Beyond Sight: Michelle Lamm

By Travis Hill

Before you start reading this story, check out the cover again. Seriously. We’ll wait.

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Cool painting, huh? It’s wonderfully abstract, full of strong, clean lines and powerful colors. The second we saw it, we knew it was going to be the cover.

Incredibly, the artist has never seen it.

[Editor’s note: The pictures referred to in this article can be seen in the print version of Drift magazine.]

Michelle Lamm was born with bilateral anophthalmia, an extremely rare gene mutation that caused her eyes not to develop in the womb.

Michelle Lamm was born without eyes.

And frankly, she isn’t that impressed with her painting.

“Painting is visual,” she says. “I can’t tell the colors. I like ceramics better.”

For Lamm, it doesn’t matter how powerful the colors are. But her ceramic elephant has really cool tusks and a giant trunk. Her monkey has long arms and a funny face. She can touch them. She can remember how mushy the clay felt when she created them.

She also makes creating a Noah’s Ark of characters sound too easy.

“We took a big sheet of clay and rolled it up so it was easy for the monkey to stand up,” she said. “Then I pinched the sides for the ears and cut a slit for the mouth.”

For the record, she’s right – the ceramics might be cooler than the painting. We do love the monkey.

We also love the turtles she made. They’re on the next page. When you get back, we’ll start talking about her trip to Machu Picchu. Seriously. Turn the page. The turtles are awesome.

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Michelle Lamm’s story is almost impossible to believe.

She was born in Japan to Eric and Ako Lamm. The family came here when she was 6 years old to enroll her in the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. Just a year later, Michelle had open-heart surgery at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville to treat a ventricular septal defect (a hole in the septum of the heart’s bottom chamber).

At that point, she was still speaking her first language – Japanese.

It took years of hard work, but Michelle finally learned English. And Braille. And eventually became an honor student at FSDB.

Michelle may sound like an overachiever to you. But in the Lamm family, she is just one of the gang.

Eric is a firefighter in St. Augustine and a member of the National Guard. He’s already completed a tour in Iraq.

Ako is a native of Japan. She wanted to learn English in the United States, so she went off on her own, traveling to college at the University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss).

Michelle’s older sister Stephanie lettered in three sports at Pedro Menendez High and is now a 21-year-old med student at UCF, studying genetics.

When Michelle was 11, the Lamms decided it was time for their daughters to get out and experience our beautiful country.

Now, after a series of spectacular summer vacations, Michelle has breathed the air in more places than many of us have ever seen. She has listened to the ground tremble at the geysers of Yellowstone National Park. She has felt the power of Devils Tower in Wyoming. She has even had the cold nip her nose in Nova Scotia. The Smoky Mountains? Been there. The Rockies? Done that.

All of that traveling led Michelle to her greatest adventure yet.

This summer, through a program called Global Explorers, Michelle was one of three blind adventurers who journeyed to the Andes in Peru. With the help of poles similar to ski poles and several sighted guides, they hiked over 30 miles over six days, culminating in a visit to the ruins of Machu Picchu.

Despite suffering from a spell of altitude sickness, she continued to climb, even getting in a bit of trouble for getting too far ahead of the group. (During our interview, Eric seemed especially proud of that part of the story. “I’m not surprised,” he laughed.)

So Michelle, how was Machu Picchu?

“It was cool,” she said. “It felt like the bricks weren’t finished yet.”

There are a few pictures here of Michelle with her family in Yellowstone. Check them out and imagine how different her experience there would be from yours. When you get back, we’ll talk piano tuning.

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One look at Michelle’s baby-blue prosthetic eyes tells you she’s different. But in many other ways, she’s a pretty average teenager.

She’s got a boyfriend. She is tired of high school. And she’s ready to tackle her future.

“I can’t wait to go out into the real world,” she said. “I’m tired of going to school and sitting in class. I’m ready to go.”

She is going to the School of Piano Technology for the Blind in Vancouver, Washington. (Sorry – did we mention Michelle also has perfect pitch and played the violin for eight years?) There, she will learn two things: How to create her own piano tuning business and how to be even more independent.

So, what does all this mean for Michelle the artist? We don’t know. Neither does she. And that’s just fine with us. Go get ’em, Michelle – we’re happy to wait.