See Rock City Barn, Sweetwater Tennessee

"As a resident of the Southeast for many years now, I'm always intrigued when I pass an old barn with a message encouraging a visit to Rock City, a tourist attraction in Chattanooga TN. My research revealed that nearly 900 barns were painted along rural two-lane roads in 19 US states from 1935-1969. They served well as billboards as Americans did more and more travelling by automobiles.

With my love of painting barns, I was determined to include a Rock City barn in my repetoire. There are a few still standing in East Tennesse and I've taken numerous photos over the years. Some were overgrown with trees, some too far off the road, some protected within barbed wire fencing. I finally nailed it with the Rock City barn on old US Highway 11, south of Sweetwater, Tennessee. The lettering is on the side of the barn (others were painted on the roof), the barn was highly visible from the roadside, and I could get fairly close to photograph it. Also, the hand-painted words were different from any others I had seen: "Bring Your Camera and see Rock City."

The black Scratchbord™ surface lends itself to dramatic lighting, so I used artistic license to create a night scene, with the sky full of stars as it typically looks from my yard, under a sliver of moonlight."