My eyes are down here: Blind craftsman George Wurtzel's magic touch

Artist George Wurtzel says his favourite piece is this jewellery box he created for his art show as seen in Minneapolis. Wurtzel is blind. He gradually lost his sight in his teens to retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease caused by mutated genes.

Blind woodworker George Wurtzel says that one can learn to see with their hands.

George Wurtzel whistles Camptown Races as a high-powered lathe hums a quarter-inch from his thumb and forefinger. Thread-thin streams of sawdust arc like an exploding firework off the small chunk of pine he is fashioning into a sombrero-shaped wine stopper, some of them landing on his full-on beard. “As you turn wood, the sound changes dramatically with the shape,” Wurtzel says. “You can tell what’s happening by the chatter noise and feel of the vibrations.”