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Artwork from two LaGrange artists and friends is currently being displayed in an exhibit in New Jersey.

The exhibit titled Silver Linings An Exhibition of Photograms features the artwork of Ann Beason and Merri Lawrence who discovered a silver lining to the pandemic when they found inspiration in a 19th-century photography technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot.

Talbot invented a predecessor to modern photography where light-exposed images are created on paper treated with silver iodide. Talbot named the process calotype, from the Greek meaning “beautiful drawings.”

The process creates a negative image that can be converted into a positive and replicated. The process pioneered modern photography leading to the images now known as photograms. 

In 2020, Beason and Lawerence began experimenting with techniques similar to Talbot’s using silver-based paper and things from nature.

Lawrence said the items need to have some transparency to work with the process, so they started with plants.

“You can make shapes and do abstracts or whatever. We just happen to really like plants, because we’re both gardeners and plants work really well,” Lawrence said.

Beason, a LaGrange native, learned the process from John Lawrence, who was head of the LaGrange College art department at that time.

“He had his students out in the front of the modern art center on a day when I was in for a class, and I came out, and they were exposing material, their designs, to sunlight,” Beason said. “I just loved the way they looked and the whole process and I thought that would be fun to do.”

Beason said she asked John to teach her about the process. In the meantime, John married Merri, so he taught them both.

“He designed a dark room for us in a barn on my farm and we just started making them. It’s addictive,” Beason said.

Beason grew up in LaGrange but left in 1962 to live in New York. When her children grew older, she moved to the suburbs, about 40 minutes west of New York, to Summit, where the exhibit is displayed.

When Beason returned to LaGrange, she met Merri who was an artist showing her work and working at what was then the Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum, now the LaGrange Art Museum. Beason had known John for a long time and he and Merri began going out, so they became good friends. John and Merri ended up getting married on Beason’s farm.

It was John who encouraged Merri to work with Ann doing the calotype. She was reluctant at first but she began to love it.

“I took photography in college, and I hated being in the dark room. I just hated it, but it’s more fun now,” Merri said.

The two got started during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That’s where the idea of the Silver Linings came from, Beason said.

“This was our silver lining, plus the silver paper,” Beason said. “Having a project during COVID makes you very aware of everything, of what you’re looking at, all this plant material. You get to be just very focused. And that’s just been a wonderful experience. Things that you pass by, things you weed, and things you throw away, turned out to be good material for photographs. We really enjoyed the process too, because we both garden.”

“Ann likes to work with native plants and I like to work with weeds and noxious plants, poisonous ones and sand spurs, and things that you would overlook,” said Lawrence, noting she has photograms of poison ivy.

Beason and Lawrence’s exhibit, “Silver Linings,” opened in Summit on March 2 with a well-attended reception of art lovers and collectors. The photograms are available to collectors, and the exhibition continues through April 30, 2025.