a new international juried exhibition of new media by artists with disabilities

Terence Healy

Santa Monica

www.terrencehealy.com

"Lemonade is derived from lemons. Andy, a model for figure-drawing classes, combines his lemons of being 'short, bald, and big-nosed' with his love of humor, jazz, and film noir characters to create memorable poses."

Terence Healy's video documents Andy Flaster, a figure-drawing model working in Los Angeles. Andy works in a field dominated by good-looking, graceful people. A self-described "short, big-nosed, bald actor from Brooklyn," Andy found the "lemonade" of modeling amidst the "lemons" of being an aging actor with a disability in youth-worshiping Hollywood. He shows up to each class with his tattered bag of costumes and props, hobbles up to the modeling stand, and creates an intriguing world of characters that inspire hundreds of artists like Healy.

"As a portrait artist, I depend upon seeing," says Healy. "Given that I have unilateral anophthalmia (missing an eye at birth), I find that the practice of visual arts is a challenge. The joyful payoff, however, is that my art lets me say things via pictures that otherwise might not be said in words. I also think that it made me more sensitive to Andy's story. Both of us have physical challenges that we wake up with every morning, and the shared experience in, as he puts it, 'using what we have,' perhaps drew me to his spirit."

Healy believes all people have an element of dignity—and stories to tell.

"I made this film about him [Andy] because he showed me how to bring incongruous things together into something wonderful," he says. "It would have been easy for him to assume that art classes only wanted classic-looking models, but he chose to plunge headlong into the art world, and uses what he has to make something his own."

Andy received a 2005 New Vision Award for New Screen TV (Orlando, Florida, 2006); a silver medal at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2005) and was a semifinalist at the Second City Short Cuts Film Festival (Chicago, Illinois, 2004). Healy studied at the Santa Monica College Academy of Entertainment Technology (1999–2003) and the Fortman Studios in Florence, Italy (1986–1987). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and film festivals since 2001.