The Archival Photos Reimagined project emerged from a collaborative partnership between the Central Piedmont Archives and the Visual Arts Club. It encourages members of the Central Piedmont community to create works of art inspired by our photographs and publications collections.
We created this project to present the Central Piedmont Archives as a source of inspiration for creative expression, to help students practice drawing techniques and develop a deeper understanding of the elements and principles they've learned in class, to provide an opportunity for students to expand their professional portfolios, and to expose the community to primary sources, archival research, and the Archives Room in the Parr Center.
This project was inspired by a different collaboration between Erin Allsop, College Archivist, and ENG 125 (Creative Writing I) known as Archival Revival. As part of a class assignment, students select a photograph from our photographs and publications collections and develop a creative writing piece inspired by it. This motivated Johnamarie Macias, Librarian Archivist, to expand and create a similar project, but instead of students creating stories, they would use our visual sources to create a different form of art.
Special thanks to Erin Allsop, Amelia Zytka, James Spence, and the Visual Arts Club for helping to make this collaborative endeavor a reality.