Touching Sound is a three-dimensional collage created by individuals with sight loss, following a sensory-led nature walk and workshop at the Guelph Arboretum in late-June 2023. The six participants were asked to rely on their senses of touch, smell, and hearing to navigate their walk, and to record their feelings, memories, and associations through a “deep listening” practice grounded in the environment. The walk informed what was created in the workshop, which consisted of mixed media, abstract, mobile sculptures. . Audio recordings made by the participants can be found near their sculpture as touch-activated buttons.

Touching Sound is supported by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and funded by the Ontario Arts Council.

Meet the artists:

Olivia Brouwer is a partially blind artist based in Cambridge, Ontario. Olivia creates mixed media paintings, prints, sculptures, and sound art of abstract interpretations of our natural surroundings while inviting both sighted and non-sighted audiences to interact and perceive using the senses of touch and hearing.

Dawn Matheson is an interdisciplinary artist from Guelph, Ontario, with a social practice, co-creating within diverse populations living with difference or disability, using the medium of video, installation, and sound. Dawn hopes to interrupt civic and social spaces with unexpected moments of beauty, curiosity, and joy.