Annie Young lost her sight to a hereditary retinal disease. Now her paintings hang in a Minnesota fire station, and visitors are meant to feel them.

BURNSVILLE, Minn. The paintings by Annie Young have thick, built-up surfaces, and the texture is the point. Young is an Air Force veteran who is completely blind, and she makes work to be felt as well as seen.

Several pieces from her collection, The Great American Experience, are on loan to the city of Burnsville and hang at Burnsville Fire Station No. 1, 14275 Newton Avenue. They are part of the city’s rotating local art collection and mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, as part of Burnsville’s America 250 programming. The city’s own story about her is titled “Do You See What I Feel?”

Young served a combined 14 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and the Minnesota Air National Guard. She began losing her vision at 37 to rod-cone dystrophy, a hereditary retinal disease, and was fully blind by 40. She started painting out of frustration, she has said, and later began building tactile layers into the work.

Her process runs on memory and touch. She labels her paint tubes with notes that connect each pigment to a sensory memory, and she identifies the tubes with a barcode reader. A color, for her, is something she has attached to a smell, a place, or a moment, and the label tells her which one she is holding.

Her watercolor “Secrets She Keeps” was accepted into the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Foot in the Door exhibition. The museum did not know she was blind when it accepted the piece.

The city has not published start or end dates for the display. Readers who want to see, or touch, the work should contact the city of Burnsville before visiting.

Reporter follow-up: Ask Young how she decides when a layer is finished, what one of her pigment labels actually says, and how she felt about the museum’s acceptance once the jury learned the full story.

Photo: Annie Young at work, and a close-up of a textured painting from The Great American Experience. Request images and credit from the City of Burnsville communications office and from Young. A shot of the labeled paint tubes and barcode reader would show her process.

Sources and links

• https://annieyoungarts.com/
• Hoodline: Blind Burnsville veteran’s tactile art marks America’s 250th
• “Do You See What I Feel?” A Veteran’s Perspective on the Great American Experience https://youtu.be/vkG2od0gDPg?si=vGvoRB4IgCD6LQPl