NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Vesna Pavlović has captured moments in time all around the world, depicting the post World War II era, the experiences of refugees and other memories of days gone by through her photography.
These photographs have ended up in galleries as far away as Poland, Estonia, France, and more. But one particular image has made its way into several homes in Nashville, hanging on local residents' walls for months at a time.
It's a simple black and white photo of a child's fist and leaf from a Yagrumo tree, but Pavlović said there's something about it that she thought would "spark a thought or a wonder.”
The photograph was taken in 2019 while Pavlović, who serves as an Associate Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University, was on a research trip in Jibacoa, Cuba. There, she visited an abandoned park that was once the site of Milton Hershey's sugarcane factory.
"After the Cuban Revolution, he left, and that village that was once thriving became really obsolete and abandoned, except for that park that continued to grow and become lush and beautiful," Pavlović said.
Noticing beauty in the Yagrumo leaves that had fallen to the ground and taken on crumpled, fragile shapes, Pavlović said she asked her son to hold up his hand next to a leaf before capturing the moment permanently in a photograph.
"It reminded me of this like really beautiful, kind of almost like a metaphor for hope that never truly materialized in Cuba, but it's still there, and it's still present in the people and this common kind of like a collective imaginary of Cuban people," she said.
People in Nashville have been able to borrow that very photograph for a few years now as a part of the Metro Arts Lending Library Collection. Currently, the collection is available at the Madison and Southeast branches of the Nashville Public Library, but it will be expanding later this year.
The program was launched in 2021 as a way to help artists who had been financially struggling following the COVID-19 pandemic and deadly March 2020 tornado that touched down in Davidson County, according to Ed Brown, Public Information Officer for the library system.
“We’re known as ‘Music City’, but you could almost call us ‘Creator City’ because it’s music, it’s the arts, it’s a lot of these different facets," he said. "And, for us, it was a great way to offer an additional thing that our patrons could take advantage of while giving those local artists a chance to shine.”
Since its launch, Brown said the 60 different works of art — each created by local artists and varying from oil paintings to photographs — have been checked out a total of 443 times, with the majority of the collection being in peoples' homes at any given time.
“We know people who are on waiting lists to get some and they come in looking for them, so it’s really neat to see that," said Jesse Ross, Public Art Project Coordinator for the Metro Arts Commission. “I think some people became fans of artists that they didn’t know, too."
To Brown, part of the program's success is that it opens up access for people who maybe always wanted to collect art but couldn't feasibly afford to hang original artworks in their homes. That's part of what drew Pavlović to the program when she got a call from the Metro Arts Commission.
“I thought it was just a genuinely really beautiful idea to have local artists participate in something that is such a generous thought, to you do not have to own the art in order to experience it," she said. "I think if my artwork can be seen in people's homes and enjoyed and sparked some conversations or ideas, I think I'm always in for that.”
Sharing her artwork with the public has always been an important aspect of Pavlović's life. Like her photograph in Cuba, most of her work focuses on the idea of memory in photographs and how images can be used to tell stories and histories that sometimes "have been erased."
"Certainly, there is a way of photograph taking on that role of being a memory object, being even a physical memory," Pavlović said. "It can remind us of smells, it can remind us of sounds, of a certain, even like, generation. And that's how I feel about the 1990s."
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A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović) -
A photo from Vesna Pavlović's archives from the 1990s. (Photo: Vesna Pavlović)
Her archives feature a plethora of photos from the 1990s when she worked as a documentary photographer in former Yugoslavia, documenting the dissolution of the country. For a decade, she worked with and captured photos of Women in Black, a feminist pacifist group, as they took a stand against the wars that erupted in the country.
"For me, remembering through the viewfinder really becomes an important way to think about the period of the 1990s because it is a document of what has really happened," Pavlović said. "And I think the further we are away from certain periods of time in history, I think as witnesses, we have this responsibility to tell."
While pieces of her collections have ended up all around the world, knowing that one image is circulating around people's homes in Nashville is a particularly special feeling for her.
After finding out how often the works are checked out at the library, Pavlović said, "It makes me feel great. I love that. I would love to give more and certainly would love to see that work in people's homes.”
By Summer 2024, 60 more artworks are expected to be available for checkout at the Donelson, East Nashville, Green Hills, Hermitage and Old Hickory branches of the Nashville Public Library as a part of the expansion of the program.
“We don’t want anybody limited in what they can access, information, entertainment. Everybody deserves a chance to be able to access those things, and when it comes to artwork, that’s key," Brown said. "It’s just as important to us as being able to access movies or being able to access books.”
Officials are currently going through the process of selecting more art for the program, and there's still time for local artists to submit their work by the January 14 deadline. To find out more information, as well as rules and guidelines for submissions, click here.
from WKRN News 2 https://ift.tt/SAFHzX8
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