Canadian artist creates erotica for blind people

From The Toronto Sun:

Porn is in the eye of the holder.

Especially if you can’t actually see it.

Toronto artist Lisa Murphy was so sure the visually impaired were doing without a staple of guilty pleasure, she created a book that’s busting at the seams with private parts.

Her 3-D plastic thermoform book Tactile Mind — part erotica and part art-piece — was actually released almost two years ago. But suddenly, it’s gained a new sex life of its own.

“Pornographic magazine for the blind launched,” declared Britain’s Telegraph newspaper on Monday.

The book includes photos of nude men and women — friends recruited by the artist, who are captured in odd and naked poses, including with masks or in suggested bondage.

Murphy, who says it just makes sense to have a touchable sex book, has taken each of the photos, and transformed them into fine sculptures on a page.

And each of those pages can be unbound from the book, so they can lay flat on a surface.

But that kind of detail doesn’t come cheap.

Each copy of Tactile Mind costs $225, before shipping (www.tactilemindbook.com).

“There’s so much work that’s gone into it, from the models to the Braille…it’s not an unreasonable price,” she points out to QMI Agency.

Each naked image in the book took about 50 hours of work to create.

Of the undisclosed number of copies she’s sold so far, many have been bought as an art object — and most by sighted patrons.

“It depends on your eye,” she said of whether it’s porn or high art.

But she doesn’t believe it pushes the bounds of 3-D. In fact she’s planning a new project that blind followers may want to, well, get their hands on.

“It’ll be much more erotic...with couples,” says the 35-year-old artist, who says her own vision is picture perfect.