February 11 – April 29, 2018
Lily Brooks. Tornado Siren, Eskridge, 2016
Closing Reception
Sunday April 29
12-5 pm
Refreshments | Free Admission
The photographs featured in SIREN CALL function as evidence of the ways in which we comprehend, negotiate, and mediate our relationship to daily weather and our changing climate.
A study of tornado sirens was made during repeated visits to Wabaunsee County and central Kansas in 2016 and 2017. Each town – no matter how sparse the population – has its own beacon of defense, a quiet visual reminder of the threat of extreme weather to the inhabitants of the plains. The siren photographs will be exhibited alongside photographs from Brooks’ long-term project We Have to Count the Clouds, which presents the visual remnants of weather and climate found in archives and meteorological observatories.
Lily Brooks earned a BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art + Design and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin.
Brooks is a full-time Instructor of Photography at Southeastern Louisiana University and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She was an artist-in-residence at The Volland Store in the summer of 2017.
The Volland Store will explore “Weather” from the perspective of artists, poets, writers and scientists, throughout the duration of the exhibit.
All events will be held at The Volland Store
March 10 “Telling Water’s Story: Art, Science, and Narrative”
Cynthia Barnett, author of Rain and Jeff Davidson, Watershed Specialist, Kansas State University
April 8 “Kansas Weather in Life, Literature, and Photography”
Caryn Miriam-Goldberg, former Poet Laureate of Kansas | co-sponsored by the Kansas Humanities Council
April 15 “Climate Change: Testing the Resilience of Flint Hills Prairies”
Chuck Rice, Distinguished University Professor, Mary L. Vanier University Professorship,
Kansas State University
April 22 | Earth Day “The new science of weather: how the way we treat the land has an impact on the kind of weather we experience.”
Judith Schwartz, author of Cows Save the Planet and Water is Everywhere; and Walter Jehne, Soil Microbiologist and founder of Healthy Soils Australia
24098 Volland Road, eight miles southwest of Alma, Kansas.
Open Saturdays and Sundays 12-5 pm and by appointment 785-499-3616.