When Susan Fecho travels, instead of taking photographs with a disposable camera and buying tourist items like magnets, she makes rubbings of ancient walkways, sits on the Great Wall of China and draws, and takes a series of digital images from the same spot – all of which, she turns into artwork.

The artwork depicting Fecho's travels around the globe will be featured in an art exhibition of mixed media images, entitled "Travel Notations" at the Mims Gallery at N.C. Wesleyan College beginning today and continuing until Sunday, March 9.

"When you travel, you see someone else's environment as an outsider," said Fecho, 49, of Tarboro.

"I am forcing viewers to look at where I've been through my eyes. When you use a camera, you are seeing what the camera sees."

Her artwork, showcasing travels to China, Italy, Newfoundland, Georgia, Arizona and New Mexico, was created through mixed media or various mediums including paint and photography.

"People are the travelers. We are outsiders looking out and that's why there are no people these pieces," added Fecho.

In 2006, Fecho was granted a six month sabbatical for creative work from Barton College, where she serves as chair of the Art Department.

"I started at the bottom of the Appalachian mountains in Georgia and traveled to the other end of the Appalachian trail," said Fecho.

"When most people carry clothes in their luggage, I'm carrying art supplies in mine."

Fecho travels "to see how the world is connected" and the underlining theme in her work is the way the world is converging.

For her artwork from Western China, Fecho took a large piece of drawing paper and folded it into an accordion folding book that fits into her back pocket. Throughout her stops she picked up items (such as straws, an envelope from a garbage can and tea bags) and glued them in her book and paints over them creating a masterpiece as she travels. Some of the artwork contains rubbings from a small walkway built by Chinese monks and a drawing she made of the Great Wall of China while sitting there.

"I collected stuff, put them into my pockets, glued them down back at the hotel and paint on top of them. When I came home I had a travel journal," said Fecho.

She made one journal every four days and ended the trip with a total of three journals which are on display in the exhibit.

Her artwork from the Appalachian Mountains contains a merging of paint and photographs together along with poems, song lyrics and recipes that are 100 years or older.

"I try to find writing connected to the area I'm visiting," said Fecho. "I find older books and use writings from the 1800s to merge the past and the present together."