“botanical”

bo – tan – i – cal :  concerning plants, agricultural, gardening, floral, grasses, herbs,  horticultural, shrubs, floricultural, botanic, weeds, landscaping,  arboricultural, trees, flowers …

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“It was told, I never actually knew it at the time, that Finn, as a young man, read Thoreau’s On Walden Pond. As did I. I remember very little of it now. Evidently the reading of it lit him up. It opened up something in his psyche. I do remember talking with another friend back then and he told me that he had seen Finn working on a window air conditioning unit in his backyard. It appears that after reading the book he decided he was going to become self-sufficient, repair his own stuff. I don’t remember how much success he had with all that. What I do remember is around that time, in our late teens and twenties, he most certainly looked at the natural world differently, especially the plant world.

Prior to his awakening, I think he saw the flora around us, as did I, as a great big green and grey and umber thing. Nothing really separate, distinct from the rest. This most likely came from us growing up in the dense pine forests of East Texas. After, he became excited, connected, almost obsessed with each individual plant and what its uses were. He studied books on local botany. He sought out locals that knew about natural cures. He befriended an old Coushatta woman that was an encyclopedia of the local woodlands and the uses of all the plants; as food, medicine, or otherwise. He collected old food boxes and cans with graphics that portrayed plants. He hung a series of unfortunate, not purposely expressionistic paintings of local plants and trees, done by his sister, on the walls of his apartment. He became, almost entirely, a carnivore.

Finn and I are old men now. He raised three kids. I raised five. He became a professor of Biology. I ran a lawn irrigation business. We’ve played golf almost once a week for over forty years. If he leaves this place before I do, the one thing that I will make sure everyone knows about him is, The True Taxonomy of The Flora of East Texas, a self-illustrated four and one-half inch thick book created by him over thirty years. He renamed every tree and plant in the Big Thicket of Texas and listed all that he had discovered about the tree or plant. One example of his handiwork is a color drawing of the leaves of the native sassafras tree, sassafras albidum, which he renamed, “affable dinosaur foot”. I tried to get him to publish it over the years. I volunteered to be his agent. We could have gotten rich. Not really, but he could have been known…” From The Man That Gave Them Names by Franklin Cincinnatus

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JUROR | Lee Anne White will be the juror for “botanical”. Lee Anne is a photographer whose work is rooted in the landscape. She creates intimate portraits of place—the terrain, what grows there, the history of the land and our relationship to place. Working in the studio as well as the field and garden, she also creates still life photographs of plants, seedpods and found objects.

She has exhibited her work in both solo and juried exhibitions, is the recipient of three Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, and has 30 photographs on permanent display at Brenau University. An instructor for 25 years, she has taught at Maine Media Workshops, Santa Fe Workshops, Chicago Botanic Garden, Madeline Island School of the Arts and through her own online program.

She previously served as editor-in-chief of Fine Gardening magazine, photographed more than 70 magazine features, and produced nearly 20 books on garden design and landscape architecture. She has a master’s degree in Creative Studies from the State University of New York/Buffalo State and an undergraduate degree from The Women’s College at Brenau University.

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SUBMISSION | Guidelines: Digital images should be up to 1800 pixels on the longest side saved in JPEG format at 72 ppi. Each image should be labeled with consecutive numbers followed by your name, i.e. 1FirstName_LastName.jpg. The number should correspond with the number on the application form.  Please do not watermark your images.  If you need help sizing your images, please follow this link https://convert.town/image-dpi

SUBMISSION | Online:  Fill out our online application to apply, send images, and make payment with Paypal. You will receive an email confirmation upon receiving the submission and payment. You can also fill and submit the online application, print out your confirmation email, and mail it with a check for your fees to the address below.  Please note that gallery emails often end up in spam folders.  Please check your spam if you did not receive a confirmation email.

SUBMISSION | Entry Fee: $40 for the first 5 images, $5 per each additional image.  There is no limit to the number of images you may submit. Submission fees are not refundable.

SUBMISSION | Entry Reviews:  Photographers submitting 13 or more images are entitled to receive a complimentary review by the gallery directors. Photographers that enter less than 13 images, can receive a review for an additional $20. All reviews will be 30 minutes and typically scheduled a week after the exhibition results are announced.

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ELIGIBILITY | The competition is open to all photographers both professional and amateur working in all photographic mediums and styles. International entries are welcomed. Work that has been previously exhibited in an A Smith Gallery competition is not eligible.  We prefer not to accept images created with Artificial Intelligence at the present time due to the lack of clarity concerning copyright issues and the ongoing litigation associated with them.

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ONLINE EXHIBITION and CATALOGUE | Jurors will be selecting 47 images in total. All artist included in the 47 images will receive the following:

1. The gallery will be featuring each of the 47 images on both Facebook and Instagram over the span of the exhibition.

2. Gallery Directors will be hosting a GalleryTalk and will discuss all 47 images.  The GalleryTalk will be posted in the blog section of the website.

3.  The gallery online store will include all 47 images listed for sale.

4. An exhibition catalogue including all 47 images will be published and available for purchase.

5. The online exhibition as well as the GalleryTalk will be permanently archived after the end of the exhibition period.

“THE 27” HARDBOUND EXHIBITION BOOK | 27 images from the total 47 images will be selected for “The 27”, a hardbound fine art book of the exhibition.  “The 27” will be available for purchase. Both the Juror and Director Award recipients will receive the hardbound exhibition book.

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NOTIFICATIONS | All photographers who have submitted an entry will receive an email notification of the juror’s selection as well as confirmation of your entry being received.  Confirmation emails are sent directly from the gallery directors and may take a few hours to be sent.  Please note that gallery emails often end up in spam folders.  Please check your spam if you did not receive a confirmation email.  If concerned, please email amanda@asmithgallery.com.

AWARDS | The awards are as follows:

Jurors Award – an online solo exhibition, “The 27” exhibition book and feature story on the gallery blog
Directors Award – “The 27” exhibition book and a feature story on the gallery blog
Visitors Award (most Instagram likes) – $100

The solo exhibition awarded as the Juror and Director Awards will be scheduled at a mutually agreed time for the duration of a month.

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SALES | The gallery has an online store and will include all images from the exhibition. The gallery will retain 30% of the sales price.  When a print sells, there are two options.  First, the artist may ship a signed print directly to the buyer.  Or the gallery will print the image for the artist.  Please see Printing Services for details.

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USE RIGHTS | Photographers retain full rights to their own images. The gallery will use the photographer’s images for publicity purposes as well as on line gallery, online store, exhibition catalogue and “The 27” exhibition book.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION | amanda@asmithgallery.com