These artists are on a mission to make images extra accessible

High college sweethearts Ted and Carrie Tahquechi have chased golden hours throughout the nation. A dawn over Boulder’s Flatirons. A sundown on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

They’ve shared a love for images since they studied it collectively within the Nineteen Eighties. In the many years since, they’ve undertaken a number of photographic initiatives, together with panorama and portrait collection, in shade and black and white.

But in 1999, Carrie, Ted, and their 3-year-old twin boys have been rear-ended in a automotive accident. Carrie bought minor whiplash. The boys, Jarren and Jorden, have been unhurt. But the influence shifted Ted’s retinal tissue, completely damaging his sight. Now, he has solely 5 p.c imaginative and prescient in his left eye. The different 95 p.c of his sight is gone (although he is been blind in his proper eye since faculty). 

“Ted can still see some lights and shadows, some color, big things like bridges and mountains,” Carrie defined.

But that is not rather a lot for a inventive like Ted. So he and Carrie needed to discover a new method to make artwork collectively — they usually landed on tactile images. 

Tactile images permits folks with low and no imaginative and prescient to expertise images with their fingers, feeling the contours like they might really feel Braille. The photographs are additionally useful for folks with colorblindness and neurodivergent viewers.

But it was an extended highway from Ted and Carrie’s accident to their new invention.

“It was a pretty dark time for us, for quite a long time.”

As Ted adjusted to life with 5 p.c imaginative and prescient, he needed to adapt. But the process was long and tedious. As he discovered new methods of navigating the world, he sustained frequent cuts to his face and brow, concussions, damaged bones, and had a couple of shut name with site visitors. 

But Ted’s incapacity could not rob him of his love for artwork.

“When Ted lost his sight, we didn’t stop going to museums. And we didn’t stop going to art galleries,” Carrie mentioned. “I just had to describe all the things.”

They additionally discovered locations that offered particular excursions for the visually impaired. But Carrie mentioned that did not really feel ample.

“You know, in the back of your head, you think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one exhibit at each gallery that (someone with limited vision) could feel and experience without having to make a special appointment? Or without having to arrange for an audio-descriptive tour?’” she mentioned. “Those (options) are fantastic, but what if Ted didn’t have to make an appointment? What if he could just go in and see and feel and experience the art just like everyone else?”

An opportunity encounter

One day, Ted and Carrie have been at Access Gallery in Denver’s Santa Fe Arts District. As they have been standing in entrance of the work, Carrie started to explain — in nice element — what they have been seeing.

“And one of the most amazing things happened,” Carrie mentioned. “The curator (Damon McLeese) came up to us, and he listened. And then he turned to us, and he said, ‘I have never heard anyone come in here and audio describe what was going on like this. We need this.'”

For Ted and Carrie, that was a turning level.

“We know that there’s a need out there,” Carrie mentioned. “And curators know that there’s a need out there.”

So she and Ted got down to meet that want by making artwork extra accessible.

Creating images that may be seen and felt

Carrie and Ted examined quite a lot of mediums, from layering paint and glue to sculpting with paper. 

They have been all a bust.

Then, they found 3-D printing. But that additionally had its challenges.

“It was a pretty long process trying to figure out how to make something without any texture to it print with texture,” Carrie mentioned. “A lot of (the test prints) were comically outrageous. Just a big pile of swirly mess.”

“Yep,” Ted mentioned. “It’s called spaghetti.”

A scorching room, a chilly room, or a grimy printing floor can all have an effect on the success of a 3-D print.

Plus, it is laborious to show a 3-D machine find out how to print mild and shadow in a approach that is sensible to the human hand.

“When you first throw a picture through the 3D printer, it comes out with the tactile equivalent of static,” Ted mentioned. “So you’re not feeling all the things that you need to feel to experience the composition of the image.”

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

But collectively, after a lot trial and error, Ted and Carrie honed their approach.

“We found a process where we can extract different layers of texture, form, light — a bunch of different things in a photo so that you can experience a mountain, a bridge, a sunset.”

The photographs are displayed with a visible print, a 3-D print, a written description, a Braille description, and a QR code that hyperlinks to an audio description. 

“It tells you the mood, the time of day … it gives you the description of the photo, and then it walks you through what you’re feeling in the tactile version so that you have full context of what it is that you’re experiencing,” Ted defined.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

A future the place all galleries, museums, and exhibitions are accessible 

To additional their work, Ted and Carrie secured funding by a RedLine Colorado Artist Grant, sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation. The cash allowed them to buy a 3-D printer, so they do not must schlep backwards and forwards to a library or makers’ house each time they need to print.

They additionally acquired a journey grant from Flight for Sight (now the Blind Travel Foundation), which allowed them to seize iconic landscapes and vistas throughout the nation. 

“Big pie in the sky dream,” Carrie mentioned, “would be that someone with low vision or no vision could walk into any gallery and experience art by touch without making an appointment or having a special showing.”

But that is a great distance off. For now, Carrie mentioned, the 1st step is organising a 501(c)(3) for his or her enterprise, Tactile Photos.

“That’s our current project, so we can subsidize the printing and be able to offer these, for free, to different museums and studios and things like that here in Colorado,” she mentioned.

Imagine seeing one thing for the primary time

A number of months in the past, at a National Federation for the Blind convention in Florida, Ted and Carrie have been reminded of the influence of their work.

At the convention, they met a blind lady who grew up in Boulder. Unlike Ted, she was by no means sighted.

One of the various landscapes in Ted and Carrie’s assortment is a picture of Boulder’s Flatirons at dawn, with a grassy area within the foreground and a transparent sky within the background.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

So they invited the lady to really feel the picture. 

“She never really understood why people talked about them all the time — because when you never have sight, you don’t really understand how enormous the mountains are and how they look different when you’re really close up to them, or if you’re far away from them,” Carrie mentioned. “It’s a very emotional thing when people feel these for the first time.”

“It seems like every single time we show this work, there’s just so much emotional outpouring,” Ted added. “For me, it feels fantastic to be able to share that.”