Go ahead. Touch it.
Art can be a tactile experience.
Indeed, all of the art in a new exhibit, “Please Touch,” at Edmonds Community College’s art gallery should be touched, artist Jim Ballard said.
The exhibit will be displayed through March 13.
Ballard is an Edmonds writer, photographer and graphic artist. He makes embossed paper for children and adults who are blind or visually impaired.
In 2010, he received a grant from the Edmonds Arts Festival Foundation to research new ways of presenting paper embossment illustrations alongside braille. This research resulted in a book, “Spineless Critters: A First Book of Invertebrates,” copies of which he has donated to the Louis Braille School in Edmonds.
Examples of his work are at somethingspecialpress.com.
The show at the college, curated by Ballard, includes wall panels of paper embossments illustrating star constellations, the profiles of birds, snowflake shapes and various surface textures of lakes and oceans.
Some of the wall panels will be placed on the walls of the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library in Seattle after the exhibit closes.
The show also includes stone and bronze sculptures by Sabah Al-Dhaher, Richard Hestekind and David Varnau.
The exhibit is narrated in braille by Caroline Meyers.
In addition, poet Holly J. Hughes has recorded her poems about three extinct birds that appear in Ballard’s paper embossments. The audio loops her voice with environmental sounds.
The Edmonds Community College Art Gallery is located on the third floor of Lynnwood Hall, 20000 68th Ave. W., Lynnwood.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
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