The Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts will hold an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m., Monday, June 9 at 527 N. Patterson Street. 

The center will feature the works of Clyde Butcher, “America the Beautiful,” Leslie Peebles, “Florida Impressions,” the second annual Glass and Ceramic Art Invitational and the 17th annual Valdosta People’s Choice Photo Contest. Admission is free and light refreshments will be served.

Butcher is an acclaimed photographer who has made it his mission to photograph and document wild and natural places across America for the last 50 years. He grew up in California and later relocated to Florida, finding peace and his life’s mission within the Everglades. 

His photographs reveal wild and natural places where few humans have ventured, with images capturing remarkable solitude and wonder. His oversized dramatic images are a valued artistic expression of what there is now, and what might be lost if people do not protect the environment. 

Butcher is an ambassador to the arts and the environment, a diplomat of the remaining wild places and an emissary to the hearts and minds of Americans to protect our country’s natural places.

Peebles is an ardent environmentalist and naturalist who connects her audience to the flora and fauna of the southern landscape. The south’s vanishing wilderness, from the Everglades to the Dismal Swamp, has become a big source of inspiration for Peebles’ work. 

Her primary medium is printmaking, woodcut and lino-cut relief print, letterpress and collagraph. Carved blocks, cast letters and sealed collages are inked and “impressed” into paper on an etching press or a letterpress machine. 

Nature serves as a living metaphor for the connectedness of all things — internal, external and universal. The atmospheric layering of the pieces evokes the multi-dimensional layering of people’s experience and understanding of reality.

The center also welcomes the second annual Glass and Ceramic Art Invitational and the always popular 17th annual Valdosta People’s Choice Photo Contest exhibit. Entries from the photo contest will be on display for public voting, which runs through July 11. For four weeks, the public can view the framed photos in the center’s Jerry Tillman Gallery and vote for their favorites. Overall winners will be announced at the awards reception held at the center from 5- 7 p.m., Monday, July 21. Cash prizes will be awarded.

Exhibits will remain open in the galleries for the public’s enjoyment through Wednesday, July 30. The People’s Choice Photo Contest exhibit will close July 21 after the awards reception. 

For more information, call 229-247-2787 or visit turnercenter.org. Patrons who need special assistance may contact the center to make those arrangements.