Perplexed expressions permeate the room. It’s 1 PM on a not-so-unusual Saturday. Five minutes ago, you were eating a waffle in peace and joking about your family’s inevitable lack of punctuality (who eats waffles at 1 PM?). One minute later and you’ve been thrown an all-too-familiar hand grenade, a consternating question, what may be perhaps the bane of every college student’s existence. “So, what are you studying?”

In February of 2019, a friend of mine at the Colorado Center for the Blind invited me to Ann Cunningham’s tactile art club. I had no idea what this would entail… I didn’t even know what “tactile art” meant, exactly. I was vaguely confused and significantly intimidated. Naturally, I said yes.

Percussive cane taps accompany cheerful greetings and chatter. Braille dots adorn the pages of the pamphlets, and enthusiastic “talking signs” guide people to their destination. People of all ages, identities, and perspectives share stories, coming together from around the world.
This month, I attended The National Federation of the Blind’s National Convention: the largest gathering of blind people globally. This is an event for training, support, and information for the blind community, facilitating human connection and inspiring people to lead full, independent lives.

Tactile Art Club is back with another fun June project inspired by blind mosaic artist, Mary Dignan. She identifies as having moderate to severe deafness and being blind as a result of Usher syndrome (Type 2) and retinitis pigmentosa. With her mosaics, she explores the power of Tactile senses, color, geometry, texture, and storytelling. In our June meeting, we created a simpler version of mosaics using only air-dry clay and pasta! Designs ranged from abstract patterns to figurative, and each mosaic was unique to the artist that made it.

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) BELL Academy provides children with Braille and nonvisual skills instruction through fun, hands-on learning activities. In June, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Anahit LaBarre, director of Youth Programs at the Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB) , and Michelle Chacon, a Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments and an NFB board of directors.

“El Dia Del Amor y la Amistad” Valentine's Day is called “The Day of Love and Friendship” in Latin America, and I find it beautiful how the name encapsulates multiple forms of love, without confining the holiday strictly to romance. In our Tactile Art Club meeting, we celebrated Valentine's Day by honoring the people and things we love in life. The meeting was a great time to share the joy with loved ones and celebrate together as a community. During the club, we learned to make origami hearts.

Art has, historically, represented visionary ideas and thinking. Yet sometimes, the most visionary art showcases do not rely on vision at all. On Thursday, November 11, Arapahoe Community College (ACC) hosted its opening night for the annual “Shared Visions: Tactile Art Exhibition”. Growing up with only visual arts, the exhibit further challenged my notions of what’s possible in a gallery setting. I truly felt as though I lost myself in the artwork, exploring sound, texture, and interactive elements of art.

We had another successful Tactile Art Club (TAC) meeting on September 21. With each coming month, we continue to be thrilled by the interest from students and individuals joining across the country. We were delighted to welcome guest artist Erin Schalk, Art Instructor at Braille Institute who conducted a workshop that takes old, discarded books and repurposes them into unique and highly textural sculptures.

In this hands-on outdoor art making adventure, children and their families learned about abstract art, , Clyfford Still’s painting technique, and the multisensory process of painting using textured paints. This workshop was designed as a family program to celebrate the Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, such as jobs, schools, and recreational activities. We aimed to form connections with one another and explore their creativity by emulating Clyfford Still’s unique painting technique.

Tactile Art Club is officially continuing over the summer! While the club was originally only active during the school year, the growing interest allowed us to continue providing virtual programming over the summer. The summers will be focused on using household material in unconventional ways, and creating an open studio space free from formal instruction. This month, we delved into abstract art making by creating raised line art using strings! In these projects, participants explored different patterns, textures, and shapes by gluing string to their canvases.

In this Vision of the Artist’s Soul workshop at Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB), we had a wonderful time constructing unique 3d paper flowers! The students loved making botanical flowers out of tinfoil in a past workshop, so as per their request, we experimented with ways to make different types of flowers out of multi-textured materials! These flowers represented new beginnings in the summertime, personal growth, or gratitude for an important person in their lives. Many students chose to give their flowers to parents, friends, and seniors who were graduating in the following week.

In this Vision of the Artist’s Soul workshop at Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind, we had a wonderful time constructing unique hanging mobiles! This workshop took a more open studio approach, providing students with wooden dowels, clay, bells, and string. As a warm up exercise, we started by playing an icebreaker where each person had 2 minutes to make something out of clay. Then, we passed the pieces around and students had to guess who made what and why the person created that piece of art. This was a great way to witness how materials provide an infinite amount of possibilities for how they can be used.

During this week’s Vision of the Artist’s Soul workshop at Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB), students created a 3d wire sculpture based on the raised line drawings completed in the previous art class. Through this lesson, they explored the relationship between 2d and 3d representation, learned new sculpting techniques, experimented with geometry and other mathematical concepts, and ultimately, developed their artistic process. This was surprisingly one of the students’ favorite workshops.

I’m grateful to get the opportunity to volunteer and contribute to Braille Institute’s incredible accessible arts programming! We had 24 participants attend the workshop and we all had a great time creating our own gardens of aluminum foil botanicals. I cannot thank Erin Schalk, Art Instructor at Braille Institute, and participating students enough for welcoming me with open arms and making me feel like a part of the Braille Institute family.

The fifth of the Tactile Art workshop series in partnership with Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Denver was a great success with 15 registered participants. It was wonderful to meet teens from diverse backgrounds and form creative connections. This interactive, virtual workshop series serves as an engaging creative outlet for teens who are blind and visually impaired or interested in accessible tactile art.

We had another successful Tactile Art Club meeting on March 16 with 19 participants attending the meeting. With each coming month, we continue to be thrilled by the interest from students and individuals joining across the country. After getting to know each other, and discussing personal tactile art, we all worked on a fun project using clay, toothpicks or cotton swabs.

This week, we were excited to have world renowned artist John Bramblitt as part of the “Vision of the Artist’s Soul (VAS)” project for a multi-modal workshop where participants explored using their senses to create and think about art in different ways. We discussed things such as color with taste, imagery with smell, and eventually painting without sight. It provided students a great opportunity to let loose and think about the process versus the end result of art.