When Susan D. Locks graduates from the Art Department of Georgia College & State University this spring, she will leave school having already negotiated her first exhibit in a private gallery.

Tuesday Locks held an artist’s reception to accompany her photography exhibit “Vanishing Cultivation,” which will be on display at The Gallery of Crazy W Creations in downtown Milledgeville through Nov. 23.

Locks’ work, which deals with the vanishing landscape of the family farm in modern America, found its way into The Gallery when a real estate shortage developed in the GCSU galleries because of the number of studio art majors who are graduating this semester.

As a part of the capstone experience for her studio art degree, Locks was tasked with negotiating an exhibit with a venue outside of the GCSU Art Department. Through this experience, Associate Professor and Art Department Chair Bill Fisher hopes that Locks’ and other students’ will be able encapsulate their four years of coursework at GCSU and give them the confidence to pursue their artistic passion in the professional setting or in a post-secondary educational setting.

“Elements of the capstone provide students with real-world experience,” Fisher said. “It is crucial that art students develop skills in communication, self promotion and tenacity, because art is a tough field to be in as a professional.”

Crazy W Creations Artist and gallery owner Maryllis Wolfgang said she was happy to work with Locks on an opportunity that provides gallery goers with a greater variety of art. But she also appreciates how the experience affects the education students are receiving in the GCSU art program.

“I think it gives an added dimension,” Wolfgang said. “For artists to go out and initiate contact and work together with [gallery owners] to rearrange the gallery to get people in seeing the work is an added experience as an art student.”

Locks said that the experience of working her project into a private gallery made her negotiate situations that she may not otherwise be faced with.

“I feel that it is a positive experience,” she said. “There was added stress knowing that I had to find a space and that I wouldn’t be able to know how I would present my work until I had found that space.”

In the back exhibit room at The Gallery, Locks filled the space with not only her images of the disappearing world of a family-operated tobacco farm in Virginia, but she also incorporated objects used in the production of tobacco.

On a lot of farms that are no longer working farms, most people sell off all the equipment, Locks said.

But that’s not the case at a farm once operated by Locks’ grandparents, where many of the instruments of production remain on the land in varying states of decomposition.

“It’s kind of like a big archeological site, if you will,” she said.

Locks said the work on display at The Gallery is a culmination of different experiences in her life, she also holds a bachelors degree in agriculture communication from the University of Georgia. But photography allows her to freeze the moment in time when the perfect light makes something everyday extraordinary.