October 15, 2020 - “My English name is Adrean Clark. I’m an ASL Deaf woman, and I work as an artist and a writer”. Adrean’s family is hearing, and she grew up in North Carolina. Her early educational experiences were in a mainstreamed Total Communication classroom, but Adrean later went on to graduate from the North Carolina School for the Deaf. Adrean also attended Gallaudet University. She then received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
She works from home in her studio. As a full-time mom of three kids, Adrean has had to be creative with her career and her responsibilities over the last 20 years. She has done freelance graphic design and illustration work, plus owned several book and video publishing companies. Nowadays the focus is on her own art projects with occasional freelance work.
The best part of a creative career is flexibility, Adrean says. “I’ve been fortunate that I could stay at home with my kids and work on projects, but it comes with its own set of challenges.” Over the years she has published many books/ebooks and individual comics. “It’s very satisfying to see your creations out in the world and being shared by people.”
The biggest challenge that Adrean has had with her work is in managing people’s perceptions. “Technology and interpreters can only solve so much.” Adrean shares an example, where she wanted to go back to school for further training but was confronted with unqualified interpreters. “The school refused to listen to my requests. I ended up having to go out of state to find a school that would listen to my needs regarding ASL interpreters. In this situation it wasn’t about having ASL interpreters — it was having the right interpreters that would allow me to finish the program with a minimum of barriers.”
“Also, people do not always understand and appreciate the amount of work that a career in the arts requires.” She mentions that Artists are often underpaid or have their work stolen without acknowledgment. “People tend to ask artists to donate their labor or ask for free unpaid work.”
Aderan doesn’t work around those challenges — she continues to work with them as her energy allows. These challenges aren’t ones that are quickly solved, she states. “They take years of coordinated community effort to help mitigate. I do my part by standing up for my wages and being clear in communicating with people through visuals and text.”
Adrean adds that “As Deaf people, we are often presented a narrow idea of being successful. We are told that our disability is a barrier that must be overcome through sheer willpower. The truth is that society made our barriers by promoting a certain type of person at the expense of all else. It’s very important to think critically about who we are as individuals. We define our own expectations on ourselves, and we need to be flexible on the parameters of those expectations to ensure they match who we are as human beings.”
She finishes off her thought process with “In short, you decide what success means to you, and go for it!”
It’s hard for Adrean to define what is a hobby and what is not, because she has many interests. “I am curious about the world around me. Lately I’ve been in a deep dive researching the history of the place where I live.”
She encourages everyone to check out her ongoing comic, MY HANDS FULL. It is about her daily life as a cartoonist mom. You can support Adrean’s work at patreon.com/adrean !
The #CanDoAnything campaign showcases people who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing at work, giving them an opportunity to share what they do at their jobs and explain how communication access works for them. This campaign shows what our community can do, which is anything!
