Douglasville Celebrates Photography

The Cultural Arts Council of Douglasville/Douglas County is pleased to display recent works by members of the Sweetwater Camera Club at the Cultural Arts Center in downtown Douglasville, presented during “Atlanta Celebrates Photography,” a greater metropolitan area event encompassing more than 200 exhibits, lectures and special events every October. The exhibit opens Oct. 4 and will be on view through Oct. 27. Hosted by the Community Alliance of Stage and Theatre (C.A.S.T.), the reception will be held today from 6 until 8 p.m. During the reception, West Georgia-based musician Ilja Moston, will perform on piano.  The event is free and open to the public.

One of the Cultural Arts Council’s most popular satellite organizations, the Sweetwater Camera Club meets the second Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. in the community room at Hunter Park facility on Gurley Road in Douglasville.  The purpose of SCC is to share and promote photography for enjoyment and recreation. This active group conducts monthly photo contests on different themes and presents expert professional photographers as guest speakers at each meeting, maintains a reference library and offers several field trips during the year. The club presents a group show of recent works by its members every other year at the Cultural Arts Center, and its individual members are often included in other exhibits at the arts center as well. This year’s exhibition includes many deservedly well-established local photographers’ images and also introduces Douglas County to some fascinating pieces by newcomers to the community and the club.

This year the exhibit features eighteen photographers from the Sweetwater Camera Club.  Among the more than 80 artworks presented, many members display digital images as Giclée prints on canvas. Incoming Sweetwater Camera Club President Hoke Smith includes many large landscapes -- Misty Mesa Arch, Sunrise at Driftwood Beach - Jekyll, and Fishing Hole -- that transport the viewer into vast, sprawling natural environments.  Well-known experimentalist Gene Spicer uses Giclée printing and paints with photographic processes; his most successful works here are represented as vivid overblown leaf textures and vividly colored figures heavily impasto-ed on canvas. Another local aficionado of the Giclée process, James Bell references a recent fad in youth pop culture with his eye-catching photograph, Chaos of Color, a textural study of brightly colored, shaped rubber bands.  Toward a somewhat different effect, the beautiful close-up textures of Just Nuts and On The Ground by Stella Spyrou seem to reduce the viewer’s window into engagement with the minute details of natural objects. Nicolette Dunn, who will also be exhibiting in the Cultural Arts Council of Douglasville/ Douglas County’s upcoming NOVAS show in November, displays the atmospheric Foggy Day in San Francisco, an alluring composition which pulls the viewer into an eerie silent mist, and the equally arresting reflections of The Edge of the Pool. Western landscapes, particularly desert canyons filled with dramatic lighting, are deftly captured by Erik Peterson in his beautiful color prints. Other works -- Morning in Serenbe by Bob Smith, Callaway Chapel by Lana Edwards, Lake Louise by Diane Yancey, and Sunlit Snow by James Bell -- feature more tranquil rural scenes. The exhibit also features several lovely floral photographs like Mandy Corbin’s Big Daddy Hydrangea as well as insightful bird and insect studies including Retz Joseph’s Kissing Parakeets, Crane by the Sea by Denise Bedford, and Janet Newton’s Pedicure Please.

The Cultural Arts Council and its exhibitions at the Cultural Arts Center are supported by its members, sponsors, the City of Douglasville, the Douglas County Board of Commissioners, and Georgia Council for the Arts through appropriations from the State General Assembly. The GCA is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes a great nation deserves great art.

For directions and more information, please contact the Cultural Arts Council at 770-949-2787 or visit our web site, www.artsdouglas.org.