Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnoted architects and for being stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls the barn stands. 

The Roundup barns encircle to represent shelter, protection, and endurance. They enclose and embrace in itself the landscape. They, like people, are both individual and part of a larger landscape. 

These are all Arkansas barns captured in my haunts about the state as I scan ever back and forth, looking for gems to photograph. Some were easily found and accessible. Others I can add my own story to their history.  

To act easily and quickly in sometimes sudden stops in the middle of nowhere to capture barns, I use a non-professional Canon EOS M5 camera and basic lenses. Once I take my barns home, each one comes down to several decisions using Photoshop and Lightroom to bring out the barns natural textures and colors, what part of the photo needs to be creamed out to create the empty sky space surrounding each final project, what part of the barn do I leave in color, carefully outlining the details to be left alone, how to best represent the rest in black and white so it is not completely lost when I finally “encircle” the barns using an app not typically intended for professional art. 

They were shortlisted in the Siena Creative Awards and Refuge won 1st in the multi-state 12th Annual Newport Delta Awards. Many of them are currently awaiting results in online international competitions. Their non-abstract counterparts Honor Guard won 2022 Monovisions Awards Honorable Mention for Architectural Series.  

The series shows well individually or together in 12” prints.

Sunrises make me happy. They are cheerful, surprising, and colorful--mostly things I am not. So it is my joy to remake photos of sunrises into these graceful, happy images that hold meaning for me and hopefully for you too.

  
Percipient is one that perceives. Percipients are more about what the viewer thinks, sees, feels, connects to in these works. As such, I could go into what I as the artist mean by _Projected Self_ or _Joy in Creating_ but then the viewer would not have the freedom to say whatever they want about the work.

  
Too often the viewers are afraid to realize their own meaning and then speak their mind about it for fear “of getting it wrong.” I am the illustrator and they the storyteller and together a new work is created each time a new storyteller comes along.

  
I _will_ tell you something unique about the Percipients. As in all my digital art, they begin with a photograph with which I create something unique and abstract. (Abstract is also an important word that tells only a small part of a work or is something fluid rather than fixed.) Each Percipient begins its journey as a photograph of one of several sunrises I’ve been pleased to partake of. A sunrise may display completely different arrays of color or mark of land regardless if it is one place many times or many places at the same time.

Joy in Creating

Salve of Song

Memory of Moxie

Projected Self

Migraine

Sunrises make me happy. They are cheerful, surprising, and colorful--mostly things I am not. So it is my joy to remake photos of sunrises into these graceful, happy images that hold meaning for me and hopefully for you too.

  
Percipient is one that perceives. Percipients are more about what the viewer thinks, sees, feels, connects to in these works. As such, I could go into what I as the artist mean by _Projected Self_ or _Joy in Creating_ but then the viewer would not have the freedom to say whatever they want about the work. 

  
Too often the viewers are afraid to realize their own meaning and then speak their mind about it for fear “of getting it wrong.” I am the illustrator and they the storyteller and together a new work is created each time a new storyteller comes along.

  
I _will_ tell you something unique about the Percipients. As in all my digital art, they begin with a photograph with which I create something unique and abstract. (Abstract is also an important word that tells only a small part of a work or is something fluid rather than fixed.) Each Percipient begins its journey as a photograph of one of several sunrises I’ve been pleased to partake of. A sunrise may display completely different arrays of color or mark of land regardless if it is one place many times or many places at the same time.

I see YOU

Albert Pike Memorial Temple of Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Freemasonry in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, USA is a 3-story Neo-Classical Revival style building with about half a block maybe of tall creamy white columns that make it an imposing and interesting site on the National Register of Historic Places. “Stability” is but a taste.

Solidarity

Welcome to just one of the interesting aspects of Subiaco in Subiaco Arkansas. It’s been a while since I made that trip. I distinctly remember sweating my buns off and getting overheated AND hungry because somehow I couldn’t find my meals for the weekend in Eureka Springs and the only thing for a long ways around was a convenience store. Eating healthy wasn’t on the menu but I managed some salty nuts, orange juice, Pringles, and a Honey Bun. Not a lot of my photos came out well in the heat and sweat but I rather enjoy this one

At the Cross of Subiaco

It is filled to capacity with hay and tucked in 

overshadowing trees. If not for my practice of 

constantly scanning roadsides, I would have 

missed it.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sands ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Sanctuary 

This is one of the few weathered barns I 

encountered that is obviously still very much in 

use. If you look closely, you see donkey and 

grazing cattle. Like another Boxley Valley barn I 

call Repose, it has the Gambrel roof style.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sands ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Resolve

One of the many barns in the Boxley Valley. It is 

probably one of the oldest in the area.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sands ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Scribe

This expansive Gambrel roof barn suits the 

expansive shrouded autumn background of the 

Boxley Valley. It is notable for its proximity to the 

nearby Elk preserve. The Gambrel barn’s style is 

intended to maximize usable space.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sands ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Repose

Discovering this barn was discovering an 80-year￾old story of a 13-year-old maiden who lived within a home within the barn. Now age 93, the widow continues to keep the barn and surrounding patch of grass in pristine condition sheltered by an old oak.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sands ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Rustic

This simple barn sat unpretentiously hunched 

over a mowed field--bare facade suitable to bare 

landscape.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms sand ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Stability

Raw is a quaint small barn which sits nestled in 

its small plot of land across the road from the 

home. It is aged to a fine patina.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

This candy-striped roofed barn's most interesting 

features are two vented extensions on the roof, 

echoing the barn’s larger design, a one-time 

windmilled well, and a raised stone stairway 

entrance that keeps livestock at bay

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Relentless Relic

Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Roughened

If you travel from Little Rock to Eldorado,

Arkansas, you may pass a tall grass buried barn 

with a home and rusty pickup or you may catch it 

as I did just after a mow. Its notable for its larger 

than usual spread along the sides.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Sharecropper

This rusty barn and fields are at the opposite end 

of the spectrum in culture from the splendor of 

the nearby colorful Garvan Garden’s beds of 

tulips. You pass it around Hot Springs.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Stronghold

Reminisce kept me at bay with barbed wire and 

no trespassing signs, a nearby home deserted. I 

had to balance on a fire ant fraught ledge 

between barbed wire and deep ditch, very aware 

of my easily broken bones. However, this barn’s 

unique arching entrance of beauty but unknown 

practicality intrigued me.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Reminisce 2

A stiff wind could blow down this piecemeal 

structure, but cattle lounging churned mud in the 

foreground testify to its ongoing use on Hwy 10.

  
Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects and as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.

Ranch-Hand

Eureka Springs, AR, USA, was a former vacation spot for mobsters and perhaps this spiraling ironwork staircase served as a getaway strategy while keeping to the style of a now historic age.

The view of this staircase is through the lens of Perspectivism. The silver tones soften the black and white tendency of this unique aspect of historic architecture.

The only time I strayed from my desire for color growing up was as a teenager, sketching chromatic pictures such as stamps and prints into the shades of greys using #2 pencils. It is always the challenge in my of trying to portray color through monochromatic variety, then, by light erasure, touch, and the pencil’s sharpness and today through deepening shadows, contrasting, and highlighting.

Spiraling Upstairs Downtown

 This one took a bit more effort in several ways but I love doing perspective photography alongside black and white tonalities best. It wasn’t much of a piece of architecture before but it just goes to show that there is beauty in even the least expected places like this footbridge near the Arkansas River in Little Rock.

Hypnosis

St. Elizabeth Catholic Church was one of my stops in my recent Eureka Springs, Arkansas, US trips to focus on the unique, interesting, historical, and peaceful, and this church with a bell tower from which you walk down to the church past the 14 stations of the cross among part of the beautiful garden grounds. 

If you have seen my pieces Perspective and Crossways you know my fascination with bell towers and it was lovely to even here and partially audio record the bells chiming. Bells small and large are beautiful for their significance in many aspects of a long history and for their pure tones that sometimes chime and sometimes melody. I loved this bell tower with its gateway to a church and its setting in gardens--also if you know me, you know how I love flora.

It was built in 1906 after the manner of a church in St. Sophia's Church in Istanbul, Turkey (https://www.eurekasprings.com/historical/church.html).

St. Eliza Bell

Did you know that Arkansas has a Golden Gate Bridge often referred to as Beaver Bridge? It is between Eureka Springs and Beaver Arkansas US over White River where it joins Table Rock Lake. Its one wood-planked lane is one of the last suspension bridges in Arkansas. 

You can even see the nails in the planks here as I quickly took a photo before someone could drive up behind or ahead in a not infrequented bridge.

Suspense

I suddenly decided, as it so happens, on Winter Solstice morning to capture what might be the last not too terribly cold dawn before it dropped into the teens and remained cold for who knows how long. I went to Two Rivers Park in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA alongside the Arkansas River because it was close and I would have the advantage of light from behind one bridge and the reflection on this bridge. I waited patiently, taking photos every little bit to get the absolute best reflection of this gracefully curved architecture photograph I felt merited the name “ Light My Path.” I am in a place in life that I am asking God, “Why? I don’t understand what you are doing.” 

Light My Path

Despite obstacles look for the potential of the possible. It isn’t always easy, as I can attest in my own obstacles of mental illness, physical disability, and precarious finances. But in photography, creative writing, gardening, or simple Christmas decorations that currently twinkle within my home, I am honing possibility.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

Possibility

Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Fill in or make up the lines or change your vantage point to move through. It has taken and is taking a long time to see my own way out of traumas. Though my life feels obscured most of the time I can always move one way or thing or another.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

Point of View

Obscure

Life is in that tree framed by the stone bricks. However, the textures of the frame interest me more. Sometimes a picture is made by the frame or context by which we view it.
  
  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

Life

It is a mystery how this low part of the building that opens behind us was used. Above, the floor simply drops away into the cool shadows calling to mind root cellars and wells. However, only the very old may know this building that passed for one of the best rooms to rest your head back in its heyday.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

High Road

I have always loved the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” with its ideology of individuality, it’s road . . . less traveled resonating with my own very other worldly life. Some of it has been very bad but many parts of it have been very good. Both have shaped me.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

The Road Less Traveled

Well . . . which one is it? Is one better than the other or just different, as each of us are to one another. The photograph only makes sense if you include both. We are the same in our differences or, as I recognize, people are inclusively exclusive or collectively individual.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

What’s the Point

I have a general sense for the finer things of life like art and literature, but it isn’t often that something sticks with me like the photographer Fan Ho’s, On the Stage of Life. Fan Ho’s portrait silhouettes are replaced with silhouettes of the landscapes I prefer to photograph when I am not photographing architecture.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

Fan Ho Recalled

It’s all in the name—something to see in contrast, light and shadow, foreground and background . . .

However, what probably captures everyone’s initial attention is the striated rock in the dilapidated fireplace. You see them in most of The Lodge photographs. This striping in many of the rocks that make up College Lodge is called Liesegang or color banding and it is created geologically locally with rhythmic precipitation of iron hydroxide within fluid-saturated rock.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

Something for Everybody

I have found, probably similarly, to war-torn land survivors that getting away, leaving the shadows, doesn’t mean an end to hardship. This image speaks to both the empty space as freedom from restraints to climb out of the darkness and the flip side of that freedom. Your light may come with the promise of no shelter from weather and your way out may be strewn with obstacles. The door out may reveal another door of only potential possibility and not assurance of a yet out of reach easy way beyond.

  
The Lodge series exemplifies my rough history, rich heritage, and vivid design. College Lodge rests on Petit Jean Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks, USA. It was built in the 1920s through the efforts of YMCA and YWCA chapters of Arkansas colleges. In the 1930s it became part of YMCA’s Camp Petit Jean. At this camp you could spend the night in the kids’ shacks and tents or enjoy the luxurious boulder-hewn and rock-built College Lodge or “Guest House.”

The Price of Freedom

Commissioned Work

Terry House (411 E. 7th St) is pictured here and I give so much space to its history because it is a shame that you or your children may not later know of this house’s existence for it go to rot and ruin without intervention. I took an hour on Sunday to capture the house for someone who was married there and I hope you both enjoy the history and the images and will tell me which angle and part of the history you like best and why. 

Constructed in 1840, the Pike-Fletcher-Terry House, has been touted as an architectural landmark from the beginning, and it has seen its share of history. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “The builder of the house, Albert Pike, came to Arkansas from New England in 1832 and had a varied career that included being a teacher, poet, lawyer, newspaper owner and editor, and Civil War general.” In 1874 it became the Arkansas Female College which I can only imagine included preparing for housewifery but perhaps they were more advanced for their time. Anybody? 

I’m 1889 the house was deeded to John G. Fletcher who with his wife were a prominent native Arkansan family, was a cotton broker in the years following the Civil War of which he was a veteran, German National Bank president, Little Rock mayor, and Democrat candidate for Governor. 

One of the Fletcher sons won the Pulitzer Prize as a poet, one married a career soldier, and Adolphine was not only married in the house but lived there with her husband much of their lives. Her husband, a lawyer and civic leader, became a US Congressman who spent part of his time in Washington DC. “Adolphine Terry was a graduate of Vassar College and spent much of her life working for the causes of educational improvement, public libraries, and racial harmony. She was well known as the leader of the WEC, and many of the meetings were held in it.”

Terry House 1

The creek flowing under this Memphis Mississippi style miniature bridge flows into the Haw Creek where Haw Creek Falls in Arkansas is that I photographed on the same day. This is literally a one lane bridge off the beaten path.

The only time I strayed from my desire for color growing up was as a teenager, sketching chromatic pictures such as stamps and prints into the shades of greys using #2 pencils. It is always the challenge in my of trying to portray color through monochromatic variety, then, by light erasure, touch, and the pencil’s sharpness and today through deepening shadows, contrasting, and highlighting.

Through

Garvan Gardens bell tower from within shown here is the earliest of my black and whites created in 2013. It still turns heads wherever it goes.

The only time I strayed from my desire for color growing up was as a teenager, sketching chromatic pictures such as stamps and prints into the shades of greys using #2 pencils. It is always the challenge in my of trying to portray color through monochromatic variety, then, by light erasure, touch, and the pencil’s sharpness and today through deepening shadows, contrasting, and highlighting.

Perspective

The  Capital  was the place to be to capture autumn leaves  that late November. The mall ran right up to highlight the Arkansas  Fallen Firefighters Memorial  under the watchful eyes of the State Capital.

The only time I strayed from my desire for color growing up was as a teenager, sketching chromatic pictures such as stamps and prints into the shades of greys using #2 pencils. It is always the challenge in my of trying to portray color through monochromatic variety, then, by light erasure, touch, and the pencil’s sharpness and today through deepening shadows, contrasting, and highlighting.

AR Firefighters Memorial at Capital

Resilient 

Reaper

Resolute

Refuge

Reminisce 

Ranch

Respite

Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now I notice these ordinary  structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnoted architects and for being stalwarts  of the rural. When all else falls the barn stands. 

The Roundup barns encircle to represent shelter, protection, and endurance. They enclose and embrace in itself the landscape. They, like people, are both individual and part of a  larger landscape. 

These are all Arkansas barns captured in my haunts about the state as I scan ever back and forth, looking  for gems to photograph. Some were easily found and accessible. Others I can add my own story to their history. 

To act easily and quickly in sometimes sudden stops in the middle of nowhere to capture barns, I use a  non-professional Canon EOS M5 camera and basic lenses. Once I take my barns home, each one comes  down to several decisions using Photoshop and Lightroom to bring out the barns natural textures and  colors, what part of the photo needs to be creamed out to create the empty sky space surrounding each  final project, what part of the barn do I leave in color, carefully outlining the details to be left alone, how  to best represent the rest in black and white so it is not completely lost when I finally “encircle” the  barns using an app not typically intended for professional art. 

They were shortlisted in the Siena Creative Awards and Refuge won 1st in the multi-state 12th Annual  Newport Delta Awards. Many of them are currently awaiting results in online international  competitions. Their non-abstract counterparts Honor Guard won 2022 Monovisions Awards Honorable  Mention for Architectural Series.  

The series shows well individually or together in 12” prints.

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Y. Hope Osborn