By means of the Lens With Photographer Gary Heatherly

This metropolis is wealthy in tradition. It’s round each nook, etched within the panorama and radiating from the stately buildings downtown. Knoxville’s creative expertise just isn’t one thing that goes unnoticed, however there are such a lot of artists. You could have an artist dwelling subsequent door with out realizing it. I had an thought to put in writing a collection that includes our artists and determined to begin with my outdated good friend, Gary Heatherly.

I requested Gary, why right here? “Knoxville is a lovely city that gives me quick access to the national park and other natural resources. It is also a progressive city with a university, where I attended and began my artistic journey.” 

Gary has a lightweight and fascinating persona. His dialog is simple, and his spirit radiates across the room. You can rely on him as a real good friend, all the time pleased to assist. Nature and the sturdy affect of his household have guided his life and work.

“My philosophy is based on the Pantheism direction,” he says. “The universe and nature are identical to the divine. I have had a close and grounded base with nature since I was a child. I equate the cycles of nature to the human cycle of life. My work shows that theme continually.” Storytime along with his mom ignited his luscious creativeness whereas his aunts and uncles kindled his love of artwork and sense of spirituality. 

Gary’s work supplied him with the power to journey. He has photographed castles in Scotland, England, France, Wales and Caribbean resorts. He has labored for Outside journal, the City of Knoxville and Whittle Communications. 

Gary was born in LaFollette, Tenn., and moved to Syracuse, New York, for his father’s job at Union Carbide’s nuclear division when he was a child. Later, they moved to Milwaukee. He was 5 when his household moved again to Oak Ridge, after which to Karns, on a 10-acre plot. His father cherished to backyard and agreed to maneuver to Farragut if he might have a spot to backyard. Gary lived in Fort Sanders whereas on the University of Tennessee and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing, with a minor in Art History. Gary moved to his mother and father’ house in West Knoxville to look after his father after his mom handed in 2006. 

Gary’s Knoxville roots run deep. He held a studio downtown for over 25 years. He was on the Candy Factory, then an arts colony backed by the City of Knoxville. He additionally held a studio within the stately Victorians that line eleventh Street, which have been additionally a part of town’s backed artist studios. Later, till 2008, his area was on the L&N Station. Gary was the photographer for the brand new Knoxville Museum of Art’s collections, catalogs and different advertising and marketing publications throughout this time. 

At the 1982 World’s Fair he showcased the 3M Scanamural, an early large-format laser scanner and digital printer that used photo-transparency and acrylic paint to switch pictures to any floor. He labored for a show firm based mostly in Memphis. They secured contracts for large-scale printed canvases for the US Post Office and the Peruvian pavilion on the World’s Fair.

Gary says, “I also was hired to go to the Philippines to produce medium format, panorama transparencies for the Miss Universe Pageant held in Manila. It was a wild 10-day trip, flying over some exciting and dangerous areas of the Philippines to create 20 x 60-foot scenic murals of the country.”

Gary jogged my memory, “In ’91 I did my book, Knoxville Then and Now. We received a National Book of the Year award from Warren Paper in Boston. Robin Easter did the design. After the book, I started doing stock photo sales and later started my studio in the Candy Factory.” Gary’s picture books of Knoxville embody Knoxville Impressions (1981), Knoxville: Gateway to the South, by Cynthia Moxley, Melissa Martines and the Greater Knoxville Chamber of Commerce (1995), and Knoxville: Green by Nature by Jack Neely (2013).

Today, his studio is his laptop and the skies. Gary started experimenting with drone photography in 1995. Exploring the skies along with his drone is an addictive muse for Gary, consistently driving him skyward for that candy perspective and producing pictures that resonate with the epic fantastic thing about our landscapes.

“The drone gives me the ability and freedom to get aerial views that were originally only possible from hills and mountaintops or planes,” Gary says. “I used to do a lot of aerial work with clients from large developments, architectural firms and contracting firms. The drone can serve as an extension of my tripod for low heights, such as 10 or 50 feet, or provide the freedom to see like a bird from 400 feet. Like all children, we dream of being a bird or being with the clouds, the drone makes a lot of that feeling possible.”

Gary retired from business pictures in 2018 and now focuses on his old flame, pictures as artwork. His present art work encompasses an enlargement of spirituality. His inspiration is the power that lies inside all of us. The atomic connections that recycle and regenerate. Gary feels it’s all related, every molecule vibrating in opposition to one other, a resonating pool of matter that frequently renews. Focusing on nature, he creates an power that radiates from the body.

Once he started working with digital artwork, his work remodeled right into a painterly poem the place pictures illustrate natural complexity and the caress of sunshine. “For my layering or ‘Dreamscapes’ I do a lot of in-camera double exposures,” Gary says. “The twin exposures are taken within five minutes of each other and combined in camera as one image. I may do post production to get a textured effect I am striving for.”

He continues, “I like to start with the reality of a photo and go backwards or forward to reach a hybrid blend that has either a painterly or lithographic feel. I was trained in those two areas in college.”

Gary’s digital work are on show on the Lilienthal Gallery, positioned at 23 Emory Place, as a part of Deconstructing Landscapes. The exhibit will run till September 2025. The exhibit options art work by David Butler, David Underwood, Ann Marie Auricchio, Joseph Ashman, Micah Ofstedahl and Paul Paiement. Deconstructing Landscapes examines how these artist disassemble and reconstruct the pure world in their very own creative type.