Please Don T Touch
Cris Luczak
Several years ago, social practices artist Gk Callahan began working as an art teacher and community outreach program coordinator for The LightHouse, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting blind and visually impaired citizens of San Francisco through rehabilitation, education, recreation, and employment services. While teaching, Gk often gazed out of the classroom window at the run-down lot located across the alleyway and dreamed of the things he could do with that space, to better serve the surrounding community.
The lot was in a state of neglect for over thirty years, and provided a stark contrast to the beautiful San Francisco City Hall located across the street. The Lech Walesa alleyway adjacent to The LightHouse was a popular location for illegal drug activity, which oftentimes spilled over into the abandoned lot. Gk Callahan decided to develop a plan to transform it into a space that not only allowed his clients to have access to fresh air and sunlight, but a space that was accessible to all, an everyman's land devoid of the segregation that people of different socioeconomic back grounds face. In the end he thought it was best to build a community garden. Through this revitalization Gk aimed to make the area safer, increase access to art and nature, and provide a fully ADA-accessible garden that would be inclusive to all. A place where one could meet and interact with someone you might never have had the opportunity to otherwise, in a non-judgmental and safe environment.
In 2010 Callahan received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, but it was more than a year later when he finally set foot on the lot. In 2011, after clearing red tape, and making a long-lasting partnership with the city of San Francisco, his team began construction of the Please Touch Community Garden. Over time the efforts of numerous community volunteers has transformed the garden from an idea to a reality. One full community volunteer day was dedicated to sheet mulching the entire lot, which ensured that the soil was safe for planting. Other community volunteer days resulted in the construction of garden beds and wheelchair-accessible planters, and the installation of an artwork titled The Living Wall.
With the generous support of a local landscape architect, the organizers at the garden developed a plan that was completely wheelchair-accessible and compliant with ADA regulations. It is the contributing angels, and the openness of the community to engage with the space, from the many passersby, to schools like Stanford and California College of the Arts (CCA) that brought donations, manpower, and support, that help the garden thrive.
A bright red needle dispensary box was placed just outside the garden gates. Once installed, the number of needles found around the lot dropped dramatically. The needles were one of the bigger problems the team faced at the beginning of the project. Over 2,000 used needles were collected initially, and for a long time after the initial clean up, five to fifteen needles a day would need disposal. It was a biohazard, it was scary, and in its own way an epidemic. It was one of those said angels, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, who were instrumental in helping get the sharps dispensary box installed. It was the needles that led Callahan to his next project . . .
Please Touch Community Garden is not a traditional plotted vegetable garden; all of the food grown at the garden can be grown and harvested by anybody at any time the garden is open. There are no dividing lines between plots, and everyone shares responsibility for the care of the plants. There are many works of art that fill the garden, ranging from sculptures, murals, and mosaics. The first artwork created for the garden was the eye-catching Beaded Quilt, a large mural installation of Perler bead squares. The Beaded Quilt is installed on the wall of The LightHouse; it was made over a period of one and a half years at the LightHouse. This beaded-quilt mural is a beacon leading to the Please Touch Garden entrance. It was constructed by clients, donors, volunteers, and staff of the LightHouse for the Blind. Resembling a patchwork quilt, this mural is made of 576 squares and over 147,000 beads. Each square is a small reflection of the person who made it, highlighting the colorfulness and diversity of the community.
But the biggest collaborator with Please Touch Community Garden has been the people who touch and activate the space, and their continued collaboration, contribution, and engagement. Whether it is volunteering, educational programming, or event planning, they keep the garden thriving.
-Story contributed by Ashlie Flood, Smithsonian Gardens 2014 Katzenberger Intern, and Gk Callahan.
Placing historical gardens on a map can be tricky. We choose locations based on what we think makes the most sense. Sometimes we get it wrong (and sometimes there is no "right" answer). Feel free to email us at community...@si.edu with suggestions for improvement.
Please Touch the Art is a multi-sensory exhibition aimed at creating an immersive artistic experience that engages all of the senses. Not only does Please Touch the Art challenge visitors to consider how they may engage with a work of art beyond seeing, it also challenges visual artists to consider how their work engages a diverse range of audience members.
Please Touch the Art invites sighted and visually impaired visitors to go beyond looking at artwork and encourages them to use their sense of touch to experience each piece. The exhibit addresses issues about the nature of aesthetic appreciation and perception of art. It also provides an inclusive and accessible experience for all visitors with the use of braille and large print gallery guides, audio guides, tactile maps, and navigational tools (preview/download ahead of time via the links below).
Maryan Amaral, Paul Angiolillo, Zy Baer, Su Bailey, Lev Brown, Eddie Bruckner, Ava Chan, Melissa Chaney, Nancy Crasco, Julia Cseko, Jean Cummiskey, Linda Cundiff, Trisha Danforth, Rosalyn Driscoll, Ann Forbush, Bette Frank Leahy, Adric Giles, Kimberley Harding, Jennifer Justice, Cynthia Kennelly, Bob Kephart, Laura Klausmeyer, Michael Kolitsky, Cindy Lu, Elizabeth Martinez, Karen McCarthy, Aaron McPeake, Michael Moss, Chris Neiman, John Norton, Ponnapa Prakkamakul, Claudia Ravaschiere, Etta Rosen, Carolann Tebbetts, Rocky Tomascoff and Students from Perkins School for the Blind- Lower School, Sylvia Vander Sluis, Cathy Weaver Taylor, Meegan Williams, Annie Zeybekoglu
We have a wonderful team of knowledgeable trained guides ready to lead group tours for sighted, blind, and low vision visitors. We'll be running tours with them all summer long! Please follow this link to view the full schedule of available tours and sign up for the one that works for you! Don't see a time or date that works for you? Please contact our Director of Exhibitions, Aneleise Ruggles at exhi...@mosesianarts.org to schedule an alternative time for you or a group. Limit 5 visitors per tour guide.
Georgina Kleege, Curator of Please Touch the Art & Professor of English and Disabilities Studies at UC Berkeley
Panelists:
Sarah Stewart - Art Education Teacher, Envision, Inc (a not-for-profit that seeks to improve the quality of life for individuals with vision loss in Wichita, KS)
Ronit Minchom - Accessibility Coordinator, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Maryan Amaral - Please Touch the Art Artist and Founder and Director of Aero Inc (an integrated abilities dance company in Newton, MA)
Please Touch the Art is funded in part by Sasaki Foundation, Watertown Commission on Disability, and Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mass Humanities conducts and supports programs that use history, literature, philosophy, and the other humanities disciplines to enhance and improve civic life in Massachusetts. Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy, now simply known as Mass Humanities, was established in 1974 as the state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and is an independent programming and grant-making organization that receives support from the NEH and the Massachusetts Cultural Council as well as private sources.
The Sasaki Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization committed to empowering communities by tackling the issue of inequity in design. The Foundation works with communities, government, practitioners, and others to support research and programs that diversify the voices involved in discussing the built environment.
When the Cleveland Museum Of Art embarked on its $350 million expansion, they needed to grow their audiences to match. Our research showed that most of their visitors returned with a deep sense of ownership over particular parts of the collection. With this in mind, we set out to rethink what an art museum could be.
We wanted to give kids and adult visitors alike an intuitive, innovative way to search the CMA collection. Our intuitive touch interface allows users to simply draw lines and shapes to call forth artworks from the collection with similar geometry.
Organized by Tess Haas BMC '18, PLEASE TOUCH THE ART: an anti-aesthetic project features textile works that value tactility and touch over visual aesthetic. At the intersection of curatorial theory and artistic practice, this project aims to be wholly accessible to all. PLEASE TOUCH THE ART features small-, medium-, and large-scale embroidery works, along with one sculpture (co-created by local Philadelphia sculptor Cameron King) and one interactive piece.
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Touch has received increasing interest in marketing, given research indicating that contact with products influences evaluation and the tendency to purchase. However, little is known from the marketing or psychophysical literature about visible attributes of objects that elicit touch for hedonic purposes. In these studies, participants rated the tendency of pictured objects to invite touch, or "touch-ability." Rated touch-ability varied reliably with structural attributes of objects, and the structural influences were distinct from those on other ratings such as attractiveness and apparent expense. Although the trends varied across object sets, touch-ability generally declined as surface textures became markedly rough and shape complexity became extreme. Holding stimulus factors constant, touch-ability also varied with the specific hand movements that were anticipated. Finally, mean touch-ability ratings were correlated across participants with the "Need for Touch" scale, which measures an individual's tendency to touch products. The studies point to touch-ability as a potential factor that might be incorporated into product design.
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