Growing up on a farm, Tracie Grace Lyons loved exploring the old abandoned buildings around her home. To her, the dusty surroundings were like a Sherlock Holmes novel, offering clues she would use to create a story and history of its long-forgotten past.
As a senior drawing major, Lyons has found a way to channel that same imagination and creativity into her art, while combining it with her lifelong love of historical buildings and architecture.
A project for an advanced drawing class led the Jackson native to create a series of drawings of historical buildings in downtown Columbus. As she researched the buildings, she decided to include windows into bygone times by incorporating vignettes of historical elements from the buildings' past.
The project inspired Lyons to continue her series, and she has developed an extensive collection of drawings depicting buildings with historical, and sometimes fictional, elements as her imagination stirs.
"The most satisfying part is the process, because it is kind of like a game where I can put all the pieces together to tell a story," she said. "But it's so rewarding to see the reaction of people when they see a picture and it stirs some of their own memories of a time or place they may have forgotten."