_{Bryant's photograph "Cloudburst," included in her gallery at Tech's Appalachian Center for Craft} 

Photographic artist Susan Bryant’s show “A Journey of Astonishments” is on display in the Dogwood Gallery of Tennessee Tech University’s Appalachian Center for Craft through March 22. She presented an artist talk on Jan. 7 where she discussed her exploration of photography, hand coloring and where she finds inspiration throughout history. 

Bryant received her bachelor's degree in painting from Indiana University, as well as her Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana State University. She is professor emerita from Austin Peay State University where she taught photography for more than 30 years.

Bryant’s works have been in over 100 juried and group exhibitions and 25 individual exhibitions. She is also included in multiple collections across the United States. Although she has retired from full time teaching, Bryant still has the passion for education. She can be found teaching photography workshops at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, SxSE Workshops in Molena, Georgia and Woodsmoor Studios in Tennessee. These workshops focus on hand-coloring, black and white photographs and 19th century cyanotype process. 

“I am especially interested in the kind of alchemy that occurs as 19th-century photographic processes collide with 21st-century technology. These images are 4” x 5” tintypes and employ the 19th century wet-plate collodion process. Invented in 1851, this process produces a negative on glass, from which positive enlargements can be made. The process can also generate an ambrotype or tintype, both positive one-of-a-kind images,” Bryant said. “This work has led me to explore the integration of this antique process with both darkroom and digital technology. The tintypes in this series were created using inter-positive transparencies that were made from .jpgs shot with my digital camera.”

Her personal work includes gelatin silver prints, hand-colored silver prints, digital photographs, and most recently, the 19th century processes of daguerreotypes, tintypes and wet plate collodion negatives and positives, ambrotypes. Her work has been widely exhibited across the United States in solo and juried exhibitions. 

She is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship and is represented by The Cumberland Gallery in Nashville. 

The gallery hours are Monday - Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The ACC is located at 1560 Craft Center Drive, Smithville, Tennessee. Learn more at https://www.tntech.edu/fine-arts/craftcenter. 

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