Artists sometimes find their inspiration where they least expect it. For Ronnie Brookshire, inspiration hits in the form of As, Bs, Cs and all those other letters in the alphabet.
Brookshire, an Elizabethton native, held an art show for his Word Works series Wednesday at the Elizabethton/Carter County Chamber of Commerce.
With Word Works, Brookshire takes pictures of shapes or structures that resemble letters of the alphabet. These could be naturally occurring items like tree branches or flowers, architectural features or the actual letters featured on a structure.
Brookshire has been taking pictures of these sometimes hard-to-spot letters for the past four years. He said he was talked into starting the project by his brother-in-law, and it took off from there.
“He noticed a father and son on a talk show that did something similar, but they would only take pictures of letters that were formed in tree limbs,” Brookshire said. “I thought it would be something interesting to do.”
After deciding to start the project, letters started appearing to Brookshire in different places he went. He has pictures of letters from right here in Carter County and surrounding cities such as Johnson City and Jonesborough. He has some that he spotted in Nashville and others in Williamsburg, Va.
“What I really enjoy is finding letters in a historic place,” he said. “Some of the pictures I took in Williamsburg were from places that were 200 years old.”
These letters also include places of local significance. Brookeshire has featured the Bemberg smokestack, both for the letters on the smokestack and as a letter itself. The smokestack is featured as an “L” in the Word Works world.
He also captured an “A” in the supports of the Wilbur Dam, and an “R” in a water fountain at the Covered Bridge.
“That was one of the first ones I found,” Brookshire said.
It has taken Brookshire all of the four years he has been working on the project to find all of the letters of the alphabet. While some letters are easy to find, such as “O” and “S”, others play a little hard to get.
“An R is almost impossible to find,” Brookshire said. “They don’t naturally occur that often. Ks are not easy either.”
Brookshire’s next goal is to complete “Elizabethton” using pictures of letters only found in Elizabethton. So far, he has an E taken from the 50-yard line at Brown-Childress Stadium, an L using the Bemberg smokestack and an A from the dam supports at Wilbur Dam.
Word Works art can be created and ordered at www.wordworksart.com.
Brookshire also has a series of photographs of local landmarks that are available on prints or aluminum available at www.ronniebrookshirephotography.com.