08/25/02 By Thomas B. Harrison
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Mobile Register

As a youngster, Emily Savage would leave Augusta Evans School and walk to what is now Queen G's, then a Dairy Queen, for a blue sno-cone. Her dentist had his office nearby.

"I usually showed up with blue teeth from those awful sno-cones," she says. "There was nothing in nature that color -- cerulean blue."

She walks her dog, Alfred, around the building that houses Savage Photo Lab & Gallery on Old Shell Road in Midtown. Alfred found a hole in the fence around her old school, and they crawl through to go for a run.

"It's sort of deja vu all over again," she says. "Who would have thought I went to middle school and would end up back there and loving it, and feeling that kind of familiarity? I do. It's a happy and a sad time."

Happy because the place holds such memories, especially for Emily, a Mobile native. She and husband Stephen Savage have enjoyed quite a run since the mid-'90s, with many of the town's movers and shakers in and out, photographers and other artists seeking their counsel or bringing in film for processing.

And the exhibitions were something as well. Whether it was the dark vision of a Lyle BongŽ, the elegance of Leigh Brown or the wildly disparate images taken with the plastic lens of a Holga, the photos were extraordinary. Opening receptions were always jammed.

All that ends Friday when Stephen and Emily Savage close the doors and sell their photo processing equipment. Call it a sign of the harsh economic climate, the ripple effect of Sept. 11 or the pervasiveness of digital technology, but the Savages are not alone. Businesses large and small are feeling the pinch.

"I'm not sure (what happened.)," Emily says. "Someplace along the line, before (Stephen) increased the size and put in all the color, we probably should have examined nonprofit. We sort of didn't know how to do that."

The Savages had discussed the possibility with Georgine Clarke of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Clarke said Savage Photo should have been a nonprofit all along. With a steady stream of visitors, exhibitions and media attention, the place felt like a nonprofit.

"We have met so many people, so many artists, photographers and students," Emily Savage says. "They have enriched us and broadened our horizons, our understanding, empathy, everything."

Emily, a full-time artist, left the day-to-day running of the business to her husband. But she spent much of her time there, and leaving will be hard, she says.

"It's probably not very healthy to say you are what you do. I felt like that place was its own entity and had a life of its own. It felt as comfortable as an old pair of house slippers."

She says the long hours didn't matter. "When you're doing what you love, it's easy," she says. "And we are doing what we love to do. ... That's a privilege."

She says she has wept only once, when she received an e-mail.

"I just boo-hooed," she says. "It really does feel like home -- that squat little ugly building with poor lighting, poor ventilation, not well laid out. It feels more like home than this big old house with 12-foot ceilings."

The Savages say they want to remain in Mobile, where the two seem to be everywhere at once, on both sides of the Bay. They came here to be with Emily's mother, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday. "We have good friends, we love our neighbors, and Stephen has made such an impact," she says.

"We came here to be artists -- that's what we want to do. Other than that, who knows?"

The Savages are looking forward to the serene, contemplative atmosphere of The Mesa in Utah, a retreat for writers, artists and scholars. The couple will spend two weeks as artists in residence. The red-rock majesty of southern Utah should clear their heads and ease the pain of a stressful summer.

"I've made a certain peace with closing down," Emily says. "We are trying to see it as a window that opens when this door closes. I'm always looking for the next window. It'll be there."