Roussos blazes a trail with Tipton Gallery exhibit

ETSU Masters of Fine Arts candidate Meg Roussos seeks to bring part of the outside world indoors with her “BLAZE” exhibition at Tipton Gallery.

“It is geared around the idea of navigation,” Roussos said. “A blaze you find out on hiking trails or trails of various sorts and they indicate navigation. My work within this exhibition deals with various interventions in the landscape, how to experience the landscape and walking. The name of the exhibit kind of reflects those themes and ideas.”

The exhibit features a photograph book, pictures of land art and a video installation. The inspiration for this work came from Roussos’s hiking experiences after receiving her undergraduate degree.

“Prior to graduate school, I hiked the Triple Crown, which is over 7,500 miles,” Roussos said. “It is like the three longest trails: the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. That created these various cathartic experiences and deepened my bond with the land. This work is reflective experiences from that, but also thinking deeper into how we intervene with it in different ways.”

She expressed her “BLAZE” exhibit was a step out of her comfort zone at the start of the process.

“I never would have thought at the beginning of my masters I would pursue anything other than traditional photography,” Roussos said. “This is an exhibition that showcases a wide variety of series of works that I have done, and to bring it all into one space, I think will do something that I was not expecting.”

After putting in a year’s worth of work towards the exhibit, Roussos hopes visitors will see the exhibit and learn to treasure nature in their own way.

“I hope they gain an awareness of how their relationship to the land is complementary or different from mine,” Roussos said. “I hope they can see some connection of my interaction with the land but also gain an awareness of theirs as well.”

The exhibit will be on display until Oct. 11 at Tipton Gallery. A reception will be held Oct. 4 starting at 6 p.m. To learn more about Roussos’s work, visit megroussos.com/.