Jacksonville State University 
Art Department Head, 
Bryce Lafferty 

Allison McElroy, Professor of Painting at Jacksonville State University organized Naturphilia, the first artist residency sponsored by the Gadsden Museum of Art, the Little River Canyon Center, and JSU. Allison, through this residency, brings four international artists to North Alabama to share their unique perspectives. Like Allison’s art, the residency explores associations with nature-materials – items as elemental as sound, light, and the very ground beneath our feet. As North Alabama community members, the artists in this residency offer us the exciting gift of seeing our surroundings in a new way as we witness how they filter their experience of our region through their own artistic sensibilities. 

Allison McElroy Biography:
Artist Educator interested in using nature as an artistic medium that will
decompose and decay over time. We live in a world full of objects so I am somewhat burdened by creating more objects. We are born, we live, we die, we decay. Studying the process of natural materials is a replica of the human. Make, create, recycle, reuse, art that will compost itself and decay to help the environment when finished. Pigments are collected on hikes and made into oil paint and water color paint.
www.allisonmcelroy.com