Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers

Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers

October 3, 2024 - January 4, 2025

Reception: October 3, 2024

Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers challenges the traditional boundaries of art appreciation by inviting visitors to engage with artwork through touch.

Please Touch has called various Seattle venues home for the past 10 years. Now, this exhibition comes to ARTS King Street Station to raise awareness about accessibility for blind and low-vision individuals in the arts while bridging the gap between visual and tactile art experiences.

Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers curators are Barbara Oswald, Jessica Ong Carbaugh, Cole Devoy, Laura Ferri, and Susan Springer. ReVision Arts is the brainchild of founder and current director, Barbara Oswald, a multidisciplinary artist and disability rights advocate.

ReVision Arts’ mission is Art for All! Over 187 artists have created and contributed their artworks, participated in 50+ exhibits, utilizing their imaginative and inclusive perspective. Jurors ask artists to close their eyes, use their open palms, and gently stroke their artwork, describing the meaning it holds for them. Artwork whose work has maximum tactile impact and visual beauty is accepted.

ReVision Arts has paired sighted and non-sighted artists encouraging collaboration in the creation of a single artwork, enhancing their joint perspectives. Their organizational knowledge and connections with underserved artists enabled ReVision Arts to distribute $85,000 of Neighborhood COVID Recovery Grants to artists in Rainier Valley in 2023.

Partner galleries and arts companies participating in the exhibition: A/NT Gallery, 5th Avenue Theater, Seattle Opera, Gray Sky Gallery, Taproot Theater, METHOD Gallery, The Vestibule.

Presenting artists: Emily Counts, Elizabeth Arzani, Debra Broz, Megan Prince, Patti Curtis, Terry Richardson, Shelli Markee, Leah Gerrard, Karen Abel, Mary Coss, Jim Alaya, Stoned Patti O, Megan Leah Gottfried, Rod Guevara, Tristan Heberlein, Juan Gimelli, Sue Springer, Sean Hennesey, Jacob Luckey, Pieter VanZanden, Edwin Fountain, Carolyn Autenreith, Sandra Over Pressley, Tom Haddy.

What To Expect

Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers is a tactile exhibition inviting visitors to engage with artwork through touch. The show includes 2D and 3D work including theatrical costumes; depictions of animals, animal skeletons, architecture, and mythic creatures; depictions of the human head and face and form, and other abstract imagery and sculpture.

Image: Rabbit Rhinocerous by Debra Broz