Emotional trek

Chris Butcher wants her audience to feel something after seeing her photography

As a means to address her empty Hilo nest, Chris Butcher picked up a Sony Cybershot camera two years ago -- "you know, the kind that fits in your pocket," she says. The pictures she took were so intriguing, friends hounded her to enter one in a contest. When it won an award, Butcher was astounded.

"I was always the kid in school who couldn't draw the bowl of apples," she says.

Butcher thought it was a fluke, but she bought a bigger camera anyway and submitted more shots for consideration for art shows. Each time, her work was accepted.

Today, two years later, Butcher still seems stupified by her success. But she definitely has the heart of an artist. Butcher works not on individual shots, but on series that present "a preconceived idea, an emotion of some sort" that she hopes will elicit some kind of emotional reaction from her audience.

"I don't care if they don't like what they see. I just want them to feel something -- a question or a connection of some kind," she says.

Butcher would like her own gallery show but says spaces are hard to come by on the Big Island. So in the meantime, she's been keeping busy operating a greeting card business online. "I made a few cards, and surprisingly, they sold. The ink money comes from sales," she says.

Not bad for a 51-year-old mom who was looking for something to do.