Pilgrims Progress → Roanoke Arts Commission

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In Oracle, Ready to Pay	YES!
Name	Bess Lee
Phone	8123322763
Email	Email hidden; Javascript is required.
Name of Work (TBD or Untitled are okay)	Sálvame (Spanish: Save Me)
Please upload a JPG of your work in progress
Please upload a JPG or PNG of a picture of you that we can use in the show. We prefer a headshot or something that clearly shows your face. Please make sure it’s high enough resolution for print.
May we potentially use your work in progress image as part of promotional activities?	Yes, please do.
Describe the work including planned media, size and presentation format. (All art forms are accepted for this call, but there must be a physical representation of the work ready for display. Most often this is a framed and ready-to-hang two dimensional image.)	Complete piece will be 24″ by 36″ Gessoed plywood, acrylic paint landscape of Tinder Mountain and Tinker Creek, framed by strips of plywood with Tinker Creek animals on the framing wooden strips. Will be wired, ready hang on wall.
Describe your contemplative practice in relation to the work so far.	I have continued to look up and read about many animals in the book, made notes, sketches, looked at historical and modern photographs of Tinker Moun (also known as Dead Man’s Mountain) and Tinker Creek. I have reflected everyday with prayer and thoughts about this beautiful, beautiful area I/we are privileged to live in and hope and pray that there will be an awakening to the environmental damage happening locally and world-wide in order that this life-filled area, this exquisite mountainous ecosystem, will be saved. That is why I am naming my painting Sálvame, “Save Me”, in Spanish.
Describe your engagement with nature in relation to this work so far.	Since this process began, I have walked frequently in parks and neighborhoods where I can see Tinker Mountain and Reed Mountain. Also, I have returned to the Tinker Mountain Greenway four times since we took the science-led and medatative walks with the Roanoke City’s Tinker Art group. The reading, discussions and focus/ familiarity have formed this habit: Daily, I pay more attention to trees, plants, insects and birds that cross my path.
Describe your engagement with the text in relation to this work so far.	I started reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in an ONLINE library book with the Raleigh Court Roanoke Public Library reading group. (I had read this when it was first published 50 years ago as a young woman.) That lead to the ability to lookup every mention of any item that I wanted to see or was curious about. You, reader, probably knew about this, but I did not. I thought if I wanted to see something I had to stop, go to my search engine, type in the word or copy the word, past it and look it up… But no, there is this incredibly easier, quicker path: When reading from a lending source online, all I had to do was touch and highlight the word and the online library copy would give me the “option” to LOOK UP… I was then taken to a Google search of the word with images and articles galore. Wow… once I started I could not stop… I cannot believe how much I searched down images and explanations from the book: -The Brocken Sprctre -John Ruskin watercolors of nature -A giant water-bug killing a frog -A giant termite queen laying thousands of eggs -A dog-faced butterfly -The tree with lights in it and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I looked up. If I wasn’t sure about what she referenced OR was super curious to see an image or both, I looked and looked. Pure joy…. I came to a sense of awe: the beauty, the horrorsof nature in life and death, the struggles in the everyday natural world, the unexpected and the plain… let me say, the NON-Disneyficaiton of our surrouding wrold…that’s with what I engaged continuosly in this book.
What questions, or primary question, have arisen for you in pursuing the work so far?	What will happen next in the world, in nature, in my life? How will we communicate any of this to ourselves… to each other? How, why or when will I continue to create? (There is rarely a “what” for me.) The human brain, as in Annie Dillard’s brain and with so many students I have taught, are often a marvel in assimmilation and connection… wondering if that human brain will join in with nature and support her to thrive? …and work to save our own nest?
What have you learned in the process so far?	What I describedd above are the many experiences of how and what I learned. I realize how much I like to find out something new that is unexpected or sort of an outlier fact/thing/happening in my personal awareness. and… I already knew this but this reading/art/ physical emmersion expereince drove it home: How very little I do know.
If applicable, please describe any challenges that will prevent you from participating in the effort or completing the project on time.	No challenges will prevent me from finishing unless I become unexpectidly ill.
REQUIRED: Please add a PDF of your vendor’s invoice here. The payer is “City of Roanoke, Attention Douglas Jackson.” This invoice is required and may be generated from your accounting system or manually created. The invoice must be numbered and all information must match what you have entered in Oracle.	bbe88a90-0384-40f0-850a-51fad26e5c05.pdf
Invoice Number	101
My typed name stands for my signature. I have identified all technology used in the creation of this work in the description of my process above.	Bess Lee
Staff use only	DCJ Okay to Pay $500 300065-2010 Percent for Art Fund 9/24/25
Staff Use Only: Melissa Tracking	Paid ACH 10/30/2025