7x7x7 Series: Emma Terry

Published on July 30, 2021. Emma Terry likes to say she was born into the arts. Her mother, Georgia Terry, was an amazing artist with a vibrant Carytown co-op gallery in Richmond, VA called But is it Art?, and her father, Tom Terry, is an extraordinary photographer and writer. Emma inherited her mother’s love for making things by hand (especially multimedia sculptures and graphic design) and from her father, a daily writing practice including a Diary of Dates: capturing the funny, the terrible and the absurd world of online dating.

Professionally, Emma holds a BA in Anthropology from William and Mary, but accidentally found herself working in finance for 7 years in Richmond after graduation. Seeking a career change, she took a year off to study Ethnography & Folklore at the University College Cork, Ireland where she learned the value of slow-living from a new pace and sheep. In 2010, she relocated to Charlottesville to become the Staff Assistant to the Vice Provost of the Arts in the Office of the Executive Vice President & Provost, an opportunity to support artists and creative work in her day job. 11 years of working in this office fulfills her dream to become a lifelong student, tasked with collaborating with progressive thinkers to facilitate open forums for discourse, exhibition, and performance.

Currently, she serves as the Programs & Communication Director for UVA Arts. Emma regularly attends First Fridays and arts events and serves on the boards of the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, WTJU 91.1FM, IX Art Park, and Empowered Players. One of her favorite side hustles is co-hosting CreativeMornings Charlottesville. Emma believes in overusing exclamation points and the power of creative community!!! Emma is our fourth featured 2021 artist in our fifth 7x7x7 Series, which asks 7 questions to 7 Charlottesville artists and is published once a week for 7 weeks.

If you had a free afternoon in Charlottesville, what would you do or where would you go?

I would walk from my apartment in Belmont towards the Downtown Mall, stopping at The Bridge’s Belmont Gallery to peek through the windows, and then heading over the bridge and down the Pavilion ramp – I enjoy walking the mall in its entirety. I would hope to run into friends as I walked to New City Arts’ Welcome Gallery (really, it is ALL ART, ALL THE TIME for me) to see whatever exhibition was up! I would then head to Mudhouse for some tea and writing time, adding stickers and drawings to my journal and planning for my next adventure! If there isn’t live music to head to, I would likely end with some tequila and ginger ale at Bebedero, outside if possible, and with the friends I collected along the way!

Describe your artistic work in 7 words.

Playful • Colorful • Crafty • Thoughtful • Sundry • Functional • DIY

Who or what inspires your current work?

I just love making – creating something new to share with my loved ones and strangers alike. I am currently inspired by a personal goal of sending a postcard every day and have been designing lots of them to send – some of photographs of rocks on rocks collected on pandemic excursions to the shore – some of my favorite sayings like You are the bee’s knees! debossed on metallic cardstock– some of cleverly designed inside jokes to my friends & family (Fork It, Let’s Get Takeout).

Consider one piece you’re working on right now. Give us a snippet of your routine—from start to finish, what goes into making it?

I am working on a landscape created from the found metal I have collected on my walks around Charlottesville. A couple of years ago, I found the most beautiful piece of metal on the road – an abstract mountain soaring into the sky with rusty trees swaying at the top – I knew immediately I wanted to highlight it and that it could be the anchor of a landscape. Since then, I have been picking up cool scrap and discarded metal I see on my walks – more than I will ever need for this landscape, but I want options. When I have a few free moments, I lay out all the pieces on my coffee table and rearrange them until I find something that works. With all the flattened bottle caps and washers (in varying degrees of corrosion), the landscape is looking like a far-away land with lots of beautiful moons!! But I haven’t settled on any one composition, so I end the exercise with a quick snap of my camera to document the newest round of exploration and store everything back away. As I keep collecting more, I am not sure it will ever be finished – perhaps I will add magnets to the back of each piece and be able to play with them endlessly…

What have you learned about yourself as a person through the experience of making art?

I have learned just how much I value curiosity and connection. Most of my making comes from being curious about whether I can create what I envision or make something I think my friends will enjoy. It might come from, “I can do that,” or “I can make that better,” or “would this even be possible?” As I am sure many makers are, I can be a bit self-conscious about putting my work out there, but I love creating for others, so I stretch myself! Connecting with folks through hand-made objects and designs made from love helps to alleviate that apprehension and makes me braver!

What would you like to see happen in Charlottesville to better support artists in our community?

There is so much I would like to happen!! Goodness, I love this community, and there is good work being done to support artists, but there can be more! First, I would like to see more affordable housing, studio space & collaborative makerspace, so artists can live and work here. Second, I would like to see the creation of an Arts Leadership position within the city & county government, to be a voice and catalyzing agent for the outstanding artists in our city! Perhaps this position could help allow for more collaboration and cohesion amongst the various arts and culture organizations in our community. Third, I would love to see an annual fund/endowment established for artists to apply for low threshold rolling grants to support their work, life, and ability to create! Finally, I would love to see a central arts calendar to be able to support each other through more events, workshops, dialogues, exhibitions, performances, and the like!

What is currently on your studio/work desk?

My journal, ALL THE STICKERS (filed by category in a card catalog), beautiful quotes, abstract pictures, desk-in-a-box for traveling, postcards, cards, envelopes, stamps, Sprocket printer, SO MUCH paper, clipboard, cardstock, small notebooks, blank moleskine sketch books, sticker paper, empty to-do lists, sticky notes, loads of pens, oodles of markers, erasers, colored pencils, water colors, four pair of scissors in differing sizes, paper cutter, corner punch, 3 differently sized circle punches, 1 inch button punch, hole punch, my Circut Maker, multiple cricut blades & tools (perforated blade, wavy blade, cutting blade, engraving blade, debossing tool, scoring wheel, double scoring wheel, foil transfer tool, scoring pen), masking tape, painter’s tape, roller tape, double-sided tape, scotch tape, hundreds of rolls of washi tape, washi chomper, spray glue, glue stick, gorilla glue, tape measurer, folding ruler, regular ruler, paint brushes, roller, stapler, needle nose pliers, craft blade, weeding tool, tweezers, rotary blade, extend-a-mirror, scraper, 50 Way to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life, The Antiquarian Sticker Book, Creative Journaling, A Book that Takes it Times, Paper Pattern Play, My Perfectly Imperfect Life, Lost in Translation, FLOW Book for Paper Lovers, For the Love of Paper Botanicals, For the Love of Paper Florals, World of Wonders, Find Your Adventure, OuiSi, Flow Magazines, Moon Calendar, The Scribble Diary, Onlooker (a zine I created documenting some of my favorite pages from 36 years of journaling)…

The opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the artist and do not necessarily represent the policies or positions of NCAI. These images feature work made by Emma, as well as other artists' work that is part of her personal collection.

This summer's series is presented by The Seven Society and features artists affiliated with the University of Virginia.

7x7x7 Series: Emma Terry

7x7x7 Series: Lisa Woolfork

7x7x7 Series: Federico Cuatlacuatl

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