COMMUNITY ART CURRENT EXHIBIT

Mary Ellen Stevens

Mary Ellen was given her first camera, a small box camera, for Christmas when she was fourteen years old, and she’s been hooked on photography ever since. The first of several photography awards in her life was for a photo taken with that same camera many years later. She has also won awards for her photography in Japan and here in Tennessee.

 

Mary Ellen was born in Nashville, but moved with her family to a farm near Shackle Island when she was two years old. There her family primarily produced apples and peaches, and she learned to love the great outdoors, land and animals. She rode her pony Grasshopper to school through the fourth grade, since there was no school bus. In 1935 her father, a WWI U.S. Navy Veteran, contracted tuberculosis, and was instructed to move the family to Tucson, Arizona. He died the following year, just before Mary Ellen’s twelfth birthday. Her mother elected to stay there with her three young children. Mary Ellen, the eldest, helped her mother in caring for her younger brothers while she finished school. She attributes much of her success with photography to the art classes that she took in high school. That is where she learned about composition and the effect of light.

 

She married her high school sweetheart in October of 1945 after World War II ended in August of that year. Less than a year later, they moved to her beloved Tennessee, started a family, and prepared to build a house near Franklin and stay here forevermore - but, the vagaries of life interfered. Her husband Dick was in the Air Force Reserves, and was called back to active duty when the Korean War started. He was sent to Japan, and Mary Ellen had to physically build the house by herself from drawn-to-scale plans that she had drawn herself. It had only been finished a short time when she and the children were able to join Dick in Japan, and thus had to leave their new home.

 

While in Japan, she did volunteer teaching at the American Cultural Center. She taught English to Japanese teachers, many of whom had never conversed with Americans before. She developed a number of friendships that lasted for over 40 decades. While in Japan she received another photography award. Dick was then stationed in Maine, where Mary Ellen was begged to take up judo, and became part of the 8th Air Force Women’s Judo Team. In 1961 she gave birth to the last of her four children, and the next year was First Runner-up in the Mrs. Maine contest. Finally, Mary Ellen and the children returned to Franklin in 1965 when Dick was on a tour of duty in Alaska. He rejoined the family the next year.

 

Mary Ellen’s mother moved in with them in 1982 following some health issues, and the following year Dick passed away. She has been running the farm in Leipers Fork alone since then. This full-time farmer, part-time actress, and part-time photographer is indeed a full-time participant in life. She is able to go to the “wild and wooly” parts of the world thanks to money left to her by her mother that was specified to be used for traveling. The photos in this exhibit have mostly been taken since the time of her mother’s death.

 

For purchase information call (615) 794-5269, or email her at windsongfarmtn@hotmail.com.