Colleen Anderson

Colleen Anderson is a writer, songwriter, and graphic designer in Charleston, West Virginia. Her writing has appeared in Redbook, Arts & Letters, The Sun, Carolina Quarterly, Antietam Review, Kestrel, and many other publications. Her songs have been featured on Mountain Stage and The Folk Sampler, and she has produced three collections of original songs: Fabulous Realities, Going Over Home, and Trail through the Trees. She is the author of a children’s chapter book, Missing: Mrs. Cornblossom, and a poetry chapbook, Bound Stone. For more information about these and her other passion, origami, visit her website: colleenanderson.com.

Thoughts from the artist:

“I am not a trained photographer—far from it. These photos were taken with a little Canon PowerShot camera that is smaller than a deck of playing cards and probably less powerful than most mobile phones. But I am an avid observer, and I’m especially attracted to textures and colors. I have taken many, many pictures of rusted surfaces, reflections on water, leaves, flaking paint, sewer grates, the interiors of flowers, twisted vines, dead trees, and lichen on stones.

I am pleased when I can capture an ordinary subject from an unusual point of view—the underside of the Queen Anne’s Lace bloom, the ghost-image of wet leaves from beneath an umbrella, the reflection of a tree in a puddle with floating leaves. Sometimes a “mistake” creates a feeling. One of these images was snapped from the back seat of a moving car as I traveled through Ohio in autumn. I think the blurred landscape evokes a wistful emotion about time and loss.”

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“Photography, for me, is a form of pure play. There are very few rules. When I’m working as a graphic designer, or when I’m writing a song or a poem, I tend to be aware of conventions and strictures, and to create with more focus on a purpose: the brochure should include readable text, the song should have a chorus. With a photograph, I ask only, do I like this?”

— Collen Anderson