Meet the Artists: Only Strangers Use the Front Door

Only Strangers Use the Front Door: Works by Angela Singer with Ashley Maynor is a photo and video installation. This exhibit is viewable only during the artist reception on Monday, February 4th at 6pm. The exhibit will take place in the H. L. Lawon Warehouse, a brick building located on the 700 block of Campbell Ave. SE, just past the railroad tracks.

Meet the Artists behind this exhibit:

ANGELA SINGER: Angela Singer has lived her entire life between two towns: Joelton, Tennessee (pop. 7,000), a rural suburb outside Nashville and neighboring Ashland City (pop. 3,000).

She grew up on a family farm with nine siblings and soon after marrying in the 1960s, gave birth to the first of her own nine children.

Though Angela has spent the majority of her days as a homemaker, she took to image-making early on and filmed 8mm and Super-8 home movies of her daily experiences in the 1960s and 70s.

During these early years, Angie shifted to photography and began snapping pictures of everything around her: old barns, sunsets, piles of folded laundry, her kitchen sink. Some of these photos have been entered into the annual Cheatham County Fair and have won her a steady stream of blue and red ribbons (not to mention a reputation in her community as “shutterbug” and “the camera lady”). Her camera never leaves her side -- not even when she goes to the mailbox.

While Angie started out taking one or two rolls of film each week, her habit grew steadily over the years. In 1990, she began working outside the home to support the costs of processing her photos at Wal-Mart. By then, she was taking at least a dozen photos a day every day. After switching to digital cameras in 2004, her picture-taking has grown exponentially. She now takes anywhere from 30 to 500 photos in a given 24-hour period.

At age 66, Angie is a great-grandmother, retired from her job at the Nashville Zoo, and her collection now totals well over 150,000 photographs. This collection, spanning four decades, chronicles the details of her daily life, family and church gatherings over the years, and the changing landscapes and ways of life within the 20-mile radius Angie calls home.

ASHLEY MAYNOR: Ashley Maynor was born and raised in Joelton, Tennessee, and is the granddaughter of Angela Singer.

Ashley received her BA in French Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2004. In December of 2005, she began the process of preserving her grandmother’s home movie collection, which soon grew into a documentary film about her extraordinary grandmother. She is currently completing her MFA from Temple University's Film and Media Arts program.

Ashley has taught a variety of filmmaking classes and workshops and has served as writer/director, producer, and production designer on a host of short films. Her interests as a filmmaker and new media artist range from regional filmmaking to essay-films and home movies.

Ashley currently resides in Roanoke, Virginia, where she serves as Oral History Archivist for the Roanoke Public Libraries and teaches video as part of the Art Council of the Blue Ridge’s Artists in the Schools Program.