Carol Traveny

Bio
I am a native Pennsylvanian and grew up in Ridgway on the Allegheny Plateau. I now live in Telford, in the farm fields and suburbs near Philadelphia with my husband, Tom Bishop, and our two cats. I am a nature-lover, a Quaker, active in the fiber arts community, and a lifelong bookworm.

Over the past 15 years, my photography has appeared in several local and regional venues including:

• Lehigh Art Alliance, Bethlehem, PA
• Perkiomen Valley Art Center, Harleysville, PA
• Exhibit B Gallery, Souderton, PA
• Pennsylvania Center for Photography , Doylestown, PA
• Olympus InVision Juried Exhibition, Bethlehem, PA
• Phillips Mill Photographic Exhibition, New Hope, PA

Since 2012 I have had five solo exhibitions of my work at Bryn Athyn College, Neumann University, and Foulkeways at Gwynedd Retirement Community. I am also preparing for an exhibit of my landscape photography at Indian Valley Public Library, Telford, in November 2026.

What are Everyday Abstracts?
To abstract is to take out of context. To do this in my photography, I often use close-ups to isolate an image I find particularly interesting. By naming the source of these images, I hope to provide the viewer a way to see what I saw and perhaps to look at the world in a different way.

I use a Nikon D5100 DSLR camera with a Tamron 18 mm-400 mm lens. I do ‘traditional’ photographic editing in Adobe Lightroom: cropping, exposure and color adjustment, removing dust. I don’t use Photoshop. I do not use AI. Nothing is added that wasn’t already in the image; nothing is re-arranged or moved. At the same time, I love the freedom to experiment and make mistakes that digital photography provides. (If you don’t like an image, you can simply erase it and try again. When I was young, and had twelve exposures on a film cassette, it was almost paralyzing to try not to make a mistake and ‘use up’ the film!)

When did you know you were an artist?
I have always been attracted to patterns, shapes, and colors and can’t remember not loving to color, paint, or make things. I became a photographer in third grade when my older brother gave my sister and me Kodak Instamatic cameras for Christmas.

When and why did you decide to pursue art as a career?
To have a career in art is extremely difficult. Although I studied art in college (I attained a BFA in Visual Arts, Sculpture, from Penn State) I have earned my living by doing a lot of other things. I recently retired after 20 years as an academic librarian and library director.

What’s been your hardest challenge?
My hardest art-related challenge has been continuing to try to make art and make the time to make art during all the years I was working and living life. To keep showing up and doing the work is the hardest part of being an artist, but it’s also the most satisfying.

Feel free to add anything else you’d like to share with readers about yourself or your art.
Having the opportunity to make something—anything–is a privilege. Everyone does creative things every day that are valuable but not necessarily recognized as “Art.” Sometimes I think society makes it hard to see the creativity happening all around us, all the time.

[You can view more of Carol Traveny’s work on her website.]