It’s good shootin’ at Annie Oakley’s
Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Relocated eatery boasts the island’s first gallery dedicated to photography.
When Annie Oakley moved her restaurant from its longtime home next to Calico Cat to a space adjacent to Bainbridge Bakers last February, its pristine walls caught Kristin Carroll’s eye.
“I said (to Annie), ‘These are nice walls. This is a nice space. I’ve got a few things you could hang.’”
The island photographer ended up hanging enough photographs to make a solo exhibit in a traditional gallery, and put up a second show in time for April’s ArtsWalk – images of roses from local gardens photographed with the digital Minolta XT Carroll favors.
In addition to being the restaurant’s first exhibitor, Carroll is curating other photography shows for Annie’s Place, making the restaurant the island’s first show space dedicated to that art form.
“I would like to see photography highlighted more,” she said. “There is no photography gallery on Bainbridge.”
Already, the schedule for next year’s month-long shows is almost set, with an October slot remaining to be filled.
Annie’s Place follows ArtsWalk convention: the restaurant doesn’t cover liability for art displayed, but takes a modest 10 percent of sales, as opposed to the 40-50 percent cut of a commercial gallery.
Carroll’s own love affair with photography has roots in the early 1970s. A single mother, she was raising a four-year-old daughter when she went back to school to get her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
“My very first camera I bought from a biker who needed bail money,” Carroll said. “That lasted me for a while, and then I got into studio cameras.”
Carroll worked for the university’s botany lab at night, cleaning up negatives taken of pen and ink sketches.
Her daughter would curl up on an old desk in a sleeping bag while Carroll worked in the darkroom all night.
Carroll worked alongside an old Air Force photographer, who showed her the tricks of the trade – many involving a lighted cigarette.
Under the amber or red light of the darkroom, a lighted cigarette would provide light to see. The same “tool” could be used to heat up an area of a negative, to make it develop faster.
Carroll also worked for the brother of her Air Force buddy, a pilot who dusted the Oregon hops fields.
Carroll photographed the fields, hanging out the door of the small plane.
In order to shoot with the 1940s-vintage camera she was using, the plane had to be in a stall to prevent vibration.
“They stalled the plane and these guys were just laughing their heads off as they dived under the telephone wires to rev it up again,” she said. “And I’m screaming my head off, ‘I’m never going up with you guys again.’”
After Carroll moved to Bainbridge with her new husband in 1981, she found work at the University of Washington, opening the first computer graphics studio for the School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology.
“In the end I had about 8,000 archived files,” she said. “Slides, prints, posters – that was a lot of fun, 10 years of making it up as you go along.”
In 1996, after her daughter graduated from college and her husband completed a PhD in molecular biology, Carroll decided to explore the community through part-time jobs.
To date she has been an assistant to a Poulsbo horse vet, a projectionist for Bainbridge Cinemas and a seasonal worker at Calico Cat.
The jobs support travel to Norway, where Carroll has roots, and an art habit that has her purchasing works from her latest workplace, Roby King Galleries.
“I love busy,” Carroll said. “Busy people get more things done.”
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For information about upcoming photography exhibits at Annie’s Place, call 842-0335.
