Elmore DeMott’s mission in life is to connect more people to the earth; through art, through music, through writing, and through simply listening to the world around them.
DeMott will be speaking at 12:15 p.m. today at Smith Wilkes Hall for the Bird, Tree & Garden Club’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. Her lecture, “We Are One Song With The Earth,” will focus on the connection between people and the nature that surrounds them, as well as some of the ways in which that connection can be more deeply explored.
“(For) so many people, quarantine invited us to think differently, to slow down, and also for some of us, it gave some new challenges in life that we had to work through,” she said. “For me, I had to work through some hard things as my life changed and I found myself turning to nature for the answers.”
An Alabama native, DeMott graduated from Vanderbilt University with a double major in mathematics and fine arts — though the fine arts degree wasn’t entirely on purpose. She started taking art history classes because she “love(d) them,” but didn’t want to commit to the fine arts major because it required taking studio art classes, where she would need to actually produce her own art instead of learning about pieces made by
other artists.
Her college adviser eventually talked her into officially declaring her fine arts double major, and she found herself in a photography class shortly after. There, she learned some basic skills and spent time in some of Vanderbilt’s darkrooms, but her newfound skills wouldn’t immediately be put to use.
After graduating from Vanderbilt, DeMott began her career in banking, eventually jumping over to arts administration, before becoming a mom and picking up a camera again.
“I would call it a return to photography,” she said. “Eventually — as I like to tell people — if you do what you love, success will follow. And I found, more and more, what I love is photographing nature.”
In 2016, DeMott found a way to channel her love for photography into a project with deep emotional roots. During a stay at Chautauqua, DeMott’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s, broke her femur after a fall. Trying to think of something to brighten her mother’s spirits — as well as her own — she set out to photograph one flower each day, beginning with a Queen Anne’s Lace on the grounds of the Institution.
DeMott photographed a different flower every day for nearly five years.
“People talk about how that was such a great gift for her, but the truth is, the gift was mine,” she said. “When you start really dialing in, paying attention to nature, you start to see things differently. And with a desire to find a wide variety of flowers, I started realizing that things we have deemed to be weeds are flowers, and I started asking questions.”
The answers to those questions often echoed the same idea: that reconnecting with nature can often be the most healing thing one can do. With her lecture today, DeMott hopes to encourage Chautauquans to take a moment and listen to what nature may be telling them. Perhaps, she said, the healing they need may best be found in the air, trees, plants, birds, and life that surrounds them.
“The Earth is resilient, and the earth is showing us the way,” she said. “If we listen to the earth, then what we are going to discover is that we too are resilient. We know how to heal, and we know which way to go.”
