Maggie Flanigan, Sutherland Valley Church, 2025
Call for entry:
24th Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition (AMPC) exhibition, Staring at a Glimpse
2026-2027 Dates
- Online Submission System Opens: September 22, 2026
- Deadline for Entries: November 19, 2026 @ 5 PM EST
- Notifications Emailed: December 11, 2026
- Artwork Delivery Dates: January 5-8, 2027
- Exhibition Dates: February 5 – June 5, 2027
- ARTtalk & Awards Reception: April 2, 2027 @ 5pm EST
This year’s exhibition will be juried by Maggie Flanigan, artist and Director of the AFA Visual Arts program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, who chose, “Staring at a Glimpse” as this year’s exhibition theme. Flanigan says:
“I’m forever trying to know this place. To learn by working its endless puzzles, every mountain, neighbor’s story, church, and river. Rather than searching for answers, I’ve become interested in the ghosts that linger within them.
Ghosts are not always supernatural beings. Rather than something to fear, ghosts are evidence that something needs our attention. They are histories, absences, environmental change, lost industries, displacement, grief, rituals, collective emotion, and unresolved questions. The region has always carried its own hauntings, but I wonder what new ghosts we are creating. The things that haunt us are the things we love, inherit, mourn, and, often, what we’ve yet to understand. What losses, silences, inheritances, and unprocessed feelings will remain long after we’re gone?
Photography has always occupied a space between presence and absence. Every photograph is evidence of a moment that no longer exists. This exhibition invites artwork that explores haunting in its broadest sense, encouraging work that considers the visible and invisible forces shaping communities and personal histories.”
The AMPC submission process opens Sept. 22, 2026 and includes both single-image and series submissions. For the single-image submission category, artists will be able to submit 1-5 stand alone images aligned with the theme of “Staring at a Glimpse” for $15 dollars. The series submission option allows artists to submit 6-12 images from a singular body of work, also aligned with this year’s theme, for $20 dollars. Selected artists from this category will show six images chosen by the juror from their submitted series, highlighting AMPC’s vision to support the expansion of Appalachian narratives.
The deadline for submissions is November 19, 2026. Artists will be notified of their acceptance on December 11, 2026 and will be expected to deliver their artwork to TCVA in Boone, NC, between January 5-8, 2027. Artists are responsible for transporting artwork to TCVA. TCVA will provide complimentary return shipping via FedEx/UPS to exhibiting artists.
Single-image submissions: https://tvca.slideroom.com/#/permalink/program/86480
Series submissions: https://tvca.slideroom.com/#/permalink/program/86481
The exhibition opens Friday, February 5, 2027 with a public reception that evening. People’s Choice voting will take place in-person in the gallery through April 1, 2027. The public Awards Reception will kick off with an ARTtalk by Juror Maggie Flanigan at 5pm in the Turchin Center Lecture Hall, followed by awards announcements and an evening of celebration as part of First Friday Art Crawl on April 2, 2027.
About the Juror
Maggie Flanigan is a North Carolina-based artist and educator whose photographic work interrogates the complexities of religion and community in the rural South. Using lens-based interventions to evoke the nonlinear nature of memory, her practice positions photography as a tool for resistance and reimagining in places where dominant narratives often obscure marginalized voices. Currently the Director of the AFA Visual Arts program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, the same place where she first experienced formal education, she carries forward a commitment to teaching as a reciprocal exchange rooted in care and curiosity.