Six rotating galleries at the Lyndon House Arts Center regularly play host to exhibitions from an array of artists, many of them local. Beth Sale, curator at the Lyndon House Arts Center, says her team looks for some specifics when selecting a gallery show.
“We ask anyone who's interested in exhibiting here at the Art Center to submit an online exhibition proposal,” Sale says. “And we look for exhibitions that are relevant to our community, and that demonstrate diversity and inclusion.”
So it's not unusual that Emily Cameron’s proposal, “The Local Athenian: One Degree of Separation,” caught Sale’s eye. Cameron’s blog by the same name is a visual project that showcases long-time Athens residents. After Cameron had three photos from her blog accepted to the 46th Juried Exhibition at the Lyndon House, Sale says she encouraged Cameron to think bigger.
“We discussed her submitting an exhibition proposal, she submitted one, it sounded fantastic,” Sale says. “I think of her not just as a photographer, but also as a community activist.”
Cameron is an avid cyclist and an overall star athlete. Good enough to qualify for the 2012 and 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming. In 2020, with no prior photography experience, she decided to pick up her I-Phone camera and interview a fellow athlete at his backyard skate ramp. While her photography has gotten more technical, her writing style — largely transcripts of her conversations — has remained unfiltered and raw.
Here’s part of my discussion with Cameron.
SG: “ How would you describe the content that's on the blog?”
EC: “It's just a journey through like the locals that live here, and just understanding the decisions they made to end up how or to end up in the position they are now in their lives. And maybe selfishly, it's like a late 20s search. …These people, in my mind, are successful. And they love their lives here, as at least that's what it seems. And so what did they do? And how can I implement that in my own life?”
SG: “So do you think that's what makes them seem, in part successful, that they love their life here?”
EC: “Yeah, I think that's huge. And I think that's why that's the driving question behind the whole project. Obviously, it's like, yes, I want to know about your life. But mostly, it's like, why Athens? Why this community? And why do you thrive here?”
Why Athens? Cameron’s collected different answers to that big question. Some people stick around after college and find community, others take advantage of local business opportunities. A few credit spiritual awakenings found in a thriving music and arts scene decades in the making. Not all who arrive in the Classic City become a permanent resident, but those that do usually end up with a story or two.
On the lawn of the Lyndon House on April 28, almost a month into Cameron’s exhibition, she hosted a small group for some storytelling from people featured in the gallery. Chef Rashe Malcolm, Jittery Joe's founder Charlie Mustard and Jay Kloepfer — the late Marti Schimmel’s younger brother — shared their Athens stories.
Attendees heard live music from string-band duo Nancy and Charlie Hartness, also featured on Cameron’s blog. Though varied, these local stories
are oftentimes inter connected. That song played by the Hartness’s? It’s an homage to the smell of coffee from the Jittery Joe's coffee roaster that often floats down the tracks to Pulaski Street.
“Just being a university town doesn't make Athens what it is,” says Charlie Hartness. “There's something about this place that people like, they want to stay here or they want to come back if they can figure out a way to do it.”
Cameron says she’ll keep collecting stories for as long as she can. She’s thinking about continuing a condensed project, “The Locals,” during summer travels, something she tried during a cross-country cycling trip she did last year. Regardless, she plans to stick around town.
“Every time that I interviewed someone new, I just became more and more evident that this was the place that I wanted to be,” Cameron says. “And I think, as human beings, we're always searching for what home is, whether that's like a physical place or home within ourselves. And I think I kind of found both of those things through this project.”
To close out this story, I’ll let Emily read an excerpt from her interview with local musician, Vernon Thornsberry. Full stories like Thornsberry’s can be found on thelocalathenian.com.
EC: “It's actually really funny. I haven't looked at the story in a long time. But he says: ‘I lived on Meigs and Church Street on the corner. I was blowing my trumpet all the time. I was just learning the trumpet at that point. And then I learned a sax but I played the sax in New Orleans as well. They used to tell me to play that tune far far away. So I did here in Athens. And then I started to dance and I met Jean and we started to go dance together. And then I formed a band named ‘Hear it, Love it, Dance it,’ in other words, they used to say ‘Hit, Lit, Dit.’”
