The Art Parlor for April, 2026 Presents: NVision Guitars!

Episode Notes

Welcome to The Art Parlor for April, brought to you by Friends in Art! It’s been a spell and we are very glad to be back!

Join us for an inspiring conversation with the creators of NVision Guitars, a mother-and-son team building custom adaptive guitars for musicians with disabilities. From tactile designs for blind players to ergonomic solutions for mobility challenges, their work is opening doors to music for everyone.
Hear their story, their passion, and how they’re redefining accessibility in the arts.

AI-Generated Transcript

Jason
Opinions expressed on ACB Media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by Friends in Art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff. Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work. Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world. And now, here’s your host, Anne Chiappetta.

Ann
Welcome everyone to the Friends and Art, Art Parlor podcast. I’m Ann Chiappetta, your president, and I’m joined tonight by some special guests. But before I get to them, I also want to let you know that Meghan Downing, one of our board members, is here to help us welcome our guests from Envision Guitars. So we have Renee and Tristan. And I just want to welcome you guys. I know we had you featured on our blog at www.friendsinart.org/news. If anybody wants to go there and check you guys out for your interview. So welcome, welcome, welcome.

Renee
Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be here.

Ann
Sure. So you’re from Iowa, right?

Tristan
Yep, we’re from Ankeny, Iowa. So just a suburb outside of Des Moines.

Ann
So my new guide dog’s name is Iowa, by the way. So really?

Tristan
Really? How did you know?

Ann
He was born in the I litter. And that’s the name that they picked. So. Oh, okay. Yeah. I just thought that was a little, a cute little thing to let you guys know. Before we get into like the questions, could you give us a little bit of your history, how you started your business and maybe some of the reasons why? Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Renee
Well, Tristan started playing guitar when he was about 10 years old. And he’s always had a love for guitar and played it and kind of messed around with building guitars all through high school. And anyway, about a year and a half, two years ago, I was having some health issues and Tristan was taking me back and forth to Mayo. And we just really got into some deep talks about life and the purpose of life. And I had recently retired from the military. So I had been running a Christmas decorating business that I had to actually quit due to the health issues. And so we were just talking over just what the future holds for both of us actually. And I said, you know, what would make you the happiest? What do you think would you would find most purpose in? And he said, I would find most purpose in building guitars. And that was just kind of out of the blue because I never knew that he actually just wanted to build guitars for a living. And I said, Well, you know, what’s stopping you from doing that? And he said, I don’t know. And I said, Well, what would that look like? And so we brainstormed on up to Mayo and we talked about how my dad, who was a quadriplegic, had went to Easter Seals and gotten training on leather making and he had gotten some tools from them and he had found his purpose through that. And then Tristan had shared with me that when he was younger, he used to play the guitar with his eyes closed because he was afraid that someday he may not be able to see and he was afraid that he may not be able to play the guitar. And so he’d been doing that for some time. And just on that same vein, we brainstormed the idea of what if we made guitars for people who can’t just pull a guitar off of the shelf of a box store and play it. So what if we made guitars for people who have challenges, maybe some low vision or maybe they’re blind or maybe they’re in a wheelchair and they have spatial considerations or Parkinson’s. You know, there’s a variety of different challenges face where they can’t just take a guitar, like I said, off of the shelf. And you know, as we dug into it, we realized there’s actually nothing like that. There’s nothing like that out there. There’s guitars that look like tech toys, and there’s guitars that maybe they have, you know, some tactile markers on them with glue or some homemade type of fashioned material to allow people to kind of use it, but nothing’s actually made for people with these challenges. And we thought, well, why won’t we, you know, we could do that. And so we have developed various adaptations for our guitars and we built a business around it. And that’s what we do. So Tristan is the luthier and I do the management, the sales, the marketing. He of course helps me with a lot of that as well. But he’s our guitar maker and our technical expert. And I try to help anywhere that I can to free up his time so that he can do what he does best.

Ann
Wow. So Tristan, how did you learn your craft?

Tristan
It wasn’t necessarily like a linear learning system, I would say. A lot of times with a kind of niche craft like that, you have to really stretch out your arms to whoever you can get information from that will really benefit your ability. So whether that’s from reaching out to local Luthiers and local shops, to ask them how can we get better at our craft, what are we missing, what are the things that we’re nailing, countless hours of watching YouTube videos and different tutorials, and then a lot and a lot of practice in the garage and trials and errors and learning from those errors. So it’s a very compound kind of learning for it. you have to pull from just multiple different sources.

Ann
Do you feel that some of this is like natural for you in eight? And then some of it is, you know, you’ve got to learn how to hone your craft. Do you feel like you were, you were kind of like, you had it in you, you just had to get it, get it to the point where you, you know, get it out there.

Tristan
And definitely, yeah, I think that I think that it’s one of those things that when you have a passion for something, you’re going to find a way to make it so you know how to do it. But so I don’t think that it necessarily takes like someone that has these innate abilities compared to another. It’s who’s willing to put in the hard work and who’s actually passionate about what they’re doing. So it’s, you can apply it to anything that anyone’s passionate about. It’s just the ability to keep moving forward with it and keep persisting even while you’re waiting.

Ann
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I have a curious little weird question. Are you the one that drinks the monsters while you’re working? because there’s a picture in the background. The monster drinks are there.

Tristan
I’ve been trying to cut down on that a little bit. But yeah.

Renee
To be fair, even though they’re completely not what I would recommend, Tristan was working a full-time job up until not too long ago. So he was working the full-time job while doing a vision.

Jason
Oh, wow.

Renee
He was sleeping literally about four hours a night. Yeah, I was sleeping like four to five hours a night for a good year. Yeah, but we finally were blessed with the opportunity to go full time. And so he’s been getting more sleep. So OK.

Ann
That’s pretty good. I was. Well, yeah. Sometimes I didn’t expect that to be described on the photo when I put him put it through my describer and I was like, oh, it was really cute. Anyway, Megan, do you have any questions?

Meghan
Yeah. Hi, guys. I’m Megan. It’s nice to be on this call with you. I love so far what I’m hearing and learning about what you guys are doing. I guess I want to give a little bit of background on kind of where I fit into this a little bit, but I’m blind. I started losing my vision when I was nine to a progressive eye condition. I’m 24 now, so it’s been a little bit over half my life now since I’ve lost my vision. I started playing fiddle when I was like four, and then music was always something like I could do Well, my vision was decreasing as I got older. And so I just love your mission of like figuring out ways for people with any ability to be able to play music, because I think music is one of those things where it’s accessible to like everyone, whether it’s listening or playing. And this process of losing my vision and music helping me through that led me to I went to Berkeley College of Music, And I actually play guitar. I went to Berkeley for guitar.

Renee
That’s awesome.

Meghan
Yes, big fans of Berkeley. Yeah, I was really blessed to be able to– I was like my dream school. And I started playing guitar when I was younger as well. It was probably my second or third instrument I started playing and fell in love with guitar. And so I kind of put the fiddle aside. And guitar is my main passion. So when Annie told me you guys were coming on and I learned about what you guys were doing, I was like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing. because I actually, I studied, I’m a music therapist.

Jason
And so I work with folks all that like literally

Meghan
every single day that could use products like what you guys are doing. I worked in like neuro rehabilitation with stroke patients and I still work with people who are brain injured. And it’s funny that you said something about, you know, I just got a grant from the Christopher Reeves Foundation to do a project with people with paralysis. And I know that you mentioned your dad was a quadriplegic and I’m working a lot with those folks right now or I’m about to start. So I’m like really interested in what you guys are doing and I would love to know like if you found a way to adapt for people with extreme paralysis and like what your process is for, for kind of like hearing about people’s abilities and how you like can adjust with those disabilities and how like the process goes of making those guitars.

Tristan
Okay. Yeah, so as far as full paralysis, that’s not something that we have gone to quite yet. As far as spatial accommodation, the way that we try to account for that is we take measurements of the different parts of the space that the guitar will really be making contact with the individual. So we’ll take use of different contour gauges to get a general sense of what space is available to put for the curvature of the guitar and then applying it in there so that way it fits that individual within their space.

Renee
That’s really cool. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I’m sorry. We offer four different adaptable customizations. So can you explain those?

Tristan
Yeah. I mean, so we do have a few different adaptions that we’re trying to really implement into our instruments to help with just different things that could really make you not be able to enjoy guitar as much as just a kind of store guitar, I guess you could say. So as far as spatial accommodation, it was the contour gauges. The other thing that we take into account is weight reduction, so chambering out the body so that way there’s not as much stress on the body when playing. Another thing that we really have been diving into is the tactile markers on our guitar for low vision and blindness. What we’ve been really focusing on is putting fret markers on the back of the neck that we’ll make it so you can really just navigate where your hand is playing on the fretboard. just as you would usually use fret markers, but these would be more tactile for the back of your thumb to kind of guide your hand. Then along with that, we add different components to the guitar itself for better navigation. So our different knobs will use two different textured knobs for the volume compared to the tone. So that way as you’re navigating which knob you’re wanting to activate, it’s just a little bit quicker from the feel of it.

Meghan
Oh, that’s huge. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. Because that’s something I really struggle with, getting a new guitar or playing someone else’s guitar or even my own guitars that I’ve had forever. I forget, you know, like which one’s the tone or which one’s the volume. And yeah, that’s super, that’s amazing to hear what you guys are doing with that, especially with low vision.

Tristan
Yep. Our goal is just to make it so it’s a navigatable guitar. And so that way you can really just get the same feeling whether you’re getting the vision of the fretboard itself or not.

Meghan
And do you notice that like when you make these adaptations, especially with like the size or the weight reduction, do you notice like, how are you kind of combating the loss of maybe like tone or volume of the, the like resonance of the guitar? Yeah. Yeah.

Tristan
So right now our guitars are exclusively electric guitars. We will be getting into acoustics and nylons down the road. It’s just with a time constraint of having a full time job at the time and then also building the guitars, I wasn’t able to get into acoustics and nylons where that weight reduction would affect more of that tone. – Yeah. – Since a lot of them are running through your pickups. Don’t get me wrong, there probably is some tonal drop off from the chambering, but since a lot of it is from the hardware and from the really the electronics that you put within the guitar that has I would say kind of more of an influence on what sound you’re going to get out of it.

Meghan
Oh yeah that totally that totally makes sense. Wow and and then are you for like future in the expansion of what you guys are doing like obviously you kind of just mentioned how you’re doing full time work with Envision now, but how what do you see what are your goals for the future of

Tristan
where you guys are headed? Yeah, um, so our goal is to it’s really what we’re doing now and it’s uh to keep creating guitars for anybody and everybody that wants to be able to play them. So whether it’s the player that is has a 13 guitar collection that wants something just really special to them or if it’s someone who needs this tool so that way they can pursue their passion that they’ve been going for. Really, what we would mark as successful is just the people that we get to connect with and the difference that we get to make.

Meghan
And are you guys getting funding from grants right now? Are you able to apply for those? Where are you getting the resources that you need to be able to function right now?

Tristan
I would say it’s a very mixed bag. So yes, we do the guitars as our main exclusive thing, but we do have some supporting pieces of our business that we call our different arms just to make it so we are able to focus on the guitars. So whether that’s selling handmade picks, different, we also hit a lot of different vendor shows for some of our other handmade art and stuff like that.

Renee
Right now we don’t have any grants or any, there’s no funding coming in besides what we sell. And what I’ve been doing to kind of get this up and going is I’ve been hand carving picks made out of the wood from the scraps of his guitars. I know it sounds very tedious and it is, but that’s what moms do. So I hand etched them and they do very well at the craft shows. And it kind of opened the doors for some of the guitar stores. Like I would go in and offer up these picks and then we were able to get our guitars into stores. Right now, believe it or not, we are really donating a lot of our products. 10% of our sales go to donations to nonprofits in our area. Um, so I wouldn’t say it’s extremely lucrative for us, but that’s okay because that’s not really our purpose. And we, we have a different purpose in mind and we have a different outlook, I think. And so we’re just moving straight ahead with that and we’ll get there when we do. So if that makes sense, I hope that makes sense.

Meghan
Oh yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Ann
Yeah. So this is Annie. I was reading about your picks. Can you tell us a little more about how that began? Like you talked about making them out of nuts. – Oh yeah, yeah, I did that too.

Renee
Yep. So I make the picks out of wood and nuts. So the wood ones, of course, like I said, came from the offshoots of his guitar. So we’ve got Ebony, you know, some of the harder woods. – Right. – You can such. And then also I’ve been making them out of Tagua nuts and they’re really, really cool. They’re a nut from South Africa and they are very, very similar to animal ivory in terms of strength and– – Wow. – And so obviously we can’t use animal ivory nor should we, but if you were to compare it, it’s similar in, it’s cellulose, right? So it’s very hard and it’s not something you’re gonna break. It’s organic vegan, all the good stuff. And it just kind of forms to your thumb and finger when you’re using it. And then at times there’s certain ones that I cut the center out of so that you can have a better grip should you have issues with grip. But those are really hot seller to be honest with you. We sell out of those pretty quick. And so the nut is sliced and then I just sand it down using five different kinds of sandpaper. And then we sell those as well. And that’s something that we’re doing now and we may continue to do that but really we want to focus only on guitars but for right now, That’s one of the things that we do to get us where we’re going. Right. Right. Because we’ve only been doing this for one year as a business. And so we’re building up to where we want to go. Yeah. And it’s just a big way of helping.

Ann
Yeah. It’s like you do what you can, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I had a question about like how much can you, in terms of weight for one of guitars, how much can you take out without compromising the guitars, you know, working and performing and…

Tristan
Yeah, definitely. So right now, we’re finishing our chamber guitars at about around seven pounds. Eventually we’re going to start making headless guitars as well, which will really bring down the weight. But right now, they sit around seven pounds if not a little bit lighter, which is usually about a pound or two lighter than your standard guitar that you would get from a store?

Ann
Wow. Wow. That’s very interesting because that’s one of the things that I don’t think people understand about electric guitars, that they’re heavy. They’re heavy. You pick one up and they’re, you know, you’ve got to be able to like build up your muscles and you know, your body and so how, you know, I was very interested in that. If you adapted one of these guitars for someone who is in a wheelchair, is there anything else that you use with the guitar, like a mat that goes across their lap or something that grips or anything like that to help keep it balanced from sliding or if they can’t do a strap?

Tristan
Yeah. So we haven’t done anything like that quite yet. The way that we really go about accommodating for those spatial accommodations is by using our contour gauges. So we’ll take a contour measurement of both of their legs as well as the surrounding area and then a one across their sternum as well to know where the actual wood of the body will be sitting across you to make sure it is conformed to your figure.

Ann
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Renee
Yeah. Sorry. I’m sorry. – Oh, go ahead. – It’s very, very ergonomically fit to any individual’s body. You can–

Tristan

• It’s got three different playing positions. So you have a upright playing position, a cross lap playing position, and then you can also put it across your other leg. So it is versatile in the way that you can have it within a seated space. And then along with getting the measurements of the individual, that really just helps accommodate for what we’re shooting for.

Ann
Oh, wow. Have you ever considered making a video that explains, you know, like, you know, the different positions and then demo them? Have you ever considered that?

Tristan

• We are working on that. We’re trying to get more and more content out about how we adapt the guitars. Right now it is kind of a two-armed business in a way with them, ’cause we have our player guitars that we do put out in the stores, but then we have our augmented guitars as well that we have these adaptions to. So it’s really just us having more time to keep pushing out the information that we’re working on.

Renee

• One of the things that one of our clients that was blind really appreciated that we came up with was, we had a client in New Jersey and we have three models. We have the Regatta, we have the Galley, and then we have the Symbiote. And so what we did in order for them to be able to understand the contours of each guitar was we built miniature versions of those guitars and we sent them the templates in the mail and they had holes in them to designate which guitars they were. So they were able to feel all the different contours and how those guitars were built and then communicate back to us, you know, which ones would be best for them and then they could just toss those instead of, you know, like mailing anything back to us or what have you because They were made out of basswood and they were very cheap templates. And then that was just a good way for them to be able to communicate to us. So in our we send these packages with the templates and the gauges so people can easily take you know, measurements of their body and send us back the contours and throw away the templates. And we’re trying to make it as easy as possible, but also making it so that people can really get exactly what they want. Because I mean, everybody’s needs are going to be different. Everybody’s situation is different. And so that that was just something that they really, they really liked about it.

Ann
That’s a really good idea.

Renee
Yeah, that’s a great idea. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it really worked out well. So that’s, that’s excellent.

Ann
How many guitars do you have out in the hands of other people right now?

Renee
We have about nine.

Meghan
Oh, cool. And that’s including like guitars sold for like able-bodied folks and also adapted guitars.

Tristan
Correct. Yep. That would be the ones that we donated as well as the ones that we made for just other clients.

Renee
We’re working on five more right now. But again, we have only been in business for one year because we opened last March and he was working full time until a month ago. So we have been struggling to find the time, but we have been working 24/7 to develop these designs because every single model was developed, like we designed and developed them all. And so once we get these next five out, we’ll be up to 14, but we know that they’re going to continue to grow. And the word has to get out, that’s the thing, is the word has to get out that these are even available because nowhere else are these available. They have not been available. And just show that they’re out there, then we can start making them. And so we’re not afraid of the fact that we’ve only made nine, because we just have to make sure that people know that to get the message out, basically is what we need to do.

Ann

• Yeah, well, you gotta start somewhere, right? – You do. (laughing)

Meghan

• So I was just thinking, I have so many, I’m like, this is so exciting. It’s music to my ears to hear what you guys are doing, ’cause I’m gonna spread the word about you guys and hopefully get more information because I think so many people, when they have a disability, they just like, initially are like, “Oh, I can’t do that because of this.” But I think as more people become aware of, everything can be adapted. And I love that you guys are starting off. And the fact that you did nine in a year is amazing.

Renee

• Oh, thank you very much. Tristan just developed a guitar for Parkinson’s. And– – Wow.

Tristan

• I wouldn’t, yeah, it’s, we’re taking all the considerations that would really affect your ability to play and trying to instill those into the instrument.

Renee

• Yeah, and so he’ll be presenting that at a conference on April 22nd. And so we’re really excited about that one too. So that’s kind of exciting for us. So that’s kind of a new development that we’ve got going on.

Ann

• Could you talk a little bit more about the adaptations in terms of Parkinson’s symptoms and how they would help somebody to play?

Tristan

• Yeah, so when doing research, the things that we really tried to hone in on were the slowness of movement. I believe it’s called a Brady, I’m not gonna try to remember the word, I’m gonna totally butcher it. (laughing) It’s a slowness of movement as well as the squeeze and the hands and then along with that you have–

Meghan

• The tremors.

Tristan

• The tremors and the strength of holding the instrument. – Right, yeah. – So some of the accommodations that we’re gonna start to implement into this guitar to present would be things like having a shorter scale length. So that way you have larger frets that are not, that way your hand isn’t as needed to move around to make the same kind of music, having a multi-scale fretboard, so that way the frets move ergonomically with how your hand would normally go across the fretboard.

Meghan

• Wow.

Tristan

• Lighter weight, so changing up the body as well to make it, so it’s just a, you can play it longer for a longer duration of time without it really starting to affect your ability to play. But the thing that we’re getting really excited to present about is some of the just kind of modifications that you can do to your own instruments as well as just different techniques that you can do to really help implement just timed playing and everything like that. So one thing we’re excited to kind of just really talk about and promote is timed practice with people who are starting to get symptoms of Parkinson’s just ’cause you can start with a metronome at a lower BPM and it’s not like you’re shredding or anything but you’re playing a interval note and it’s in control And then as you bring up that metronome, you can really just start getting more and more control over that movement, at least over a fixed period of time. So that’s something that we kind of wanted to talk about and just kind of spread the word about just ’cause even if you’re not getting a guitar from us, but you wanna just be able to play your guitar, it’s good information to have.

Ann

• Yeah.

Meghan

• Now there’s a lot of research with Parkinson’s and like music and music therapy. And it’s like, it makes a huge difference in people’s lives with Parkinson’s.

Tristan

• A lot of studies have really just, really narrowed down the point of, it just benefits the quality of life. And we feel like when you’re pursuing a passion, that really is benefiting your life in that way. So that’s what we’re doing next.

Ann

• Yeah. I think that’s wonderful. Before I retired, I worked a lot with veterans and I had quite a few veterans with Parkinson’s symptoms. And one of the things that they felt that they could continue to do, even though they had their music and they just connected with that kind of stuff. And they continued, one of them was a drummer and he found ways to keep up his response times and stuff like that. And I think if he hadn’t been a drummer, maybe he would have slid into a symptomology even more. So there’s definitely that physical component that keeps the mind active and engaged so you don’t have that freeze time and that delay of response. And I think definitely there’s this, I don’t know, maybe I know how the mind works. We really don’t know a lot about how the mind works, But I think there’s this component of desire and wanting to do something, in that your creative brain that can really, can really help delay the on those symptoms. So you guys are on the right track with all of that for sure. And the only other, the only thing that I, there was when I lived in Westchester County, New York, there was the Westchester Music Conservatory. They did a healing music program for PTSD. It could have been PTSD from war trauma or from other types of stuff, any type of abuse or whatever. And that was the only program that I knew of like in New York state. I mean, and it was really popular. And we would send some of our veterans and stuff to them they did guitar and violin and keyboards for people. Yeah. But they didn’t have adaptive equipment. They would be teaching people on regular stuff. So yeah, this is definitely something that’s much, much needed. Have you ever approached the VA at all or the Veterans Administration or any types of veteran treatment centers with what you want to do that might be?

Renee
I know that there, I’m in a couple of veterans groups that we follow on social media and such like that. The local VA has a few guitar groups where they get together and they jam and stuff like that. We want to do that. We just need to get our feet on the ground and going. And that is one of the places that we want to get involved in in our overall marketing strategy. But we have not yet fully. that I know there’s some great opportunities to work with veterans and we will do that. We just need to, we need time is what we need. So we’re just working on that right now.

Tristan

• Yeah, ’cause we went out officially full time about two weeks ago. (laughing) Now that we got the full time status, we’re gonna be making a lot more moves a lot quicker. – Yeah. Tristan, what are you doing beforehand?

Meghan
Like full time work before working?

Tristan

• Yeah, I used to be a manager for a family entertainment establishment.

Meghan

• Wow.

Tristan

• So it was about 50 hours a week on top of the

Renee

• Oh my God.

Tristan

• 100 hours that we were thinking about in vision. – Wow.

Renee

• Yeah, he would get home at 2.30 in the morning and then I’d call at eight and he didn’t get to sleep till sometimes four. And like, okay, you ready? And you know, and so, yeah, it was a lot for him. And finally we were just like, we can’t do this. we have to follow our passion. And we’re just gonna take the risk and see where it leads us and this is what we’re gonna do. So it’s what we’re doing.

Ann

• So what do you guys do when you’re not doing this?

Jason

• Nothing. (laughing)

Tristan

• I was gonna say, we still try to maintain just the important values of life on top of it just to make sure that we ourselves are healthy individuals. So that way, just ’cause you can’t, I feel like you can’t do anything for anyone else unless you yourself are taken care of. So part of our work day is also making sure we get our regular workout routines in routine,

Jason
making sure we’re serving our community in some way

Tristan
and then keeping our faith with us, with everything that we do, because without that, it really doesn’t matter. – Yeah. So that’s kind of when we’re not doing that, we just focus on the parts of life that actually do matter. you know, that along with family time and all that fun jazz.

Renee

• Tristan and I get a lot of family time. (both laughing)

Ann
I love that. – Yeah. So what else do you think that Friends in Art can do to help you out? I mean, we have, I mean, we’d love to do what we can for you, like just, you know, helping you promote stuff. I would really like to see us to, you know, be able to, I don’t know how we could help you, but maybe we can work, we can do some brainstorming and.

Meghan
I can think of like a hundred ways that I could. Yeah. So, okay, you guys have time or you’re looking for more folks or anything like that, especially I got the privilege to work at Perkins School for the Blind for like eight months in Boston, and they have a big music therapy department. And so if you are looking for more folks that are fully blind or low vision, they have a lot of students that would benefit from you guys. So I’m happy to connect you with any of my people. But yeah, I agree with Annie if there’s any way that friends in art can help you, let us know.

Tristan
Yeah, no, we would love that. For us, it’s the more people we can connect with the better because the work is there. We just need to be where the work is at and with individuals that need our services. So the more people that we can connect with and the more that we can really do our art for other people, that’s what really benefits us the most. So we always can find the time to meet with you, meet with other people because unless we do, we’re not going to be able to help the people we’re trying to help.

Ann
Yeah. I don’t know if you know about the major conventions that come up for the ACB and also the National Federation of the Blind. They’re in July. We’ve already gone past our programming stages for them, but for next year, that’s a place you probably want to be. You probably want to be, see if you could be a vendor in the exhibit hall. They can do, God times, they do an in-person one and then they do a virtual recording, like a short piece as well. But that’s something that you should look into. and then there’s also the American Foundation of the Blind, they have a convention and a conference. So there’s all kinds of resources there for you to prep for the conference season. That might be a good idea for you to get the word out for your marketing and stuff.

Renee
That would be wonderful. We are set up and ready to do any of that, and we would love to be involved in it.

Ann

• Cool, okay, yeah, I mean, I know as, I’m a writer and sometimes the marketing is the hardest part of all of this and it’s a full-time job in itself, so I hear you. – Yeah. – Sometimes you wanna say, “I want somebody else to do this.”

Tristan

• That’s why I’m glad there’s two of us.

Ann

• Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you guys share the stress, right? And share the load and share the successes and yeah, wonderful stuff. I wanted to ask you if you, could you tell us your website and your other social media stuff for people who are listening and wanna look you up?

Tristan

• Definitely, yeah. So for our social medias, for our Facebook, it’s just capital N, capital V for InVision Guitars, LLC. as far as our Instagram, it’s all lowercase, Envision_Guitars. And then we are still working on getting our square website up and going. We’ve done some tinkering around with it, but we should be publishing it here soon. And then we also have our YouTube, which is EnvisionGuitars LLC, in which we just kind of post the different build processes. And it’s a, yep, just @envisionguitars.

Ann

• Okay, cool.

Meghan
All right, Megan, you have any other questions? No, I mean, I think a lot of the questions that I asked, we kind of both thought about them, which is awesome. No further questions on my end. I just am so impressed by you guys. I found, I just found your Instagram gave you. Oh, yay. Yeah.

Renee
That’s awesome. Well, thank you guys for having us on and we really appreciate it. And if, you know, if anything comes up, we would love to be a part of anything that, you know relates to this and and we appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah.

Ann
Thank you all for coming and good luck to you all. Thank you.

Renee
Wonderful stuff. Best of luck. All right. So much Megan. Take care guys. All right. Thank you.

Jason
Art Parlor is brought to you by Friends in Art and ACB Media. It airs several times a week on ACB Media One. To listen and for a full schedule, go to acbmedia.org/one. Art Parlor is also available as a podcast. Just search for Art Parlor in your favorite podcast app. We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at artparlor@friendsinart.org and please feel free to check out our website www.friendsinart.org. Thank you so much for listening and for your support. We’ll be back next month.