Laurie Usher’s Classic Reflections photography exhibit of classic yachts is on display at the Blue Café in Downingtown through the end of the year.
An artist’s reception will be held on Saturday, October 22, 2011, at 12:30 p.m. until 2:00 p.m. The Blue Café is located at 150 East Pennsylvania Avenue in the Mill Town Market. The reception is open and free to the public.
Usher is a 1974 graduate of Downingtown High School and worked for the Downingtown Archive and Daily Local News newspapers. She now teaches photography at Olympic College in Bremerton, WA, owns ENVIRO-ED, an environmental education firm, and coaches high school girls’ lacrosse.
The subject of the Classic Reflections exhibit is classic yachts. “As a kid, my family would go down the Chesapeake Bay with our little ski boat,” she said. “We loved watching the beautiful wooden Chris Crafts with their inboard motors churning up the waters. We’d water ski in the muddy, seaweed filled Chesapeake in Dad’s 16-foot, Barbour wooden speedboat. Our boat didn’t have much horsepower, a Mercury 55, so we’d jump out and tread water while one of us got up on skis.
“Our boat was better for the slow speeds of trolling for shad and fishin’ for flounder with Grandad. Dad would scrape the barnacles off the boat every spring, then lovingly shellac the wood so our family could experience the ‘boating life.’ I’d watch old 1930’s movies of Great Uncle George & Aunt Dot Gensemer’s Garwood and Chris Craft yachts at Northeast,Maryland, and Florida, where Dad developed his inspiration for classic yachts.”
Usher’s work has been published in WomenSports magazine and textbooks. As a photojournalist, she was photo editor for the Outer Banks Current newspaper in North Carolina and a staffer for the Daily Collegian at Penn State.
To see Usher’s work, go to www.laurieusher.com.
