Last month, with The Aspinauts, I had the honor of playing with a wonderful performer, Heidi Everett.  This is my interview with her. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s art work is called Coming Out.

Coming Out can mean many things and for me it is an important and valuable concept.  This painting helps me celebrate the importance of coming out and the endurance and challenges it takes for any of us to do so.  Read the rest of this entry »

   OK, so February got lost somewhere in the Victorian bushfires and their chaos and yes, my blog has been so quiet.  But, welcome to the March 2009 poetry challenge.  Who knows, any of you coming to see us at any of the upcoming gigs for Donna and The Aspinauts may actually see some of the poems performed, complete with gestural signing and characterisations.

But right now, you have 30 days to send in your poetry challenges for the March 09 poetry jam.  So off you go – feel free to send me a TITLE or THEME to write to in the comments section and in the next 30 days, you’ll find I’ve responded by posting a poem here addressing it.   Come on, give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »

Katherine Kasper is a reader on the spectrum who read the third book in my autobiographical series, Like Colour To The Blind.  When she emailed me about the book I offered her the opportunity to send me 10 interview questions about it.  Here’s that interview. Read the rest of this entry »

  The world of Synesthesia is broader than you think.  I see musically.  I process the meaning of what I hear through the kinesthetic movement of gestural signing and representational objects.  I sometimes have colors and patterns trigger in my brain in response to touch.  I talk of green smells, bright tastes, crunchy sounds and fluffy, scratchy and hard edged people.    Here I interview hill’s artist and singer-songwriter, Tracey Roberts, on how her own Synesthesia relates to her ARTism.

Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net

http://www.myspace.com/donnaandtheaspinauts

This month’s art work is The Gadoodleborger.

In  Nobody Nowhere I had thought of the world as having ‘The Worlders’, which were those who were ego driven and geared for appearances and ‘My Worlders’ who were those who valued ‘beingness’, had and valued a world of their own, and for whom image, ego and appearances were only secondary.

Then, in   Somebody Somewhere, in 1994, I first wrote of another category of humans; Gadoodleborgers.   Gadoodleborgers weren’t ‘The Worlders’, nor were they people necessarily on the autism spectrum.  But what was special about Gadoodleborgers was that they were natural translators, bridgekeepers able to cross between worlds, diplomats, anthropologists interested in the wonderment of social difference and diversity.  I wrote a fable about them best captured in the poem, The Gadoodleborger:

GADOODLEBORGER, copyright, Donna Williams, Aug 2008

He spied her in a magic wood, a sensing creature in need of none

And dreamed of how he’d join her there, his partner she would soon become

He lured her back to the place he knew, a world of hierarchy and of power

And there she then began to die, as surely as a wilting flower

His heart began to break inside, he knew only one thing to give

Return her to her sensing world, that she might find the will to live

And there as she began to bloom, she saw something he’d never seen

That he was not of that world either, a Gadoodleborger, he had been.

That he walked between two worlds, he now had finally understood

And so they made their home in neither world, at the edges of the magic wood.

So for me, The Gadoodleborger is a source of faith in humanity, a reason to shun opportunities for reverse prejudice against non-spectrum people, a reason to believe that neurodiversity exists amidst human beings in general and in not reserved for those with diagnostic labels.  I have found Gadoodleborgers in the non-spectrum and autism spectrum populations and many many people in those populations are not Gadoodleborgonian, but I think I just may be rather Gadoodleborgonian and so I share this something with all other Gadoodleborgers throughout human kind, a something which defines me beyond being ‘an autistic’ and something which connects me to personhood more than labels.

The painting, The Gadoodleborger, was painted in Woolongong in 2002, the year my Gadoodleborgonian husband, Chris Samuel (who features in the book Everyday Heaven ), migrated to Australia from his UK homeland, allowing this homesick Aussie to return to live in Australia after almost 13 years away.   In this sense, it is our marriage, that of an autie with an Aspergerian Gadoodleborger, which is captured in this painting, something of the essence of Chris’ inquisitive interpretive mind and world of meaning, and mine as a place of sensing in the reality of someone partially meaning deaf, meaning blind and face blind.

The butterflies in the painting were originally rosella parrots, indicative of the return to Australia.  But they were turned into butterflies a few years later, symbols of change, transition, adaptation, perhaps just as I was changing, transitioning, adapting from a world of autism into a world of ARTism.

The painting was done in acrylics on stretched canvas and the grass is full of rainbows.  The colors capture the summer of Australia, and yet the lush dark green foliage across the water is perhaps the characters memories of the climate of the UK.

I hope you like the painting and feel free to visit my many other paintings in my online gallery at my website.

Warmly,

Donna Williams,

author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.

http://www.donnawilliams.net

I’ve decided to start a new monthly feature called art work of the month.  I’m going to pick out one of my works and tell you the story behind it and its production.  Hope you come to enjoy the feature and if you are also an artist, feel free to use the comments section to tell people a story about your own ARTism and don’t forget to check out the sites of the many artists listed over at http://www.auties.org.

The art work featured here is called Back to Normality .  It’s part of a series which includes the works Imaginary Friend, Here They Come and The Lunatic. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi folks, if any of you already went to this show you’ll have found the show wasn’t up yet (courier problem).  The show’s opening is now this week, Wed Jan 14th and it runs the full three weeks to Feb 4th.  Hope to hear from any of you who made it to the show.

A Place of Belonging: a solo exhibition of artworks by Donna Williams

Jan 14th – Feb 4th 2009

Venue: Grenfell Gallery, 25 Grenfell St, Adelaide
Hours: Mon-Fri 9am – 6pm daily

More information:  www.peakevents.com.au/gallery 

THE BUTTERFLY CLUB
presents…Donna & The Aspinauts play at The Butterfly Club, Melbourne’s swanky home of camp kitsch, in an evening of irreverent avant-garde poetry and flamboyant musical surrealism with a satirical bent.

Dare to be there.

Wednesday 4th March 2009
8pm-9pm
Cost: $22

The Butterfly Club
204 Bank St, South Melbourne

For bookings, email: info@thebutterflyclub.com
other enquiries: phone (03)9690 2000

http://www.thebutterflyclub.com/

   OK, so you’re face blind, a little meaning deaf, maybe you have social-emotional agnosia and can’t read facial expression or body language to save your life or are as literal as a real life Mr Spock.  Would you be a little socially phobia?  Have a little social anxiety?  Struggle socially in the mainstream?

Well, how do a bunch of autistic people with this stuff rock up to a popular live music venue in the inner city and hang out among a crowd of potentially largely non-autism-spectrum people?  Read the rest of this entry »