at the Nashville Zoo with a tamandua named Feliz
When asked how she’s doing on a recent afternoon, Amiee Stubbs says something you’re not likely to hear at any other workplace.
“I got bit by a penguin!” she says with apparent glee, pointing to the proof on her hand. After a couple of hours with her, you learn what this means: She’s doing great.
Stubbs is the official photographer for the Nashville Zoo. She also might be the most interesting woman in town. A native Nashvillian, Stubbs went to Overton High School and then to Middle Tennessee State University — although she says she didn’t exactly apply herself back then, and ended up leaving without a degree. Eventually she started working at a marketing company and, as you do, wrestling professionally at night.
She wrestled as Athena — yes, named for Athena at the Parthenon in Centennial Park — for NWA, TNA and USA Championship Wrestling, often at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds, from the late ’90s until 2005. (It’s how she met her husband, who was also a wrestler at the time.)
After losing the creative outlet of wrestling, Stubbs says she found herself “miserable” at a corporate job. So she went back to MTSU, and a series of events led her to a black-and-white photography class. That’s when she realized she’d wanted to do photography all along. She had taken a black-and-white class at Robertson Academy when she was 10, and been in the photo club at Overton. She had even spent seven years working at Old Time Portrait Studio at Opryland.
“It’s something I’d always loved, and I think I was scared to do it,” she says.
All she had to show her professor was a bunch of U2 concert photos — she’s an admitted superfan who’s seen them live 37 times — but he encouraged her to pursue it. So she did, and now she’s making up for lost time.
“I don’t sleep, and I’m on blood pressure medicine now,” she says. “I’m working every minute of every day.”
In addition to her volunteer work at the zoo and as a photojournalist with the Animal Rescue Corps, Stubbs maintains an art gallery downtown, along with doing pet photography and teaching photography classes at the zoo (those last two being how she earns a living).
If that all sounds hectic, remember the blood pressure medicine and the sleep deprivation, but also the penguin. Stubbs recalls the wary comments she got from friends when she started interning for no pay with Christian Sperka, her predecessor and mentor as the zoo photographer, who handed the job down to her.
“I’m learning so much, and I’m doing what I love, and I held a leopard today, so, you know what, I’m all set,” she says. “I’m good. I got bit by a penguin earlier! You can’t buy that.”
