Picture taking is just a hobby for Mary Alumbaugh, but for guests at the Coffee House, the photographs add a whimsical passage into the artist’s life.
Alumbaugh has always loved to take pictures. As a child, she participated in photography through 4-H. As a teacher for 20 years, she loved capturing her student’s personalities and their eyes in pictures which were displayed on her classroom door.
Then, about five years ago, a friend, who had an artist at her law firm in Champaign during the Boneyard Arts Festival, mentioned to Mary that she should put together a photography show the next year.
While Alumbaugh was in Florida for the winter, her friend sent her the Boneyard Arts Festival entry form and she put a portfolio together.
Although she was not aware there would be a potter at the same location that spring, Alumbaugh’s photography and the pottery complemented each other so well the two artists were able to work together to set up displays throughout the office.
When Alumbaugh’s husband, John and the Coffee House’s former owner, Mark Kesler got together at Rotary club, Kesler mentioned Mary could display her photography at the coffee shop. Since then, while Alumbaugh has time and is in town, she displays her work in frames and cards throughout the store.
Alumbaugh lives in the Villages in Florida during the summer months.
With a wide variety of subjects, Alumbaugh just takes pictures as she sees them throughout her daily life, then edits them in a simple editing program, such as Picassa.
“It’s really hard for me to go out on a shoot,” Alumbaugh said. “I see something, then go from there. It’s just whatever catches my eye.”
A small print of a blue lights in a vortex bounces off the coffee shop wall. The picture from High Trestle Trail in Des Moines Iowa shows the trail lit up at night to simulate what it would be like to be lowered into a coal mining shaft.
An enthusiastic bike rider, Alumbaugh has taken her camera on cycling tours through Nova Scotia, Colorado, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. There is a picture of a children’s bike in the coffee shop that reminded her of the bike her sons learned to ride on as children.
She also has pictures displayed from Urbana at Urbana Grand Prix.
This week Alumbaugh put up a picture of a tree in Arizona which she took out of her car window. She brought Daytona Beach to Mahomet in a picture of a runner along the ocean from the view of her hotel balcony. Alumbaugh also brings the extraordinary out in the ordinary in her display of colors in floral, antique cars and lanterns.
The colorful lanterns on the wall were also used as a newspaper promotional material in a Florida newspaper for a photography contest they hold every year. Alumbaugh has won honorable mention three years in a row in the contest with a bike racing picture in the sport category, a gas pump in the gadgets category and a floral picture in the nature category.
Alumbaugh uses an early digital Kodak camera with a high quality lens, a Cannon SLR and a Panasonic click-and-go camera.
While Alumbaugh is in Florida, she attends a few photography clubs at the Villages which allow her to display her art and work with others to share ideas.
Whether it’s a picture of her mother’s birdhouse or her son’s fence in his yard, Alumbaugh sees the beauty in the small things in life and brings all those characteristics into share at the Coffee House.
