������

No matter what the calendar says, it’s the first week of summer. The temps are in the 90s, the garden is being planted and summer staff are shadowing their ITP staff counterparts. Friday 25 teenagers (summer students) begin arriving and on Monday the elementary Confidence Camp kids start too.

So here’s another first or two. Above, Amber uses a spade for the first time out in the garden. When asked if she’d dug with a shovel before she promptly answered, “I’m about to.” And then she proceeded to do it. In the process she and classmate Annette planted this year’s pumpkin and zucchini hills.

Our long-time art instructor and national leader in tactile access to art and science Ann Cunningham was in the artists’ make-a-space at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) in February. A group from the ������ visited DAM and Ann’s exhibit and art-making on February 9. The collaboration between DAM and Ann caught the attention of others, resulting in this episode of the popular podcast, “Eyes on Success” – an interview by podcasters Peter Torpey and Nancy Goodman Torpey of Ann and folks at DAM.

Listen to the episode here:

Here are a few photos from the Shared Visions reception at the at on Thursday night. Everyone got hands on with pieces from Nathan Abels’ painting and drawing classes. CCB students also had laser-cuts of drawings they made in Ann Cunningham’s art class with accompanying Haiku, and CCB alum Jenny Callahan had a number of stone carvings and a bronze in the show.

The Seniors art class had bowls thrown on the wheel in Katie Caron’s ceramics studio. Katie brought her daughter, who insisted on wearing sleepshades so she could try to identify the art tactilely.

The first-ever meeting of a new Tactile Art Club will meet at CCB from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, January 17. It will be held monthly on the third Tuesday of each month.

Our long-time collaborator and art instructor, Ann Cunningham, CCB alum Jenny Callahan and CCB Tech Instructor Yolanda Thompson hatched the idea, inspired in part by the first-ever NFB Tactile Art and Tactile Graphics Symposium held at the National Center for the ������ in Baltimore last December.

“The idea is to grow a community around the idea of access to tactile art and tactile graphics,” Says Ann.

With just a week to go before the third annual exhibit, “Shared Visions Collaborative Artworks”, some Center art students traveled to to make some art and to offer some feedback to painting students on their tactile works.

For their very first class with Ann Cunningham, the newest group of CCB art students composed objects on a flat plane and then used a thermoform machine put together by Ceramics Instructor Katie Caron. Some of the results are shown in the photo above – plastic sheets that, using a combination of heat and a vacuum, conform to the shapes of the objects.

It’s basically the same process used in product packaging, but way more legit.

Tactile art and art shows are in the works this fall, with collaboration and coordination from the ������’s as the common medium.

First, Arapahoe Community College’s now-annual “Shared Visions” tactile art show will open with a reception on November 10 at the from 5 to 8 p.m. The show, which will be open to the public until November 18, will feature tactile and sensory art from ACC Painting and Ceramics students, as well as works from CCB students and staff in several media. CCB’s Ann Cunningham teaches classes each week to Independence Training Students and to Older ������ Programs.

Tactile art classes, taught by sculptor Ann Cunningham, have been a unique part of training at the ������ since the 1990s. Students might work in stone, clay, make tactile drawings with Ann’s Sensational Drawing Board, or go wherever their creative sense pulls them.

Just before his graduation from the Center and return to New York, Peter talked about his experience in Ann’s art class at the Center and what it meant to him.

Monday afternoons our art class meets with our long-time teacher and friend to make tactile are pieces from stone, clay, paper or whatever creative fancy strives to take flight.

Shelby will graduate next month, and she’s been a fixture in art class since last fall. Here she is with her latest art project, titled “Beacon”. She started out to make the two maroon ducks sitting on their lime green nest, but along the way got the idea of a kind of lamp, its light shining from one of their mouths. So after she fired and lazed the piece, she went out to the hardware store to get the wiring and put it all together. Creativity, we may observe, is a process.

And so, it is a beacon!

The “Shared Visions” exhibit at Arapahoe Community College’s Colorado Gallery of the Arts on November 19 and 20 was a big success, featuring numerous multi-media and very tactile paintings by students in Nathan Abels’ painting classes, as well as pottery pieces from joint activities between Center students in Ann Cunningham’s art classes here and those in classes taught by Katie Caron, Ceramics Coordinator at ACC.

In addition, the cooperative activities and exhibit were featured on the Breaking ������ YouTube channel in two videos. See what Maureen has to say and what she experiences:

For nearly two decades, Colorado artist has been teaching art classes at the ������. Initially drawn to us because she was curious about how blind people experience art (such as the stone carvings she produces), she has become one of North America’s leading teachers, advocates and innovators with respect to access to the arts for the blind – both as observers and creators.

Natalia at the wheel in the ceramics studio on the ACC campus.