Educator to be guest speaker for Art at Lunch series

Jackson Cheatham is one of our area’s most popular artists. His multiple talents as printmaker, teacher and exhibit designer – complemented by his dry wit and easygoing manner – have earned him a permanent place near the center of Augusta’s art circles.

Over the past 25 years, Jack has planned and installed exhibits for institutions throughout the state, shows ranging from paintings and drawings to historical objects to coastal ecology. With a background in architectural drafting as well as fine art, exhibit design is something he has a knack for. He admits, not immodestly, that he’s good at it and doesn’t waste time getting it done. Can’t beat that.  

Jack’s teaching career includes adjunct positions at the Atlanta College of Art, Augusta State University and for the past seven years, the University of Georgia. Last fall, he took over managing the New Space Gallery at Augusta State University, planning to eliminate the commute to Athens, but it meant doubling up for a semester and commuting from his Thomson, Ga., home in two directions.

The New Space Gallery (created after the university’s art and music departments split, with the art department moving into Washington Hall across campus), offers him an interesting new challenge, working with a faculty committee to review proposals and select shows for the five slots open each year.

Augusta’s inaugural Westabou Festival in September is the driving influence in the upcoming season’s first two shows. “Inviting the Stars – an Exhibition of Local and National Ceramic Art” is being organized by the Clay Artists of the Southeast, with a Porter Fleming Foundation Grant. Following that exhibit, sculptor R. G. Brown will be featured in “A Notion of Journey,” opening in early October. The artist, who has said he is out to build a boat on every continent, will also be doing an installation piece on campus during Westabou. (Artist Robert Stackhouse may have set the precedent for that in 1999). Rounding out the fall will be an exhibit featuring the work of Malaika Favorite (indeed an Augusta favorite) and David E. Harmon, who teaches painting at Savannah College of Art and Design.  

The New Space Gallery is not as visible to the passing public as the gallery was in the previous location, but the art department is working on that, and the strong shows this fall should help bring it the community attention it deserves. www.aug.edu/art/newspace.

In addition to working with the gallery, Jack teaches a figure drawing class at ASU. Such “day jobs,” he says, “help support his habits,” which happen to be making art in his Thomson studio and sitting on his front porch. As for his own art (paintings, drawings, lithographs), he has a long list of exhibition credits and awards, including the Governor’s Georgia Artist of Excellence, and he is included in many public and private collections. Most recently, he had 100 works shown in a retrospective exhibit at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art.

He’ll be the featured speaker at noon Friday, May 9 in the Morris Museum’s Art at Lunch series. It will not be a lecture on printmaking, but a conversation about his art. He’ll talk about his journey toward abstraction, relating his own work to some of the works in the museum’s current abstract art exhibit, and will talk about some of his influences, works he likes, and things that make him want to work… and to think. Call the museum at (706) 724-7501 for reservations. www.themorris.org

Art professor Kristin Casaletto has work on display at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, in an exhibit called “Inscribing Meaning: The Context of Text in Visual Art.”  She was also featured in a concept show at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Mont., along with such artists as Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Enrique Chagoya, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The show was titled “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate,” and all the art in it is made from hate literature. She also has a solo show of woodcuts opening May 11 at The Fire House Gallery in Louisville, Ga. 

www.galleryafire.com

ASU art professor Brian Rust, known for his large-scale sculpture and temporary installations, succeeded Kristin Casaletto this year as interim department chair for fine arts, continuing to bridge the gap created by the separation of the music and art departments, and he will remain in the position through the summer. He reports that the search committee has been interviewing finalists, and once that decision is made, he’ll be spending more time in the studio. www.aug.edu/%7Ebrust/

Brian’s project at the South Carolina Botanical Garden in Clemson is the subject of a half-hour documentary to be shown on South Carolina ETV as part of the “Touch the Earth” series spotlighting the sculptors who have works in the botanical garden. He describes his project, called “Earthen Bridge,” as both functional object and sculptural metaphor, serving as a focal point and a passageway. Latest word is that production is complete and the segment will probably be in the fall lineup. After that, it will be available on DVD.     

Photographic Artistry:

The work of renowned photojournalist A. Aubrey Bodine will be shown in the Coggins Gallery at the Morris Museum of Art beginning Saturday and continuing through July 13.  Opening festivities will be Tuesday, May 6, beginning at 6 p.m. with Jennifer Bodine discussing her late father’s long and productive photographic career. A reception will follow, and the program is open to the public.

The exhibit includes a representative sample of the masterworks of Bodine, a photographer in the pictorialist style, who was associated with the Baltimore Sun for 50 years. Working in the romantic pictorial tradition of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Bodine is best remembered for his photographs of the Chesapeake Bay and its watermen. He created memorable images by manipulating photographs through a variety of techniques, much as a painter selects features that suit his sense of mood, proportion and design, according to Bodine’s daughter, who comments that “He did not take a picture; he made a picture.”  www.aaubreybodine.com

Continuing on display at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History is photography by William Anderson, who has compiled a retrospective of black and white photographs from a period covering 1958 through 2008. He will present a lecture on his work June 21. www.lucycraftlaneymuseum.com

Both the Morris and Laney exhibits are part of the Augusta Photography Festival June 19-22. Exhibits and special events are also planned at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta Canal National Heritage Area, Columbia County Public Library and Artists' Row in downtown Augusta.  www.augustaphotofestival.org

Teeing Off for the Arts:

Playing golf on behalf of the arts is popular this spring. First up is the Jessye Norman School for the Arts, which the Augusta-born, world-renowned opera singer founded to provide after-school arts programs for at-risk middle-school students. As a way of raising awareness and funds, the school will hold a golf tournament at the Belle Meade Country Club in Thomson, on Tuesday, May 13. Lunch will be provided at 11:45 and a shotgun start will begin at 1 p.m. Word is that Ms. Norman plans to attend the luncheon before the tournament starts.

Belle Meade will also host the Augusta Symphony Golf Classic on Monday, May 19. Registration opens at 11:30 a.m. with a box lunch and shotgun start following at 1 p.m. www.augustasymphony.org