TITLE: Honor Guard

I used to pass barns without a glance. Now, I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnamed architects as stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls, these buildings stand.

The Honor Guard is just that--strength, endurance, steadiness against time and nature, holding the fort down for countless farms and ranches across Arkansas, United States, and beyond. They have always been assurance of safety, enduring long past use. It is a building plan passed down in history from one person to another. They are buildings that lack the esteem of an architect's name. Perhaps by noticing them, we become part of their history and heritage.


Relentless Relic - This candy-striped roofed barn's most interesting features are two vented extensions on the roof, echoing the barn’s larger design, a one-time windmilled well, and a raised stone entrance for walking over without stock following.

Scribe - This unassuming structure is the one barn in Arkansas registered as a historic building.

Rustic - This pristine barn stands by the dedication of a 90-year old woman who when she was a 13-year old newlywed called it home.

Sanctuary - It is filled to capacity with hay and tucked in overshadowing trees. If not for my practice of constantly scanning roadsides, I would have missed it.

Stability - This simple barn sat unpretentiously hunched over a mowed field--bare facade suitable to bare landscape.

Stronghold - This rusty barn and fields are at odds with the splendor of the nearby colorful botanical garden of tulips I just left.

Repose - Expansive even against expansive background, it is notable among local photographers for the nearby Elk preserve.

Ranch-Hand - A stiff wind could blow down this piecemeal structure, but cattle lounging in the foreground's churned mud testify to its ongoing use.

AUTHOR: Y. Hope Osborn (United States)

Y. Hope Osborn is an author, photographer, digital artist, and editor residing in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. Her published writing includes ecological experiences that educate and entertain and personal traumas that encourage survivors and expose victimization. Her documentary art is the fusion of photographs and texts of history and her story, weaving art with how she/we think, feel, believe, connect, and care.

Hope is published as author and artist with The Sun Magazine, Woods Reader, Plants and Poetry Journal, Whitefish Review, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Writers’ Network, Awakenings, The Sunlight Press, and online Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Her works are exhibited and awarded, including Monovisions Awards, Neutral Density, Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Award, International Photography Awards, Architecture Masterprize, and See|Me, internationally, online, and off in Portland, Oregon; New York City; Santa Paula, California, Arkansas—USA and Barcelona, Spain. She won the Not Real Art Artist Award and $10,000 Mid-America Arts Alliance Catalyze grants.

Hope believes being a great author and artist is to be entrusted to express reality and imagination that captivates, inspires, or informs while enriching lives.