January Meeting Summary:
Thanks to Caroline Allison for sharing her thoughtful and historic landscapes with us. Detailed notes
below after a quick summary of other items of interest before her talk.
• Remembering Tom Keller
o Thanks to Sharon Brown Christopher for leading us in a short session to remember Tom
Keller, former SNAP president, who unexpectedly died last week. Among other stories and ideas, we remembered Tom as a classy guy, kind, great eye for photography, generous, lots of grace; inviting thoughtful conversations; Bad at directions, Loved red convertibles, Didn’t have a cell phone; Veteran, Scholar, Longtime SNAP member who will be missed. For all that has been, thanks; for all that will be – Yes; So be it (Dag Hammerstein)
• Upcoming Exhibit
o Call for Entry for our April-June show at Scarritt Bennett Center should be finalized within a
few days – Theme: Portals and Passageways; Juror: Katie Mitchell from Belmont University – Be thinking: Doors, gates, openings, passages or connections between places or moments. people in transit/on a journey/ on the cusp of change; . transitions between space and time, with thresholds that may be concrete or implied.
o Pick up your prints from Hotel Preston
- Upcoming SNAP Meeting o February 25, 6:30-8:00, 2964 Sidco Drive, Rich Seiling. See http://www.richseiling.com. Rich will discuss “crafting photographs” which will include considerations of the technical as well as the creative side of this endeavor
- Other News
o Sai sold a print at the recent Hotel Preston Gallery exhibit!
o Jo Fields – “Trust the Story” at Baldwin Photographic Gallery at MTSU, Murfreesboro,
February 10 – 7pm Baldwin photographic o Jen Vogus
Parthenon – Jen Vogus/Able Voices through Feb 2
Vanderbilt/Peabody Kennedy Center – “Kindred Stories” through March
o Sandy Burr – Trinity School near Atlanta weekend of 1/31
o Dunn Brothers Coffee Shop in L&C Tower downtown – Jo and Wayne Justus Thomas
displaying until March 6
Guest Speaker: Caroline Allison
Photography includes landscapes and space, with many examples that she shared with us also on her website: http://www.carolineallison.com For Caroline, the camera is a vehicle to get us out of “regular” space.
Her work evokes deep social and historical roots
Artist in residency in Wisconsin
Lost Message
Work is landscape
Began photography in high school
Shoots commercial projects that feeds the personal project
Mostly interiors and landscapes
Personal work – 4×5 – no zoom, slow process, plastic toyo
Color negative scanned into photoshop
A Common Place –
returned to the south, began mapping landscapes through curiosity and wandering, places where something has happened, either historical or local history
Stephen Shore – documented prosaic places, ‘conscious attention’
Aleuthra – Island in the Bahamas
Francis Frith, Carlton Watkins – inspirations
Angel Oak, SC – 500 yrs old – recently saved by a group from suburban development
Industrial plant
Twitty City
William Faulkner – window air conditioner
Defeated, TN à Difficult TN – obliterated landscape, site of civil war encampment
Bryant’s meat market
The Hermitage dining room
Motown apartment
Hank Williams boyhood home
Cars, cars – represent changing landscape
Underground again
Message lost
Coal mine – into empty warehouse
Charleston – Tidal creek – construction
The Mother Tree – one of the last surviving chestnut trees – took a year to get access
Slickaway Road – underground railroad
Panther Motel – hijackers checked out on 9/10
Hemlock at Sewanee – observations of time passage
Elemental landscape from larger view of earth
Frozen Lake Winebago
Recycling, climate change – she did not think about as a child
Anna Atkins – ephemeral / cyanotypes / first photography book of british algae specimens
What things might not exist in future
Snowball cyanotypes – freedom to experiment
Series of snowballs – begins looking galactic or celestial
Primal Landscapes that have harbored humankind – snow scenes
Also small confined spaces
Did double exposures – mirrored – lake and Cumberland plateau
Reversed sheet of film to achieve effect
Moved to bamboo paper – salt/snow – bell weather of climate change
Soaked in super saturated salt water then dried – Crusted with salt
Cycles, seasons, cyanotype orb weaver webs
Salt drops on cyanotype paper
Question on consistency of cyanotype process – Got materials at store, 2 bottle process
Question on scanning – does her own scanning of the negative
Captioning – knowing the history adds to the power of the photo
Next exhibit – Zeitgeist – 2021
Sewanee – exhibit
