Let’s get to know the artist:
Cheryl Flory
1. Where are you from?
Lansing IL, now Thornton, by the quarry.
2. How did you begin your art journey?
Cell phones got me started. I would take pictures of people and places, constantly. I began takin photos of my garden, another hobby, and on my walks, especially in the forest preserve by me. I found I had a unique perspective and started using tools to enhance my photos. Facebook gave me an audience. My friends suggested I try to sell my photos. So I got a website for my pix, then recently I started having them printed professionally on canvas and have just started displaying them at art exhibits.
3. What inspires you?
My love for art and nature’s beauty and for the peace and quiet and solitude of working in my garden and taking long walks throughout my town and the surrounding forest preserve. That allows me to immerse myself in peace and beauty and relative silence. (I’m a tutor and surrounded by chattering children 8 hours a day.)
4. Does your piece always end up looking like the idea that inspired you?
There’ve been times I’ve held a camera high in the air or facing into direct sunlight and snapped several photos hoping to get a great shot. I also love letting my camera get a bee’s eye view of the often hidden intimate parts of a flower. The camera lets me take multiple pictures of the subject. Then when I’m home in my armchair, I go through and pick the ones I want and play with them to enhance the special quality I saw in them. I put them on FB and see what reception they get. Though it’s sometimes difficult to choose, eventually I’ll find the shot that most closely resembles the unique view I saw when I first noticed the subject.
5. Do you have a favorite music/artist/genre while working on a piece?
I don’t listen to a lot of music, but I appreciate all genres if it’s done well. I listen to music competitions on TV and have sung publicly in choirs, and duets and a few solos, ranging from Gospel, to classical, to hymns, to rock, to popular music of various genres. I often have music going through my head. 73 years of snatches of melodies and phrases. I mostly work outdoors so I’m vaguely aware of the sounds of my town and the forest preserve. There’s often trains idling on the track. The hum of the expressway. Stones rumbling through the chutes of the quarry. And birdsong and the scurrying and chittering of squirrels. I hate wearing headphones or earbuds, so my brain just creates its own mixes.
6. Most artists are creative in many ways, what is your favorite?
I play piano. I’ve sung in choirs, church and community. My husband - a guitarist - and I did open mics for a while. As a teacher for many years, I had had many opportunities to be “creative” with my students. I’m a good writer and have done PR writing as well as meditations to accompany some of my pictures
7. Do you have a favorite piece of your work and why?
Well, today I have a favorite because it recently took 2nd place in the first AGOFVALPO exhibit. It was a photo of mushrooms. I frequently shoot flowers, but when I see unusual or striking arrangements of any subject in nature, I’ll take pictures to try to capture it. It was “different,” outside the box. I also try to capture the variety of tree shapes, dead and alive, that you find in the woods often juxtaposed against the Thorn creek or arising from wetlands or mist or transformed by frost or snow or the light of a sunset.
8. Does your art help with other areas of your life?
It helps me find peace. It’s my meditation time. My mind free floats while I weed or walk. Then, I see something that puts my mind in hyper focus. Creating beauty out of that moment is a God thing. Teaching struggling kids all week requires intense concentration at times. Going out with friends can be overwhelmingly noisy. I am probably most myself alone in Nature. That’s where I recreate and recuperate and recharge.
9. How do you define success as an artist?
When people can see and feel what I saw and felt, we are experiencing, enhancing, and sharing a mystical or “holy” moment, and I feel joy and humility. That connection and oneness that occurs is, for me, a holy moment. To have had a part in that is exhilarating and humbling.
10. How can people who are interested in your work contact you?
