Thursday, September 29
6:30 pm in the Weatherspoon Art Museum

Please join us for a special artist talk by Leah Sobsey on the release of her latest publication, “Collections: Birds, Bones and Butterflies” (Daylight Books, 2016), a series of exquisite photographs of the collections of North America’s National Park Museums on the occasion of the centennial year of the National Park Service.

Leah Sobsey, Visiting Assistant Professor, UNCG, works at the intersection of nineteenth century photographic processes and twenty-first century digital technology. Inspired by Anna Atkins, the 19th-century botanist and photographer, Sobsey photographs bird skins, bleached bones, tattered shoes, and fragile butterflies that she unearths from the drawers of national park museum collections.

Sobsey started her work at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where she was granted permission to handle and photograph some of the 10,000 bird skins in its collection. In May 2008 she was awarded a residency at the Grand Canyon National Park where she had open access to their vast and diverse collection of birds, flora, fauna and artifacts. A reception immediately follows and books will be available for purchase. Free and open to the public.