Braille Alphabet Tiles

Heidi Lasher-Oakes refers to herself as an artist and a scientist. In 1993, she began making a series of sculptures, drawings, and prints titled “Biological Abstractions” that examined the shifts in scale of biological materials, including the anatomy and physiology of plants and animals. While earning her MFA, she became aware of spots appearing in her visual field—the beginning of progressive vision loss caused by a condition called Acute Zonal Occult Outer Retinopathy. Her work soon began to address her own diminishing vision. This ceramic work consists of tiles (which she also refers to as “flash cards”) molded with the raised Braille forms for the letters of the Latin alphabet (each corresponding letter is imprinted on the verso). Lasher-Oakes began learning Braille as an adult. Her neurological symptoms included a loss of fine touch sensation in her extremities. She explains that “one of the reasons that I made the Braille alphabet tiles was that there were no three-dimensional ‘large print’ Braille alphabet sets available.” She subsequently made this set during an Arts Industry residency at the Kohler factory in Sheboygan in the summer of 2000. It is one of seven sets of ceramic tiles (some glazed in various Kohler glazes, others left unglazed) made alongside one cast-iron set. Each set includes the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet in Grade 1 (uncontracted) Braille. A bump on the top of each letter serves as a registration mark since some of the letters transform into others when inverted.