Eye Center Visual Arts

What We Do
• Feature a Touchable Art Gallery collection chosen to be handled
• Provide hands-on art activities for children who are waiting for surgery or doctor visits
• Exhibit works created by artists who are visually impaired
• Engage volunteer gallery docents who explain the artwork to visitors
• Place artwork to enhance public waiting areas
• Curate changing exhibits 3 dimensional media by local and regional artists
• House permanent collection of two and three-dimensional art

Art Cart
I sit on the floor with a 7 year-old girl who has almost no vision. She is waiting to have eye surgery and we are here to help her make art to ease the tension, the hunger and thirst. Like all surgery patients, she hasn’t eaten since the night before and both she and her parents are anxious and restless. I offer the girl the heavy drawing foil from our Art Cart. She is ecstatic, scribbling ferociously to create a raised drawing on the reverse side. The nurse comes with pre-anesthesia medication and the girl accepts it. Her parents smile and express their gratitude. As her father accompanies his daughter down the hall, her mother asks where they can buy these materials so that they can all “play” with them at home, together, rested and fed.


Touchable Gallery 
Students from the School for the Blind will visit our Touchable Gallery today. As I prepare for their visit I am both excited and apprehensive.  Their inquisitiveness is amazing. They don’t miss a thing. Have I selected the right pieces, does each piece have its Braille label? They arrive and are eager to experience it all. Don’t rush them; this looking at art takes time!  They love touching everything, everyone has his or her favorite, but especially popular is a child’s rocking motor cycle created by one of our volunteer docents, who is himself blind. And then there is glee when they discover the Magic Tree quilt with hundreds of textures and shapes hidden away to be found only by careful exploration. (The quilt was designed and created by an eye patient just for this purpose.) And then there is glee when they discover the Magic Tree quilt with hundreds of textures and shapes, designed and created by an eye patient, hidden away to be found only by careful exploration. Their hands are all over everything. They are discerning critics – they love baseballs for eyes in the sculpture they adorn, but not the rough dry texture of its wood. Ninety minutes later they’re gone. It’s suddenly quiet. Oh, as they leave the students are quick to advise me that several Braille labels are missing.

I love this work because it reminds me how art can change the way we live in the world.