Blind
Working while blindfolded emerged as a response to multiple features in my life. Firstly, I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to craft and construction and am constantly trying to upend this impulse in myself--favoring the spontaneous and imperfect-- through artistic challenges. Letting go of my vision, in the making of an object, necessarily reigns in my ability to control the visual outcome.
Secondly, I am deeply invested in alternate forms of learning and in understanding how we learn through touch. As a maker, I understand that the hands are the second set of eyes. I want to enable them to act as such.
And last, I work with the visually impaired and have been endlessly inspired by their visio-spatial knowledge. I began working with cognitively and physically disabled artists in the Bay Area in 2011. I have the great opportunity to work with some of the most talented artists in the Bay, and the world, through this portal. Multiple artists, with whom I works, are blind or severely visually impaired. It has been in watching and learning from them that I decided to see if my hands had a similar capacity to learn.
