. I can talk about the fact that he has worked in television and radio and healthcare. I can talk about… man! There’s a lot to talk about! But I’ve decided to talk about the impression I got of the man during the interview.

Jim is a 53 year old man with Autism. Don’t get the significance of that? Then let me explain. Jim was an autistic child during a time when there was no distinction between autism and ‘mental retardation’, to coin the term of the day. And not only was he an autistic boy, he was a blind autistic boy. Imagine the nice little cubby hole that would have made for him in the welfare system of the day!

Jim made it plain that, for much of his formative years and into his adult life, the things people were most interested in telling him were what he couldn’t do. The focus of family, social services, educators, everyone was on Jim’s limitations, not his capabilities. And I honestly believe that was the best thing that could have happened to him. Because it motivated Jim to prove them wrong.

This blind autistic boy, at the age of eight, completed his first ever artistic work; a quilt sewn on his great grandmother’s Singer sewing machine. Crafted by a child supposedly ‘mentally retarded’ and incapable of just about anything, as decided by a fresh-faced young psychologist straight out of school with a book of definitions.

So what else has Jim done to prove the system wrong? Well there’s the 30 years of community radio, including production and hosting late night talk back. There’s the television where he was a technician, a cameraman (no joke! According to Jim he just worked the focus until it was at its least blurry. And it worked!) And he was producer/director of his own show.

Now, in Queenstown, Jim is the secretary of the local Men’s Shed, and key in the recent acquisition of funding for that shed, he is an active member of the Friday afternoon Quilting Group and of the Q-West Gallery (funnily enough). And at home he carves wood.

And this is all very interesting and makes for a compelling story and had absolutely nothing to do with why I chose to tell you about Jim. You see, when organising this interview I asked Jim to bring in some of his pieces so that I could capture images of Jim with his work. During the interview, I asked Jim to talk to me about the quilt he brought with him. It was during this description that I saw the complex and subtle mind that lay behind all the history and all the labels. I saw someone with a deeper understanding of himself and his autism than any supposedly ‘normal’ and apparently ‘healthy’ person could hope to achieve. His description of the quilt, the meaning of the colours, the nuanced design and construction, the intentional disparities all served to paint a picture for me, not of the autistic blind man, but of the highly intelligent man, the highly skilled artist, it had been my pleasure to talk with.

And that is the point I want anyone reading this to take away; look beyond the surface. Ignore what you can see, what you are told is there and what you expect to be there. Do that and you will see what is there. Jim the Autistic Blind Man is far, far more than those labels convey, but many people have allowed those labels to define him. And man, have they missed out!