Detail View: Deaf Studies, Culture, and History Archives: National Deaf Poetry Conference poster

Filename: 
ac_ritdsa0118_nationaldeafpoetryconference_0001.jpg
Identifier: 
ac_ritdsa0118_nationaldeafpoetryconference_0001.jpg
Title: 
National Deaf Poetry Conference poster
Creator: 
Jim Cohn
Summary: 
Poster designed by NTID designers made for 1987 National Deaf Poetry Conference at NTID.
Date of Original: 
1987-09
Date of Digitization: 
9/8/2022
Broad Type: 
poster
Library Collection: 
RIT/NTID Deaf Studies Archive poster collection
Catalog Record: 
https://archivesspace.rit.edu/repositories/2/resources/906
Rights: 
RIT Libraries makes materials from its collections available for educational and research purposes pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. It is your responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder to publish or reproduce images in print or electronic form.
Notes: 
Note from donor Jim Cohn- Jim Cohn collaborated with an NTID designer to make a poster that was both visually and artistically unique as well as informative about the 3-day conference he coordinated and which took place at NTID from 24-27 September 1987. The poster, formally a collage, is divided into three columns, has an underlying pop-art aesthetic with cut-up letters for the event's title and various fonts and font sizes used to highlight and differentiate the pieces of information the poster provides. There are four hands, those of my design collaborator, photographed and placed in the center column with overlay 3 different visual fields meant to convey the energy, vividness, and movement central to ASL Poetry and poetics. The center column also conveys a surrealistic space of possibilities where no space had existed before, with the cut-up letter "PoW" suggesting the explosion of new ASL poetic activity that awaited the first National Deaf Poetry Conference in the United States. Black backgrounds on the outer columns document the invited Deaf poets: Peter Cook, Patrick Graybill, Ella May Lentz, Debbie A. Rennie and Clayton Valli; the conference's schedule of events, and the skilled poetry performance art interpreters who were intrinsic to the conference being accessible to both Deaf and hearing poetry communities of Rochester. If I remember correctly, all the pieces of the collage were never glued down to a surface and then copied. I believe the designer placed a glass over all of the pieces and then made a photograph from which copies were printed.