FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — This spring the people of northwest Arkansas will have a rare opportunity to witness the creative act — and view the final product. University of Arkansas professor of architecture Laura Terry offers an in-depth view of her painting process in the forthcoming issue of Overland Review, which is devoted entirely to her writing and artwork.

“I think combining media in this way, deploying one’s own writing to explore one’s own painting, is pretty unusual,” said Robert Cochran, director of the University of Arkansas Center for Arkansas and Regional studies and editor of the Overland Review. “Laura Terry has a rare constellation of skills; she seems to be comfortable in deploying both hemispheres of the celebrated right-brain/left-brain divide.”

Inside the Firefly Jar

This sketch, which inspired the original layer for Inside the Firefly Jar, demonstrates Terry’s fascination with quilt patterns and stitches.

Twelve abstract landscapes by Terry also will be on display in the Julie Wait Designs gallery through June 16. An opening reception will take place from 5-8 p.m. Friday, May 12, in the gallery, which is located at 318 S. First St. in Rogers, Ark.

“We are excited to have Laura’s work because it’s a breath of fresh air in the gallery,” said Julie Wait Fryauf, owner of the gallery.

The exuberant colors and irregular symmetries of quilts pieced and stitched by the African American women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., inspired “Victory Garden,” Terry’s latest series of paintings. On first viewing the quilts, Terry was struck by the layers of pattern and stitching, which relate to her process of building up — and stripping away — layers of imagery on her canvases.

“I am interested in the evidence of time, the imprint, the way time leaves its mark on things” she said.

Just as the quilters sort fabric scraps permeated with memories — Grandmother’s tea towel, work clothes, worn bedding — Terry gleans ideas and images from Southern women novelists, glimpses of landscape, even mundane artifacts unearthed in archeological digs.

“It’s important to me that my paintings convey moments that are not noticed or celebrated,” she remarked. “Like the quilts, these moments are important to people’s daily lives, and reveal a lot about them.”

In the spring issue of Overland Review, which is the journal of the Mid-America Folklore Society, Terry traces her craft from first inspiration found in the pages of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers to the final luminous painting. Fifteen color plates and excerpts from Terry’s sketchbook document her creative process. Readers may track the evolution of one painting, “Carry Me Home,” through seven layers of development.

The spring issue of Overland Review will be available before the end of this month, and may be obtained by contacting Dana Harris at (479) 575-7708 or dharris@uark.edu.

Raised in Columbus, Ga., Terry earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design from Auburn University in 1993 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1998. Since 1999 she has found her niche at the UA School of Architecture, where she teaches architecture students to draw and paint and directs a summer design/build program at Camp Aldersgate, a Little Rock camp that serves children with special needs.

Terry has exhibited her work in Savannah, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York City, and her work was included in “New American Paintings,” a juried publication. Her work at Camp Aldersgate will be featured in the September 2006 issue of Dwell magazine.