EveNSteve - STEPHEN M. SCHAUB AND Eve O. SCHAUB

“EveNSteve” is the husband and wife creative team of photographer Stephen M. Schaub and author Eve O. Schaub. In 2022 EveNSteve completed a month-long artistic residency in Sanquhar, Scotland dealing with themes of myth, folklore, and legend. This artwork, “The Soothsayer,” is the first in a series of works responding to that experience. In these artworks, vertical panoramic photographs depict Scottish landscapes and interiors combined with prose that is equal parts fictional and factual. Examples of the famous “Sanquhar knitting,” are hand sewn into the imagery just as the unique knitting pattern permeates the visual culture of the region. The watermark of the historic paper chosen for the series indicates it was produced during the reign of King George 1st in 1715. “The Soothsayer” has been shown at the Knoxville Museum of Art and will ultimately be part of a traveling exhibition composed of a series of multi-panel artworks (26), photographic images printed on 300+ year-old laid paper with handwritten text and swatches of knitting. Supplementary materials and a short film will accompany the exhibition as it travels to galleries and institutions to spark conversation and foster education on the topics of myth, folklore and legend and how they relate to literature, history,
politics, visual arts and traditional handcrafts.

Schaub's vision
Artist Stephen M. Schaub's works have been described as "art dreaming about itself." In them, rather than experiencing a literal place or a linear story, we encounter something akin to the fragmentation of an emotional memory- or the illogic of a dream. Depicting scenes of unresolved narrative, these images seem to have been subjected to the vagaries of perception and the passage of time.
Art critic and Andy Warhol Foundation Fellow Ric Kasini Kadour writes, "Great artists are great artists because they tackle impossible problems. Schaub has spent the last decade refining and improving his solution to the question of how to convey time- a phenomenon in constant motion- in a two-dimensional print. His works are grand and epic, rich with detail that encourages the viewer to pause and look slowly and consider the past and what it means to the present."

EVENSTEVE ON FERRANIA P30
In addition to being a photographer, Schaub is also a filmmaker, so he has long been aware of the strong legacy of Ferrania films. “I chose Ferrania for the Scotland project because I knew the rich tonality and contrast would not only be expressive and beautiful, but because I felt the cinematic qualities would resonate with the themes I was exploring of myth, folklore and legend. “Coupled with my developer of choice, in this case Rodinol, I was able to process my film on location in very minimal circumstances (a bathroom the size of a closet) and achieve the feeling that I was going for: evocative, alluring, and a little unsettling.”