Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           SLU 10880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           985/549-2341/fax 985-549-2061
    Date: 3/7/02
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple 5

Editors: Photo accompanies release   Please note local interest
SLU PROFESSOR'S PHOTOS, PAINTINGS CELEBRATE TICKFAW STATE PARK
     HAMMOND -- Pink-hued lichen on a tree trunk, a small splash of orange from the
leaves of a red maple. Such touches of beauty have attracted the artistic eye of Gail Hood at the
Tickfaw State Park.
     For two years, the Southeastern Louisiana University art professor has been walking the
Livingston Parish state park's walks and strolling the banks of the Tickfaw River, cameras in
hand, to capture the landscape on canvas and film.
     An exhibit of her photographs and paintings of Tickfaw State Park will be on display
March 12-April 12 on the second floor of the university's Sims Memorial Library. The exhibit
opens March 12 with a reception from 4-6 p.m.
     Hood, a Covington resident and veteran visual arts faculty member, has combined
photography and painting in her art projects for years. Instead of setting up canvas and easel on
site, she takes pictures of the landscapes she wants to paint, using a 35 mm camera to take
multiple pictures of a scene, then assembling the prints into a panorama.
     She used the same method to create the works in her 1991 exhibit of landscapes from
Pine Island, a small dense swamp near Madisonville and the Tchefuncte River. Three years later,
she took her cameras back out to the swamp when she and colleague Barbara Tardo did a series
of paintings and photographs of the Manchac Swamp, as seen from the "Swamp Walk," located
off U.S. Hwy. 51, south of Ponchatoula. The 
     "I started photography because I couldn't schedule time to work out in the landscape,"
Hood explained when she was working on her Swamp Walk series. "When I started painting 
                             (MORE)
GAIL HOOD -- Add One
from photographs, I discovered that I could get a fairly good sense of space by using 
series of photographs stuck together. So I painted long, thin paintings that referenced those
photographs. It appealed to me, so I'm still doing it."
     Hood admits that the landscape that captured her imagination for years is the Tchefuncte
River, the subject of the majority of her work. However, the new Tickfaw State Park peaked her
artistic curiosity. She has been traveling to the site with her cameras since spring 2000.
     "There is so much to see," Hood said of the park, which encompasses both swampland
and forests. While she has taken pictures from the boardwalks, she has loved tramping along the
Tickfaw River's banks, looking for a vista to fit her artistic fancy. The park staff, she said, has
been "extremely helpful" and has taken an active interest in her project. Wildlife educator Brad
Lavigne, a 1999 Southeastern graduate, is one of her former students. 
     Although Hood doesn't tote her painting supplies to the park, she does carry an armful of
equipment on her artistic hikes. In addition to the 35 mm camera, she also hauls along a Crown
Graphic, a vintage large format camera. Once the workhorse of newsrooms, the antique was
given to her a decade ago by Bogalusa photographer Don White. Nine prints from the Crown
Graphic's 4-by-5-inch negatives are in the exhibit.
     While she knows the old camera is a dinosaur, Hood enjoys using the Crown Graphic. "I
set up something I think I'm going to like....and I never know whether it's going to be good or
not," she said laughing. "I just think with all the digital technology in photography today,
somebody needs to still be doing it this way."
     For additional information about the Tickfaw State Park exhibit, contact Hood or Clark
Hall Gallery director Don Marshall at 985-549-2193.
                             -SLU-
Press release available online at www.selu.edu/news/spring02.html