Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy

History. Art. And the Great Outdoors.

Listening to the Land

Listening to the Land: Reimagining the Bartram Trail – Free Public Reception

Listening to the Land is a visual exploration of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail, or Bartram National Recreational Trail, that features photography and photo-based installations by thirty-two artists. The photographs featured in this resonant and varied exhibition celebrate the region’s rich biodiversity while honoring each person’s unique relationship with the land.

Drawing inspiration from Bartram’s Travels and the enduring wisdom of land-based and indigenous peoples of this region, photographers were invited to enter an intimate world where the landscape was alive and waiting to be met, understood, and listened to. This exhibition invites you to contemplate your own wild origins while visually reimagining a time when humans moved in respect, harmony, and co-creative kinship with the natural world.

GALLERY: Bunzl Gallery
ARTIST(S): Angela Martin, Anna Helgeson, Anna Norton, Anne Cannon, April McNiff, Barron Northrup, Beate Sass, Brent Martin, Casey Visco, Drew Jorgensen, Eric William Carroll, Erik Mace, Frances Bukovsky, Joanna Parkman, Kaoly Gutierrez, Kaye Savage, Laura Rudkin Miniot, Lesley Ann Price, Liliana Vitale, Lisa Stockton Howell, Lu Mann, Lynn “Cricket” Woodward, Lynne Buchanan, Mike Belleme, Sam Brown, Sandy Johnson, Sarah Morgan, Shawn McIntosh, Starlett Henderson, Susan Patrice, Virginie Drujon-Kippelen, Yvonne Dalschen
ON DISPLAY: September 9, 2023
THROUGH: January 6, 2024
MEDIUM(S): Photography

The Bascom: A center for the Visual Arts is located at:
323 Franklin Road
Highlands, NC 28741

TheBascom.org

This free public reception will offer an opportunity to meet the photographers and artists who have made this journey. The reception will be held on October 5, 2023 at 5pm.

Listening to the Land : Contemplative Photography Awe Walk

Many of us yearn to create photographs full of feeling and emotion. Contemplative photography offers us a path. By learning to listen to the land and centering our practice in humility and wonder, we deepen our connection with the natural world and our photographs come alive with meaning and beauty.

This one-hour awe walk* will introduce you to simple contemplative photography practices. Starting at the Macon County Library, together we will take a leisurely photography walk on the Little Tennessee River Greenway. Photographers of all levels are invited (camera phones are welcome) and even seasoned practitioners should find value in this unique approach to the medium.

*An Awe Walk is a walk within a place of meaning and beauty to encounter something that amazes and transcends, whether big or small.

Susan Patrice is a documentary photographer and contemplative artist. Her photography and public installations feature intimate images that touch deeply into questions of place, belonging, and ecological personhood. Since 2016, her work has primarily explored the power of beauty and its impact on our feelings of connection and kinship. Through the use of handmade cameras built in response to the land, she engages in deep conversation with wild and natural places. Susan lives in the southern Appalachian region, where she is the director of the Kinship Photography Collective.

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