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In 2016, during the national park system centennial, artists Christa Bowden, Emily
Gómez, and Ernesto Gómez began a multi-year collaborative project to document the
unique biome and history of Cumberland Island. With this project, they 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. The artists' photographs,
wind drawings, and sound collages record the diversity of the island's ecosystem.
Image Credit: Emily Gomez, Dungeness Ruins, 2019.
About the Artists
Christa Bowden was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1975. She earned her MFA in photography from the
University of Georgia and a B.A. in photography and film from Tulane University. She
is a Professor of Art at Washington & Lee University, where she started the photography
program in 2006. She has been the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship,
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 United States in both
solo and group shows, including at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), the
Ogden Museum of Southern Art t (New Orleans), the Center for Photography at Woodstock
(Woodstock, New York), and the Peninsula Museum of Art (Belmont, CA), among others.
Her 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 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. Currently, she lives
in Lexington, Virginia.
Emily Gomez is originally from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She earned her B.A. in Fine Arts with
a concentration in photography from Loyola University Chicago and her MFA with Distinction
from the University of Georgia. She is a professor of photography at Georgia College
in Milledgeville, Georgia. Her interests lie in finding awe-inspiring landscapes,
often while contemplating their complicated histories of human habitation. Among her
accomplishments are a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for a Distinguished Fellowship
at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, and published photographs
in the books Platinum and Palladium Photographs: Technical History, Connoisseurship,
and Preservation, as well as Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium
with the Contemporary Printing-Out Process by Pradip Malde with Mike Ware.
Ernesto Gomez is originally from Highland, Michigan. He earned his BFA from The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago and his MFA in sculpture from The University of Georgia, where
he graduated with distinction. Many of his sculptures utilize sound as the dominant
element, and he also works with traditional sculptural materials such as bronze, iron,
wood, and stone. His work is exhibited both in the United States and internationally.
As a musician, he has performed in many experimental and standard rock ensembles.
Ernesto was awarded the Friends of Cortona Scholarship to study stone carving and
bronze casting with the University of Georgia in Cortona, Italy. He was elected to
the Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges and is a recipient
of the International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary
Sculpture Award. In 2015/16, he served as an Academic Director for the Montepulciano,
Italy, study abroad consortium led by Kennesaw State University. Ernesto is a full-time
Lecturer of Art at Georgia College, and he lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, with his
wife Emily J. Gómez, a Professor of Photography.
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