Head down the road to a couple of contemporary art hotspots

Essence 3 by Doug Mott is featured in the show Lost: The Art of the Found Object at Gallery RFD in Swainsboro, Ga.

While downtown Augusta’s arts scene has been slowly gathering momentum, a lively contemporary art mix has popped up in some of our neighboring towns. One might think that a rural Georgia art gallery would be country-collectible-predictable. One might be wrong about that. Take a trip south on U.S. 1 to find a couple of grassroots galleries that are drawing on creative energy and connections to revitalize their communities.

First stop: The Fire House Gallery in Louisville, Ga.

Located in a restored historic fire station, this gallery was created by the Friends of Historic Downtown Louisville and opened in 2005.  In its first year of operation, the gallery claimed an annualized attendance greater than the total population of the city, which is somewhere around 3000. Its mission is “to provide a unique venue for important Southern and rural artists.” The website of the Georgia Department of Economic Development says the gallery is “dedicated to bringing the best and most provocative Southern and rural art to Louisville and the Central Savannah River Area.”

The gallery is currently featuring artist Brett Busang in a solo exhibit titled “A Place Not Unlike Your Own.” Busang, who now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, includes in his show more than 40 works depicting street scenes and interiors of places where he has lived. Buildings, empty lots and undersides of bridges, sometimes shown from multiple angles and or in various stages of decay, underscore the artist’s fascination with endangered places and the passage of time.

Brett Busang is a noted realist painter whose credits include shows in several museums, and he is represented in numerous private and corporate collections. He also has written for various publications including American Art Review and American Artist. On his website at www.brettbusang.com is his blog named “The Unfazed Art Spectator” with commentaries on exhibitions, art history and places he has lived or visited.  You’ll find examples of his work there too, accompanied by informative text.

So, how does a Brett Busang show make its way to rural Georgia? Connections. The gallery has a committee that works with curatorial consultants including Augusta State University’s Kristin Casaletto (printmaking), Ben Reynolds of the University of Georgia (photography) and Virginia/Indiana artist Diane Tesler (painting). Each of these artists has connections with fellow faculty members and friends in the art world.

The connections began with business partners Helen Aikman and Kathleen Galvin, who saw the old fire station advertised in the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation bulletin. Once they visited Louisville, saw the building and talked with the local Arts Guild, they undertook the restoration of the firehouse and launched the Friends of Historic Downtown Louisville, of which the Fire House Gallery is a primary focus. And they called on their own art world connections to help launch the venture.

Links with university art department faculty members have given the gallery access to art that reflects current trends and interests. For instance, a few months ago Kristin Casaletto curated an exhibit called “20/20 vision,” featuring artwork from 20 national printmakers, each representing a state in the South or Midwest.  R.G. Brown III, who will be featured at Augusta State during the Westabou festival, had a show in Louisville in 2006, titled “Journeys: 33.0 N x 82.4 W.”

Coming up in the fall: “Transcendent Ground,” landscapes in mixed media by Nick Nelson; “Santee Paradise,” wood engravings, drawings and photographs by Nancy Marshall and John McWilliams; and “Road to Kewanna,” new work by Diane Tesler and selected students. Local artists will have the spotlight in the annual fall exhibit of the Arts Guild of Jefferson County in November.

To see the Brett Busang exhibit, you’ll need to make the road trip by July 27th. After that, the gallery takes a summer break until September.

Getting there:
Louisville is about 42 miles from Augusta off U.S. 1 in Jefferson County.
Detailed directions are available on the website: www.galleryafire.com.
The Fire House Gallery
605 Mulberry Street
Open Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.
(706) 625-0387

Next stop: Gallery RFD in Swainsboro, Ga.

With a population of just under 8,000, Swainsboro is located at the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 80 in Emanuel County – in timber country. It claims to be the only city in the United States that holds a yearly Pine Tree Festival, and has done so since 1946.

Two years ago, Gallery RFD began as an arts incubator funded by the Georgia Rural Economic Development Center, with a mission of stimulating economic growth by bringing art and cultural events to the region.  Co-directors Bryan Ghiloni and Mary C. Wilson, who came to Swainsboro from Brooklyn and San Francisco respectively, say the idea is to mount cutting-edge exhibitions that will attract tourists, while at the same time developing innovative education and outreach programs for the local community.

Housed in a renovated dress shop on North Green Street, Gallery RFD often stages exhibits curated by guest jurors from submissions that come from around the country. Recent shows have had such titles as “Unfamiliar Ground: New and Nontraditional Media,” “Collectives and Collaborations: The Creative Process of Artist Groups,” and “The New World: America.”

Opening this week is “Lost: The Art of the Found Object” for which the guest juror was Emily Holt of Nashville, a found-object artist and University School art teacher. According to the gallery website (www.galleryrfd.org), the exhibit “celebrates the work of the pickers and gleaners who imbue lost objects with found meaning.”

The gallery will be the centerpiece of Swainsboro’s Second Saturday Art Stroll which takes place this Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. in the downtown arts district. A gallery talk will begin at 7 p.m.

Among other venues open for the stroll will be 114 West Main, showing a collection of narrative-based self-portraits by Baltimore writer and photographer Gray Lyons; and the Emanuel Arts Council’s Kalmanson Gallery, 303 N. Green St., showing “Discovered,” photographs by Gayle Townsend, a Swainsboro native and longtime Savannah resident. Rounding out the evening will be a concert by American Gun from Columbia, S.C.

Gallery RFD has also put out calls for submissions for two upcoming exhibits.  Works in any media that “explore the dynamism of language’s visual representation” are sought for an exhibit titled “contextualized: The Word as Image.” Juror is Maggie Fost, who holds a B.A. degree in studio art from Bowdoin College and an M.F.A. from California College of the Arts and serves as art director for Merge Records.  Deadline for submissions is July 18th.

The second call is for “Beautiful Losers: The Art of Failure,” which, according to the gallery website, “pays homage to the value of the error in all its guises – rough drafts, flawed ideas, mistakes and accidents. Mishaps in any media of a conceptual, mechanical, material or theoretical nature are sought.” Jurors are Scott Oliver and Joseph del Pesco, co-founders of the online art journal, shotgun-review.com. Submission deadline for this one is August 3.

Getting There:
Swainsboro is about 77 miles from Augusta or 30 miles south of Louisville on U.S. 1.
Gallery RFD
106 N. Green St.
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
(478) 237-6873