Tryon Fine Arts Center (TFAC) presents the award-winning exhibit “The Awakening of Turtle Island: Portraits of Native Americans” the month of November in Gallery I.
Photographer Tracey Schmidt, a former resident of Tryon who resides in Asheville, will be on hand for the opening reception on Sunday, Nov. 6 from 4 – 6 p.m. The exhibit is sponsored by the Kirby Endowment Fund.
“The Awakening of Turtle Island” won a Regional Designation Award in the Humanities when it opened during the Olympics in Atlanta, 1996. It has toured to more than 17 museums in the southeast, including two showings at the Cherokee Museum of the American Indian. The exhibit includes more than 60 contemporary photographs Schmidt took of native people, half of which will be at TFAC. Each photograph has an extensive text panel created from interviews she conducted with the person in the photograph or one of the spiritual elders from their tribe.
At the age of 19, Schmidt traveled to Japan to live in a Buddhist monastery, where her spiritual practices awakened a desire to return to America in search of a tradition that was as authentic and indigenous in America as Buddhism had been for her in Japan.
“The Awakening of Turtle Island” mirrors that search and represents, for her, a way to share with America what she found among Native American culture. Her search also resulted in documentary film and video work with the production of “Voices in the Wind,” a PBS docu-drama about Native Americans.
During the month of November, Schmidt will give a gallery talk to students as part of TFAC’s “Arts in Education” series.
The opening reception on Sunday, Nov. 6 from 4 – 6 p.m. is free to the public. Native American flutist Bob Child will provide music to complement the photographs. For more information, call TFAC at 828-859-8322.
– article submitted
by Beth Child