Category: Blind Artist

NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship for “Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography”!

Thanks to a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship, New York Public Library will be my office this fall! I’m excited to bang around the library telling people I’m doing research in the Wallach Photography Collection… Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography Proposal by M. Leona Godin Many anonymous blind people populate the  photographs of NYPL’s Wallach            Collection. Through a series of essays,… Read more

My Portrait—Graffitied By Me—Hanging Out with the Mayor in City Hall

Almost ten years ago, I was invited to the SoHo studio of artist Roy Nachum. He had me choose colors and paint my portrait on a big piece of paper on the wall.. It basically consisted of long stripes of hair and round sunglasses. I think I chose silver and black. I was wearing gold and black and purple. He… Read more

Perceived: Disrupting The Blind Stereotype * Radio Interview Embodied (WUNC)

I was delighted to join fellow blind culture creators, Lachi and James Tate Hill, for an important, fun, sexy, and a little bit punk discussion of how to have blind pride in an ocularcentric world. As writers and artists we need to think less about inclusion and more about shifting culture in our direction. I’m tired of saying: “Let me… Read more

The Brain-Smashing, Pity-Bashing Art of Blind Punks

“You must sing like an angel,” a woman said to me as I prepared to go onstage with my “Avant Accordion Brain Smash” act in a Brooklyn warehouse performance space. She either did not notice my hand-sewn black bustier, or decided that my white cane rendered all the badassery surrounding it null. When I began bellowing about some murderous renaissance… Read more

Nietzsche and His Pain Named Dog, #52essays2017

“I have given a name to my pain and call it “dog.” It is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog–and I can scold it and vent my bad mood on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.” -Nietzsche, The Gay Science. I first heard this… Read more

Apostrophe, an anti-suicide suicide song for accordion

To sleep perchance to dream I hope. Can I will myself to survive I wish. Last wish. Last dying wish to live.   I took the anti-step Just now Nothing to live for so long You see. And nothing to die for either I fear. On this long Long long Way down.   When I hit the bottom My body… Read more