Turning literature into visual art at Reflections Gallery on Lee Highway

photo Kathryn Grier created an entire book illustrating the lyrics to "The Fox," a sinister but catchy folk song, with opulent, delicately cut paper collages. The exhibit displays all the illustrations including this one, where the Fox begins his fatal mission.
photo Victoria Minor's "Mine, Mine, Mine, A Place for My Stuff" is a slightly menacing sculpture that combines a black oven with a built-in cage containing a golden heart. A torn diary page is in the kindling box. The Literary Art exhibit required all artists to use an actual piece of a book or depict something in a book.
photo Fisher's "Paradise Lost" includes an origami moth folded from a page of John Milton's classic poem. A companion piece, "Paradise Regained," has origami butterflies, also made from the poem pages, flocking to a forest of white tree branches.

IF YOU GO* What: Literary Art exhibit* Where: Reflections Gallery, 6922 Lee Highway.* When: Friday-Oct. 23; opening night reception starts at 4 p.m. Friday.* Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.* Admission: Free.* Information: 423-892-3072.

Reflections Gallery's entryway has been transformed into a huge arch crafted from exploded books whose ripped pages seem frozen midair in a perfect arc.

Beyond that is the Literary Art exhibit, where local artists have created haunting, luminous works inspired by books. Some actually made sculpture by cutting and reshaping book covers and pages.

Studio director Summer Fisher's sculpture hangs from the ceiling, an open green book whose pages she shaped into endless raindrops that dangle down toward the floor in a torrent. Delicate leafy vines cut from other pages curl around the raindrops. It all vividly conveys life springing from a good story.

Sculptor Victoria Minor's darkly beautiful "Mine, Mine, Mine, A Place for My Stuff" resembles a small, black, wood stove containing a golden heart captured inside a cage. Tucked inside the space for kindling is a folded diary page.

"I love her work because her titles are as rich as stories," Fisher says, noting the sculpture reflect how quickly passion could ignite into menace and whether possessiveness is always enmeshed in true love.

A nearby table is heaped with gleaming scrapbooks whose covers are painted sapphire, emerald, amethyst and topaz. The books are intricately embellished with fake jewels, illustrations, poetry snippets and some contain mementos that document a make-believe life, work that combine a scrapbooker's emotional storytelling and craft with an artist's creative talent and imagination.

Owner Jan Rushing (Summer's granddad) says the gallery had some rough times during the last recession, but its frame shop provides the gallery with solid revenue. The hundreds of frames include some lavished with pink glitter, black wood frames painted with scarlet Harley flames by artist Tommy Payne. Local artist Mark Edwards made exquisite frames from wood reclaimed from old barns.

"Even our frames are works of art," he says.

Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.

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