Video courtesy of Patti Durr's Deaf Art website. David Call, a Deaf artist, was born in Los Angeles, California around the 1960s. His parents and oldest brother were hearing while his middle brother and him were Deaf. David attended the Hearing Institute in Los Angeles for speech training at an early age but did not benefit from his experience there. He attended the California School for the Deaf and later on Gallaudet University, where he met his wife, Debbie, and graduated with a BA in public education and history. David earned his MA degree in special education from the California State University and is currently pursuing his teaching career in art at the California School for the Deaf.
From a young age, David had a love for art because it was a medium that helped him communicate with his parents during a time when sign language wasn’t introduced in his life yet. During his time in public school in Southern California, David was placed in a class for the Deaf and was discouraged from using gestures to communicate. He was often isolated from other hearing students and made fun of because he was Deaf. These experiences caused him to get into trouble in two public schools until his mother decided to acquaint David with sign language.
David learned to sign in Signing Exact English (SEE) and later on American Sign Language (ASL) which helped him ease into the Deaf community and identity. After he took a visual arts class, David was motivated to explore different mediums and was fascinated with art literature and art history. He taught social studies for 18 years before replacing an art teacher and teaching Deaf-centered visual arts. The Deaf View/Image Art movement, also known as, the De’VIA Art movement was a topic that David focused on and he, himself, became a part of this movement.
Block cut prints, ink drawings, and linocut prints were the main mediums David worked with in his exploration of the Deaf experience. He originally sold his De’Via art pieces to raise money for his classroom art supplies and ended up creating his own online art business for his work. David continues his artistic path and hopes to inspire his own Deaf students to find their own identity through this form of expression.
| Title | Medium | Year | Size | Acquired | Picture |
| Breakthrough |
Linocut art reproduction "The main theme of this linocut is Abbé de l'Epée being underground in a stone-lined crypt, sledgehammering Aristotle's crypt wall down to set Deaf butterflies free. An ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, once said that the Deaf were incapable of learning because they could not hear, thus setting off two thousand years of the Dark Ages in deaf education. The Roman numeral "MM" represents 2K years of darkness being split in half by a sledgehammer, a metaphor for a breakthrough in the progress of deaf education. The two butterflies symbolize two deaf sisters whom Abbé de l'Epée met for the first time and used "their" sign language to educate them about God. He initiated the first of a long series of revolutions using signs' natural language. He showed us the way out by going up the stairway toward our emancipation. The coat of arms hanging on the keystone above actually is the coat of arms of the city of Paris, where Abbé de l'Epée started the world's first public and, still in existence, a school for the Deaf, the Institut National de Jueune Sourdes (INJS). The boat inside the coat of arms symbolizes the 1815 sea voyage of Gallaudet and Clerc to America. On the right side is a bust of the Father of German Oralism, Samuel Heinicke, who thought signs were not a route to abstract thought. Two short epee swords hanging on Heinicke's crypt wall represent the duel or the exchanges of letters between himself and Abbé de l'Epée on the heated debate on how best to educate the deaf. The six fleurs at the upper corners represent prominent people in French Deaf history. The three on the right, Ambrose Sicard, Thomas Gallaudet, and Auguste Bebian, are the hearing allies of the Deaf. The other three on the left, Jean Massieu, Laurent Clerc, and Ferdinand Berthier, are illustrious graduates and teachers. They all contributed to their deaf community and indirectly to the American and the world's deaf communities. The Deaf souls were, are, and still will be entrapped by "oralism" behind the unbroken crypt wall in which Abbé de l'Epée had failed to shatter open. This job is still and now left to us to finish his sledgehammering." |
2012 | 72 x 55 cm | Purchased by Joan Naturale, NTID Librarian |  |
| The Great Convergence |
Original art print: colored pencil The sailboat from France carrying Langue des Signes Francaise (LSF) met up with another sailboat carrying Martha’s Vineyard (MV) Sign Language. A beautiful convergence happened when the boats met and went on the American mainland, where ASL was born—multi-colored prisma color drawing depicting two sailboats on the sea intersecting to form a butterfly. |
2016 | 30 x 23 cm | Purchased by Joan Naturale, NTID Librarian |  |
| The Beacon of Hope: Reject | Art print -linocut | 2016 | 77 x 56 cm | Gift of artist passed on through Patti Durr |  |
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