21 Gallery

Conversation III: Connections in Place

Launch in external player | Audio/Visual Help

How would you direct someone to a place that is important to you?
How would you describe it to them?

How would you represent your favorite place visually?

Contribute a photo or digital image of your favorite landscape/place and we’ll put selected images up in our gallery throughout the summer. We’ll also display all contributed images on our website’s 20/21 Conversation page.

Submission Guidelines

Join the Conversation

Take Kansas Highway 4 out to the rim of the prairie or travel the high road along Skyline Drive to where the hills flow into each other and the wind constantly moves.
If the space feels different than it ever has before. If you see a hawk balanced on top of a high place. If you notice the grasses bending a certain direction. If you see a tree and wonder why it is there. If you stand alone in the prairie sea and hear the whisperings of tall grass. If you have a sense that none of it and all of it is yours. And if, in the early morning or late evening light, you are privileged to see purple in the hills—then you will have seen my prairie.

Rutledge, Carol Brunner, Dying and Living on the Kansas Prairie: A Diary, the University Press of Kansas, 1994, p. 213.

My favorite place in Lawrence is Martin Park. To get there you take Folks Road to what used to be a Christmas tree farm. Then you take a right. It’s not a very big park, but it’s completely wooded. Once you get in, you park your car. Cars can’t drive on the path. You can just walk through and you’re in the woods walking wherever you want. Since there’s hardly ever anyone else there, you really feel like you’re in a secret garden that’s untouched. People use the park sort of as a hideout space. I like that there’s a sense of solitude when you’re there, and that you can get there in three minutes: three minutes to solitude. Margaret Perkins-McGuinness / Lawrence, Kansas

I think about sustainability when I look at these landscapes. Are we affecting the land so much that we can't maintain the changes we make to it? Or, are we being realistic about our ability to acclimate to the needs of the land? In this photograph, I look at the dirt, gravel road and it's bend up and around the hill. We have cut a path, but we haven't paved it. There's a sense of collaboration here. Not domination.

I love the subtle Kansas landscape, but for a change of pace and air, my favorite place to escape are the high alpine lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. The fact that you have to put in quite a bit of hiking effort before reaching the lakes makes it extra rewarding. The more difficult the hike, the better the reward in fewer people, more wildlife, more pristine surroundings, more quiet. The air is amazing.

Its the kind of place that makes me wonder about the first human being who found it. How long ago? Sally Piller
2008-08-26

There are few places in the world more enchanting... more comforting... than your own backyard. Megan Bickford
2008-08-06

This is one of oil paintings of what I see from my window to the West. I'm delighted, entertained, and awed by the beauty, variety, and colors I see in the sky. It is a gift to live and see this outside world everyday.Kathy Bourgeois
2008-07-26

As I looked upon this collection, I was instantly connected to the artists by a sense of spirit, timelessness and freedom. The photo I selected to share gave me that same feeling when I browsed through my recent journey through Germany. There were many pictures that were so similar to the paintings, but I felt this shot conveyed the feelings of being lost in space and time--yet connecting with all those able to see, hear, smell, taste and feel in a tangible world. Our conection with Nature makes us human--our connection through spirit makes us sublime Bravo to the artistslisa lyons
2008-07-11

Driving across the country last week I reflected on the slow change in land formation as you move in any one direction. I think it's not the land alone that shapes our experience with it; it's also how we engage with the land - how we react to it.Anonymous
2008-07-02

Often we see the land from the windows of our automobiles, or through rear-view mirrors.

What are other ways we see and interact with the land around us?Bert Lyons
2008-06-11

These connections with specific places remind me of a hike to my favorite place in the canyons behind my childhood home. It was a hike I made when, at age 18, I knew I would soon be leaving home for good to attend college in another state. I sat for an hour and took in everything I could, imagining how the memory of this secret place near a small waterfall might sustain me later on. I think it has.Steve Goddard
2008-06-11

I haven't been in Lawrence long, and much of my time here has been characterized by these sorts of enthusiastic, informed recommendations: You've gotta see the view from this spot; You've gotta try this restaurant. I think that this sort of excited willingness to offer tips for ways in which best to experience this place speaks not only to the welcoming spirit of its people but also to the pride that they feel for this, their place.Emily Ryan
2008-06-11

Works evoke how the places feel. Stinging cold air. Sticky humid days. Soft cool breezes.Anonymous
2008-06-11

Moving to a new place, Lawrence, KS, in June of 2001, my husband and I chose to drive across the state of KANSAS, starting in the southwest corner. We saw the BEAUTIFUL ROLLING HILLS, GREEN LANDSCAPE and BLUE SKIES that continued on our journey across the state. We love the open space of KANSAS.Anonymous
2008-06-11

The concept of place in these works embodies what we often (unconsciously or consiously) consider an essential aspect of many artists' work. One of the first pieces of information we learn about any aritst is: where is she or he from? These particular works demand that question before we even look at the labels.Anonymous
2008-06-11

Growing up in Kansas and then leaving for a brief time and returning, you realize how the landscape is such a defining part of you -- the horizontal, wide spaces speak to you -- it's like exhaling.Anonymous
2008-06-11

What strikes me about this installation is how dramatcially different a landscape becomes when you see it in motion, as opposed to a still painting or drawing. There is an entirely different sense of place between the two.Anonymous
2008-06-11

The video (in the 2021 Gallery) reminds me of walking on a path along the river in North Lawrence. The smell, sound, and feel of that place always make me think of another favorite place, which is a path to the beach in Costa Rica. The fact that I always connect these places is somewhat of a mystery. Heat, light, birds, smell.Sue Ashline
2008-06-11

I always seem to come back to the familiar. coming back to Lawrence was so easy, the rolling hills and the big sky, the fields and the blowing trees, all familiar, always home. The film (in the 2021 Gallery) evokes these feelings and the connections would transport me no matter when or where I experience them.Anonymous
2008-06-11

In the 1950s my grandfather and his four brothers bought a small island on a river in Northern Ontario and built a cabin. Every summer he, his brothers, close friends, and later his children and grandchildren, would visit for a couple of weeks.

Two years ago my grandfather passed away after battling Alzheimer's for several years. During those years he may have forgotten his address, to change his clothes, or what year it was, but he never forgot the island. Last summer I took his great-grandson to the island for the first time. It was wonderful to see my son so quickly and whole-heartedly understand the magic and the hold this place has had on the past four generations of our family. I will always treasure not only the beauty of the location, but the memories I have of it.Anonymous
2008-06-11

Images must be in either JPEG (.jpg extension) or GIF (.gif extension)
Images can be no larger than 5 MB
Images should be at least 350 pixels in width, but preferrable 800 pixels. Larger images will be accepted, but they will be resized to fit the format of the website.
The Spencer Museum of Art reserves the right to not display an image if we deem it to be inappropriate
If you have trouble uploading your image with the above form, you may email your image, name, and comment to our webmaster