Most of us experience a few twists and turns throughout our lives, and often those moments become the defining ones that shape us as people. Often, it’s not what happens to us but how we choose to respond that makes a difference.
That’s something Sierra Smalley has learned early, despite her youth. She spent most of her childhood and teen years in Wisconsin practicing basketball in hopes of getting a scholarship to a Divison I school. She ended up on scholarship at University of Detroit Mercy, until a broken foot (and the many surgeries that followed) ended her basketball career and seriously impacted her ability to run.
But, as she says, “not being able to do exactly what I want has taught me a lot. Namely, do what you can.”
She took a lifelong interest in photography and has been honing her talent on trips to the national parks and exploring Detroit. Her art is on display at the Boll Family YMCA’s lobby gallery through the end of the month, and you can also see her work at www.sierrasmalley.com.The website chronicles her photography and also her and her husband’s quest to visit all of the national parks. They’ve been to 37 so far, just in the last two years, she says.
Interestingly, she is self-taught and most of her work has been done with an inexpensive digital camera, although now she’s working with a professional quality camera she received as a wedding gift.
One of the interesting things about the lobby gallery at the Boll is that it features both established artists and new ones like Sierra. She discovered the gallery when she joined the Boll Y because of its rock climbing wall (she’s become an avid rock climber since her injury) and asked coordinator Seth Amadei about the possibility of exhibiting her work there. Seth reviewed some of her work and immediately offered her the chance to have her work in the gallery for a month. “I think it’s cool having national park theme in city,” she says. “Especially for the kids there — when you’re that young you don’t know what is out there, and I think it’s really cool that being from a city they can see these really remote places.”