Join us at the opening at The Bookshelf & The Gallery in downtown Thomasville, Georgia on Friday night from 6-8 pm to see the work of Ansley Simmons, Marshall Blevins and Ling So and to hear each of the artists speak about their work. Can”t make it Friday? The exhibition will be up all May.

Ansley is a fine art and on-location portrait photographer located in Cairo, Georgia. She earned her MFA in Photography from the Florida State University and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Arts Administration. The exhibited work focuses on Ansley’s landscape and interior images of abandoned locations as well as mixed-media work. The 5 large canvases feature images taken using her grandmother’s Brownie camera. The canvases have been stained with tea and native soil. The images are transferred using a heat technique and evoke a feeling of impermanence and the roll and sway of time.

Artist’s Statement: There are people in these pictures. They are just absent from the frame. By examining the discarded artifacts and forgotten places they left behind, I uncover traces of the people who are no longer here. The viewers are encouraged to find context for these objects from their own perspective, and in doing so they reach out and connect to the lost context. These images reveal the dichotomy between simplistic beauty and unremitting hardship. To portray the solitary beauty in the decaying, the mundane, and the abandoned, I photograph my South.