Pam Yarnell, an avid hiker and member of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, emailed me in February of this year asking for help. He wanted to make sure others could learn about an important artist who had a special connection to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“A few years ago a handful of us were hiking in the Elkmont area,” Yarnell wrote. “An 80-year-old man who was hiking with us asked if we wanted to go see the ‘artist’s cabin.’ He had never heard of this, so we left.”
Yarnell ended up on a mountainside overlooking Jakes Creek, about a mile south of the remains of the Elkmont community, in a log cabin known to have belonged to one of Tennessee’s most esteemed artists, Mayna Treanor. Avent. Yarnell was immediately fascinated by the well-traveled woman who used this humble place as a summer studio, painting and drawing by light streaming in from an oversized window. Yarnell was especially intrigued when he saw that an article about Avent from Smokies Life magazine had been clipped and placed in the booth.
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“The pages had unfortunately been partially eaten by mice,” Yarnell wrote to me. “So a few days later I went back to the cabin and put the article in plastic sleeves to protect the pages. If there is any way to obtain another protected copy to place in the cabin, I know hiking enthusiasts will also enjoy reading about this amazing woman.”
My staff and I went to work printing another article, placing it in protective plastic sleeves, and mailing it to Yarnell. By March, he had brought the new copy of the article to the cabin, saying along the way that he “met a nice couple from Kingsport who were trying to find the cabin, so it was great to share the information and directions with them as well.” . .”
“Nashville native Mayna Avent began visiting and painting the Smokies in 1910, using the cabin as her summer studio from the mid-1920s to 1940,” writes Courtney Lix in “Mayna Avent: Artist in the Woods ”, which appears in the September 2010 issue of Smokies Life.
The story goes that although her parents called her Mary, she nicknamed herself Mayna as a child, a name that matched her unusual personality. Her family encouraged her enthusiasm for art, allowing her to study first in Nashville and Cincinnati, then in Paris at the Académie Julian, following in the footsteps of such artists as Henri Matisse, Diego Rivera, and John Singer Sargent.
He would go on to receive commissions from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and his work was acquired by the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, the Morris Museum in Augusta, Georgia, and the Tennessee State Museum, which is referred to her as “a trailblazer for future generations of women…an important transitional figure in art in Tennessee and the South.”
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Lix writes that “she painted primarily in oils, but was also adept at pen and ink sketches, gouache (a water-soluble paint), charcoal, watercolors, and graphite pencil. She also used a technique called white line woodblock printing, which was a variation of the traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique. … her best known woodcut of hers is the one from her cabin in the Smokies.”
The cabin itself is one of the oldest structures in the park, hand-carved from oak, chestnut, and poplar in the mid-19th century. Lix writes that, in the early 1990s, “there was talk of demolishing the cabin, as the National Park Service planned to restore much of Elkmont to its natural habitat for environmental reasons and because funding for maintenance of historic buildings They were scarce.” Its preservation is a tribute to the extraordinary talent of Avent.
Last November, Yarnell and some of his fellow hikers drove to Mayna’s childhood home, the handsome antebellum mansion, Tulip Grove, located directly across from the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s estate near Nashville. “It was really special to connect both places,” she said.
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Since his first visit to the Avent cabin years ago, Yarnell has returned on several occasions to leave new guestbooks for visitors to sign, as the existing ones continue to be filled with the names of hundreds of hikers who discover the remote structure and become friends. they are drawn to the story of their famous artist occupant.
“This cabin has been one of my favorite places to take friends, family, newcomers to this area,” he said. “It’s only a two mile round trip from the upper Elkmont parking lot, but it’s a bit tucked away, which makes the hike even more exciting when we find the right trail, cross the log bridge, and then climb over the shore to this beautiful abode.”
In late June, Yarnell wrote to tell me that she had recently gone on a hike to the Avent cabin and had taken her daughter and her husband who live in Virginia. She said that she was pleasantly surprised to see that our plastic sleeves had been replaced by “nice laminated sheets” and that there were now Avent plaques and framed photos on the walls. “I’m sure you were able to get someone to do that, so I just wanted to thank you! Looks great.”
I wrote back to tell her that I hadn’t orchestrated the new commemorative additions to the cabin, but that I was excited to know that other hikers like her were celebrating this special soul and keeping her Smokies history alive.
Courtney Lix’s article “Mayna Avent: Artist in the Woods” can be found in the September 2010 issue of Smokies Life (Vol. 4, Number 2). Her story is also told in “Women of the Smokies” by Lix. Both are sold at park bookstores and online at SmokiesInformation.org.
Frances Figart is the editor of Smokies Life and the director of creative services for the 29,000-member Great Smoky Mountains Association, a nonprofit educational partner of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you would like to receive a PDF of Mayna Avent’s article, please contact her at [email protected].