Just days days after a historic presidential election that reconstructed the way  Americans think about their political landscape, 250 fans of artist Steve Penley jammed linstrum+matre Artworks in the Bennett Street art district in Atlanta to buy his new book, The Reconstruction of America, and view a powerful, timely exhibition of the sketches, drawings and paintings that went in to creating it.

How did exhibition attendees compare Penley’s icons of American history, like Washington, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, with the new iconic figure of Barack Obama? Do they think that in 150 years visitors to an exhibition of images of giants of American history will see the 44th president among them? To find out, click on this image of Steve Penley at work.

Signed copies of The Reconstruction of America, published by Mercer University Press, are available at the gallery.

To see more of Penley’s work and the other artists represented by the gallery, go to the linstrum + martre website. 

Click on the image at right to see a collection of remarkable river photographs by Birmingham-based environmental photographer Beth Maynor Young. Beth’s photographs are included in many  private and corporate collections across the country, and one look at the images here will explain the reasons why. The photographer’s short descriptions of the photos, sometimes including information on the time of day the pictures were taken or the logistics of transporting photography equipment into difficult-to-navigate natural areas, add another dimension to the images.

The pictures here are organized into three groups. The first is the Chattooga River: images of the Wild and Scenic River that forms the border between Georgia and South Carolina. Beth describes it as a powerful river with a personality all its own and one with which people from all around the world have a personal relationship. The second group contains images of Tallulah Gorge. In the third group are rivers in Beth’s “Waters of the South” series, a collection of some of her most popular and timeless photographs, including Georgia’s Flint and Tallapoosa rivers as well as waterways in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. The total of 27 images take you on an inspiring river voyage from sunrise on the Chattooga to a full moon on Mississippi’s Gulf Island National Seashore.

After viewing these photographs, it will be a comfort to know that you can own them yourself (or give them to friends) in the form of inexpensive sets of note cards. (Inexpensive meaning really inexpensive, like in the price range of $10 to $14 for a set of 6 cards that come in a custom-designed wrapper with information about the rivers and links to various sources of information). This Kingfisher Editions note card collection places some of the photographer’s work in the public market place for the first time. A wide variety of note card sets are available – not limited to just the images you see here. Fine art prints of some of Beth’s photographs are also available. Learn more about Beth Maynor Young and browse through her collection of note cards and prints on her Cahaba River Publishing website.

Remember that by using the Flickr connection in the BG Gallery, you can send individual images from the Beth Young’s Rivers - or the entire set - to friends.

Other Links

• Read more about the Flint River
• See a map showing all of the bridges and dams on the Flint River
• See a map showing just the dams on the Flint River
• Read more about the Tallapoosa River
• Read more about Cumberland Island
• Take a whitewater rafting trip on the Chattooga River with Southeastern Expeditions,  Wildwater Limited, or Nantahala Outdoor Center

By David R. Kaufman

How did it happen, I asked myself as I navigated my canoe along Peachtree Creek through the forgotten backwaters of Atlanta.  How could this once-source of  drinking water, which first attracted Indian civilizations and later settlers to the area, have been relegated to a sewer, a dumping ground?

Early in my quest to find out about this waterway, I was granted an interview with the late Franklin Garrett.  I relayed my mission to seek the roots of Peachtree Creek.  He thought for a moment, and then said, “Other than the Civil War Battle which was fought along it, I don’t know that much happened along Peachtree Creek.”  Regardless, I continued to dig.  And history I found.  I found the birthplace of Atlanta, its source of water, and the roots of its namesake “Peachtree”.

To imply that Franklin didn’t know Atlanta history inside out would be heresy; few, if any, knew it better.  Rather, it was that Franklin, as many historians, Read the rest of this entry »

Georgia’s river corridors have provided the stages for some of the great historical dramas in Georgia and some of Georgia’s most important characters have explored up and down the state’s 14 major watersheds - even before there was a state.

As a celebration of Georgia’s rich river heritage we’re adding to the Brown’s Guide Gallery a collection of 50 illustrations of Georgia’s “River People.” These illustrations show some of the people, places and river-related activities that have influenced the state’s destiny and shaped its character and personality. You’ll find a surprising number of familiar characters, including Hernando de Soto, William Bartram, Benjamin Hawkins, and three U.S. Presidents - Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. There’s a wide spectrum of river fun too: rock climbing at Dripping Rock on the Flint, sea kayaking on coastal rivers, tubing on the upper reaches of the Chattahoochee near Helen, and a couple of dozen other activities. Click on the accompanying image to see them all.

The illustrations are by Roel Wielinga, a master of a mind-boggling number of drawing and painting styles that combine traditional illustration techniques with state-of-the-art computer technology. You can see more of Roel’s work on his website. (A warning though: parental supervision advised for some of Roel’s art).

By David Leonardis

Chicago gallery owner and art entrepreneur David Leonardis discovered the work of nationally acclaimed Georgia folk artist Howard Finster in 1989. It was the beginning of an involvement with Finster’s art and eventually with Howard himself that has led to Leonardis becoming the country’s largest dealer of Finster’s work and the creation of the Howard Finster Vision House in Summerville in Northwest Georgia. For Vision House photos and an interview with Leonardis, see the MySpace and YouTube links at the bottom of the page.

Like a lot of people that graduated from high school in 1985, I was a Talking Heads fan. In my dorm room I had a Talking Heads Poster as well as posters from a few other bands. After college, I rolled up my Talking Heads poster and put it in a closet. Years later after I was working with and publishing Howard Finster’s prints, I pulled out the poster and had Howard sign it and then I had it framed in the wood-burned molding that he had personally designed.

I first saw the Rev. Howard Finster’s paintings in a Chicago art gallery in 1989. I was drawn to them. There was a whole wall of Howard Finster originals of different sizes and shapes. The one that spoke to me was a cutout of a Camel, “The Desert Taxi.” I couldn’t afford it, so I got a job at the gallery so I could get a discount. “Desert Taxi” was $500 even then. I got my 50% off and I owed $250. I could work for other art from the gallery but I had to pay cash money for the Finsters. Read the rest of this entry »

Agriculture and Industry
Georgia, like other southern states, was predominantly rural and agricultural in the early decades of the twentieth century, and cotton was preeminently the crop of the region. The state’s economy was to a large extent dependent upon the success of the year’s crop, and fortunes could, and frequently did, rest on such variables as rain or lack of it, and after 1913 on the boll weevil. The post card views of cotton fields, gins, and compresses, and of town squares and city streets jammed with wagon loaded with bales, leave no doubt as to the importance of cotton. Small towns sometimes measured themselves against other small towns by how many gins they had. Farmers competed with one another for the distinction of bringing in the year’s first bale. One of the cards included here records for us the date on which W.A. Brannon delivered two hundred bales of cotton to Newnan.

There were other crops that were a part of the Georgia economy - peaches, for instance, especially the Elberta peach, famous long before anyone had heard of the Vidalia onion. Corn was one of the major crops in the early 1900s. Many of the state’s farmers grew sugarcane. Steamboats carried cotton, naval stores and other agricultural products down the Chattahoochee, Flint, Savannah, Coosa, Ocmulgee, Oconee, Altamaha and other Georgia rivers to ports at New Orleans, Apalachicola, Darien, Brunswick and Savannah. Read the rest of this entry »