Graystone Cafe
FEATURED ARTIST
MARY WADDINGTON
PHOTOGRAPHER AND ARTIST
Mary Waddington was a painter before she took up photography. Her work is inspired by her rural surroundings of river, marsh, and farmland. It reflects the enduring themes of the simple life. For 40 years, her concentration was on documenting the lives of local people and their pioneering spirit of self-sufficiency, stewardship, and making do. Today, she concentrates on simply making art, but her subjects remain local. The beauty and honesty of nature, natural lives, and what these lives give forth underpin her work. Backroads and back rooms continue to call to her, and her radar leads her to authentic material worth capturing and sharing.
Magazines containing her photographs include Early American Life, Country, Nature Conservancy, Smithsonian Associates, Friends Journal, and Down Jersey. Books illustrated with her work include NATURAL LIVES, MODERN TIMES: PEOPLE AND PLACES OF THE DELAWARE RIVER, AND PHILADELPHIA QUAKERS.
Juried exhibitions included: National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington DC (purchase prize); National Preservation Conference, San Antonio, TX; Delaware Art Museum and Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (multiple), Wilmington DE; Perkins Center for the Arts, Moorestown NJ; New Jersey Advocates for the Arts (purchase prize), Glassboro NJ; Maritime Museum, and DaVinci Art Alliance Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
Awards include Certificates of Commendation from the League of Historical Societies of New Jersey and the American Association for State and Local History, and a research grant from the NJ Historical Commission for an illustrated oral history project. Mary was project photographer for the Harrison Township Historical Society’s multimedia production “The Friendly Legacy” funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.Mary was photographer and co-creator of the following multi-media educational programs on local culture: “Eating Year Round Off Salem County Tidal Water;” “Heritage of Harmony;” “Seeing with Compassion;” “Eighteenth Century Salem County;” “An Alternative to Prison;” “Growing Up Quaker;” and “Voices, Views and Visions.” She co-designed and co-authored the student workbook My Friendly Legacy which for three decades was used in local school curricula. Recently she teamed with an audiographer/producer and they create short docs for WHYY’s Newsworks Tonight, Third Coast Foundation, HereSay International, and other storytelling venues.
The beauty and honesty of nature, natural lives and what these lives give forth underpin her work. Backroads and back rooms continue to call to her, and her radar leads her to authentic material worth capturing and sharing.
Magazines containing her photographs include Early American Life, Country, Nature Conservancy, Smithsonian Associates, Friends Journal, and Down Jersey. Books illustrated with her work include NATURAL LIVES, MODERN TIMES: PEOPLE AND PLACES OF THE DELAWARE RIVER, AND PHILADELPHIA QUAKERS.
Juried exhibitions included: National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington DC (purchase prize); National Preservation Conference, San Antonio, TX; Delaware Art Museum and Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (multiple), Wilmington DE; Perkins Center for the Arts, Moorestown NJ; New Jersey Advocates for the Arts (purchase prize), Glassboro NJ; Maritime Museum, and DaVinci Art Alliance Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
Awards include Certificates of Commendation from the League of Historical Societies of New Jersey and the American Association for State and Local History, and a research grant from the NJ Historical Commission for an illustrated oral history project. Mary was project photographer for the Harrison Township Historical Society’s multimedia production “The Friendly Legacy” funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.Mary was photographer and co-creator of the following multi-media educational programs on local culture: “Eating Year Round Off Salem County Tidal Water;” “Heritage of Harmony;” “Seeing with Compassion;” “Eighteenth Century Salem County;” “An Alternative to Prison;” “Growing Up Quaker;” and “Voices, Views and Visions.” She co-designed and co-authored the student workbook My Friendly Legacy which for three decades was used in local school curricula. Recently she teamed with an audiographer/producer and they create short docs for WHYY’s Newsworks Tonight, Third Coast Foundation, HereSay International, and other storytelling venues.
The beauty and honesty of nature, natural lives and what these lives give forth underpin her work. Backroads and back rooms continue to call to her, and her radar leads her to authentic material worth capturing and sharing.
