When Betty Dare was growing up, she felt isolated, even from members of her own family.
At the dinner table, they’d talk about their days. But Dare, who is the youngest of five, is Deaf and couldn’t understand their oral language.
“All my family is hearing,” Dare said. “When I was using only oralism, a lot was missed in those interactions with hearing people.”
Dare and others at the Deaf Arts Academy in the southeastern New Brunswick community of Grande-Digue spoke to CBC through certified American Sign Language interpreter Lauren Molloy for the interviews in this story.
The Academy is a four-week retreat, fully organized by deaf artists. Here they’re able to collaborate and build their artistic practice in a fully Deaf environment, where ASL is the main language and everyone has deafness in common.
When Dare, who is based in Montreal, began making art, she didn’t realize at first how deeply it connected to her Deaf experience.
“For example, with my eye on my hand, that’s how I exist,” she said.
De’VIA Artist Betty Dare says much of her art depicts the disconnect she feels with the hearing world as a deaf person. (Victoria Walton/CBC)
It wasn’t until last year, when Dare heard about De’VIA — a type of Deaf art — that she realized she’d been doing it all along.
De’VIA, or Deaf view image Art, is visual art. But De’VIA paintings,
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