Here’s what’s happening Jan. 20-April 7, 2023: Guest juror Jamie Nichols selected 3 of my works out of 89 pieces entered for the first exhibition of 2023 in Arts Illiana Gallery at Terre Haute, Indiana.
Among the 58 works selected by Nichols for “Spaces & Places, Oh My . . .” is my City in Pane, a 14×20 giclee canvas, created during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in 2020 and pictured below at a 2021 Wabash Valley Art Guild Spring Show; and Wyoming Vista, a 12×20 landscape on high gloss metal with acrylic float, which received a 3rd Place in Sept. 2022 at Covered Bridge Art Association Gallery in Rockville, Indiana.
Also in “Spaces & Places” is my triptych on high gloss metal titled Approaching Fear Head-On, which illustrates Gephyrophobia, fear of crossing a bridge. It received a 3rd Place in an August 2022 juried exhibition hosted in Terre Haute by River City Art Association.
Excited to share that my artwork, “Approaching Fear Head-On,” received 3rd Place in the 14th Annual Juried Exhibition hosted Aug. 5 through 31 by River City Art Association in First Financial Bank in downtown Terre Haute, Indiana.
This piece also will be featured in the exhibition’s Winners Show throughout September in First Financial’s Springhill branch.
Each high gloss 8 by 10 image is printed on aluminum and float mounted as a triptych on brushed aluminum background.
Initially the lines of the bridge over the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, into Indiana, grabbed my attention for a future photography show, but then I did what I like to do best and that’s to turn one of my traditional photographs into photography-based abstract art.
After contorting the lines using a few photo editing techniques the road and bridge in the second image took on scary movement which then sparked the third image of the gloom and doom, fear and anxiety experienced by someone with the fear of crossing a bridge, and maybe intensified by the fear of heights and/or fear of water.
Myself, I’m OK with bridges, but I do not like heights or swimming in deep water (thalassophobia, defined on Wikipedia as the persistent fear of vast, deep, and often dark bodies of water that feel dangerous).
I looked up the phobia for the fear of crossing a bridge and up popped gephyrophobia, but as represented in my triptych, I preferred my title as a more courageous and positive outcome.
According to Wikipedia: Gephyrophobia is the anxiety disorder or specific phobia characterized by the fear of bridges and tunnels. As a result, sufferers of gephyrophobia may avoid routes that will take them over bridges, or if they are a passenger, will act very apprehensively when passing over a bridge. The term gephyrophobia comes from the Greek γέφυρα (gephura), meaning “bridge”, and φόβος (phobos), meaning “fear”.
Some possible manifestations of gephyrophobia may be fear of driving off the bridge, fear of a gust of wind blowing one off the bridge, or fear that the bridge will collapse when crossing it (e.g., fear that the bridge lacks structural integrity). The fear overlaps with acrophobia (the fear of heights) as gephyrophobia tends to be exacerbated in taller bridges as compared to those closer to the water or ground beneath.
Sheila T Illustrated© 
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