Downtowner

Page 1

The Downtowner and CountianThe Newsletter of The Jefferson County Information Center and

Friends of Historic Downtown Louisville

August 2012 Volume 8 Issue 3JeffersonCountyGeorgiaInfo.org

Last spring, the Louisville Kiwanis Club hit on a fledgling idea as part of an ongoing effort to sharpen its focus on serving Louisville’s chil-dren and youth.

“We’ve been gradually zeroing in on service to kids,” said Kiwanian Helen Aikman, “which has always been a key element of the Kiwanis mission. For example, our current club president, Patricia Edwards, has been really dynamic and success-ful in getting Kiwanis behind the

The woods have been a source of inspiration for many stories through history; just think of The Wizard of Oz or Hansel and Gretel. Any characters that enter the woods are left to their own judgment to navigate their way through and exit again safely. For the newest show at The Fire House Gallery, called In, Through, and Out, artist Mary Robinson has created a forest of drawings and paintings that seeks to recreate that familiar feeling that only the woods can give us.

Ms. Robinson is someone who has always sought to stay close to nature. As professor of printmaking at The University of South Carolina, she often travels to Congaree Na-tional Forest and other South Caro-lina state parks to find inspiration for the complex paintings that she creates. While hiking the trails, she likes to focus on the intricate groups of tree roots and limbs that grapple and tangle around one another, and to bring those observations back to her studio where she uses paint and graphite to recreate the scenes. In the intertwining of these organisms, Ms. Robinson sees a strong connec-tion between the natural structures and life. “When I look at a group of trees, I’m reminded of how every-thing is connected.”

In, Through, Out continues on page 2

JCHS and Kiwanis continues on page 2

Inside This Issue

Joining The Friends Team

Photo of The Month

Fire Writers

Page 3

Page 4

Page 4

In, Through, and Out: Navigating The World

of Mary RobinsonJCHS and Kiwanis Partnering To Offer

After-School Leadership Seminar

By Philip Muller

By Helen Aikman

The opening reception for Mary Robinson’s “In, Through, and Out” will be this Saturday, August 4, from 7-9pm

In, Through, Out (continued from page 1)

August 2012

Page 2

Ms. Robinson has always had a fascination with this motif; but it took on a deeper meaning for her after travelling to India and becom-ing a regular practitioner of yoga. In our interview with her in her Columbia studio, Ms. Robinson recounted how all of the colors, new sounds, and surroundings of India inspired her work. It was there that she first began to develop the idea of traveling through a forest as a larger metaphor for life. She also told us about the disorientation that one might experience in yoga. “Dur-ing a complex pose, I can really lose sense of which way is up.” It is this sense of disorientation that she seeks to bring into her drawings and paintings by creating scenes that make the viewer wonder where he or she might stand in relation to the tangle of limbs that wraps around the canvas.

No matter where she finds her inspiration, Ms. Robinson begins each piece by making photographs and drawings from life. She then takes those images back to her stu-dio where she works to recreate the feelings they provoked. As a print-making professor, much of her prior work has utilized lithography and intaglio methods, but for this series she elected to use paint and graphite to take advantage of the immediacy of those mediums. By cutting many of the steps in printmaking, Ms. Robinson has been able to work more freely and spontaneously. “With paint, I can gob it on where I want it thick and let it drip, which reminds me of the South Carolina swamps and humidity,” she explains.

The southern landscape has become a major part of her work over the

years. Though Ms. Robinson stud-ied painting and printmaking in Wisconsin and Indiana, she grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee and has lived and worked in Columbia for more than ten years. “The light that we have here has become such a big part of my work, and I’m not sure what my work would look like without it,” she says. That fact truly comes through in the color of Ms. Robinson’s paintings. This show is dominated by several large black and white drawings that concentrate strongly on the structure or roots of the trees – but together, the many paintings of the show collectively create a feeling of looking through the brightly backlit canopy of a for-est.

There is much to experience in Ms. Robinson’s paintings, which convey both a sense of natural beauty and a feeling of entrapment within the scenery. “I’m trying to create a for-est of work that viewers can enter, go through, and hopefully escape,” says Ms. Robinson. Hopefully, everyone will make it back out of Ms. Robinson’s forest of paintings at The Fire House Gallery. For a dry run, try the video interview with Ms. Robinson at http://vimeo.com/45712826. In, Through, and Out will run from August 1 through September 8, and the opening re-ception will be Saturday, August 4, from 7-9pm.

Furst Foundation, which promotes literacy in young children. And last year we launched a Builders Club at Louisville Middle School, and we were looking for ways to expand our support for youth – something a little more targeted than the stan-dard Key Club format. After several discussions, the board authorized me to explore an exciting partner-ship at the high school level.”

The basic idea is to create an op-portunity for community leaders to share hands-on, real-world leader-ship experiences with developing student leaders. Ms. Aikman first mentioned the idea in passing to JCHS art teacher Linda Merritt at an FHG opening reception. Ms. Merritt responded enthusiastically, pointing out that Dr. Alan Long, JCHS principal, had already in-stituted a program for cultivating student leadership, and that she imagined the seminar idea would dovetail nicely with Dr. Long’s program.

Ms. Aikman then contacted Dr. Long by email to sketch out the plan. There followed a meeting at the Home Fresh Bistro of Ms. Aik-man, Dr. Long, and Ms. Tammy Hodges, who heads up the JCHS work-study program.

Said Ms. Aikman, “We spent some time over lunch catching up on what’s going on at school – new ideas for the coming year and so on. Then we got down to the seminar subject. It was a terrific conversa-tion. I always have so much fun talking with Dr. Long and Ms. Hodges – they are full of good ideas.”

JCHS and Kiwanis (continued from page 1)

JCHS and Kiwanis continues on page 3Click the video above to watch Mary Robin-son’s interview with Fire Team Productions

Page 3

Volume 8 Issue 3

Dr. Long shared his early experi-ences pulling together the JCHS student leadership program, which involves Dr. Long and/or Ms. Hodges meeting with the student leaders every couple of weeks. “At first, they were all so quiet,” said Dr. Long. “It was really hard to get them to say anything at all. But eventually they really got it. Now they understand that what they think really matters – their opinions are important.” He laughed, “Now I can hardly get them to be quiet! They are going to love this idea.”The leadership seminar concept is still in the planning stages. Ms. Hodges and Ms. Aikman have been working together to map out the schedule – probably three seminars in the fall and three in the spring.

Each seminar will feature a lo-cal business or community leader sharing his or her experiences and thoughts concerning the risks and rewards of leading. A Kiwanian will participate in each seminar as well.Ms. Aikman said, “We want to fol-low Dr. Long’s lead – to get the kids really engaged in the discussion – not lecturing them the way grown-ups so often do – like, I’ve been there, I know it all. Instead we want to talk about mistakes and missteps – to get them thinking about how every important decision has an up-side and a downside – understand-ing that mistakes are inevitable, but they are also how emerging leaders grow into effective leaders.”

Check back with The Downtowner and Countian in the coming months for updates on the progress of this innovative Kiwanis-JCHS partner-ship.

JCHS and Kiwanis (continued from page 2)

I had never heard of Louisville, Georgia before. It wasn’t until I got an email notification from the career center at the University of South Carolina about a fellowship oppor-tunity in Louisville, that I imagined moving down to Georgia for a year after graduating college.

By the second semester of my senior year at USC, I regularly got email notifications from the career cen-ter about job opportunities and upcoming career fairs, but I hon-estly normally just deleted those emails. I majored in Art History and minored in ceramics at school, so my career goals were to apply for curating jobs or work in a museum or gallery after graduation. One day while checking my email, I noticed one that was titled “Curating and Graphic Design Fellowship at The

Fire House Gallery” and I was immediately interested in reading more. Doing some online investigat-ing, I researched about the Gallery and the fellowship. The application had a long list of things the fellow would be responsible for, like work-ing in the Gallery or at the Jefferson County Information Center doing basically everything under the sun and essentially getting experience working with artists, kids, and the community – as well as writing, dealing with financials, making videos, and so much more. I didn’t even get up from the couch before I dialed the number of the contact, whom I would soon find out to be Helen Aikman.

Our first conversation was brief. I told Helen that I was very interested in the opportunity, yet had no video experience and so I was not sure I should even bother applying. She told me it was worth a try and to send in an application. Helen and

Joining the Team continues on page 4

Joining The FriendsTeam

By Emily Russell

Documentary Fellow Emily Russell on her first day on the job

August 2012

Page 4

the rest of the team at The Fire House Gallery would learn through my application and resume that I am originally from Annapolis, Maryland, where I was born and raised and left only to go to col-lege in South Carolina. I went to a small private high school, and this was where my passion for the arts started to blossom. I loved painting and working with clay; and I knew I would continue this throughout college. At USC, I took infinite Art History classes, as well as ceramics and painting courses, and became a member of the club lacrosse team there. I was very excited when I got a phone call saying that I was to come and visit Louisville, and go through a series of interviews for the fellowship opportunity.

After finally being accepted for the position, I moved to town and am now living above the Gallery on Mulberry Street and working in the Information Center as the new documentary fellow. I have had such a warm welcome from every-one I have met in Louisville and am so happy to be a part of the commu-nity. I have taken the place of Casey Sullivan, who was dearly loved by the entire community – and I hope I can make even half the impact she has made. I will be working with Philip Muller, the other fellow, recording interviews and videos of artists and life in Jefferson County. If you have not had the opportunity to stop in the Information Center to say hello, please come by so I can in-troduce myself. I already know it is going to be a great year, and cannot wait to continue to meet the com-munity and to call myself a member of Jefferson County.

Joining the Team (continued from page 3)

Last weekend there was something colorful afoot in The Fire House Gallery, and it involved some of our very favorite folks. We could mention names, but

we’ ll wait on that … except to say that Hizzoner, the Mayor of the ‘Ville, Larry Morgan, was spotted with a paintbrush in his hand. Sit tight – this project will

come to fruition in the FHG’s September exhibit of paintings by Georgia College muralist Valerie Aranda ….

Photo of The Month

This June, an outstanding group of Jefferson County middle schoolers participated in The Fire House Gal-lery’s Fire Writers: Creative Writing and Book Arts Camp. The students who participated were Kenneth Fields, Beau Merritt, Haley Staf-ford, and Ju’Asia Hiers. Rather than finding themselves idle after the school year ended, this enthusiastic bunch stepped up to the challenge of creating a complete book of origi-nal short stories and illustrations in just two weeks. The two-week camp was led by Gallery fellows Casey Sullivan and Philip Muller, each of whom brought expertise to the mix

to help participating students realize their creative ideas.

In the first week of the camp, stu-dents concentrated on poetry, short story writing, and comics. They be-gan each day with some fun creative writing exercises, such as writing sentences using adjectives, verbs, and nouns randomly chosen from a bag. After the group got its wheels turning on the first day, the students visited Helen Clark Memorial Park to find inspiration in everyday ob-jects and to create some exceptional poems. Below is Haley Stafford’s outstanding poem titled, “A Place.”

A place with birds that is so high, Tree limbs give us shade from the sky.

A place so quiet, so peaceful,

Fire Writers continues on page 5

County Middle-Schoolers Excel at

Writing CampBy Philip Muller

Page 5

Fire Writers (continued from page 4)Volume 8 Issue 3

So calm and wonderful.

A place that is blocked by a large fence, Which to me doesn’t make sense.

Another place on the other side, More modern with a space so wide

A place not as peaceful but just as cool, With a playground for kids, after school.

The place with trees and the other, with a space more wide. Each makes you want to go to the other side.

Beau Merritt entertains a small crowd of lis-teners with his short story in The Book Worm

The underlying focus of the writing camp was on structure. As the kids turned their focus to short stories, we talked more about the impor-tance of revising original ideas into more refined and cohesive stories, which the students tackled with ease. They first wrote flash fiction, which faced students with the excit-ing challenge of writing a story as short as possible (in this case only a paragraph long). Then we gave them the prompt of using a story to

solve the stray dog problem in Jef-ferson County. Each student chose a super power for their protagonist and quickly got to work, crafting some truly creative solutions to save the dogs.

In Ju’Asia Hiers’ story, she won the power to heal stray dogs in a call-in radio contest and quickly discovered that her new power was the only hope to save Jefferson County’s dogs from Jerome, the evil dogcatcher. Whether they were battling arch nemeses or teleporting dogs to a new home on Mars, each of the students did a great job writing his or her short stories, and an even better job reading them to the group. We surprised the kids on the last day of camp by taking them over to The Book Worm where they held an impromptu reading in front of a small crowd of strangers – a daunt-ing task for any writer. Once again, the students did a great job and impressed everyone with what they had written.

After adapting their short stories into comics, the students ended

their first week with a sizable collec-tion of poetry, drawings, and stories; but they were still without a means to share all of their work. To solve this problem, we talked about a markedly different kind of structure: the bound and printed book.

During the second week of camp, participating students created il-lustrations for some of their works and designed a cover for their own Fire Writers book. The students carried out the tedious task of hand-binding the pages of their books together with a binder’s needle, threading and gluing signatures into the books’ covers. They even made special pockets to hold their comics and learned about all of the interest-ing names for the different parts of a book. Students referred to the work of Eileen Wallace, who was exhib-iting her collection of handmade books in the Gallery at the time.

Once all of the books were bound, the kids had but one last to-do

Kenneth Fields and Ju’Asia Hiers create illustrations for their observational poems

Fire Writers continues on page 6

Fire Writers (continued from page 6)

August 2012

Page 6

item: presenting their work to their families. On the last day of camp, families gathered at The Fire House Gallery for a cookout and coffeehouse-style reading of the participating students’ works. Each of the students read his or her poems and short stories aloud, while younger siblings had fun drawing

on copies of the Fire Writers’ comics with crayons. Everyone had a great time – and, best of all, the kids left feeling inspired to do more writing over the summer. With the new school year close at hand, we’re sure our outstanding Fire Writers will have plenty of stories to tell when asked how they spent their summer vacations.

Kenneth Fields reads his short story aloud for a crowd of family and friends at

The Fire House Gallery

The kids take a trip to the park where Casey Sullivan uses Langston Hughes’ “Thank You

Ma’am” to teach them how to write their own short stories

Kenneth reads “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson for the other students

Family and friends gather to hear the students read their work aloud

“Use that diaphram!” Casey Sullivan teaches the kids to project their reading voices

Gallery Fellow Philip Muller draws a story board for a comic that the kids

developed together

Ju’Asia Hiers puts the finishing touches on her Fire Writers book

The students punched holes in the book pages and then sewed them together with binding thread to create the entire book themselves

Page 7Title continues on page 9

Volume 8 Issue 3

August 2012

Page 8

Title (continued from page 4)

Page 9

Volume 8 Issue 3