When Victoria Hauck was born, doctors didn’t know the extent of her vision impairment.
Hauck said her parents were very “doom and gloom” at the possible outcomes of her vision.
“They were very concerned that I wasn’t going to have a normal life in any way,” said Hauck, currently a first-year student studying art therapy at the University of Lynchburg.
Hauck is legally blind and has a detached retina in her right eye. Her left eye has gotten worse over time, although her vision loss plateaued while in her 20s.
She described her vision impairment as basically having tunnel vision, because she doesn’t have peripheral vision and has a “very small bubble” that she can see.
But that reality hasn’t stopped her from pursuing art, going to college and acquiring new hobbies.
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English Professor Chidsey Dickson taught Hauck in a first-year composition workshop course this past semester at the university. The professor said her maturity and readiness to receive information distinguished her in the class.
“She actually helped create an environment where everyone is learning,” Dickson said.
Terry Bodine — program and advising coordinator for second-year, adult and second degree students — helped Hauck register and plan her fall semester.
Bodine said she came in really knowing what she wanted to get out of her academic experience.
“She’s really doing a good job of synthesizing what she’s already doing out in the world with her passion for art and her understanding of how the arts can be therapeutic for people with special needs,” Bodine said.
Hauck got her start in art when she lived in Massachusetts as a child.
She had an early interest in painting and drawing, so her parents sent her to their next-door neighbor, who was an artist, to learn and practice.
Her neighbor became her art teacher and a close friend whom she still visits today.
Hauck visited the Boston Art Museum with her neighbor, where she saw abstract art for the first time.
“She was the first person that ever took me to an art gallery,” Hauck said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool, colors are exciting.’”
Hauck went on to finish high school while being home-schooled. She wanted to go to college originally after finishing high school, but ended up working on a farm at 18 and started a business which ultimately became a family business.
She loved it, but the isolation of working on the farm was getting to her. She joined a ministry for a couple years but returned to the farm after a few years while in her early 20s and eventually moved to Lynchburg.
Painting picked back up for Hauck when she moved with a close friend to Lynchburg in 2015.
She was gifted watercolor paints. She loved animation such as Pokémon, so she experimented with colors, eventually venturing away from that style to more surreal paintings, which she continues today.
Her current art forms are pottery, painting and watercolor painting, but she is also interested in trying other art forms such as sculpting.
Hauck explained she cannot see realism — everything is like “colorful blobs” to her.
“Detail is not my jam,” Hauck said. “That’s why I don’t paint realism, you know ... That’s why my favorite things to do involve colorful blobs.”
She also plays piano and works with plants.
Currently, Hauck juggles school and art with her job as a licensed massage therapist.
“I love the aspects of massage therapy that are healing. Making people whole and being a part of that journey and having the privilege to be with them there in a vulnerable place is something that is a huge honor,” Hauck said.
Hauck said she wants to go further in the realm of therapy and do talk therapy, which she said is an integral part of therapy that has helped her along her journey.
She mentioned the challenges in getting mental health help.
“I don’t know if it’s just in this country or if it’s just everywhere, we don’t have support systems yet for mental health,” Hauck said.
Hauck thinks her purpose is to help people heal and she plans to continue her studies to that end.
“I feel like this is an area that really is being neglected right now,” Hauck said. “I’m not saying I can change the psychology industry or anything like that, but I’m definitely one of those people that believes you just need one stone to move the avalanche down the hill. I feel I just have an ethical responsibility to at least try.”