Isaiah Okongo is visually impaired, but the talented sketch artist doesn’t consider that a hindrance to his art.
Rather, he said it’s the thing that sets his drawings apart.
“I always say my visual impairment is a halfway point between being fully sighted and being blind,” said Okongo, who can’t see out of his right eye and can only view things close up with his left. “I think that gives me a unique perspective on the world.
“I tend to focus on details so many people with full sight take for granted because it’s really hard to appreciate something unless you know it’s not there.”
Okongo – a 2019 Sauk Rapids High School and 2023 St. Cloud State graduate – has channeled that perspective into his Minnesota Series, a collection of urban downtown imagery he began work on six years ago, starting with drawings of downtown St. Cloud.
Forty-eight of those pieces are now on display in the Gorecki Gallery, located inside the Benedicta Arts Center on the College of Saint Benedict campus.
The collection, entitled “Many Lines, Many Bricks,” runs through May 16. A reception and artist talk with Okongo is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. on April 16.
“Most of it is downtown imagery, but there are some sketches of the Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s campuses and some of St. Cloud State,” said Okongo, who now resides in Minneapolis. “I’ve always had a love of architecture and I like drawing cities and towns. I’ve been inspired by my surroundings to create a lot of pieces over the years.”
Okongo credits his great grandmother with instilling his passion for art.
“When I was little, she was living at my parents’ place,” he recalled. “She did a lot of art projects over the years. One night, she started telling me a story about one of her paintings that was hanging in the house. She told me each piece of art had its own story behind it and I really liked that. It made me want to create too.
“I started drawing because that was the best I could do with the material I had available to me at the time and I’ve never really stopped.
“Given my sight, it can be difficult to do the kind of detail I do. But seven years ago, mainly for school, I ended up getting a headset magnifier known as IrisVision goggles. People say it looks like a virtual reality headlight. But really, it’s just a way of magnifying things. It helps me zoom in and get a better grasp of what I’m looking at. Then I’m able to pick things out that a lot of people don’t even notice.”
Okongo said that sense of detail has steadily increased in his work over the years. He conducts extensive research into the buildings and cityscapes he sketches, studying their history and the purpose they serve.
“In my later drawings, starting with ones from around 2024, it’s not just the buildings,” he said. “There’s more of a focus on people and the functions those buildings serve. I’m really interested in capturing what makes places we all might walk by every day so unique.”
Given many of his sketches are focused on Central Minnesota, Okongo said it’s extra special to have them on display at CSB.
“I look at it as a real honor,” he said. “I started this Minnesota Series in St. Cloud and the surrounding communities. At the time, I didn’t plan on ever branching out. I ended up doing that, but it’s nice to be able to bring it all back home to the place where I got started.”
