| Things
began to fall in to place in an uncanny way. The fledgling
painter, experimenting with acrylic medium, asked
the manager of the San Diego bank where he did business
if he could hang some work there. The day his paintings
went up, a major Canadian art collector visited the
branch, studied the images at length, and contacted
Pierrette Van Cleve, a respected art dealer he knew,
to see if she was familiar with Lakey. Van Cleve was
startled when, after tracking the artist down, he
told her with complete candor that he’d only
been painting for eight weeks. Upon seeing his tactile
canvases, thick with raised lines and textures, she
was convinced of his seriousness, and also reminded
of a commitment she’d once made about finding
ways to bring art to the vision-impaired. She enlisted
Lakey to work with her on doing just that (although
he didn’t know until years later that their work
creating art accessible to the blind was fulfilling
Van Cleve’s long-standing promise to a young
boy).
A week later, Van Cleve mentioned Lakey to the ABC
affiliate in San Diego. Intrigued, they sent a crew
to his studio–which at the time was in the artist’s
one-car garage–then arranged a private showing
for the visually impaired, and covered it
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