FEATURED ARTIST

Melinda Green Harvey

Project Statement – for the sake of setting out

A photograph has only two raw ingredients – light and time. It is then up to the photographer to use these elements to convey the truth, the passion, the vision that each image holds. And photography is a natural for this year’s Arts Festival theme, “Light.”

This year’s featured artist, Melinda Green Harvey, says that she never intended to become a photographer, but that it found her at a time when she was beginning to understand her inherent need for a creative outlet.

The images that Melinda has selected from her large body of work – a gallery she has titled “for the sake of setting out” – showcase her love of the art of photography, but more than that, the images demonstrate her deep affection for the people she meets along the way, her raw enjoyment of her work, and her constant search to become better at what she does.

Melinda has recently expanded her photographic practice and is beginning a new body of work using monotype prints of her photographs. She says this process gives her a new understanding of the images themselves and the uncertainty of the print process feels rejuvenating.

She would encourage visitors to spend some contemplative time in her gallery, which includes color and black and white photos, as well as her monotype prints. She enjoys conversations about photography, about her approach, and about how viewers react to all of it.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I never set out to be a photographer: photography found me at a point in my life where I was only beginning to understand I would never be myself until I accepted that being creative was a crucial part of who I was becoming.

My Arts Festival gallery includes images that I’ve made while on journeys. I’ve set out to places as close and familiar as Levelland, as emotional as Cuba, as rugged as the Scottish Highlands, as contemplative as a one-room church in a forest in Maine, and as exciting and life-affirming as Sicily. Even though these trips didn’t always have a determined destination, the journeys themselves always did and it was always the same: to be open about what I saw; to be friendly to everyone I met; to look with honesty but without nostalgia; to be purposeful; to find humor; to notice sadness; to be respectful of cultures; and to be a different person at the end of each journey.

This approach has helped me to see beauty in common places, understand commonalities in the unfamiliar, and become comfortable with setting out for the sake of the journey. It has made my life richer, my friendships deeper, and my soul more at ease. The images that are included here represent the artistic journey I am on, the transformation it has brought to me personally and as an artist, and the extreme pleasure I have in doing this work.

ARTIST BIO

Melinda Green Harvey grew up in Lubbock, Texas. As a child, her dad’s interest in photography intrigued her: she still has the very first photo that she made under his guidance (a completely clichéd shot of a mountain lake with a boulder in the foreground for scale).

She eventually rediscovered photography on her own terms, with an early project documenting roadside memorials, and incorporating images and poetry. When that had run its course, she put down her camera, convinced that writing poetry was the next thing to do. However, photography wasn’t done with her: on a whim, she began posting an image every day, committing to one year to “see what would happen.” Now into her 18^th year of daily posts, she has figured out that photography is where she needs to be, and has said, “Photography arrived on the scene at a point where I was ready to understand that I had an inherent need to be creative. It has helped me address that need in a way that nothing else has. I can’t imagine my life without a camera in my hand.”

As her skills developed and her passion became more focused, she began documenting the built environment in rural West Texas, where various factors – changing farming practices, declining and aging populations, water exploitation, shifting local commerce, and the coming of wind farms (and now, data centers) – gave her the opportunity to observe the slow-motion dismantling of the places she grew up around and has a deep affection for. Much of this work was done in black and white and was documentary in nature.

In recent years, she’s expanded into color; into street photography; and into images that are more interpretative than her earlier work. Most recently, she’s been exploring the intersection of photography and monoprint images. In a nod to her former desire to be a poet, Harvey writes about her images, the people she meets along the way, and her feelings about what she sees; writing is an integral part of her artistic practice. She states, “My photographic eye will always see the old instead of the new, the faded instead of the shiny, the ragged instead of the perfect. There is great beauty in imperfection and I strive to capture that beauty honestly, without romance or sentiment.” She is constantly pushing her technical and artistic skills and looking for new ways to capture familiar surroundings.

Harvey shoots alone most of the time but has built up a network of photographers across the country. She finds collaborative projects rewarding and believes some of her strongest images have been made while she is shooting with other photographers. She is the co-founder of a photographic coalition, The Emotional Shutter Alliance, which aims to bring photographers together to document – through words and images – aspects of the current social climate in the United States.

Harvey’s work is frequently shown nationally and she’s represented by the Charles Adams Gallery in Lubbock. She holds degrees in architecture and urban planning and currently works as a grants writer for South Plains Community Action Association, Inc. She previously served on the Board of Directors for the Texas Photographic Society and is the vice-chair of the Museum and Arts Committee for the City of Lubbock.

More from Melinda
www.melindagreenharvey.com
Instagram – @melgal
BlueSky – @melgal
Threads – @melgal