RPS Meeting Guest Speaker Jim Schlett via ZOOM, 11/16 at 7:30PM
Jim Schlett’s interest in photography began with a graduation gift of a Polaroid camera from grade school in New Jersey. He later obtained an AA degree in Photography and Art and continues to attend photography workshops and presentations, including those at the Maine Media College. He obtained his MBA in 1982 and was employed by the US Postal Service as the Director/Chief of Staff of the Law Department for over 30 years in Washington D.C. In 2011, he “refocused” on his love for the National Parks and photography. He is a long-standing member of the Reston Photographic Society (RPS) and the former President of the League of Reston Artists (LRA) (2012-17). Jim has a great interest in travel and his photographs include many images of our national parks, (having visited over 170 National Park sites), cityscapes and nature in nearly all fifty states.
Since 2016, he successfully completed being an Artist-In-Resident (AIR) at nine National Park Service locations, Whiskeytown NRA, Catoctin Mountain Park, Manassas National Battlefield Park, Gettysburg Military Park, Homestead National Monument, Montezuma Castle & Tuzigoot National Monument, Herbert Hoover Historic Site and Bighorn Canyon NRA. Jim has been a speaker at the several Washington, DC art and photography organizations discussing his AIR experience with his images. He published over 10 feature articles about the AIR experiences in Live More Magazine, Parks & Travel Magazine, Reston Magazine, the Fairfax Times and the Hoover Foundation newsletter.
Jim had a solo exhibition about the National Parks in December, 2018 with many images from his AIRs at the ArtSpace Gallery in Herndon VA. In 2019, his photographs were exhibited in a joint effort partnership about the AIR program at the flagship store of Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) and the National Park Service in Washington, DC, and at the Fujifilm Exhibition at Grand Central Station in New York City.