“Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven’t left any holes, that you’ve captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.”

Karen Thompson, the revered educator and much-admired photographer, may have finally found her la querencia, that place staked out in the arena by the bullfighters to provide sanctuary from the menacing charges of their adversary or, in this case, the challenges of these difficult times.

Don’t read that the wrong way. Although she’s retiring after nearly 30 years of teaching at IPFW and most recently at the University of Saint Francis, the strikingly handsome and articulate inspirer is just changing venues, not her life’s work of documenting and storytelling.

To celebrate her exit and egress, the USF is staging a “Retrospective” opening Saturday, August 28 and running through October 2 at the Weatherhead Gallery on campus. “Retrospective” features some 50 pieces reflecting her contribution to the visual arts, and it is a humdinger.

Thompson was on the learn-as-you-go plan during classes at the University of Iowa, and one of her lessons realized after three years was that she didn’t have what it takes to be an artist, at least as measured by her accounting.

“My last semester in search of a degree included photography, and it was then that I found my medium. A 35mm Kodak Pony, if I remember correctly, was my first camera,” Thompson recalled. “In photography I found a release. Not just a release from the labor-intensive work of painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics, but I was able to do more, maybe not better in quality but more in quantity. And in all of that I discovered a voice I was comfortable with. A medium that allowed me to say what I was trying to communicate.”

Years later, the results speak for themselves. Just ask any of hundreds of former students and colleagues and collectors who have come in contact with Thompson and her work. That list includes both BP and AP as in “before Photoshop” and “after Photoshop.”

That period when alchemy reigned in pools of chemicals and contact sheets gave way to manipulating digitalized pixels some eight years ago for Thompson. She was at once initially intrigued and appalled. Maurice Papier, then the Art Department chair at USF, announced that all the instructors would be learning the new medium together.

“I was so reluctant, and then even more so when Maurice told me I was going to be teaching the course. I think I spent time every day for an entire year, plus workshops and seminars, to get a grasp of the tools. To me it is like learning a language (she studied several in college): first you learn the alphabet, then its grammar, then sentence structure, then conversation or dialog, and finally you can tackle poetry,” Thompson explained.

“The program (Photoshop) is really a time thief. Like a bandit, it steals time,” Thompson continued. “I remember once during that time my teenage daughter briefly interrupted my work at the computer at home to tell me she was going out. When she opened the door and reappeared before me, I thought she was coming back to pick up her car keys or something she had forgotten. It was then I realized she’d been gone for two hours and I was still exploring some single element of Photoshop.”

Since her apprenticeship Thompson has gone on to master the nuances of the software and hone her message. Like all artists she uses her skills to focus the attention of her viewers. “You’re not always going to be with your art. You’re not going to be there to narrate it,” she tells her students, so it is critical that the work inform itself.

Therefore, Thompson concludes, exaggeration is sometimes necessary to get your idea across. To illustrate her point Thompson related an episode involving her sister, who is, shall we say “vertically challenged.”

“At family get-togethers the rest of us would get down on her for hyping, even lying in the telling of her stories. She responded with ‘When you’re being interviewed for a position in a chair across from a desk and your feet are dangling above the carpet. What would you do?’”

TouchÈ!

As to the exhibit - it wasn’t to be hung until after this article was due - I can only go by the reproduced images in the well crafted four-color invitation produced by Thompson’s son-in-law, Jeff Dollens of HPN, the marketing force for USF, plus what I recall of her previously shown works.

In many ways Thompson’s technique mimics the medium of cut-out dolls. Remember the die-cut paper costumes that children could dress figures to stage historical or contemporary scenes by folding tabs A, B and C? In Thompson’s modern version she overlays costumes on images of her favorite subject, her granddaughter, Isabel.

Often the scenes she creates depict those very special places in the life of children and perhaps can be best described in the words of Elizabeth Goodenough in her book, Secret Spaces of Childhood, a collection of stories and poems which has been a favorite of the artist.

If you ever constructed a fort out of boxes, chairs and blankets, or lost yourself in the pages of a favorite book, you’ll recognize in (Thompson’s) landscapes the urge we had as children to hide out, build worlds within our worlds and create spaces as real and potent as any outside the limitless sphere of our younger, inner lives.

Thompson’s reflections “capture the daydream-like quality of our childhood visions and fantasy worlds, a time when imagination had yet to be banished from reality. To reconstruct that special landscape ... the gardens and wildernesses-tender and terrible-of childhood’s heart.”

This re-occurring theme of lost innocence dominates her work. One piece, done in the aftermath of 9/11, uses Isabel again as the focus. In this case Thompson has cloaked her in a Native American animal skin with a small American flag in her grasp. Her rosey-cheeked and beaming face is framed by a ring of leaves and large moose antlers. In the background are grazing sheep, cows and geese. Not quite your typical Norman Rockwell.

Another favorite features Isabel with a eye-mask askew, harkening back to the times when trick-or-treaters were free to roam the streets without fear of apples sabotaged with razor blades or worse.