Vancouver’s Heather Parsons started to dabble with photography about seven years ago after her husband gave her photo-editing software as a gift.
She dreamed that some day one of her photos would hang in a gallery.
That dream came true last month when she submitted a photo of the Glastonbury Tor to 100th Monkey Studio in Portland. The gallery was seeking submissions with a pilgrimage theme for an exhibit that opens today.
The pilgrimage theme was particularly meaningful to 32-year-old Parsons. In 2006, she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive eye disease that eventually will leave her with extreme tunnel vision.
She took the photo of the Glastonbury Tor during a monthlong vacation through Europe that she and her husband decided to take before her eyesight degenerated to the point where she could no longer take in the sights.
Parsons said the visit to Glastonbury was particularly poignant. She was five months’ pregnant when she walked the steep hill to the historic tower. Making it to the top reminded her that she could accomplish anything if she put her mind to it.
Parsons takes that approach with her photography. Rather than letting her eye disease get in the way of her passion, she has used it as inspiration and a means to distinguish her work.
“It gives me different angles that other people might not see,” Parsons said.
Parsons will be attending the opening day artists reception for the exhibit from 6 to 9 p.m. at the gallery, which is at 110 S.E. 16th Ave., Portland.
Vancouver writer stays close to her roots
Vancouver poet, singer and songwriter Dorothy Wright’s life has taken twists and turns hard to anticipate. Wright was born in Zambia to Zimbabwean parents who met on the plantation where her grandfather worked. She said her father fled the farm at age 7 after his parents were killed by the owner. Wright’s father returned to avenge his parents, she said, but instead fell in love with the foreman’s daughter, Wright’s mother.
Wright has written a book based on her parents’ and grandparents’ story. “If Only … Is Just If Only” was released in September through the self-publishing company Xlibris. The story is true, she says, although some of the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.
Wright, a 50-year-old support specialist who works in human resources for the city of Vancouver, came to the United States in 1999. Since then she’s retained a strong connection to Zimbabwe. In 2005, she received a Women of Achievement award from the YWCA Clark County for providing 1,000 chickens to help feed families in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe.
Her current focus is funding a brick-making venture in the outskirts of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, that will provide people with a source of income. The brick molds and oven have been purchased, but money is needed to procure the materials required to make the bricks.
Wright hopes sales of her book will allow her to send more money to Zimbabwe, where most of her family still lives.
“If I can use this book to help people, to me, that is all I want to come out of it. Because there’s so much desperate need in Zimbabwe,” she said.
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