This spring, I sat down with four artists whose work will be shown in the Museum’s opening exhibition, Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia: Clarissa Sligh, Molly Sawyer, Eleanor Annand, and Danielle Burke.
Clarissa Sligh
Clarissa Sligh, a photographer whose interest in the medium stems from keeping the family album when she was young, stated, “It had always interested me that my voice didn’t seem to be in the arena. I began to create these narratives from my old family photographs, and that’s how I started doing word/text/images.” Of her art in the exhibition, she says, “That work comes out of me trying to think about my father. He was a very macho kind of man, and I was interested in the need to present that facade.” She muses, “Why is it that men are so much harder on men being masculine than women are on women being feminine?”
When asked about the significance of being in Appalachia Now!, each artist had a beautifully thought-provoking response. Sligh, who credits “being part of the earth that you walk on” as her inspiration, says of her home, “It’s a sanctuary area. There is something about being in these mountains. You’re surrounded, and you’re protected.”
