Blind women take first in state Women's Club art competition

By Eric Louie
Contra Costa Times

There are things Virginia Macky and Gloria Smith can't do as they lose their eyesight. The two San Ramon Valley women — considered legally blind from macular degeneration — can't drive, and need help for other tasks around the house.

But that didn't stop the two members of the Danville Women's Club from taking top prizes — one for painting and another for sculpture — in this year's California Federation of Women's Clubs statewide art contest.

"I can't really see what I'm doing, so it's Picaso-esque," said Smith, 84, of San Ramon. A longtime painter of realistic landscapes who also ran an art gallery for a few years in Redondo Beach, she spent four months using a magnifying glass to create her watercolor "My Cat Hates Me" from a magazine photograph. It won first place for advanced water color portrait. "I can't see how much paint is on the brush, which is one of the biggest things."

Macky, 81, of Danville, made a papier-mâché sculpture of her children's former dog Mot. She learned the craft last year in a class at a community center.

"We still do everything," said Macky, who worked off and on for years as a department store buyer. "I don't let (my eyesight) stop me."

Macky was diagnosed with macular degeneration in 1994. The incurable eye disease is the leading cause of blindness for Americans 55 and older, affecting more than 10 million Americans, according to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation.

"I can't recognize people from a distance unless I know what they have on," Macky said.

For Smith, the onset of the disease began in 2002. She said her eyesight was not so bad at first, but has gotten worse the past couple years.

"I can't see your face," she said to Macky, sitting across from her at a table during the Danville Women's Club's monthly meeting and lunch. "I can see the shape of your body, but your face is a blur."

To win at the state level, the two first competed in their club's local Mount Diablo district, which includes San Ramon Valley as well as clubs in Lafayette, Brentwood, Stockton and the Tri-Valley. Smith's work was picked for submission to the state from about a dozen, while Macky's was one of about 10, said Anita Carr, a district official. She said the judges — artists who were not in the club — did not know the women were blind.

Neither did the state judges, who picked the winners during the statewide convention last month in Burlingame, said Mary Linn Coleman, with the state federation. Winners got a ribbon and certificate.

"That's interesting," Coleman said upon hearing about the artists' eyesight. "They did an amazing job."