KUDZU

I finally got around to finishing this roll of film. It took me about a year. I wanted to attempt double exposures that made places around Knoxville look like they were overtaken by the Kudzu. It just might be my favorite invasive... followed closely by honeysuckle. The base of the roll is kudzu from South Knoxville, and some more landmarks from across the river are on the second exposure. Here are some of the best attempts.

ADVERTISING

One of the things I've learned from my Dad is that digging through old newspapers and phone books for ads is a good way to find out what business was previously in an old building. As it turns out, yearbooks are great too.  Tennessee's yearbook, The Volunteer, was first published in 1897.  While it has little in the way of candid photographs that tell about student life, there are ads in the back. Most of the ads were for businesses on Gay Street, which was the main commercial area in Downtown Knoxville.

from 1910

 The student life sections showing street shots and students out in Knoxville didn't really start to appear in The Volunteer until the late 50s, but I did find some great early ads this weekend that tell what used to be on Cumberland Avenue. Ads were phased out of The Volunteer sometime in the mid 1960s.

The first few ads are from the 1929 yearbook. Before UT became such a large university, it shared a yearbook with the UT Medical College in Memphis. Therefore, some of the ads are for Memphis businesses, some are for the more popular stores on Gay Street, but a few were for buildings on The Strip.

From 1935:

From 1942:

From 1946:

From 1963:

From 1965:

Hope you enjoyed this smattering of what used to be on The Strip!

yee-haw

On Sunday, Yee-Haw Letterpress closed. The printshop had been operating in Knoxville for about 15 years. YeeHaw was hosting events and producing art on Gay Street long before the First Friday Downtown scene became a "thing."

I went to Yee-Haw shortly after I moved here two years ago to buy some decorations for my apartment. Deeply impoverished, I could only afford a few postcards. They are still hanging in my living room. This weekend, I went to get a larger print. I was able to snag the second to the last one of these. I like that it is woodcut and letterpress, gives a nod to my Memphis/barbecue upbringings, (because the two words are interchangeable...right?) and speaks of my undying love for pork products.

A few posts ago, I mentioned entering Knox Heritage's Architecture Tour photo contest. I never posted the actual images I submitted. This afternoon, I received an exciting email notifying me that one of my images was selected to be in the tour exhibition and included in the booklet of postcards. It happened to be a double exposure photograph of Yee-Haw's front window.

Yee-Haw, thanks for all that you did to make Downtown Knoxville a more culturally rich and artistically interesting place.