I Love Your Stories- Conversations with Artists and Creatives with Hava Gurevich

In this episode, host Hava Gurevich talks with wildlife photographer, teacher, scientist, and software engineer Rosalind Phillips, who has spent her life “exploring the connections between art, science, and education.” Rosalind shares stories from growing up in Inwood in upper Manhattan near the Cloisters, attending a progressive school based on John Dewey’s laboratory school, and spending summers at a Quaker camp in Vermont, where her deep love of nature took root.

She recalls getting her first camera as a child from her amateur-photographer father, becoming a national leader in using computers in the classroom, and the hummingbird nest photograph that re-ignited her passion for photography in 1992. Rosalind talks about her project-based teaching, her move into software engineering after serious illness, three decades on the art fair circuit in Olympia and Seattle, her philosophy of intent in photography, and the belief that “every living creature…deserves the same respect that we give other human beings.” She also speaks candidly about navigating racism, building long-term relationships with collectors, and her current passions: astrophotography, abstract nature work, and her annual Juneteenth images.


Memorable Quotes (Verbatim from the Conversation)
“We’re souls. It feeds our hearts.”
“Everything was based around social studies.”
“That’s really where my love of nature really, really blossomed.”
“There’s a difference between a photograph and a snapshot… A photograph though, you think about it and there’s planning. So it’s about intent.”
“I want you to see the soul of that living creature.”
“Every single living creature, whether it be a bird or an insect, is worthy and deserves the same respect that we give other human beings.”
“Every living creature, whether it be an animal or a tree or a flower or a mushroom, deserves to be loved. And that’s my philosophy. That has governed my entire life.”
“My photography is not just a hobby. Oh, no, no, no, no. It’s my soul.”
“Selling and how much you sold was not the measure of your success.”
“Everybody deserved to have beautiful artwork in their homes.”
“What I discovered very quickly was that the same types of relationships that I built with my students over the years, I needed to build with my clients.”
“Today, when I do Harbor Days, I have people who were little kids who are now bringing their grandchildren to see my stuff and telling stories to their grandchildren about me when they were children.”
“It is advocacy for building a relationship with nature.”
“Unfortunately racism is alive and well in America. And that really has not changed.”
“Even though there are hateful people in this world, I still believe that the majority of people have their hearts in the right places.”
“One of the things I love about being an artist and a teacher is that I am always learning new things and finding new ways to look at stuff.”

Creators and Guests

HG
Host
Hava Gurevich

What is I Love Your Stories- Conversations with Artists and Creatives with Hava Gurevich?

I Love Your Stories is a soulful conversation series hosted by artist and creative guide Hava Gurevich, where art meets authenticity. Each episode invites you into an intimate dialogue with artists, makers, and visionaries who are courageously crafting lives rooted in creativity, purpose, and self-expression.

From painters and poets to healers and community builders, these are the stories behind the work—the moments of doubt, discovery, grief, joy, and transformation. Through honest, heart-centred conversations, Hava explores how creativity can be both a healing force and a path to personal truth.

If you’re an artist, a dreamer, or someone drawn to a more intuitive and intentional way of living, this podcast will remind you that your story matters—and that the act of creating is a sacred, revolutionary act.

[MUSIC]

From the classroom to the wilderness,

my guest built a life around exploring

the connections between

science, art, and education.

Welcome to this episode

of All of Your Stories.

I'm your host, Hava Gurvitch, and my

guest today is Rosalind Phillips,

a teacher, scientist, software engineer,

and accomplished nature photographer.

Rosalind has spent her life exploring the

connections between art,

science, and education.

In this episode, she opens

up about her early influences,

her career as an

educator and software engineer,

and her passion for nature and wildlife.

We talk about her journey as a

photographer with three decades of

selling art at art fairs,

the lessons learned along the way, and

how she's navigated both

triumphs and challenges

as a woman of color in the arts.

She also shares her

hands-on approach to teaching,

rooted in the belief that knowledge isn't

isolated, but deeply interconnected,

and her lifelong commitment to public

service and genuine human connection.

Rosalind, welcome to the podcast.

Now, quick word from our sponsor, and

then we'll get right back to the show.

When I started selling my art, I had

absolutely no idea how to

actually turn it into a business,

a professional business.

And then I came across Art Storefronts,

and that was a game changer.

I've been a customer now for years,

and they've been instrumental every step

of the way of helping me succeed.

I have a gorgeous,

powerful commerce website.

I have marketing tools and a membership

to a community that is very supportive

and teaches me how to

succeed as an artist.

Check them out, artstorefronts.com, and

tell them how I sent you.

Welcome back to the podcast.

My guest today is wildlife

photographer Rosalind Phillips.

Rosalind, it's a pleasure

having you on the podcast.

And tell everyone a little bit about your

background and how you

got into photography.

I would be happy.

I am so delighted to be here.

I have really enjoyed

participating in the Breakfast Club.

In fact, sometimes I think that's the

most valuable one of all the education

that Art Storefronts does

because it's a heartfelt

conversation among artists.

And yes, we talk about the business

stuff, but we also talk

about the soul side of it.

And to be honest,

that's why we're artists.

Absolutely.

We're souls.

It feeds our hearts.

Yes.

And that's kind of what I want this

podcast to become, is a

sort of an extension, a public

extension of that.

No, but you, what you do, I think is why

joining the platform is valuable.

I mean, there's all the other stuff, but

it's the human side to

me that makes it worth it.

I feel like I get a different type of

validation as an artist.

Absolutely.

To me, that's what's very important.

Anyway, I was born in New York City and

live in way, way upper

Manhattan, even above Washington

Heights.

I lived in a little neighborhood called

Inwood and the Coisters,

which is the medieval part

of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art is right there.

And that's an important part of my life.

But anyway, I grew up in New York City

and in upper Manhattan,

there are lots of parks

and it was a very, well, like most New

York neighborhoods, it

was a diverse neighborhood.

We actually had a very

strong Jewish population there.

And then there were lots of black people

and most of the black people were of West

Indian descent.

And then there were lots of people from

Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

So it was a very mixed place.

And so it was a nice place.

And New York City back in the late 50s

developed this thing called the

Mitchell-Lama Co-ops.

And they were these beautiful apartment

buildings that you could buy

an apartment for a reasonable

price and it was geared towards

middle-class families.

And so that's where I grew

up in this wonderful building.

And so I have two sisters

and it was really pretty good.

My mom was a school teacher in the New

York City public school system.

And so she sent us to private school.

She worked very hard for that.

We went to this wonderful school that was

run by the Ethical Culture Society, which

is as reformed Judaism as you can get.

And it was based on John

Dewey's laboratory school.

So it was a very action doing.

I mean, it's like I can pretty much

remember almost every

single day of elementary school.

And this is all very important to me as a

wildlife photographer

because everything was

based around social studies.

So for example, in fourth grade, we

studied the Vikings.

So that meant that what we were reading

and writing stories

about in English were the

Norse myths.

And what we were learning about in social

studies, of course, was the history.

But then there was art class.

And then we had this wonderful class

called industrial arts.

And in that class, we

learned how to cook and sew.

And so in fourth grade, we made Viking

costumes and everybody

did this, boys and girls.

And it was wonderful.

So you had the art, you had the math,

because we learned about

whatever math system they

had besides regular

fourth grade math and stuff.

In third grade, we did Native Americans.

In fifth grade, it was the Middle Ages.

In sixth grade, it was

the colonization of America.

The great Jane Goodall just passed.

And she was certainly one of my idols.

And one of the highlights of my high

school life was the

opportunity to take some classes

with her.

Wow.

Yeah, you know, and

so just very important.

So the other part of it was my mother

believed that if you

wanted your black children to

grow up safe in New York City, you sent

them out of the city for the summer.

And so the way she afforded that was she

was a counselor at this

Quaker camp up in Vermont,

the Farm and Wilderness Foundation.

And we went to camp in Vermont.

And that's really where my love of nature

really, really blossomed.

And so I did all

kinds of stuff like that.

Now, my dad was an amateur photographer.

And I would say maybe when I was 10,

maybe eight, and my sister

Brenda was six, no eight.

So because they're two years between us,

we got our first cameras.

And they were little point and shoots.

And you know, so we

took pictures all the time.

And my dad would

occasionally give us some instruction.

And so cameras of taking pictures has

just always been a part of my life.

And that was pretty remarkable.

As you were talking, what it seems to me,

and I don't know yet too

much about your current

life as a wildlife photographer, I do

know you've been doing

it for many, many decades,

for decades, and that you fell in love

with both nature,

animals, and photography in your

early teens.

So you're just living your best life.

Like you're living the life that you

started living as a child.

Would that be?

I am now, yes.

You know, the first 20 years of my

working career, I was a

teacher, high school and teacher

education classes and computer science

classes in the local colleges.

I moved to Olympia, Washington when I

was, I don't know, maybe

24, 25, because I started

my teaching career at a Quaker school

just outside of Washington, D.C.

And I taught, and as I say, I

did my time in middle school.

That's amazing that you valued education

so much growing up, and

it left such an impression

that you decided to go into education as

well and impart your

knowledge to another generation.

The experience that I had at Fieldston so

profoundly affected

my life and my sister's

lives that I wanted to share that

experience with people who

didn't have the parents that

sacrificed so much to send their children

to a private school.

I mean, obviously we had scholarships and

things like that, but

still, to send three

children to private

school is pretty difficult.

And so I taught mostly, well, I taught

math and science and computers.

And so I became a national leader in

using the computer in

the classroom and worked on

several pioneering projects.

I built, when I started out teaching, we

had the Apple IIe computer.

And what was so great about that computer

was that it was really accessible and you

could build things and

plug them in and use them.

So I built a whole thing of lab equipment

so that we could do that.

And all my classes have

always been project-based.

So the skip ahead many years.

In the late 80s, early 90s, it was fairly

fashionable to bash

high school kids and talk

about how horrible they were.

And I just got tired of it.

So I brought my camera back out because I

had actually stopped

taking pictures in college

and through that, I

got my camera out again.

And I started taking pictures of my kids

in the classroom and what they were doing

because I was just so impressed because

again, my classes were all project-based.

And the school that I was teaching at a

public school was an alternative school.

And the school was geared towards kids

who didn't fit in, but it

was really geared towards

low achieving kids who really

could have amazing potential.

And so pretty much my imagination could

run wild in my kitchen

because I could do pretty

much anything I wanted.

Anyway, I started, I was

taking lots and lots of pictures.

But you know, while the kids were doing

different things, I

started taking pictures of other

things and rediscovered my love of

photography and birds.

And so although this picture behind me is

not the hummingbird

picture that I took back

in 1992, but it was a hummingbird

picture, a hummingbird

nest that was over a stream

that I noticed when the

kids were doing water samples.

And so I took a picture of a hummingbird

sitting on her nest and

that was kind of like the

start of everything again.

Wow.

I love that.

So there is an actual pivotal photograph

that you took that

ignited your entire passion.

That's amazing.

So where did it go from there?

Well, it meant that I got a real camera

because remember in those

days we're still shooting

film.

Yes.

And the primary science classes that I

taught were physics and

chemistry and advanced biology,

so genetics and things like that.

And so photography is physics.

I mean, it's a study of light.

It's a study of light.

So I took my love of physics and I put it

into my photography

and I started studying.

Well, I had been keeping nature journals

like this probably

since I was about, I don't

know, maybe 12, 13.

I had a really big

sketchbook at that time.

And what I would do is when I would take

my pictures, because on

film I would then paste

them into my big sketchbook and I would

write down the

settings, which you had to write

down meticulously as you took each

picture because we didn't

have it automatically then.

And then I would write down what I liked

or didn't like about the picture.

And from there I started to develop my

philosophy of photography.

I'd love to hear what that philosophy is.

Well, the philosophy is that there's a

reason why we take a

picture and there's a difference

between a photograph and a snapshot.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, a snapshot is

you just take pictures.

A photograph though, you think about it

and there's planning.

Yeah.

So it's about intent.

It's about intent.

And so it very quickly changed from just

writing down my

settings to what's the story.

Why did I want to press the shutter?

What was the intent?

What would you say is the kind of

narrative, like the

overarching narrative of your photography

story?

What is the main story

that you are trying to tell?

So if you were to read this stuff on the

website, it would talk

about how my intent with doing

birds, because that really is my first

love of wildlife is birds.

Not that I don't do lots of other things.

And I'll talk about that later, but is I

want you to really see the story.

I want you to see the

soul of that living creature.

I want you to know that every single

living creature, whether

it be a bird or an insect,

is worthy and deserves the same respect

that we give other human beings.

And that's what I want to

convey through my photography.

I want to convey that story.

I want to convey that.

The Quakers, because the camps that we

went to, the former

wilderness camp, were started

by a Quaker couple.

The Quakers have a saying of that of God

within every person,

and every child deserves

to be loved.

And so that was my

philosophy as a teacher.

That is my philosophy for life.

And so you can just extend that.

Every living creature, whether it be an

animal or a tree or a

flower or a mushroom, deserves

to be loved.

And that's my philosophy.

That has governed my entire life.

Let me ask you a question.

Right now, what are you most

passionate about right now?

Right now?

Astro photography.

It's really funny because I've been

looking at my pictures

and I realized that I really

haven't taken very many

bird pictures this summer.

I haven't really taken very many animal

pictures since I got back

from Alaska in early June.

Fell in love with the sky.

Well I've always been in love with taking

pictures of the Milky Way.

In 1997, I got ill.

And it was really kind of ironic because

for the first time in my

life, I had a safe science

lab that had ventilation and stuff.

And I got really, really sick.

And at the end of 1997, actually got

carted out of the school

on a stretcher because I

had such a bad asthma attack and I had

developed chemical

sensitivities, which I didn't realize.

And I got carted out of my classroom on a

stretcher and I never

went back to teaching.

And that was a really hard

transition for me to make.

And I went into my next great love, which

was software engineering.

Because I'd always been

very active with technology.

And so I then spent the rest of my

working career as a

software engineer and worked for

the Washington State Department of Health

as their lead software

engineer and was responsible

for the software that collected all the

infectious disease data

around the state and sent it off

to CDC every week.

Can I ask you a question?

So obviously, I didn't know anything

about you when we started talking.

And so I introduced you

as a wildlife photographer.

That's all I knew.

But you had-

I am as a teacher.

Really what I am as a teacher.

Teachers and a scientist and an engineer

and all of these other things.

I'm curious, like, where- I mean, your

photography is not just a hobby.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

It's my soul.

It's my soul.

And so one of the things that stopping

teaching did, it meant

that even though I didn't have

those eight weeks in the summer to pursue

photography, it

meant, though, that I could

do things at different times of the year

and I could really

pretty much be in charge of

my own schedule.

But I would say that my life as a

professional

photographer really started in 1995.

Okay.

For you, life as a professional

photographer means- because

I know you sell a lot of your

photography.

Is that your main-

In the art, the summer art circuit.

And you've been doing

that for a long time.

Since 1996, yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about that

lifestyle as an artist who

has made a career doing the

art fair circuit?

Because that's something that I know some

of us are really curious about and it has

to be a lifestyle.

Can you talk a little bit

about the pros and cons of that?

Sure.

The nice thing was that Olympia,

Washington really has a

very vibrant arts community.

And so in 1996, Olympia started this

little thing that was

called art- I guess really

it was Art on the Landing because we have

this beautiful waterfront because Olympia

is right on Puget Sound.

And you could sign up for

these Sunday afternoons.

And so, you know,

built some pegboard stands.

At that time I didn't even have a tent.

And there were two jewelry artists, my

friends Heather and Todd,

that were starting doing

this at the same time.

We kind of grew together as

artists and started learning.

And because I am a scientist, I'm very

methodical in looking

up how to do things.

You have to remember that in those days,

back in the mid-90s,

the internet is not really

a big thing yet.

And so I'm in the library doing research

about how to do this.

I think at that time I didn't know about

the Small Business

Administration and that I could

take classes with them.

And so I just figured it out.

So all the amazing tools that we have now

to get started, none

of that stuff existed.

I just figured it out.

You're such a scientist and an engineer.

When you talk a lot about the methodology

of it, I want to talk more about emotion.

From your first time sort of setting up

and having your art on

display for people to buy,

I'd love to hear what did it feel like to

sell your first

photograph, to get your first

repeat client?

What was that like?

Probably the most important thing for me

during those first years

was learning that selling

and how much you sold was not

the measure of your success.

Because what you have to realize is that

I was always used to being the best.

The top of my feet, as

a student, as a teacher.

And so you're sitting there in that

booth, you know this,

and people come by and they

look at it and they say,

"Very nice," and then they leave.

Well, very nice.

It's nice, but it'll give you money to

buy more camera equipment.

Right.

I mean, because you have to realize that

at this time when I

started, I'm still a full-time

teacher.

And so I don't need the money from the

booth to pay my mortgage.

What I need the money for is to be a

photographer and to be able

to travel and to be able to

buy new equipment and to

buy more photography books.

And most importantly, because remember

we're still in film

days, to process my film.

When I made my first sale to somebody who

wasn't a friend or

family, that was a pretty

big deal.

That was over the moon.

You're so right to say that selling your

art is not the same

thing as being good as an

artist and that should not

be a metric of validation.

On the other hand, there's still that

feeling when somebody

who doesn't know you isn't

like kissing up to you or anything like

that, they genuinely

love your art so much that

they're parting with their heart, earn

money so that they can own it.

And that is just an

amazing feeling, isn't it?

It really is.

And so my philosophy in my booth was to

always have a wide range

of prices because I believed

that everybody deserved to have beautiful

artwork in their homes.

And so I had my cards and I had, you

know, Prince, matted

Prince, and I had the frame

stuff on the wall.

And what I very rapidly discovered

through doing Harbor

Days, which is the Labor Day

celebration here in Olympia.

And so when I started doing that show,

and the first time I

would have done that would

have been in 1996, what I very rapidly

discovered was that people

would buy a card and then

the next year they'd come

back and they'd buy a print.

And then the next year they'd come back

and they'd buy the framed picture.

And so what I discovered very quickly was

that the same types of relationships that

I built with my students over the years,

I needed to build with my clients.

And so that's what I focused on.

I love that.

And I would even sometimes, particularly

people who had kids, I

would actually make notes

about people because I would see them

year after year, you

know, and I would see them

at Harbor Days and I'd see them at Art

Walk, you know, our

local types of things.

I would see them at the holiday shows.

And so over that time, I would build

these amazing relationships with people.

Amazing.

And today, when I do Harbor Days, I have

people who were little

kids who are now bringing

their grandchildren to see my stuff and

telling stories to their

grandchildren about me when

they were children.

So one of the nice things about doing art

in your community, and also because I was

a teacher in the community, is that I

just have all these

relationships and I treasure

those relationships.

You know, when people come into my, we

hug, we ask each other

how your year has been.

They ask me where I've traveled and do I

have anything special

that I want to show them?

That's fantastic.

This actually dovetails

very nicely to a question.

I like to ask all my guests, how would

you define success now

and how has it changed

over time?

Ooh, that's a really good one.

Well, I've certainly, you know, selling

lots of stuff is always good.

But I really think that I define my

success with by repeat

customers and the relationships

that I've dealt with them over time.

And especially because your art has a

very specific message

that you are sharing through

your work.

And so when it resonates with others and

especially over time, it

really does feel like advocacy

to some degree, doesn't it?

It is advocacy for building a

relationship with nature.

And so over time, you know, when I first

started taking pictures, it

was mostly about portraits,

actual portraits, and just trying to get

it in focus, have a nice blurry back, you

know, it was about that.

But over time, it has very much changed

into giving a window onto

that, onto nature's life,

to their interactions.

So if I just duck my head out of the way,

this is more of the

type of picture I take

today with mom feeding

the chicks, you know.

And so this particular picture

represents, well, the whole

range of pictures represents

21 days, well, more than 21 days of

pictures because there's

a wildlife refuge not too

far and every year the Rufus hummingbirds

pretty much nest in the same area.

They don't use the same nest.

And you know, and we're

all looking for the nest.

And as soon as somebody finds the nest,

they let everybody know.

And then I start staking out the nest.

And depending on where the nest is

located, I figure out the

time of day I want to be

there.

So for those of us listeners who are not

watching it on YouTube and

can't see the photo, what

we're looking at is a close

up of a hummingbird's nest.

And the nest itself

is made out of lichen.

Lichen and spiderwebs.

And spiderwebs.

And this beautiful little bird has two

chicks and she is in the

process of feeding one of

the chicks.

It's just such an intimate and magical

moment, especially

because it's a hummingbird.

So it's so tiny.

And seeing this delicate creature in such

detail is actually quite amazing.

And it tells a very, very vivid story.

So we talked about your success.

What success means is connecting with

people and building those

connections over time and

generational connections with people.

What are some of the challenges that

you've encountered in

your career as an artist?

There are a number of challenges.

First off, there's the challenge itself

of your booth doing

outdoor shows and coming

up with an arrangement that lasts through

windstorms and rainstorms and still looks

beautiful, you know,

because it has to look beautiful.

And so obviously my booth has changed

over the years to do that.

One of my worst show stories is rain was

forecast for one evening.

It was a summer show up in Seattle and I

sort of looked at it

and I thought, you know, I

think I'm going to take all the pictures

off the wall and put

them in their tubs and cover

up the tubs with a tarp.

And I don't, you know, because I just

looked at it, it was

supposed to be windy.

And you know, I had that grid wall so the

booth wasn't going anywhere.

And so that morning when I got back, it

was like, well, where's my tent?

And it had collapsed.

And the middle was down on the ground and

then the edges were

still up around the grid

wall.

But if I had had my pictures up on the

wall, they all would have been ruined.

Some people's tents were gone.

These tent pretty much was ruined.

And in those days, Costco was so great

because you just took it

back in and they gave you

another one.

It was great.

But that was, but that, but that was, you

know, that's the type

of thing you deal with.

The other thing that I dealt with besides

practicalities of money

and all that and insurance

and all that kind of stuff was the fact

that unfortunately

racism is alive and well in

America.

And that really has not changed.

And people have stereotypical images of

what women and

particularly what black women, women

of color can do.

And so, you know, it still is not

uncommon for somebody.

I mean, in 2025, it still is not uncommon

for somebody to come

into my booth and say,

is this your husband's work?

And to assume that I'm

married to a white man.

And I have got into some very, I mean,

essentially I just ask

people to leave my booth.

It's because engaging in

conversation just upsets me.

You shouldn't have to.

Evolve the right kind of energy.

Yeah.

Which makes it even more remarkable that

you are committed to your

passion and have persevered

over three decades.

Well, that's because I believe that even

though there are hateful

people in this world, I

still believe that the majority of people

have their hearts in the right places.

And those are most of the

people that I interact with.

Yeah.

And you've interacted with like three

generations of people.

You know, the kids, the

little kids now have grandkids.

And so you can clearly say that your

message, you have, and each

one of those people shares

that story with their people.

And I feel like the message that you're

sharing is worth sharing.

And I think it trumps the few.

I have a lot of respect for anyone who

continues to do their passion.

And it's like we said from the beginning,

a passion for

wildlife, for animals, for the

environment, for ecology, for

storytelling, for arts and

photography, all of that.

You've had that in you

since you were 10 years old.

And you have known from a very young age

how important it is to have an education.

And you've watched your mom and your dad

do everything they can

to give you the best start

in life.

And I think if I was to say, what is the

definition of success?

You wake up every morning

and I know there's challenges.

There's always challenges.

There's life challenges.

As we get older, there's health

challenges and so on.

But you get to do what you

were meant to do in this life.

And now that I'm retired, I can really,

really focus on stuff.

And so the two things I love to do is

take pictures and teach.

And so I teach photography.

In fact, I'm Zoom.

And so one of the things I love about

being an artist and a

teacher is that I am always

learning new things and

finding new ways to look at stuff.

So if you were to look at some of my

newest work, you would

see that over the years I've

started doing a lot more abstract stuff

with nature because

what I have found is that

by doing some abstract stuff, I'm really

getting into the soul of stuff.

So here's a story for you.

I went out to the coast to do Milky Way

pictures on this

beautiful place called Ruby Beach,

which is on like the

wild Washington North Coast.

But there's also the

whole rainforest up there.

And so whenever I'm in

that area, I always...

Now the whole rainforest is like going

into a mystical fairy land.

It is just this most amazing place.

And for 30 years, I have taken pictures

of the whole rainforest

and I have never printed

one because it has never

done what I wanted it to do.

And so this particular day I said, "You

know, I think I'm going to leave...

I'm going to just leave my big lens in my

pack and I'm just

going to use my mid-range

lens and I'm going to do what's called

intentional camera movement.

I'm going to have a long exposure and

move my camera around

and see if that does more

of what I feel in my heart."

And so what I ended up doing was doing

one kind of like this

up and down of this group

of cedar trees with all the big moths

hanging down and stuff.

And it did it.

It captured it.

It did exactly what I wanted and I split

it up into a triptych.

And when people look at that picture,

they look at me and

they say, "Oh my God, this

is the whole...

This is what I feel in my heart."

Mom.

You know?

Another picture that I did that day was I

laid on my back and I

looked up at the canopy

and I zoomed my lens in and out.

And when I looked at the picture, I could

see a woman dancing.

It's amazing.

That's, you know...

Mother and father.

And for me, what I immediately thought of

was Langston Hughes.

Music is a very, very

important part of my life.

My mother was a pianist.

We all learned...

She was a music teacher.

We all learned how to play instruments.

And I looked up at that and I heard

Langston Hughes's

poem, "A Dream Deferred."

To fling my arms wide in the face of the

sun, to dance, dance, dance till the dark

day is done.

What about that?

Okay.

And then Sweet Honey and the Rock, which

is this incredible

acapella black women's group,

put it to music.

And so when I looked at that, I

immediately heard them singing it.

My mother and I did a fair amount of

travel during the latter

part of her life after she

retired from teaching.

And whenever we would go someplace, and

particularly in a waterfall,

she would fling her arms wide

and twirl around and say,

"Rosalind, take a picture of me."

And so I have all these pictures.

And so when I look at that

picture, I see all of that stuff.

And again, it captures a soul.

And it's part of my Juneteenth collection

because every year I

pick a picture that I've

taken over the last year and I designated

it as a Juneteenth picture that tells the

story.

So just as a final thing,

how can people find you?

Where can they find you

both physically and virtually?

So physically, I live

in Olympia, Washington.

And they can find you at the different

art fairs there, right?

They can find me a different...

Right.

So my next big show is my big Christmas

show, The Best of the

Northwest in Seattle, which

would be November 7th,

8th, and 9th up in Seattle.

And I actually will be featuring some of

my night photography as

well as my pictures from

Alaska when I went to Alaska and spent an

amazing two weeks up there in June.

My website is

rosalindphilipsophotography.com.

And of course, I'm on Facebook and

Instagram and you can just

type in "Rosalind, Phillips

Photography."

Thank you so much.

It was a pleasure speaking with you.

And thank you very much.

Well, thank you, Hava.

Thanks again for tuning in.

That's our episode.

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