The only time I'd touched clay was when I was a youngster.

It's both one of the most expressive forms and one of the trickiest to get right.

The first thing that I started with was roses.

I like the feel of it between your fingers.

I really enjoyed it and can see I have grown tremendously.

It's the concentration and the pleasure you get out of doing it.

I always loved arts and crafts.

That sort of empties your head.

I think one of the things that I love about coming to the group is there's an incredible sense of camaraderie here.

We all learn and grow together.

I love it, it's so much fun. You get to make whatever you want.

We live in a culture where we think about, when you say the word disability,it seems to be like a mark on somebody and nobody looks at the ability, regardless of the challenges somebody has. Through art, I've been able to see – like working with other groups – a surprising amount of people that you would think can't do art and yet once they have the opportunity, they're brilliant.

It's Saturday morning. While most people are still in bed, this small sculpture class is dreaming of what they'll create next. The class, called Hands of Fire, was originally planned to run for six weeks but March of 2016 marked their three-year anniversary. Although the members come from a variety of different backgrounds, they all have one thing in common. This class is specifically catered to the blind and visually impaired.

The group meets at CNIB, formerly known as the Canadian National Institute For The Blind. They have one man to thank for providing them with the opportunity to express their creativity through sculpture each week.

I was always fascinated by art in the way it impacted people and gave them a voice to express themselves. I thought about the CNIB for a while and working with the blind and I kind of put it together. This should work in a way because of the fact of the tactile nature of sculpture and the tactile nature of just being blind in the sensitivity of the fingers, so I thought I'd give it a shot. So I guess three years ago, I contacted the CNIB and they passed me along to a group called the visionaries, which is a peer support group, and I was introduced to Ian White and he invited me in for a meeting and I did a presentation and we signed up 10 people from there. It took off a lot faster than I thought and that was surprising.

One of the things that led me back into doing sculpture was I used to do it as a hobby.

Ian White, the man who made the connection, thought his days as an artist were long over when he lost his vision. But this class has given him the opportunity to reclaim one of his favorite pastimes.

I was born with a condition called congenital glaucoma and so as an infant, I had glaucoma. I was diagnosed very early and was rushed from my home in Northwestern Ontario to Montreal, where they were doing some very experimental surgery on infants with glaucoma and I underwent that surgery at age of six months and it actually stabilized the pressure so that I had functional vision until I was about 40. When I lost my vision I just thought "Well there's another thing, you know. I can't do that anymore."

But then Bruce came in to one of our visionaries meetings as a guest speaker and pitched this crazy idea that he had that, you know, blind people are tactile people and sculpture's a tactile medium. Why don't we put these two together and see what we can do? I thought about it and I thought you know, he's right. If I love doing sculpture there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to do that but what I have to do is let go of doing it the way I used to do it.

CNIB was originally created to help veterans. It now focuses on providing services and assistance to those dealing with vision loss. The organization has helped ease the transition into visually impaired living for many Hands of Fire members.

With my temperament nothing sets me back. I just continue to do exactly what I always did.

When Carol Mondesir realized she was losing her vision to macular degeneration, she reached out to CNIB immediately.

It is what it is and ranting and raving about it wouldn't do anything, it wouldn't help anything. So I decided to really be proactive and work with it and see how I could continue my life, having good quality life.

Approximately half a million Canadians experience significant vision loss that impacts their daily lives. Each year, an additional 50,000 will lose their sight.

I was scared out of my mind. I woke up one morning telling my husband that I can't see.

For Lisa Locke, losing her vision to diabetes at the age of 32 was an emotional transition.

It is a big change. When I first went blind, all I wanted to do was sleep all day. Sleep all day, sleep all day.

It's because in my vision, in my head, I still can see. So I'd rather be sleeping and seeing what I can see in my head than to be sitting there being a little bump of a slump, like just – and it has nothing to do with "Oh, poor me," it's just, I just feel frustrated and overwhelmed and I had to break myself out of that kind of mold of sleeping all day. It's still hard, like I have appointments in the mornings and some of them I miss because I just don't want to get up. But I'm always here on time, always here coming to the sculpture group all on time.

For many group members, coming to Hands of Fire is a weekly highlight.

I did a lot of life drawing and portraits so I'm – that helps me a lot with the sculpture, what I can remember.

Ruth Brown was an artist long before she gradually lost her vision to glaucoma at the age of 62.

It's just enjoyable. It's just a pleasure to to work and shape the clay and remember and have Bruce come along and say "Oh, you've got the eyes in the right place." That's encouraging. Well it's just nice to be able to continue. Well not nice isn't the right word but just a pleasure to be able to continue with art because doing the the art I did when I was younger was visual and now this is tactile and I'm glad that I'm able to do it.

Noora Mahmoud has been volunteering at Hands of Fire for two years.

We tend to like wallow in our self-pity and we tend to like think about all the things that we're lacking, or at least I tend to do that. But I don't know, I think since I've come here and since I've been doing things with CNIB and other types of stuff like this, I kind of stop thinking about the fact that, well all the things that I'm lacking and then it really helps put things in perspective. Like, it's not about the simple things of "Oh well, I don't have this" or "I don't have what other people have" but it's about really looking at your abilities and seeing what you can do with them and that's essentially one of the best things that I've learned from it. Like, the experience I get from just being here is absolutely invigorating and exciting.

Bruce's cousin, Douglas Free, has been volunteering at Hands of Fire since the beginning.

When they come out, it's like a community and they feel like they've accomplished something. People before when they're blind or have any sort of disability always feel like they've lost the ability to express themselves and create. But we're trying to give them back the ability to do that.

Life on its own is a blessing, so constantly you get these thoughts of like "Oh my God, if I was blind I would just kill myself" and then you realize that things aren't like that like. The world is not into these binaries, the world is not black or white, it's not blind equals death, sight equals live. Like no, we get to pick what we do and we pick our abilities. It's not about looking at what you have and what you don't have, it's about just simply seeing what you have in your abilities and going on with it and I mean, the sculpture group is the best way to see it. I mean, everybody is trying to do what they can with what they have and that is the most noble thing ever.

Despite having friends and family who may understand what it's like to live with vision loss, many of the group members believe that multiple societal misconceptions still exist.

When it comes to other people that don't have the vision problem,

they might think that – the people might think they're right in the way they're helping you but yet they're not. I notice in traveling with my husband and what have you, there's a lot of ignorance but it's because people don't understand or don't know about sight and not being able to see. They either step on your cane or cut in front of you and it gets you really frustrated. Like, you know, you got people who can see my white stick but yet they still try to cut in front of you to get on a bus or cut in front of you to get on the escalator, don't allow to help and and say "Hey, do you need help?" It gets frustrating. We're just the same people, just can't see. We bleed the same colour, we're the same people as you and others, you know. It just, it would be nice to know that people can understand us a little more than the negative feeling that you get.

I think so many people that I run into on a daily basis when I'm out, you know, doing errands or traveling on the TTC or whatever, is that people will come up to me and offer to help but they don't know how and what that means is that I have to sort of step up as an educator and teach people what I need, right. I have to advocate for myself and simple things like, you know, "Do you want help onto the on to the subway car?" and I'll often accept the help even if I don't need it, in part because it's an opportunity for me to educate someone on the correct way to help and in part because it makes them feel good that they've offered and that offer has been accepted. So they'd be more likely to offer again and if I combine that with the education then they have a better shot at offering the right kind of help next time. So it's, there's a constant sort of feeling that I, as someone in the visually impaired community, I'm acting as an ambassador for that community.

In celebration of their three-year anniversary, Hands of Fire is having a potluck. It's a more relaxed class with less focus on sculpture and more on socialization between the group members.

I'm still surprised about how good it is. It's to the point I'm in the room, and I've talked to you know my volunteers about this, but we kind of forget or we don't even think of them being as blind. We're aware of it but it's not an issue that, you know, we don't even really react to it now, it's just natural, you know. You need to help somebody out, we do it but the room isn't about, you know, poor blind people, far from it. I'm impressed every time, like I said earlier, about what what we do in the room and what some of the members are doing. I treat them and I think of them as artists, that's it. Not blind artists, artists, and that that to me was important and I think it is to them as well.

I think everything's great about the class. Especially because I feel like there's always a load of bricks on me and being blind, it really screws your head up. But to be here, it's like all the bricks are lifted off.

"Oh, look who's coming in today" and Bruce would be saying that and saying hi to me and "How is everything going?" and then sit down and start creating. It feels so good.

Every time I would lose some vision, I would have to sort of change my life plan and then I would go through surgery and I would regain some of it. So I would change my life plan again to try to say "Okay, well if I have this much vision, I can do these things," right, and then I would lose it and I'd have to go "Okay, well no, I can't do those things anymore."

Eventually, it sort of settled out as "No, you're going to be blind and you're going to not be able to do anything," right, or so I thought. It's not necessarily the big life plans that are part of the the loss. Well they are, but it's a lot of the little things that you don't really think about. My daughter Rachel is now a young woman of 19 I have no idea what she looks like.

I don't know, you know, how to get. I mean, I can feel her face and I know how tall she is and I know what her hair feels like but yeah, I don't have visual access to her at all and I don't have any visual memories of her growing up. I have other kinds of memories but I don't have those sort of picture book moments that a lot of people think of when they think of remembering, you know, growing up with family. That's hard.

But I think going through vision loss and and learning to cope with vision loss is about finding other ways to experience your life. It's about absorbing the ambience in a coffee shop, you know. It's about, the touch of a hand of a friend, you know. It's about listening to people's voices, listening to what they say, not worrying about what they look like. It's about trying to sort of shift what's important about your experiences.

My time on this earth is not much left and I find that it's sort of evangelizing, you can say. I decided that I will devote my sculpting time to creating scenes from the life of Christ because it would cause people to stop and think. I did The Last Supper, I did the manger with the Angels and Christ and everything else. I can make anything else. I can make a dog, a cat, a tree. I've done a lot of those things but at the end of the day, you know, that ends up in the garbage but I believe the pieces I'm making will have some sense of worth to somebody somewhere. It will cause somebody to think. It will let people know that there is hope, no matter what's happening to you and so there is a reason for all of it.

When you're creating, you kind of go into this zone. Your imagination is at its highest, you're connecting kind of logic and imagination figuring out how to put it in front and that's a value. It makes your brain, it takes it away from issues and problems you're thinking of and you're focused in on the one thing. That usually also because it's a creative process, when you're creative, I think it brings the best out in you, right. You're at your best, you know, you're doing something you enjoy. You're doing it with a little passion and stuff like that. So when you've got a room full of people that are in that zone or at their best, it's a nice place to be because everybody kind of drops their guard and is focused in on what they're doing. I just, there's an energy in there that you can feel it's different and even the way people hold themselves and talk and what I notice more than anything, it's always in the work first. But also when they leave, they're leaving holding their head a little higher or smiling or you can see that it meant a lot to them and what surprises me about that is they keep coming back. They're kind of like, and we make a joke about it, you know, it's almost like my dysfunctional second family in a way. Like, they become not just members but they're they're friends and people that I just like hanging out with.