When we leave home for one of our Saturday “ride abouts”, we don’t always know where we’ll end up. Our most recent experience was at a county-wide photography exhibit. We stopped at one of our favorite bookstores, A Novel Experience, in Zebulon, only to discover it was on this day headquarters for glory.
Well, glory our way. SlowExposures, A Juried Exhibition Celebrating Photography of the Rural South, was in full swing in Pike County. Walking and driving to at least seven sites, we met interesting people, saw interesting photography and other art forms, and came away inspired.
Every person we met was friendly and informative and urged us to visit other artists as well. So we moved through the day on those recommendations, going from one “pop-up” venue to the next, only to be greeted by more fabulous photography, more unique ideas in presentation, more friendly people.
The photos were images made all over the South. The photographers were from as far away as Maine, and the exhibit was the 16th of its kind. How did we not know of this? Well, we know now!
There was a competitive collection of single images, and there were “pop-ups” all over the county. A pop-up exhibit was a collection of work from a single photographer or from groups with some common theme. Subject matter, or technique, or presentation could unite them for this exhibit.
If you think a picture is worth a thousand words, you can’t image the volumes spoken by some of these displays.
A collection documenting the memorabilia left behind by a soldier who ended his own life in 1959 was sobering The images mounted on black wood, in black frames, finished without a glass barrier, are stark and convey the mood of the project beautifully. (You can see photos of this here. Neither Jim nor I took snapshots of this work, it seemed disrespectful somehow – the display was the powerful.)
A former architect displayed part of an ongoing project to photograph all the azaleas in his home town. He lives in Nachez, MS, so that’s a lot of azalea blooms.
The settings for the exhibit were likewise intriguing. The main gallery was housed in an old store building in a small town six miles away from the county seat. Pop-ups were in commercial and government buildings as well as unique buildings in the community repurposed for this weekend’s treasures.
One artist had the fortune to have his work displayed in a stable. To take advantage of this venue, he created amazing large-scale displays to share his Forest re-Framed. There were dimensional elements, large scale prints with plates of glass in front to vary the distance from the viewer. There were huge prints on canvas with natural light illuminating the photos.
There were a couple of artists housed in a sharecropper’s cabin. The exposed structure of the building, painted white, was a perfect backdrop for their works.
Maybe I’m saving the best for the last. Or maybe just after such a day the anticipation builds so the last thing is the best. But our final visit was to the Hive, a small building (renamed for these two days) containing four artists who incorporate beeswax into their photo displays. Each of the four uses different subject matter and processes to make their encaustic work unique, but all were fascinating to this Beekeeper’s Daughter.
I felt a special kinship with Kevin. Kevin finds vintage photos at flea markets, collages the photos with other objects, and makes up a story about the person in the photo. Yes, like I did with Margene and Ruth, to name a couple – just makes stuff up! When I shared that I love to tell stories though my work, too, Kevin and I bonded. He gave me permission to share a photo of him, of some of his work, and later, he demonstrated his technique with wax. An earlier photo shows a closeup of one of his collages, but the shot below includes one of the fabulous vintage frames that completes his work.
Inspired, intrigued, amazed, fascinated; all good words to sum up the day. Another example of retired life with open-ended adventures! Except for the old geezer who pretended his name was Jim in order to claim our food in a crowded restaurant, the day was fabulous! Even that situation was quickly remedied by a poised waitress and it gave us another funny store to share for years to come.
Note: here are links to more of the artists whose work I described:
