Eddie Swayze
About the Artist
Eddie Swayze was enrolled at Rochester School for the Deaf until 1976, then enrolled at Horseheads Elementary School under B.O.C.E.S's (Board of Cooperative Education Services) Total Communication mainstreaming program in Horseheads, NY. He graduated from Horseheads High School in 1983. He studied Art at National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in the Applied Art and Computer Graphics Department until 1985, then cross-registered into RIT's (Rochester Institute of Technology) College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. He studied Painting and Illustration and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1989. He continued at the same institution and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1995. He taught Art, Art History, and Literature. He also tutored English and Literature at NTID.
He is a visual artist, poet, performing artist, actor, and educator. He received three New York State Council on the Arts Strategic Opportunity Stipends grants and two New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization grants. He creates mixed media, draws, and paints. He also creates digital artwork in computers, using PhotoShop/Illustrator/inDesign software, and other software and apps.
(Eddie Swayze was previously featured in Issue #1 of Deaf Poets Society.)
artist statement
This work ("ASL") is currently owned by NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf). It was painted on 3 large canvases in acrylic; the orange background and the black lines around the painting were added digitally. I want to show the beauty of ASL. It's my pictorial statement that ASL is beautiful and should be recognized as a language that should be respected and preserved.