Music, Dance, and Signs Mark Deaf Artist's Paintings

M A R C H / A P R I L - 1 9 9 8

Music, Dance, and Signs Mark
Deaf Artist's Paintings

photo of Uzi displaying one of his paintings
Uzi displays one of his paintings.

Uzi Buzgalo was the only deaf child in his family. In fact, he was the only deaf child in Afula, the town in Israel where he was born. Uzi didn't speak well enough for people to understand him, and no one he knew could sign. So he began to draw.

"I would draw a bike and show it to my parents," he remembered. "They would look at the picture and know what I wanted—and buy me a bike."

At six years old, he went to the Israeli School for the Deaf. He learned Hebrew and Israeli Sign Language there. He drew for fun at school—and he began to dance. "I never considered myself a highly talented dancer," he said. "But I was young and strong."

At 18, he joined the Kol Demama Dance Company. The company toured the world, and Uzi with it. He visited Europe, Japan, and the United States.

But as he grew older, his interest returned to drawing. At 22, he applied to the top art school in Israel. Uzi liked the name of the school. It was called Ein-Hod—Hot Eye. While he was a student, he designed stages and drew backgrounds for the Kol Demama performances.

"I had to relearn how to draw," he said. "I could copy images, but that seemed like nothing. I couldn't express myself."

Slowly, he began to develop his own style.

"I wanted to express the beauty that I felt in a visual way. Somehow I was able to put together the sense of rhythm I learned from dancing and the formal techniques I learned at the school," he said. In his paintings, notes of music and signs entwine. Many paintings are divided into two realms, one of the reality the artist sees, the other of imagination and fantasy.

In one of his paintings, for example, an individual in a circle of light talks to an individual who still stands in darkness. The lighted individual, a male, moves his hands eloquently through the light; the other individual, a female, stands frozen. The light invades her face only at the mouth, which stretches into a forced smile.

Uzi as a young man in school It's what he experienced from some hearing people all of his life, explains Uzi. Deaf people expressing themselves with strength and beauty, only to be met with the uncomprehending smile of hearing people who don't understand.

He talks over his drawings with his wife Anne Marie Baer. Baer comes from a deaf family. She enjoys cooking and art, and she is getting a degree in linguistics.

"She pulls me back from the edge," said Uzi.

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