THE FOCUS

Last month, artist Lynne Ghenov and contributor to The Focus, Ashley Layendecker, sat down together in Lynne’s South Knoxville home for a candid conversation about her work. Ashley Layendecker: I want to start with your discovery of this found paper. Can you describe how you came to find it and how it changed your process? Lynne Ghenov: I’ve always been interested in vintage books and old papers. I’ve also done some collage work in the past using older...

I direct the audience’s attention to the interaction of past and present voices that have been both for and against movements of social justice and equality by integrating their words with my photographs. This intermingling symbolizes the collision of knowledge, memory and controversy with personal experience. It is a reckoning of the elusive present with the enigmatic past (and vice versa). Natalie Eddings, Studio Visit, August 2018 Natalie Eddings, Studio Visit, August 2018 The world that we have created today allows me...

Amelia Briggs: So you maintain a studio here and at school? McLean Fahenstock: Right now I’m working a lot at Austin Peay because I’m doing a lot of building and a lot of stuff that’s too toxic to do in an environment like this, because this is the base floor of a three story building and there are other people in here that probably should be breathing what I’m working with. But when school starts, I will hav...