[Music]
how many of you have ever been referred
to as being either right-brained or
left-brained these labels don’t have
much significance to us as adults but as
young people as children whether you are
right or left hemisphere it has
everything to do with how you learn
now I’m gonna simplify this a little bit
but children at a very early age who are
left brain dominant left hemisphere
dominant tend to be able to hear and
decode sound particularly speech this
means that they are early speakers they
are early readers they are usually good
writers and good spellers children that
are right hemisphere dominant have a
whole series of additional of their
skills and qualities they do however not
have the ability to particularly here in
decode speech and it usually means that
if your right hemisphere dominant you
had problems with speaking or you were a
late speaker and you had problems
reading and you had problems writing and
problem spelling now this is something
that affects about 20% roughly of the
population to one degree or another
about 5% it affects severely and when it
affects you severely it’s called
dyslexia dis meaning difficult
Lexia with words
the thing that makes it a problem is the
very fact that our educational system
and how we measure intellect it’s pretty
well determined by words by books by how
well you can write how well you can
solve math problems how well you can
increasingly take information off of a
computer screen great if you’re left
brained a big problem if you’re right
brained I’m Dyslexic I realized very
early on that I was going to have a lot
of problems with reading and with doing
math so I look back at that time I
realized my father was dyslexic as well
he was an artist he taught me how to
draw how to paint how to work with tools
and for them I will be forever grateful
but the only intervention available back
at that time for me was to fail first
grade and I carried that inability to
work do math and to read with me all
through my education I was generally
moved into what was called the slow
track which did not prepare me for
college and so when I surprised
everybody and wanted to go to college I
was really ill prepared and in fact I
was so ill-prepared that I had basically
spent two of my first three semesters on
probation with time however I eventually
began to improve my grades by taking art
courses and I had the blessing of having
to take art history courses now art
history can be very very dominating sort
of subject to have to study it can be
very tough I had the great fortune of
having some wonderful instructors and
those instructors not only you know took
me under their wing they they mentored
me and they believed in me
but they were all great storytellers and
there was something about their
storytelling
that I just love and that I was able to
absorb they’re not that information into
my very dyslexic head it was the
beginning of me realizing that if I
didn’t have to wrestle with the
mechanics of reading my retention of the
material that was being read could go
way up
somebody read to me I gained a lot more
out of it years later I would fall in
love with books on tape and then it gave
me an opportunity to really catch up
with everybody else so with the help of
these mentors I got through and got a
bachelor’s degree I immediately moved to
Hawaii and enrolled myself in the Asian
and Pacific art history program at the
University of Hawaii and with the help
of other great storytellers and mentors
I managed to earn a master’s degree
years later I find myself chairman of a
small art department I was teaching
sculpture and art history and during the
summers I was teaching as an adjunct at
a much larger institution where I was
teaching a series of non-western art
classes in the year 3000 I was given the
opportunity to as a part of my teaching
contract to return to school I thought
that I enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts
program to become a sculptor I had at
that particular point realized that the
optimal career for a dyslexic included
entrepreneurship design engineering
architectural design any of the
Performing Arts be a dance theater or
music and art I was in the right place
but what to sculpt what to make it took
me a while to realize that I had stories
inside of me that I could take and
encode into objects for the public to
decode sort of a diss
six revenge you know the kind of
reversal the first real piece that I did
that with was this one it came as a
result of a trip that I took in 1989
with my then six-year-old son I spent an
awful lot of time trying to keep him
from being run over by bicycles we went
to the Netherlands and we also visited
the Dutch national forest which was
about the size of a city park with only
a few trees in it and I realized that
the Dutch were trying very very hard to
live within their means trying to
balance the crowded little country with
preserving the environment and the
bicycle was very very much a symbol of
their efforts to do that I think you can
begin to see what that encoding was a
little bit you know I mean bicycle
equals person or human and tree plant
these tools nature and the environment I
began to see bicycles as a tremendous
metaphor for humanity after all there
were very few cultures that you don’t
find bicycles in among the I continued
but these up I still make bicycles
related with plants I’ve taken to using
bonsai because they’re a lot easier to
handle but I think also that humanity
tends to want to control and manipulate
nature and so the bonsai is a good
example of that and I think these two
pieces depicted here express that need
to balance if you will the human with
the environment some of the stories I
found inside of me came from a very very
early age and I can remember as a child
being fascinated when I was introduced
in in school to these guys and the idea
of two people living within the same
body really interested in me and I I
didn’t lose that interest years later I
found out that the bunker brothers
married a pair of identical twins
and proceeded to father about a dozen
children I thought well that had to be a
pretty interesting home life so I
thought taking this and I thought I
would try to use the metaphor idea again
with bicycles and so I created this
piece I’m always fascinated in how kids
react to my work and I can usually go up
to a any young person looking at this
piece and I’ll test them I said what do
you what do you see here and they
invariably will give me a nice narrative
as to what this is all about thinking
about eighty eighty five percent of them
can do that it’s because the bicycle to
them is very much a tool of their
imagination they can all remember when
the bicycle was a car or a horse or a
fighter plane taking them away on great
adventures a lot of adults will look at
it and say but how do you ride it I also
began to think about other artists who
had before me experimented in using
bicycles and of course this gentleman
always comes to mind the greatest master
Marcel Duchamp in 1913 he created his
bicycle wheel and stool as seen here he
was quite an innovator he took
ready-made objects he would reassemble
them and put them together which hadn’t
been done before but he would also
invite his audience to do more than just
look he’d sit then I’ll come up and spin
the wheel get involved in the kinetics
of what the piece was like and in 1913
this was pretty outrageous stuff I
always thought it would be interesting
if I had had a chance to really get to
know Duchamp I had read a fair amount
about him and I thought if I had known
him it’d be fun to make a present for
him make a bicycle present now he wasn’t
a really very active guy he’s kind of
sedentary plays chess a lot smokes his
pipe and cigars but I thought I’ve got
to make something here that would make
him want to go bicycling I’ll make him
an exercise
so I created this piece it had two Mavs
make you know absolutely no sense
rearview mirrors even though it wasn’t
going anywhere you know a lot of those
sorts of things but I thought also
reading about him that he was pretty
shamanistic and I thought it might
interest him to want to get on it to a
machine that was like a large male
appendage he could sit there and crank
away and get all these wheels turning so
I’ve also realized that there were other
opportunities and that I could with the
idea of utilizing bicycles express
concerns about politics and some of the
things that are going on in the world in
2006 my wife and I moved to South Africa
where we lived for a year and I felt
great concern for the people of Zimbabwe
who are flooding across the border
escaping the economic deprivation of
their country as a result of that I
created this piece these two tandems put
together actually form the flag of
Zimbabwe and yes Robert Mugabe and is
more than thirty years there took
Zimbabwe which was at one point the
breadbasket of Africa and absolutely
destroyed the economy so there’s no room
for anybody to ride no seats no bars
front brake who’s locked to the back
brake but even more than that I thought
it I wanted to express how badly the
economy had been destroyed so in the
inflation there where you put the
inflation instructions on the attires I
took each tire and put the inflation
rate for one week in a year between
October and November of 2008 by the end
of the third week of October in 2008
this was the annual inflation rate by
the end of October this was what it was
up to
by the end of the first week of November
and eventually by the middle of November
it had reached this staggering amount as
most you’ve ever heard
well Gabby was finally removed in late
2017
needless to say Zimbabwe still doesn’t
print money I think you can begin to see
where I’m going with a lot of this by
now I’m sure that several of you can
look at this and say it’s a
self-portrait it’s me it’s what I was
like 10 12 years ago and many things
have changed but yes as a dyslexic I
still feel I am going through life a lot
of us with only one break in one year
but you do the best you can and for me
my art has let me stay in the race it’s
the human race there are all too many
for dyslexics who have dropped out of
that race Dean bragging ear and his
excellent TED talk about dyslexia points
out that some 35% of all young people
who are dyslexic drop out of school
before they finish high school because
of frustration with an educational
system that will have not adopt to the
right hemisphere dominates their life
I’ve often wondered where dyslexia falls
in the terms of human evolution and I’ve
come to realize that before we were a
literate society we were an oral Society
we were dependent on an oral tradition
for survival and the keepers of the oral
tradition were the bards the minstrels
the artists the shaman
and the storytellers when that was all
swept away and we became a literate
society those people were replaced by
the scribes the copyists the librarians
the writers and the readers please
understand that if you ever give a
dyslexic something to read
they will not read words they will see
symbols that need to be decoded they are
not dumb or stupid or lazy that was a
far easier title to be called a dyslexic
when I first heard it in college rather
than stupid or lazy I’ve made a partial
list here of dyslexics I would doubt if
any of you would ever look at this
anybody on this list and called them
stupid or lazy in conclusion I would
simply like to suggest a couple
possibilities to you you all know that
young person who is maybe socially
uncomfortable who doesn’t
/ maybe has a learning disability take
time get to know them talk to them find
out what interests them encourage them
and defend them the difference that you
can make if you taking a little bit of
time can be the difference between them
being that 35% that dropout or maybe
another name on this list even closer to
home if you happen to be or have a child
that is dyslexic tell them stories tell
them rich vivid magnificent stories full
of information full of details that they
can carry with them but even if you’re a
great reader and you can read to them
every single night you’ve got all kinds
of stories you can read them I’d like
you to do what my father did for me when
he would read to me and he’d get to a
where he really couldn’t push through
anymore on the weight of the words had
become too much for him he would simply
stop close the book and turn to me and
say and what do you suppose happen next
he would invite me to engage my
imagination and to create the narrative
path that would get us to the end of the
story thank you Dad
[Applause]
[Music]
how many of you have ever been referred
to as being either right-brained or
left-brained these labels don’t have
much significance to us as adults but as
young people as children whether you are
right or left hemisphere it has
everything to do with how you learn
now I’m gonna simplify this a little bit
but children at a very early age who are
left brain dominant left hemisphere
dominant tend to be able to hear and
decode sound particularly speech this
means that they are early speakers they
are early readers they are usually good
writers and good spellers children that
are right hemisphere dominant have a
whole series of additional of their
skills and qualities they do however not
have the ability to particularly here in
decode speech and it usually means that
if your right hemisphere dominant you
had problems with speaking or you were a
late speaker and you had problems
reading and you had problems writing and
problem spelling now this is something
that affects about 20% roughly of the
population to one degree or another
about 5% it affects severely and when it
affects you severely it’s called
dyslexia dis meaning difficult
Lexia with words
the thing that makes it a problem is the
very fact that our educational system
and how we measure intellect it’s pretty
well determined by words by books by how
well you can write how well you can
solve math problems how well you can
increasingly take information off of a
computer screen great if you’re left
brained a big problem if you’re right
brained I’m Dyslexic I realized very
early on that I was going to have a lot
of problems with reading and with doing
math so I look back at that time I
realized my father was dyslexic as well
he was an artist he taught me how to
draw how to paint how to work with tools
and for them I will be forever grateful
but the only intervention available back
at that time for me was to fail first
grade and I carried that inability to
work do math and to read with me all
through my education I was generally
moved into what was called the slow
track which did not prepare me for
college and so when I surprised
everybody and wanted to go to college I
was really ill prepared and in fact I
was so ill-prepared that I had basically
spent two of my first three semesters on
probation with time however I eventually
began to improve my grades by taking art
courses and I had the blessing of having
to take art history courses now art
history can be very very dominating sort
of subject to have to study it can be
very tough I had the great fortune of
having some wonderful instructors and
those instructors not only you know took
me under their wing they they mentored
me and they believed in me
but they were all great storytellers and
there was something about their
storytelling
that I just love and that I was able to
absorb they’re not that information into
my very dyslexic head it was the
beginning of me realizing that if I
didn’t have to wrestle with the
mechanics of reading my retention of the
material that was being read could go
way up
somebody read to me I gained a lot more
out of it years later I would fall in
love with books on tape and then it gave
me an opportunity to really catch up
with everybody else so with the help of
these mentors I got through and got a
bachelor’s degree I immediately moved to
Hawaii and enrolled myself in the Asian
and Pacific art history program at the
University of Hawaii and with the help
of other great storytellers and mentors
I managed to earn a master’s degree
years later I find myself chairman of a
small art department I was teaching
sculpture and art history and during the
summers I was teaching as an adjunct at
a much larger institution where I was
teaching a series of non-western art
classes in the year 3000 I was given the
opportunity to as a part of my teaching
contract to return to school I thought
that I enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts
program to become a sculptor I had at
that particular point realized that the
optimal career for a dyslexic included
entrepreneurship design engineering
architectural design any of the
Performing Arts be a dance theater or
music and art I was in the right place
but what to sculpt what to make it took
me a while to realize that I had stories
inside of me that I could take and
encode into objects for the public to
decode sort of a diss
six revenge you know the kind of
reversal the first real piece that I did
that with was this one it came as a
result of a trip that I took in 1989
with my then six-year-old son I spent an
awful lot of time trying to keep him
from being run over by bicycles we went
to the Netherlands and we also visited
the Dutch national forest which was
about the size of a city park with only
a few trees in it and I realized that
the Dutch were trying very very hard to
live within their means trying to
balance the crowded little country with
preserving the environment and the
bicycle was very very much a symbol of
their efforts to do that I think you can
begin to see what that encoding was a
little bit you know I mean bicycle
equals person or human and tree plant
these tools nature and the environment I
began to see bicycles as a tremendous
metaphor for humanity after all there
were very few cultures that you don’t
find bicycles in among the I continued
but these up I still make bicycles
related with plants I’ve taken to using
bonsai because they’re a lot easier to
handle but I think also that humanity
tends to want to control and manipulate
nature and so the bonsai is a good
example of that and I think these two
pieces depicted here express that need
to balance if you will the human with
the environment some of the stories I
found inside of me came from a very very
early age and I can remember as a child
being fascinated when I was introduced
in in school to these guys and the idea
of two people living within the same
body really interested in me and I I
didn’t lose that interest years later I
found out that the bunker brothers
married a pair of identical twins
and proceeded to father about a dozen
children I thought well that had to be a
pretty interesting home life so I
thought taking this and I thought I
would try to use the metaphor idea again
with bicycles and so I created this
piece I’m always fascinated in how kids
react to my work and I can usually go up
to a any young person looking at this
piece and I’ll test them I said what do
you what do you see here and they
invariably will give me a nice narrative
as to what this is all about thinking
about eighty eighty five percent of them
can do that it’s because the bicycle to
them is very much a tool of their
imagination they can all remember when
the bicycle was a car or a horse or a
fighter plane taking them away on great
adventures a lot of adults will look at
it and say but how do you ride it I also
began to think about other artists who
had before me experimented in using
bicycles and of course this gentleman
always comes to mind the greatest master
Marcel Duchamp in 1913 he created his
bicycle wheel and stool as seen here he
was quite an innovator he took
ready-made objects he would reassemble
them and put them together which hadn’t
been done before but he would also
invite his audience to do more than just
look he’d sit then I’ll come up and spin
the wheel get involved in the kinetics
of what the piece was like and in 1913
this was pretty outrageous stuff I
always thought it would be interesting
if I had had a chance to really get to
know Duchamp I had read a fair amount
about him and I thought if I had known
him it’d be fun to make a present for
him make a bicycle present now he wasn’t
a really very active guy he’s kind of
sedentary plays chess a lot smokes his
pipe and cigars but I thought I’ve got
to make something here that would make
him want to go bicycling I’ll make him
an exercise
so I created this piece it had two Mavs
make you know absolutely no sense
rearview mirrors even though it wasn’t
going anywhere you know a lot of those
sorts of things but I thought also
reading about him that he was pretty
shamanistic and I thought it might
interest him to want to get on it to a
machine that was like a large male
appendage he could sit there and crank
away and get all these wheels turning so
I’ve also realized that there were other
opportunities and that I could with the
idea of utilizing bicycles express
concerns about politics and some of the
things that are going on in the world in
2006 my wife and I moved to South Africa
where we lived for a year and I felt
great concern for the people of Zimbabwe
who are flooding across the border
escaping the economic deprivation of
their country as a result of that I
created this piece these two tandems put
together actually form the flag of
Zimbabwe and yes Robert Mugabe and is
more than thirty years there took
Zimbabwe which was at one point the
breadbasket of Africa and absolutely
destroyed the economy so there’s no room
for anybody to ride no seats no bars
front brake who’s locked to the back
brake but even more than that I thought
it I wanted to express how badly the
economy had been destroyed so in the
inflation there where you put the
inflation instructions on the attires I
took each tire and put the inflation
rate for one week in a year between
October and November of 2008 by the end
of the third week of October in 2008
this was the annual inflation rate by
the end of October this was what it was
up to
by the end of the first week of November
and eventually by the middle of November
it had reached this staggering amount as
most you’ve ever heard
well Gabby was finally removed in late
2017
needless to say Zimbabwe still doesn’t
print money I think you can begin to see
where I’m going with a lot of this by
now I’m sure that several of you can
look at this and say it’s a
self-portrait it’s me it’s what I was
like 10 12 years ago and many things
have changed but yes as a dyslexic I
still feel I am going through life a lot
of us with only one break in one year
but you do the best you can and for me
my art has let me stay in the race it’s
the human race there are all too many
for dyslexics who have dropped out of
that race Dean bragging ear and his
excellent TED talk about dyslexia points
out that some 35% of all young people
who are dyslexic drop out of school
before they finish high school because
of frustration with an educational
system that will have not adopt to the
right hemisphere dominates their life
I’ve often wondered where dyslexia falls
in the terms of human evolution and I’ve
come to realize that before we were a
literate society we were an oral Society
we were dependent on an oral tradition
for survival and the keepers of the oral
tradition were the bards the minstrels
the artists the shaman
and the storytellers when that was all
swept away and we became a literate
society those people were replaced by
the scribes the copyists the librarians
the writers and the readers please
understand that if you ever give a
dyslexic something to read
they will not read words they will see
symbols that need to be decoded they are
not dumb or stupid or lazy that was a
far easier title to be called a dyslexic
when I first heard it in college rather
than stupid or lazy I’ve made a partial
list here of dyslexics I would doubt if
any of you would ever look at this
anybody on this list and called them
stupid or lazy in conclusion I would
simply like to suggest a couple
possibilities to you you all know that
young person who is maybe socially
uncomfortable who doesn’t
/ maybe has a learning disability take
time get to know them talk to them find
out what interests them encourage them
and defend them the difference that you
can make if you taking a little bit of
time can be the difference between them
being that 35% that dropout or maybe
another name on this list even closer to
home if you happen to be or have a child
that is dyslexic tell them stories tell
them rich vivid magnificent stories full
of information full of details that they
can carry with them but even if you’re a
great reader and you can read to them
every single night you’ve got all kinds
of stories you can read them I’d like
you to do what my father did for me when
he would read to me and he’d get to a
where he really couldn’t push through
anymore on the weight of the words had
become too much for him he would simply
stop close the book and turn to me and
say and what do you suppose happen next
he would invite me to engage my
imagination and to create the narrative
path that would get us to the end of the
story thank you Dad
[Applause]
[Music]
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