Touch: "The Skin Has Eyes"

Glue Gun Beaded Pumpkin

"But, above all, touch teaches us that life has depth and contour; it makes our sense of the world and ourself three-dimensional. Without that intricate feel for life there would be no artists whose cunning is to make sensory and emotional maps, and no surgeons, who dive through the body with their fingers."- Diane Ackerman

This textured piece was inspired by the section "The Skin Has Eyes" in Diane Ackerman's "A Natural History of the Senses". The author describes a person's ability to comprehend depth and obtain information about something simply by touching it and using feeling instead of seeing. By covering this pumpkin in an unconventional texture, I, in a way, reverse this notion. Now the eyes have skin. An individual can look at this object and quite accurately imagine how it would feel. Even though it is no longer the texture that we are used to, we can still look at it and envision the feeling of it.