'Southward': Susan Bryant returns to APSU with Mann Wall of Legacy exhibition
By: Dr. Andrea Spofford September 1, 2026
Professor Emeritus Susan Bryant, who retired from APSU in 2019 after teaching photography for 37 years. | Contributed photo
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Austin Peay State University’s Department of Art + Design, with support from the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is hosting Professor Emeritus Susan Bryant for an exhibition on the Mann Wall of Legacy, located on the second floor of the Art + Design Building. The exhibition is free and open to the public during normal university business hours.
Selections from Bryant’s photography collection, Southward, will be on display during the Fall 2026 semester.
“Large Oak, Clarksville, Tennessee,” one of the works from Susan Bryant’s Southward collection. The photo was taken in 2017, and this archival pigment print was made from a scan of a collodion tintype. | Contributed photo
“I am interested in how nature can act as a metaphor for human emotion,” Bryant said. “I am amazed by how quickly nature can change from comforting to threatening, and that each of these conditions is imbued with beauty, power, mystery, serenity, grace, and allegory. My aim is to capture the timeless essence of a place through close observation of light and dark, space and atmosphere, stillness and silence.”
The Mann Wall of Legacy is made possible by a generous gift from Jim & Dottie Mann. Notable past exhibitions include work by Olen Bryant, Jim Diehr, and Kell Black.
Susan Bryant’s work on display at the Mann Wall of Legacy, located in APSU’s Art + Design Building. | Photo by Jaroslava Prihodova
About the Artist
Susan Bryant received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Indiana University and her Master of Fine Arts in photography from Indiana State University. She retired from Austin Peay State University in 2019 after teaching photography for 37 years. Bryant's process includes gelatin silver prints, hand-colored silver prints, digital photographs, and most recently the 19th-century processes of daguerreotypes, tintypes, and wet-plate collodion negatives and positives (ambrotypes).
Her work has been widely exhibited across the United States in solo and juried exhibitions. In addition to other honors and awards, Bryant is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship.
You can learn more about Bryant’s photography by visiting her website at https://susanbryantphoto.com/.
For more information, contact The New Gallery Director Jaroslava Prihodova at prihodovaj@apsu.edu. To learn about future CECA events, visit https://www.apsu.edu/art-design/visiting-artist/.
About the Department of Art + Design
Established in 1927, the Department of Art + Design is one of the original departments at Austin Peay State University. Accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the department offers studies in animation, art education, art history, ceramics, drawing, digital media, graphic design, illustration, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. The department is housed in the College of Arts and Letters and consists of 19 full-time faculty for approximately 350 students. Three on-campus galleries also support the art and design programs. In 2017, the department moved into a state-of-the-art building. The Department of Art + Design also houses the Goldsmith Press and Rare Type Collection, a remarkable collection of antique and vintage wooden letterforms. To learn more about the department, contact Scott Raymond, department chair, at raymonds@apsu.edu.
About the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts
Since 1985, the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts (CECA, or "seek-ah") has been providing students, the Clarksville community, and the Middle Tennessee region with engaging experiences through the Art + Design, Creative Writing, Music, and Theatre & Dance programs at APSU. CECA brings as many as 85 guest artists to Clarksville each year and presents up to 100 public arts and culture events annually, including concerts, exhibitions, artist lectures, master classes, artist residencies, and more. In addition, CECA provides the arts faculty at APSU with research opportunities to enhance their professional growth as well as numerous student scholarships each year to support APSU's own emerging artists. To learn more about the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at APSU, contact Dr. Andrea Spofford at spofforda@apsu.edu.