Barton L. Gilmore January 23, 2026 Artist Statements about images, education philosophy on teaching, professional career and history and influences.

Teaching Philosophy

We are familiar with photography as a means for personal and creative expressionism, as well as its use as a tool for collecting and reporting ideas concerning all other human activity. More importantly, however, is its development potential both artistically and personally. As an educator, teaching photography both as an art form and a technical skill, instruction begins with enthusiasm for the subject and attentiveness towards students’ maturation in art and the field of photography. Students have the opportunity to become visually literate, utilizing a language processed in the photographic medium. By encouraging students to observe how their experiences influence their perception and direction in life, they begin to understand how to visually incorporate a sense of their own personal identity into their images. Recognizing the aesthetics of technological change and embracing the diversity of art, students have the ability to create images expressing and communicating their experience in relationship to the scheme of things in life.

Barton Gilmore’s career in art began by enrolling into photography classes at the University of South Florida in 1973. Upon receiving a BA Degree in Art in 1977 from USF, he moved back to south Florida and worked for a number of photographic businesses, financially sustaining himself while maintaining his sights on returning to school one day to further his education in the arts. After working at Berkey Film Corporation, American Express Division, Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Color Lab of Florida, Dillon/Reynolds Aerial Photography and freelancing for various clients, he returned to his alma mater in the fall of 1984 to pursue a graduate degree in photography. He received a Masters of Fine Arts from University of South Florida in 1987. He has taught photography as art for over 35 years at various institutions including Hillsborough Community College, International Academy of Design and Technology and at University of South Florida, Division for Extended Studies.  Currently he is a full-time faculty and lead professor in the photography department at SPC teaching on the Clearwater campus since 1991.

The piece titled Playground, acknowledges an imaginary place, constructed by impartial pleasures during quiet times. Nurtured by returning visits and explorative in nature, often with challenges and delays, this wonderland environment, evolves into an empirically enriched sanctuary, where acquaintances foreshadow a legacy of playtime moments.

In this encapsulated ecosystem, lies a montage of compartmentalized and perceivable moments behaving like an irrational annular terrain, while moving like a teetotum, perhaps a prelude to a welcomed new landing place with a fresh point of view.

Due to the presence of another, and more to follow during an encircled timeline, today’s visit is powered by intuitive decisions, gyrating around a singular objective towards a collective response. On display, is a community of uncharted mutual interactions, governed by both instinctive and sometimes rival-coalescing behaviors. Remarkably, these conditions remodel provisional and diverse relationships into alliances.

As expected, the frequencies to this domain diminish, though each trip procured samples of impulses, identity fragments and symptoms of kindred resolve, all rendering yet another enduring moment on pause.

Artist’s Statement about the Early Signs series. In recent years, a new paradigm has materialized in the individual perception of other persons and future events. This perceptual reality infiltrates the present moment by morphing sensibilities into fictional awareness which inherently devalues the trust placed on assessing current conditions and creates a perpetual judgmental paradox between the accuracy of reality as we know it and fictional truths from unknown facts.

Organic Facade, from the “Early Signs” series, reminds us to cherish and nurture the present moment by respecting its purity instead of creating a barometer for behavioral impressions and societal conditions. This body of work urges the viewer to take caution when allowing a moment to delegate and prejudge both silent personalities and unforeseen information since discrepancies between behavioral decorations and inherent realities lying underneath create a condition where all surfaces attempt to preempt what reality is and how history plays out.

Plant Wars, from the Early Signs series investigates various industrial complexes in society and plant behavior through the use of both synthetic and organic materials as metaphors and symbols infused together in a fabricated landscape. The image attempts to parallel the proliferation of behemoth corporations and their inherent monopolistic merger transactions and impacting environmental ecosystems. As a result, many growth patterns from non-indigenous plant species are eradicating the habitats of indigenous plants and trees. As both systems-artificial and natural, consume all meager competition, the expediential growth rate of these industrial giants and invading plants will reduce market shares and natural habitats and will create both a commerce and nature imbalance. This will jeopardize the infrastructure with irreparable implications for both business and wild life communities while crippling the health of consumerism and the health of the environment. The observation of both the safe guards and survival lapses in any type of environment can offer all collective domains the means to recognize either the early signs commonly associated with potential and imminent peril or the viable solutions, and provide the resolve to act, or at least acknowledge the responsibility of either consequence.

Participating indigenous Plants and Trees: Sand Spurs, Pine Needles, Oak Leaves, Stems, Branches and Trunk Shavings, Pumpkin Husk, Sycamore Leaf, Mimosa Seed Pods, Royal Poinciana, Silk Tree, Poinsettia, Jacaranda. Sweet Gum Tree, Cherry Stems.

Participating non-indigenous Plants and Tree:Australian-pine, Brazilian Pepper plant, Camphor tree, Cogon grass, Kudzu vine, Jumbie bean, Melaleuca, Torpedo grass

Non-Plant Materials

Tooth picks, marbles, vitamin capsules, thread, tied dye fabric, window screen, chalk, metal screening, coffee stirrers, popsicle sticks, lollipop sticks, hair netting, metal shavings, construction paper, paint, shish-ka-bob sticks, glue, computer transistors, chips, etc., tape, yarn, string, screen rubber seal, letter and number decals, foil, cork, sand paper, Lupe magnifier, dust off extender, copper wire, aluminum wire, plastic mesh, straws, clothes pins, color acetates, plastic notebook rings.

Caught-up by my own Design, is a testament to how often one tends to get in their own way, from the proverbial, stubbing one’s toe, denying an opportunity for yourself, or to happenchance. This image suggests too much over planning, instead of taking action, can alter the objectives trajectory outcome. In this particular moment, the planning tools become the nemesis and yet, by perseverance, may just lead to resolve-a way out.

Growth Patterns suggest there are reoccurring patterns in all levels of human existence, and it may be useful to differentiate between viable and dormant behavioral patterns. This observational practice may evolve into an efficient and more intuitive life style. Using cloth material and a modified diagrammatic map environment, the implied navigational objective is a personal journey perhaps with, or without a without a destination ahead.

Go to Growth Patterns

Emotional Strategy revolves around the experiences of playing board games growing up during the 60’s and 70’s. It wasn’t until the early 80’s when the vantage point and distance to the environment just below me, shifted to an aerial perspective through a lens at various altitudes. Strategies existed in both worlds, one to play to win, the other for work and being as safe while doing it. The element of chance also existed in both activities, due the roll of dice in one, and acknowledging that flying was at times was a risky occupation. The affiliation between board games and aerial photography was the vantage points each embodied, which eventually led to a conceptual middle ground to explore in the arts, combining a common ground with altered perspectives. The vantage point of the board game and viewing the planet surface thousands of feet below perspectives influenced my methodical process for creating a visual narrative about my place and responsibility in the world regardless the distance from it.

Loose Ends and Feelings portray a fabricated structure with mathematical components as metaphors in an attempt to rationalize and understand the nature of feelings. Only by relinquishing mechanical thinking, one may experience a moment of emotional awareness and the clarity to differentiate between trust and insecurity behaviors. The images spatial depth attempts to convey, where emotions reside, elude a measurable means, however, the place can exist without reason or confirmation, because consciously or unconsciously, the act of feeling will define its own behavior, tailored to one’s own being, and many times incomprehensible by others.  

Community Exchange celebrates an artist life style in a venue for a collective cause, and compliments the diversity of Tampa Bay seen through transparent filters.

The image Siblings is a tribute to parenting, and a testament about the power of diversity. The piece celebrates the assiduous relationship between kin-brothers and sisters and the inherent commitment to their connection regardless of their devotion or love towards one another.     

Face the Truth is a time exposure of 15 minutes on a bridge overlooking Spring Creek in Hot Springs NC. It was a time when I had to make a profound career choice decision, and face some challenging realities I was in denial about.

Pencil Trees was a one second time exposure looking out from the entrance of a tent camping on Jackfish Bay in Superior National Forrest north of Wisconsin on the Canadian Side. I was writing in my journal about what I was experiencing in the moment using a pencil prior to capturing the image, when suddenly the lead of the pencil broke. In mild despair, I had to now use a knife to sharpen the writing tool. The results of my shaving the pencil stem looked remarkedly similar to the trees neutral color shade in the forest.

Skin Deep was photographed in Ybor City south of 7th Ave East of a building undergoing repair. Instead of a total remodeling, the landlord painted over the imperfections on the surface. This scene became a psychological metaphor for me, that superficiality in all its states is overvalued in today’s culture due to impressionable-camouflage surfaces, so stay awake, acknowledge the true self-worth underneath.  

Partnerships come in many forms and have various types of networking mechanisms at play, which are designed to sustain and grow the partnership, yet sometimes they dissolve themselves from underneath due lack of reciprocal interactions.

Downsizing with Noetic Fatigue is addressing the mental hardship associated with the decluttering aspect of one’s personal domain, and with that comes the emotional and intellectual side effects, which cannot be tossed out ass simple as the physical stuff.

Anger that went to Sleep is as quotation first discovered through the studies of philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, composer George Gurdjieff, while studying his teaching of self-improvement in 1990’s. It’s about the anger which resides underneath in one’s behavior, waiting to reveal itself due to an unpleasant situation as a catalyst. The catalyst for me was when I attempted to peel off the brown wrapping material which protected a piece of plexiglass for one of my art pieces. The frustration I experienced through the process of peeling off the paper lead me to a frustrated state of mind. Perhaps the anger was building up to this situation, a by-product from other things in life, and the challenge of peeling the material off, let it out.  

Water Fragments The color fragments consist of acetate material floating in white latex paint submerged in old car oil. This was a dark period in my life, and with that came stagnation, self-pity and depression, but from it came the piece which now is a reminder and compass to a way out of this state of existing. 

Landfill is a continuation of the dark era, where the byproducts of all the materials I used in creating this body of work was compiled together, ready to be recycled or thrown out, in order to start a new chapter in life. I chose both to find the rewards during challenging times in life one would not expect to discover.  

Low Tide is an environmental piece potentially foreshadowing the risk that Tampa Bay faces when sea levels rise in this century ahead. The images used in the assemblage of the piece are photographs I took from 7500 feet when involved in Aerial photography.

Stone Currents is a time exposure of five seconds of a small 12” X 18” bolder on the banks of a small river stream in the Smokey Mountains National Park. The water in the background for me, takes on an atmospheric-cloud behavior appearance, and the rock presents itself as a much larger organic natural formation than it really is, due to lack of visible context and reference association.  

Dancer is a time exposure for about 5 minutes of nylon window screen I acquired in order to fix a window screen torn in my apartment. Due to my fascination towards materials of sorts, I like to always photograph the subject before I functionally use it. The image was turned 90 degrees to the right, which for me depicted movement in the form of a dancer.

Shattered Mirage is very early image, defying superstition, in fact challenging it, by breaking many mirrors into smaller pieces, arranging them on a bean bag and a one-minute time exposure using a flash light to illuminate the subject matter. The photographic event removed many fears I had about all superstitions.

The piece titled Groundwork began laboriously with the removal of a partially exposed silver oak root in the yard. Upon first glance, one might think the rationale for uprooting this piece of wood was due to mower obstruction or a subterranean plumbing blockage, and even sprinkler system issues, but these reasons were far removed from the obscure visual narrative which surfaced, this time in the context of a tree root, exposing my insatiable curiosity to explore an unforeseen world and revisit another aspect of self-awareness from the ground up.

As the piece evolved in construction, the concept became clearer and reaffirmed a personal observation about how the constant flux of change through experiences impact growth cycles. Whether a participant or spectator in any event, including inadvertent circumstances involving chance and coincidences, profoundly influences personal development, and becomes groundwork for something else, defining ultimately our identity. 

Due to numerous life delays over the art projects’ three-year span, and a slower than normal production time-line, it became problematic, the piece may perhaps never attain the status, of ‘complete’. And yet, the prolonged process forged a new purpose, as the project became symbolically and literally a visual biography of my life. 

Short Stories & Make-Believe Consciences collecting of various things has evolved throughout the history of humanity, from its instinctively purist form consisting of memories, to the modern materialistic behavior often displayed in all classes and lifestyles. The rational and practice of restoring objects, structures and environments, other than for educational value, preserves the past, creates a function, and sustains the notion of immortality. Even trivia and memorability play a greater role for people who find solace in collecting both personal and memorable informational trinkets. Ironically, many of our memories whether cherished or disparage are unconsciously forgotten-lying dormant, sometimes tethered to the most mundane items or collections, where they’re inadvertently discovered later, often years removed, igniting an association to a lost memory. The acquisition process in any form, reserves a place in the life style of most individuals, and it’s this unique behavior, which provides validity to their life’s experience and perhaps, nurtures their existence. The perception of acquiring immortality through one’s legacy has evolved beyond traditional procreation methods, where offspring inherit the role and fate. Social platforms now empower individuals to a networking base, providing comfort by securing a virtual-collective social legacy. Of course, famous people with significant contributions to humanity, are archived by individuals, organizations and governments and so on however, most people come to the realization, they’re existence and memories are distilled down to things and people that influenced them surrounding them.

The Collection Series highlights the methods, types and value individuals place on preserving their memories by various objects. Some people treat these items as found and trivial objects, modeling a trophy. Others earn them as a reward for accomplishments and most acquire them as either a gift, impulse purchase or a necessity. Many objects, which withstand the test of time regardless of their relevancy, solidify their importance, due to the length of time the item has been a presence in one’s life.

The pieces Short Stories and Make Believe parallel the early lives of two young boys, a generation and thousands of miles apart. Short Stories depicts collected experiences from a single page in a year book of both found objects and various items associated with places and people, while Make Believe collectively combines toys and their respective created environments associated with imaginary play-time moments.

This triptych, Nomadic Seasons, Rouge Farmer, is a continuation of the collection series, Short Stories & Make Believe, and is inspired by my late grandfather who was a farmer in northern Illinois, utilizing antiquated equipment and materials with improvisation, despite an agricultural industry migrating to modernization methods. The conversion cost to newer technologies was justification for him to continue as is. However, the agricultural community became increasingly static, like a windless weather vane, ushering in an indifferent and distant-type automated environment, and the behavioral pressure from autonomist neighbors to align with new technology-based business protocols, finalized my grandfather’s non-alliance decision. The following pieces are metaphorical landscapes depicting the seasonal changes on a farm, accompanied with an abstract narrative underlying a farming lifestyle.   

Winter-Spring, was always the stressful months for my grandfather, wondering whether or not the reserves would last through next season. He observed during these months how his attitude became colder, with a singularity demeanor, similar to what he felt like visiting people in the technology sector, perhaps due to management instilling greater responsibility and demands on its operatives. He also heard about how the acquisition of knowledge was now preyed upon and harvested for its opportunities before it was dated and farmed out.

Summer was characterized by the ardent deployment of new, yet built-in obsolescent technologies, and he was approached often by a salesperson demonstrating how to encapsulate individuality into a corporate-like system, and trying to convince him that a dry informatics-based society, and the networking involved, is now the hands-on synthetic intellectual model. 

Fall was my grandfather’s favorite season, observing a growing community, late harvesting and blissfully reassured with his sense of self-worth, due to his insulation from the diversionary tech-no environment. He acknowledged technology’s inherently changing behavioral patterns, but remained obstinate towards its unconditional freedom, since the corporate ingenuity it took to create this new style of farming, didn’t require any discipline to attain it.

As a young teenager traveling to visit my grandfather, I always viewed the corn fields, wheat and later on, soybeans as landscape collections with hidden experiences. It was in this demographical region where I first learned about farming equipment and the cost of upgrading the technology supporting the machinery necessary to farm. Over time, I began observing how influential technological advancement in farming equipment was downsizing the labor force, creating a non-tech cultural minority, and I witnessed farmers still fortunate to be in the business, struggling to learn new skill sets just to stay pace with the demands of the agricultural industry. Eventually, the increasing competition from corporate international food producers began compromising the viability of smaller family-owned farming businesses, including my grandfather, who eventually retired from farming. To this day I still miss getting lost in the corn fields collecting memories; however, I still observe a contracting workforce everywhere I look. As I become my grandfather, I face similar challenges.

Chronicles on Native Soil

The images Group Therapy, Personal Space and 480 Square Feet on Hold are an invitation into enigmatic worlds, perhaps with familiar surroundings, though conceivably just environmental façades of characters and objects. You may have witnessed or even experienced these types of domains before, evoking responses which played out in real time, and possibly still are with renewed clarity. The scenes portray a time when ideas expired in place, without redemption and choices were abundant, but out of reach. Contentions existed with unfamiliar people who shared a partisan objective, and the phrase “take a number”, was acceptable, as no one else was around.

The images once served a singular purpose, though now offer a renewal option with foreshadowing metaphors, often unconsciously embedded into the creating process, becoming symbolic time capsules for future generations to ponder. Perhaps some insights into life’s mysteries will be unveiled, guided by personal experience lying dormant will awake, triggering current nomenclatures to lay the groundwork for a remodeled lifestyle where human nature displays itself.

Artist Epilogue-This body of work portrays a compilation of personal observations and manifestations about one’s convictions and their influences on new experiences, in the context of how they are reinforced by new events, influenced by perceptional change and then reevaluated over time.  

The mixed-media pieces serve as the groundwork for these conversant and reoccurring-thematic observations.  Utilizing manufactured and metaphorical symbols from organic and functional materials, these assemblages corroborate with photographs, both functioning as serendipitous documentations and filtered interpretations about the significance of lifelong lessons.

The approach to making collaborative pieces supports the inherent passion to create intuitive and expeditious imagery, along with a fastidious and sustained building process, which aligns with an innate quest for a balanced environment for both artistic and personal endeavors.     

All pieces were created from materials predominately found on my surrounding property, including objects of interest discovered in other locations throughout Florida. The pieces were fabricated, assembled, and photographed in my studio in Lutz, Florida.

Tree House, another piece from the “Early Signs” series, is a response to the growing concern regarding the future availability of natural resources utilized for energy consumption both artificially manifested and indigenous to the environment around the world. The energy industrial complex system currently in place is at risk and the governing body of these energy systems both corporate and federal is under strain due to rising costs, growing demand and an increasingly inadequate infrastructure within the system to sufficiently maintain itself to serve those in need. Tree Houses, reinforces how technological advances and the diminishing services and assistance once provided by businesses in many industries now vacating that role fuels the self- dependency, governing and the individual management ideology taking hold in all aspects of life. 

…the tree limbs and plywood nudged against each other like two people yawning in chorus during a steady breeze as the sun rose above the roof tops. The penthouse residences announced their presence with piccolo-like solos drowning out the animated noises of feudal land lords below. A scout, a spy or just a lookout guy was the purpose by decree, as daydreams and fantasies filled the eyes all a youth would need. Light provisions for the day lined the walls on the deck below like piled laundry on the floor; the clouds above were soon to be covered by timber, nails and a secret door. The password sang out defining friend from foe, the reinforcements were climbing with younger brothers in tow. The excitement a crescendo to a squeal-like pitch, each claiming the fortress their own, still happy to share this tree-like niche, to nurture and call it home.

The poem talks about my experience creating Tree Houses, through the memories I recall when I discovered a balance ecosystem, consisting of intellectual contentment, building a structure, social and community harmony and having fun playing in a tree house while immunizing myself from the realities of life.

First Hand Experience Narrative Portfolio

The images depict the motion and the experience of myself linking one environment to another. I am placing the camera in a fixed, u=yet tangible state of motion within a functional and controlled environment directed by me. The movement of the controlled environment in relation to its surroundings produces a window, where time and imagination serendipitously evolve into a concept with an unfamiliar space. Through my participation of moving one environment through another, I become the transitional linkage between the two, thus creating a transformation of myself fusing one reality to another.  

History of Influence…

Influenced early on by Formalism in my photography career through the likes of Professor Oscar Bailey, Founder of USF’s photographic arts program, and Suzanne Camp Crosby in my undergraduate tenure at USF. I continued primarily on this trajectory style away from the academic environment until I returned to graduate school. It was during this time I was influenced by photographic and art professors Fred Endsley, Lou Marcus, Vicky Hurt and David Yeager as well as national and international artists visiting USF, and working at Graphic Studio. My Post modernism pursuits began by connecting to impact of my early life experiences and how they manifested psychologically in the context of current influences, both   culturally and environmentally.  

From a very young age out of necessity and play, I had an attraction to altitude and heights. Playing game boards for entertainment was gaining popularity in the 1960’, and the aerial perspective inherent in most board games for their environment, enhanced the curiosity to be physically in the air beyond the reach of a tree limb excited me, eventually landed me a freelance career in ariel photography before I entered into graduate school in 1980. The perceptual and dimensional influence in seeing from the air had a profound impact during my graduate studies. My work evolved from a literal rendition of seeing from the air to an abstract version influenced by the Futurist Manifesto and artist of that movement. It was this time when I realized how my late grandfather influenced me from a production side of making art. Even though his work was strictly realism in his wood carving renditions of tools, equipment and machinery he used as a farmer, a life style he cherished. It was his patience, his attention to details and perseverance through the process of creating that I discovered in me. I also unearthed a profound and inherent art element characteristic in my behavior of organizing my life, environment and others through a linear methodology. My teachers commented frequently about the organizational characteristics in my art and strong linear qualities in the picture frame, both suggesting a spatial depth with layered perceptual narratives observing myself in the context of the environment.

The proximately of myself to the environment, once occupationally faraway, continued to move closer until within arm distance, though by this time enlightened me to a visual language which I could articulate through a contrived-conceptual organized means. Other influential memoires lying dormant found themselves through the introduction of in-process creative methods and through the lens discoveries becoming ‘point of departure’ vehicles and paradigm visual shifts. The back lighting of the mixed media pieces in the building process opened a dimensional quality where spatial depth cavities allowed room to move through the work becoming part of the creative experience. The synthetic and organic materials are combined to acknowledge the growing partnership of the medium in an increasing technology fed world.  

The use of sewing materials and cut out patterns and layered together was a delayed response to my mom’s seamstress hobbyist career beginning in 2010 with the piece An Island Without Water.

“The segue, or ‘points of departure’ images, represent in the moment visual discoveries, and a catalyst for conceptual discovering. With that, fresh production methods linked me to uncharted narratives and allowed my work to evolve and me to follow.

First Hand Experience Narrative Portfolio

The images depict the motion and the experience of myself linking one environment to another. I am placing the camera in a fixed, u=yet tangible state of motion within a functional and controlled environment directed by me. The movement of the controlled environment in relation to its surroundings produces a window, where time and imagination serendipitously evolve into a concept with an unfamiliar space. Through my participation of moving one environment through another, I become the transitional linkage between the two, thus creating a transformation of myself fusing one reality to another.