More ‘Porn for the Blind’

TORONTO—Last year, Lisa J. Murphy released Tactile Mind, a book containing 17 raised erotic “images” with accompanying Braille text. It was immediately dubbed “porn for the blind” even though the images were softcore in nature. Earlier this month, the Toronto-based creative visionary released four more sexy images and said she will soon begin work on a new book that contains images of couples. Now we’re talking! The original book is priced at $225 CDN and is available through Murphy’s website. The new images, called Tactile Atelier Bookmark, retail for $100 CDN, and can be ordered here. The process for hand-creating both sets remains the same, Murphy told AOL News. "I used the same process for this as I did before for my book," she said. "I took photographs of my friends in lingerie, blew up the images and hand-sculpted them into clay. Then I made thermoform copies. I ran the plastic myself through my thermoform machine at home, so each one took awhile to make." The toughest of the new images to make was the female rear end in lacy underwear (pictured). "The butt was really hard to sculpt. I wanted to get it nice and even and give it a feminine softness so it would actually feel like a woman's butt. It took me days to sculpt all the curves right, but I'm told it does feel like a woman's butt in a G-string," Murphy told AOL. Disregarding any criticism regarding her subject matter, Murphy said that feedback from friends has only encouraged her to continue. "I've had both sighted and blind friends check out my art, and the feedback has been pretty positive,” she said. “Sighted people like it for the art, and for the sightless, it really is eye-opening. I've had blind people tell me they enjoyed the images solely for the fashion. One person was floored by the high heels and couldn't believe those shoes even existed. Another was intrigued by the underwire in the bra image.” Leaving hints that future work could be racier, it remains to be seen just how explicit Murphy chooses to get in her next book, though it's probably become apaprent to the artist that a market exists no matter where she goes in terms of depicting sexual activity. Her current creations are not porn per se, but they are certainly sexual in nature and we could not be more enthused about her dedication to a form of sensual expression and experience for those who were previously all but ignored by visually obssessed producers of sensual and sexual content.