The Ties That Bind
The Lyndon House Arts Center is pleased to announce a Gallery Talk and Basket Weaving Workshop in celebration of the University of Georgia’s Spotlight on the Arts on Saturday November 19 from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Come spend a Saturday at the Arts Center immersed in the traditions of the Gullah Geechee culture. This event begins with a walk through of the exhibition The Ties That Bind featuring works by Tamika Galanis and Anina Major developed during a residency on St. Helena. The walk through will be led by Angela Dore. Angela Dore is the Research Coordinator of Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District, a partnership initiative of Penn Center and the Willson Center, funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. She received her BA from Spelman College and earned her MA in business design and arts leadership from Savannah College of Art and Design. Angela is s a fifth generation Beaufortonian who is interested in cultural and land preservation, and art history.
Workshop participants will then move to the Community Room for a hands-on sweet grass basket-weaving workshop with Jery Bennett Taylor. Jery is a descendant of the West Africans of Sierra Leone, where her style of unique basket weaving originates. She was born and raised in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina in the Christ Parish Church Community and taught the art of basket weaving by her grandmother at the age of five. She and Janie Cohen of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, are the only two persons who weave their baskets in what is called the “Lowcountry Sea Island Coil Basket.” Mrs. Taylor conducts workshops in Beaufort, South Carolina and Sea Island areas at the Gullah Festival, and the Penn Center Heritage Days Celebration, in addition to events in Fort Stewart, Georgia. She has presented workshops in galleries in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Maliou Arts Fest in Tampa, Florida, and at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. Jery’s baskets are on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, the San Francisco airport, and the South Carolina Museum in Columbia, South Carolina.
This program is free and all materials and lunch are provided. Registration is required. Please visit accgov.com/lyndonhouse. This programming is part of the Spotlight on the Arts in partnership with the University of Georgia Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
The Ties That Bind:
The Paradox of Cultural Survival amid Climate Events
Works by Anina Major and Tamika Galanis
September 17 – November 30, 2022
The Lyndon House Arts Center is pleased to announce the opening of The Ties That Bind, an exhibit of sculpture by Anina Major and photography by Tamika Galanis.
This exhibit originated on St. Helena Island, SC during an artist residency in which the artists examined cultural identity and sustainability through environmental relationships. Galanis and Major, both from The Bahamas and now based in Atlanta and New York City respectively. Both multimedia artists’ work interrogates popular conceptions of place: Major’s through investigating “the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation,” and Galanis’s by examining “the complexities of living in a place shrouded in tourism’s ideal during the age of climate concerns.”
The artists’ work inspired by this residency explores notions of life in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and The Bahama Islands.
Accompanying programs for The Ties That Bind will be in conjunction with the University of Georgia’s Spotlight on the Arts in November 2022.
This exhibit is possible through a partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia.
Pictured above: Anina Major left, Tamika Galanis right