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Send It: Roanoke Photographer Creates USPS-Inspired Fashion Shoot

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Maggie Ellmore’s latest photo shoot was inspired by the United States Postal Service and recent efforts to defund it, as well as the ongoing lack of funding for community-oriented public spaces in her hometown of Roanoke.

What similar roles do fashion and the postal service play in public service? And what are the implications of the defunding of the postal service? Maggie Ellmore, a fashion photographer and set designer based out of Roanoke, set out to answer these questions in her newest photoshoot, “All I Do is Fucking Send It.”

The photoshoot features a model, Taia White, dressed in black shorts and a striped shirt with a U.S mail patch attached, posing in an abandoned skate park. The shoot was done all in one day, after Ellmore reached out to White, a good friend of hers.

“Both the USPS and fashion are connected by grand notions that are larger than life,” Ellmore said. “The postal service, of course, [is] is a lot more rooted in reality, where if the larger than life really shrunk, it would negatively impact a lot of people. I decided that the best way to show that was with some pretty fly style, so to speak.”

Many of Ellmore’s projects are based in fantasy, as she often explores the idea of what life would be like on other planets and how that would then mix with fashion. Therefore, she wanted the shoot to have a unique look that went beyond the traditional USPS outfit.

“[When planning the shoot] I thrifted clothes and ironed patches on, and made [the outfit] really quirky and flow together in a way that is pretty cool,” she said.

While the shoot is inspired primarily by the defunding of the US Postal Service, Ellmore also wanted to show the importance of government and public service on all levels, which is why she based the shoot in a skate park.

“Roanoke will not fund any sort of skate park, which is really chaotic for a town of our size, because we do have a skate community,” Ellmore said. “And so we’re left with having to create our own spots that aren’t necessarily safe, but still do look cool.”

The shoot critiques the lack of funding while praising the community effort.

“I just wanted to show the importance of [the lack of funding] in  a way that critiques it, but also embraces what we’re dealt with,” she said.

Ellmore also sought to call attention to other governmental issues. One shot of White features her with an open fanny pack with stamps flying out.

“I really wanted to raise awareness for [the USPS], as well as voting,” Ellmore said.

Ellmore’s favorite shots are the detailed ones, where she was able to highlight both the story and the fashion.

“There’s one [shot] where she’s sitting in a split across the railing of a skate ramp, and I love it because the ramps are made from road signs,” Ellmore said. “It just really adds another message of why public service is so important.”

Ellmore thinks work like this is important because of art’s ability to commentate on society without words. With that in mind, she is brainstorming ideas for future projects.

“I’m excited to see if there is anything else that I can connect together to amplify my voice in a positive way,” she said.

Photos courtesy Maggie Ellmore

Bedazzled Jockstraps and Iridescent Auras

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Diversity Richmond’s Iridian Gallery presents its first show since the pandemic, featuring Everett Hoffman and Nick Simko, two artists whose work redefine the ways queerness is represented, using found objects and abstract imagery.

Lovers of shiny things and psychedelic imagery, you’re in luck. When Diversity Richmond reopened, so did the Iridian Gallery – just in time to present Everett Hoffman’s Dazzling and Tremendous and Nick Simko’s Queer Dimensionalities. 

In the past, the Iridian Gallery has shown multiple artists’ work as one show under an overarching theme. This two-show approach is meant to give more agency to the artists. At six feet apart, viewers can enjoy two separately spectacular shows (and search for hidden similarities, too).

One of the great things about art galleries, Iridian Co-Chair Michael-Birch Pierce will tell you, is there’s no right way to experience them. “There’s nothing specific anyone’s supposed to get out of any art show. I think that there’s a lot of power given to the viewer in art,” they said. 

With that in mind, know this: Hoffman and Simko, who both hail from rural America, make work that penetrates normative structures associated with queerness. Simko focuses on photography, Hoffman on craft. At the show, you can expect to find bedazzled steel jockstrap cups that light up from behind and manipulated cell phone photos that defy the laws of gravity and time itself. That’s a pretty good reason to get out of the house for a while.  

Image: “Little League,” Everett Hoffman

Everett Hoffman

Hoffman resides in Richmond, but grew up in conservative rural Idaho, where he played little league baseball and watched his grandmother quilt. These experiences would later influence his choice of materials and subject matter.

His artist statement reads, “My work reimagines the function of ornamentation and its relationship to the body. I approach new materials and found objects with the eye of a jeweler, highlighting and exploiting the subtle, and often invisible, links between material histories and their connection to identity.”

While it might help, you don’t have to know the history behind Hoffman’s work to feel its impact. His materials are familiar, like that old dusty chair in the corner of your grandma’s house, and certainly aren’t anything you’d expect to see re-imagined as a jockstrap. The masculine collides with the feminine, or on the contrary, the outside goes on the inside. Rough upholstery sitting against skin, symbolizing how our environment has an intimate role in shaping who we become. 

Image: “Rose Bud,” Everett Hoffman

Antiquing is a favorite pastime of Hoffman’s. He gravitates towards needlepoint while browsing, because, he explained, “Needlepoints are on everything from purses to chairs to wall dividers. And a lot of them have a narrative quality to them.”

If you look at the careful quality of Hoffman’s handiwork, it’s clear he has as much love for the original creation as he does for the new one he’s making out of it. “I’m interested in how I can enter into a dialogue with the person who made that needlepoint, or made that cross stitch, in creating something new.”

There’s something inherently tongue-in-cheek about Hoffman’s work. If you laugh, that’s okay. Whatever your reaction, he’s here for it. “For me, I think the work that interests me as an artist is the work that sticks with me afterwards,” he said, recalling a chair made out of woven belts by artist Hector Garcia. “Every time I see a woven belt I think of that chair that he made. And I kind of hope that my work does something similar.”

Image: Nick Simko

Nick Simko

Up until recently, Simko’s work has been mostly figurative, but when he started going for walks around his neighborhood in Kansas, that changed. To be honest, given the delightful variety of Simko’s work, it’s not surprising he’d explore a new direction.

“Queer Dimensionalities explores the possibilities of what it might look like if I took a chance to author myself in the terms of my own deeply personal vision,” reads his artist statement. It continues, “Departing from figurative representation, this project considers how queerness might be represented in textural, spatial, and atmospheric ways.”

Queerness is more complicated than most over-simplifying media representations make it out to be. “And so I was like, ‘How would I visually approximate that feeling?'” Simko said. “It’s a really complicated feeling!”

The answer didn’t come to him instantaneously. Instead, it snuck up on him in between projects, in the space he had dedicated to himself. Simko took thousands of cell phone images of grass, concrete, and his own shadow. When he started to manipulate the images in Photoshop, he was pleased to discover how they might be transformed. The process, he described, was more like working “with” the computer than telling it what to do.

“They’re not images of me, they’re images of my shadow. I’m there, but I’m not there, and I’m also an instrument in my own illegibility,” Simko said. After a brief detour on the illegibility of ancient Greek poetry, he concluded that the images weren’t exactly self-portraits.

Image: Nick Simko

Instead of presenting the viewer with an obvious subject, Simko’s images invite them to tumble through the rabbit hole of glittery, grassy gook. They’re more intangible essence than they are a thing, and I believe that’s the point. 

“Photographs, especially straight photographs, have the privilege of being something you look through, as opposed to looking at,” said Simko. “It’s more of a systematic way of looking that I’m pushing up against, as opposed to any one subject.”

——

For pandemic-related safety, Iridian is allowing five viewers into the gallery at a time and offers hand sanitizer to those who enter. Opening night last Friday was a minimal affair, without the wine and cheese, but judging by the gallery’s Instagram story, still very spirited. 

Pierce made sure of it. “It’s such an important part of being an artist, when you’re baring your soul out there with a new solo exhibition, that I couldn’t imagine depriving the artists of that opportunity,” they said.

Thirty percent of the proceeds from Everett Hoffman’s work will be donated to the Black School, an experimental art school teaching radical Black history.

You can stop by Wednesday through Sunday from 9am to 5pm until September 15. Do it!

Top Image: Left side by Nick Simko, right side, “Young Buck” by Everett Hoffman

The Faces of St. Mary’s Hospital

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A day in the life of an ER physician: unlike most of us, photographer Chris Johnson knows what goes on behind the scenes in the emergency room. Lately, it’s been a bit… quiet. 

Between the emergency room and his kids, ages 6 and 9, Chris Johnson doesn’t have a lot of free time. That’s what makes photography the perfect side hustle. As an Emergency Medicine Physician at St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, his shifts can last from 7am to 3pm, from 11pm to 7am, and even from 7am to 7pm. Usually, his spur-of-the-moment photography takes place outside of these hours, but when the pandemic hit, the hospital revealed itself to be a welcome, empty landscape. 

PHOTO: Chris Johnson Photography

“When all this started in March, we had a pretty big decline in overall patient volume that would come through the ER,” Johnson said. “I think a lot of that was because people were scared to come to the ER; they didn’t want to be around sick people. It was very interesting to walk around the hospital. It was just empty, and that’s not how it normally is.” 

Johnson, who studied theater lighting design during his undergrad years, saw potential in the hospital’s gadgets. 

“All of our rooms have an overhead light that you can move around, and it makes for some dramatic lighting,” he said. “I feel really silly about it, because I don’t think I’m a very vain person.” 

Johnson is a nice guy. He has a round, gentle voice. He is humble — excessively so — and genuine. He believes in what is right, and is annoyed when people don’t do the right thing. His portraits have an ominous, almost medieval darkness that paints mask-wearers in a new light. They are to be taken seriously. 

“It’s not a political issue. It’s a safety issue,” he said. “And it’s a safety issue for other people… you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for other people. So the fact that people don’t want to do that is very confusing to me.” 

PHOTO: Chris Johnson Photography

St. Mary’s is fully stocked with masks, but Johnson still hears about hospitals in the country that are facing shortages. “It’s July,” he said. “We’ve known about this since January, and it seems like someone — I don’t know who that someone is, whether that’s the federal government, state government, whoever — someone should have prioritized, ‘What are we going to do to make as many masks as possible?’” 

He continued, “The fact that we are, A: short on testing, and B: [testing] is not even standardized… it makes it hard to contain this thing when you can’t even accurately detect it. But now in [Virginia], we’re in Phase Three, and as people have become more comfortable, they’re starting to go back out. People have started to come to the ER more now.” 

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Johnson and his colleagues have worked around the clock to stay on top of the most relevant data surrounding treatment, diagnosis, and protocols for how to adequately care for patients (and each other). Their meetings happen virtually now, which has also been an adjustment. 

“I think initially there was a lot of anxiety, at least amongst the people that I work with, because people didn’t know what to expect. There’s so much unknown, because it’s not something that anyone’s ever dealt with before,” Johnson said. “Now we know more, and we are lucky to work in a health system that has adequate supplies and backs us up. Everyone works together as a team. The anxiety level is still there, but it’s less than it was when all this started up.” 

PHOTO: Chris Johnson Photography

The hospital staff featured in Johnson’s photos, smiling beneath their masks and protective equipment, don’t seem too frazzled. What’s more surprising is the sheer number of them. 

“If you’ve ever spent any time in a hospital or an emergency department, you would realize that a lot of people have to be there to make everything work,” Johnson said. “A lot of those people were not necessarily being recognized, so that’s what prompted me to post the pictures originally.” 

Johnson couldn’t photograph patients, of course, but he could photograph the people we rarely get to see: nurses and behind-the-scenes workers. He wants these people to be seen.

“I learned photography first, and having actually studied light was very helpful,” Johnson said. “Even though I didn’t study it in the context of photography, light is light. Lighting a scene is very important; in terms of the mood conveyed, or the overall feeling of the photo. You can’t necessarily alter that in nature, but you can use it to your advantage.” 

The photos were spontaneous, prompted only by a quick “Can I take your picture?” The staff happily obliged, likely because Johnson, recently-elected president of his medicine group, knows most of them by name. 

“In the ER, geographically, we are in the same space,” Johnson said. “We get to know each other really well. Certainly, we know the nurses we work with, the secretaries, the people who do environmental services, the people who register the patients — you’re around them all the time.”

PHOTO: Chris Johnson Photography

In addition to his COVID-19 series, Johnson frequents the Lee Monument, Black Lives Matter protests, and the James River at every time of day, from sunrise to sunset. Now that it’s summer, he goes all the time. Johnson isn’t a morning guy, he says, but some scenes are worth it.

“Right now, sunrise is about 6 in the morning,” Johnson said. “If you’re going to get up to watch the colors — which is typically about a half hour before the sun comes up — you’ve got to be up at 4:45 or 5 in the morning. Once you get there, there’s usually no one out, especially on the river. I spend a lot of time on the river; it’s very relaxing, it’s very peaceful. I joked that that’s my quiet time, my time that no one’s going to bother me. It’s worth getting up early to do that.”

Johnson continued, “We’re so lucky to have the James River here. There’s people who don’t know that there are so many points you can access the river from, and the extensive trail system. I’m just showing people, ‘Look at this amazing resource we have! Don’t take it for granted.’” 

Between the hustle and bustle of the ER, Johnson makes a point to find time for photography — and it’s not just for himself. He’s compelled to document everything from the James River to Richmond’s Black Lives Matter protests to ensure all have a chance to see them. 

“There’s a lot of things happening that other people, for whatever reason, can’t witness themselves or can’t be part of,” Johnson said. “I think that’s part of it… to actually see what’s happening is very important, and pictures can be a powerful medium for that.” 

Find more of Johnson’s photography during COVID-19 below, and galleries from Richmond and the James River at his website. 

PHOTO: A small chapel inside St. Mary’s Bon Secours hospital. 

Top Photo by Chris Johnson Photography

Car Photography Races Through Richmond

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At high-speed or on the street, Richmond photographer Wayne Hunter captures the unique aspects of each car in his lens. 

The sun begins to set on I-95, one of Richmond’s busiest highways. Colors of gold and amber cascade onto the pavement as a black Subaru contrasts the scene, carefully staying out of the way of cars making their way home. Photographer Wayne Hunter doesn’t have much time left, as his light slowly disappears. He leans out of a second Subaru adjacent to the photo’s subject car, hood scoop and minimal decals in frame, and snaps a rolling photo of the automobile in its natural environment. For this Richmond photographer, getting the perfect shot means catching the car at its best; wherever and however that may be.

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

As car enthusiasts fix up and modify their vehicles to perfection, often spending thousands to get it just right, photographers like Hunter bring in a new level of admiration by capturing each driver’s masterpiece. For Hunter, falling into the specialty of car photography came by accident. 

“We were taking pictures of all our cars,” Hunter said, “and [a friend] started teaching me a few things.” He decided to pick up a camera for himself, and started playing around with new ideas in photography. “I ended up picking up a camera from Best Buy a year or two later — just an entry-level Canon — which I still use a lot.” It sparked the beginning of a talent he carries into today’s car culture in Richmond.

Car photographers can learn and develop in the local environment, with a thriving community that dominates Richmond’s roads and parking lots. Within the ever-growing groups, photographers have ample opportunities to take stunning photos of many types of cars. But as the community increases in numbers every year, sometimes there’s only room for photographers with the right style of talent. 

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

“There has been a huge influx of photographers. Cameras have gotten cheaper, even brand new entry-level [models],” Hunter said. “Everybody’s trying to get into it; it’s been a very competitive market if you’re actually trying to make decent money from it. My thing is that you have to value the work, value the equipment — everything costs money. Everything takes a lot of time as well.” 

For most freelance photographers, the best-case scenario is making a somewhat decent wage while working unique schedules and hours. An increased public interest in car photography brings more eyes onto the work, and Hunter’s photo shoots have brought him attention at car events. After a few years of hard work and dedication, he’s been given the opportunity to be the official photographer for one of the East Coast’s largest car shows.

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

“The biggest [car show] I have coming up is Spring Fest,” Hunter said. “Before that, I show a local car show in Lynchburg for charity.” Although Spring Fest would have taken place in Ocean City, MD this year, it has been postponed due to Covid-19. 

Hunter noted that, as far as individuals interacting with photographers at car meet-ups, he’s seen a slight difference since quarantine began.

“I still have a couple of shoots coming up. I’ve only had one cancellation, but as far as the car meets, the work has been a little slow,” he said. 

Even as groups are banned from gathering and individuals stay home, Hunter is still finding ways to continue doing what he loves. As photography is already a socially-distant activity, he’s focused on many kinds of shoots, and he chases opportunities to get back out there. When it comes to the photos he loves to capture, there are a few aspects he looks for in makes and models of cars to capture his eye the most. 

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

“I enjoy the cars that have a lot of customization,” Hunter said. “I like to get a lot of the little details, and things like that. I prefer a lot of the [cars] you don’t see in the States, like [Nissan] Skylines.” With a variety of importers at work in the Richmond area, cars like these show up on local highways more often than you might expect.

Car photography is a niche subject. It’s often a difficult type to shoot, but for Hunter, the reactions from the people make it worthwhile. His favorite elements about working with drivers is to keep them involved even after their photo shoot is over. 

“I try to work with them as much as possible,” he said. “I try to have a one-week turnaround once I start editing, and I’ll keep them involved in the process.”

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

Knowing the tough nature of competitive photography in the area, many photographers are expanding their horizons, including Hunter. 

“I don’t want to be pigeonholed into just being a car photographer. I love doing portraits,” Hunter said. “That’s another aspect I’m trying to get into, doing some other creative stuff. Maybe even getting more into composites, or superimposing a subject or car from one photo and putting it onto a background from another location. It can sometimes be hard to stand out, so you don’t want to end up getting stuck with the only thing you can count on.” 

Although he started off shooting cars and modified vehicles after a day with friends in the past, he noted that being well-rounded as a photographer could be beneficial as he looks to expand his opportunities. 

PHOTO: Hunter‘s Eye Photography

“I want to continue to progress, and probably invest in some lenses. You have to learn that it increases the quality of your finished result,” Hunter said. “I would like to grow more with car photography, but I don’t want to just be a car photographer.”

Photography is not only important work for the car community to get the word out about events and meet-ups, but for the individuals that want to showcase their vehicles that took months of hard work and dedication to complete. As long as Richmond’s car community keeps growing, and as long as people are interested in modifying vehicles, niche photographers will always have something unique to bring to each driver.

To check out more of Hunter’s work, find him on Instagram and Facebook.

The Visual Narrations of Selah Marie

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Richmond portrait photographer Selah Marie started out as a model, but it was only when she got behind the camera that she truly found her calling in life.

You never know what you’ll fall into. Even if you have a clear goal for what you want to do, things can happen that lead you in a different direction entirely. For Richmond-based photographer Selah Marie, this was definitely the case. When she realized modeling might not be her calling, she tried stepping behind the camera instead and found that it came naturally for her. The results were enough to make her forget about her original goal of fashion modeling for good.

“I always had a camera, ever since I was younger, and I’ve always taken pictures. But I didn’t find it to be my passion until 2015,” she explains. “I guess when I used to watch America’s Next Top Model and stuff like that, I wanted to be a model. But when I got in front of someone else’s camera, that went… not how I expected it to go. After looking at the images of myself, I was like, ‘Oh no, I can’t do this.’”

Marie found that her lifelong dream wasn’t what she was meant to do with her life. But she soon found a new passion, seemingly by accident, only landing on photography after she began playing around with a camera and wanting to learn how to shoot.

“Let me just pick up a camera and figure it out,” she says, describing her thought process at the time. “And then I just reached out to some models, and I was just like… shooting.”

While photographing individuals from the area, portrait photography gradually became a primary focus for Marie. Photographing a single person and creating unique photos became a discipline she wanted to perfect. It’s not her only interest as a photographer — there are other areas she hopes to dive into, as she explained.

“Oh my God, fashion. That’s one of the things I’m trying to get into, as far as practicing,” says Marie. “However, my comfort zone is portraits.”

While portrait photography is a common specialty in the world of photography, Marie differs from others when it comes to the ways she composes her shots. Natural props like flowers have become a staple of her photography, and she loves the aesthetic of film, although mastering it was challenging to her at first, because she had to learn how to recreate that aesthetic through digital means.

“[The models] were like, ‘Oh my God, did you shoot with a film camera?’ But no, I don’t have one,” she says of her process. “I would use the grains to add texture, because I wasn’t that familiar with Photoshop. So I would just replace it with grain to make the image look like it has more texture in the skin.”

Learning the skills of photographic composition was challenging enough, but one of Marie’s biggest challenges came from learning how to use the equipment she was given. While cell phones have made photographers out of everyone, understanding the high-end Nikons and Canons that professionals use can prove to be difficult at first. 

“When I first started shooting in the daylight, the sun would be too much. So my images would be overly exposed,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is going on here?’ That was one of the hardest challenges for me, trying to shoot daylight. [For a while,] I was really stuck in the studio.”

Marie eventually mastered adapting to changing surroundings, and has since branched out of portrait photography, capturing graduation and wedding photos.

“I’m just now starting to let people know that I do more than what they see on my main page. I just started putting up the graduation photos and engagement photos, because I want people to know that I do everything,” she says. “I’m a creative photographer, but I can do your engagement shoot.”

While it was never her original goal, these days Marie hopes to build a future for herself in the world of photography, and she’s even thinking about moving into the world of video.

“I do see it being long term,” she says. “I can’t go full time [yet], but I do see that down the road. I also see me being behind the scenes of movies, sharing my ideas with directors and seeing the things I create inside the movie. That’s one of my other goals as well.”

Photography doesn’t come easy when you just happen to fall into it, but Marie has been lucky to do something with her work that is not only beneficial for the people she shoots, but for her as well. Marie knows that her photography not only helps those in front of her camera open up, but gives her the creative outlet to express herself as well.

“Everybody tells me the same thing: how I make them feel when they’re in front of my camera,” she says. “They will tell me that I make them feel more confident than ever in front of a camera, or even away from it. Like, I made them feel so beautiful. And then, when I show them the image, they’re like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe she made me look like this.’ Just to see the smile on my client’s face or a model’s face, their reaction lights up my world. That’s my favorite part — that’s what keeps me going.”

All photos by Selah Marie

Transcending the Familiar With Maggie Ellmore

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Photographer Maggie Ellmore’s arresting color schemes and fantastical imagery are both otherworldly in effect and deeply rooted in her local community.

Maggie Ellmore’s photos are some of the most colorful and impressive pieces of art I have ever seen. She draws inspiration from cinema, art history, and music to create beautiful sets and whimsical photographs that transport you to another world.

Her website describes her work as something that “makes you feel as if you’ve transcended into a new reality in between the familiar and the unconventional,” and I couldn’t have said it better myself.

After starting photography in middle school and maintaining it through high school, Ellmore decided she wanted to do it for a living and go to school for commercial photography. “The past few years, I have been going to school at Appalachian State University,” she said. “Last summer, I did an independent study for five weeks, where I did about 10 or 11 shoots working with a set that I modified.”

Ellmore hand-paints her own sets and does almost everything herself, to make sure the shoot is as cohesive as possible. She also uses common objects and similar items to accessorize the shoot. “From styling to wardrobe, makeup, the sets, the photography, the editing, I do it all,” she said. “I felt that it was important to do that in order to solidify a unique look.”

The sets can take a while to paint, but Ellmore said she can usually turn around a photo in a week or two. “Sometimes I can sit on an idea and wait to work on it for months or years in order to get the timing right,” she said. “But from idea to final photo, it’s usually a few weeks.”

Her unique aesthetic draws on inspiration from photographers David LaChappelle and Miles Aldridge, as well as David Bowie. “I think that music pushes the narrative,” Ellmore said. “They all inspired me to convey what I want in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Ellmore’s shoots really do make you feel as if you have entered another, more colorful, world. Her 2018 “Eyeris” shoot was a final project in one of her classes, and was shot in Roanoke, Virginia.

 “I reached out and went around to local businesses to shoot,” she said. “I also have friends who have houses that haven’t been touched since the 70s.” The clothes in that shoot were mostly thrifted, and Ellmore modified them to include the eye elements, she said.

As a local artist, Ellmore finds her work to be rewarding. “I work in such a unique niche that I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing people and businesses who want to actually work with me and trust my creativity,” she said.

She also tries to collaborate with other local artists because she “feels there is value in learning from other mediums,” and applies it to her work as much as she can.

Even quarantine can’t stop her from working and photographing. “Right now, I am working on a self-portrait series,” she said. “I have a six-foot by six-foot set in my garage, and I have been working on detailed production and slowing things down a little bit.”

Ellmore’s work can be found at her Instagram, Facebook or website. Check it out.

All photos by Maggie Ellmore