Featured Artist 2008 - Jim Ann Howard
SAS Art Teacher Jim Ann Howard is the 2008 Trails & Trilliums featured artist. Her painting above 'Red Trillium, Shakerag Hollow in May' will be on posters and notecards. Howard has been a professional artist for over 30 years, working in Boston, New York City and Tenn. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums and collections, and she is represented locally by Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville.
Appalachian Springboard #1 (shown above) was commissioned by the city of Knoxville for its new convention center in 2002. It is 4' x 10' and done on Renaissance handmade paper, made by the J.B. Greene Co, London, England. This family business went under in the early 1980's after having been in operation for over 300 years. I used the last of my stock of their Renaissance paper for this project. I hiked in to the site to draw and paint using carbon pencil with inks and watercolors that I made myself from minerals, clays and lichens found on or near the site. When necessary, I used the commercially available pigment equivalents of particular lichens rather than denuding the place where I was working. I did the separate pieces on site and then glued everything together back at my studio, then in Cowan.
The Frist Center piece was done at the same location as the Knoxville piece, but from a slightly different perspective and at a different time of year. The Frist piece was actually started in March of 2001 and I sent it to the Knoxville people as a work in progress to propose what I wanted to do for them. It was on the basis of the Frist piece that I was awarded the Knoxville commission.
The site of Appalachian Springboard #1 is "The Sinks" located near Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mtns. National Park outside of Townsend, TN.