W&L’s Bowden Presents Art Exhibit Professor Christa Bowden presents her newest collaborative art show at Augusta University titled “Cumberland Island: Land, Water, Wind, and Light."

By Erica Turman
August 17, 2021

Christa Bowden, professor of art at Washington and Lee University, will give a public artist talk for her collaborative art show on Aug. 19 at 5 p.m. at Augusta University in Georgia.

The show is titled “Cumberland Island: Land, Water, Wind, and Light” and features work by Bowden; Emily Gomez, professor of photography at Georgia College; and Ernesto Gomez, lecturer of art at Georgia College. The multimedia exhibit offers fine art photography along with wind drawings and sound installations.

The exhibit, which is free and open to the public to visit, will be on display Aug. 11-Oct. 1, 2021 in the Mary S. Byrd Gallery of Art at Augusta University.

This collaborative project began in 2016 during the celebration of the National Park Service centennial to document the unique biome and history of Cumberland Island, Georgia. With this project, the artists hope to expand the existing documentation of Cumberland Island to increase awareness of its significance and fragility and provide a record for future generations, should the island be lost or irrevocably altered due to climate change or other threats.

Through their photographs, wind drawings and sound collages, the artists record the diversity of the island’s ecosystem with their on-going project.

Bowden earned her master’s degree in photography from the University of Georgia and a bachelor’s degree in photography and film from Tulane University. She has worked at W&L since 2006. She has received a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and has been a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow and a nominee for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country in both solo and group shows, including at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Center for Photography at Woodstock in New York and the Peninsula Museum of Art in California, among others.

Bowden’s work has been included in numerous photography blogs and artist indices, including Lenscratch, Plates to Pixels, Light Leaked, Don’t Take Pictures and Art Photo Index, and it has been highlighted as an Editor’s Pick by LensCulture Contemporary Photography. Her work also appears in the recently published “Rich Community: An Anthology of Appalachian Photographers and Exploring Color Photography by Robert Hirsch.”

For more information about Bowden’s show and the Mary S. Byrd Gallery,  visit www.augusta.edu/pamplin/art/gallery.

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