American Highway, Revisited: Reinventing Route 66 Through Printmaking

Wigwams Indian Res Navajo by VC Torneden

In celebration of the centennial of Route 66 in 2026, TAC Gallery is proud to present American Highway, Revisited, a collaborative exhibition by artists VC Torneden and Melinda Green Harvey. The exhibition offers a fresh interpretation of their ongoing documentary photography project, The Other Side, transforming familiar images of America’s most iconic highway into striking acrylic monotypes that blur the boundaries between photography and printmaking.

For the past four years, Torneden and Green Harvey have traveled Route 66 extensively, documenting the people, places, and stories that continue to define the historic roadway. Along the way, they have captured tens of thousands of photographs, creating an expansive visual archive that explores both the nostalgia and realities of contemporary life along the Mother Road.

Barricade by Melinda Green Harvey

Yet the scale of such an ambitious project comes with challenges. As both artists discovered, spending years immersed in the same subject matter can lead to creative fatigue. Rather than stepping away, they chose to reimagine the work.

The idea for American Highway, Revisited emerged from experimentation and a desire to see familiar images through a new lens. Torneden, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes photography, painting, drawing, and printmaking, frequently transforms photographic images into monotypes. Inspired by this process and encouraged by Green Harvey, the two artists began translating selected photographs from The Other Side into acrylic and gel plate monotypes.

The resulting works retain traces of their documentary origins while introducing new layers of texture, abstraction, and emotion. Through the printmaking process, details are distilled, forms shift, and ordinary roadside scenes take on unexpected visual and psychological depth. What was once a straightforward photograph becomes something more interpretive, inviting viewers to engage with the landscape in entirely new ways.

Here It Is by VC Torneden

For audiences already familiar with The Other Side, American Highway, Revisited offers an opportunity to revisit Route 66 from a different perspective. The exhibition also reveals another fascinating aspect of the creative process: many of the images featured in these prints originate from photographs that may never appear in the final documentary project. After years of photographing the highway, both artists accumulated countless images that, while compelling, did not fit the narrative direction of The Other Side. Through printmaking, these “outtakes” have found new life, demonstrating how one project’s discarded material can become the foundation for another’s success.

By moving beyond the camera and embracing printmaking techniques, Torneden and Green Harvey have discovered new ways to engage with a subject they know intimately. Their work reminds us that creative exploration often happens not by abandoning a project, but by approaching it from a different angle.

About the Artists

Melinda Green Harvey began seriously pursuing photography in the late 1990s with a decade-long project documenting roadside crosses and memorials throughout Texas. Since launching a daily photography blog in 2009, she has exhibited widely across the country and served on the Board of Directors for the Texas Photographic Society. Her acclaimed series Where the Wind Gallops is part of the permanent collection of Texas Tech University Library’s Southwest Collection. In addition to The Other Side, she continues her ongoing photographic documentation of the disappearing small towns of West Texas and the Texas Panhandle.

VC Torneden is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, painting, drawing, and printmaking. Combining elements of documentary practice, surrealism, and social commentary, her work has been exhibited nationally and is included in numerous private and corporate collections. Recent and current exhibits which feature her work include The Magic of Light in Los Angeles, The 21^st National at fotofoto Gallery in New York wherein her work received an honorable mention, and her solo photography exhibit Reflections of Route Sixty-Six at Spiva Center for the Arts in Missouri. She currently lives and works from her home studio in rural Oklahoma County.

As part of the exhibition, the artists will also offer a gel plate printmaking workshop at the gallery. With growing interest in gel plate techniques among artists working across multiple disciplines, the workshop provides a hands-on opportunity to explore the creative process behind American Highway, Revisited and discover how photographic images can be transformed through printmaking.

Register