On to Georgia
We left Beaufort, SC and took two days to get to Savannah, Georgia. We cheered when we passed the sign saying we were leaving South Carolina. The worst bicycling we have experienced! Narrow roads with no shoulder, rumble strips, and speeding trucks, or dirt/sandy roads through private hunting grounds — where we got booted off the property. Yuk.
The entry into Savannah was not auspicious — we went past the port and VERY smelly paper mills. Once we got into town, though, we fell in love with it. What a beautiful city! Seemed like a cross between old NYC and New Orleans. The city is organized around squares that are just lovely.
At the Savannah College of Art and Design, I discovered some new artists I had not heard of before, including Anna Park, who was born in Korea and works in charcoal.
And Roxy Paine, who lives and works in Brooklyn — these are made of wood and epoxy:
Here’s a close-up of the green one — wild, right?
I stopped at The Beach Institute, begun in 1867 as the first school in Savannah for African-Americans, named (not sure why) for Alfred Ely Beach, benefactor and editor of Scientific American. It’s now an educational and cultural center. A drumming group was practicing for an event that evening and young people were busily setting up. I wandered around the building and discovered some terrific art, including by Ulysses Davis, a local barber who sculpted in wood. His stuff has been to the Smithsonian and beyond. This one is well-known — his sculpture of all American presidents as Black men:
There was also an artist whose name I did not get whose works are based on old currency depicting happy enslaved people:
While in Savannah we had breakfast with Lashonne Christine, who ran the inn we’d stayed at in Beaufort. Albert had helped her put together a bike and we’d spent some time getting her amazing life story. Turned out we’d left a few things at the inn a few days before, and she was heading to Savannah anyway so we reconnected. We feel like we made a life-long friend!
Her great-grandmother was enslaved in New Orleans by a man who fell in love with her and wanted to marry her; she agreed on the condition that he give her her freedom. Once he did she up and left and went to Chicago instead. Lashonne’s uncle is a painter named Archibald John Motley Jr. whose painting of this very same woman is in the National Gallery of Art:
A few more photos of Savannah from Albert:
Now we are in Atlanta for a couple of days, having rented a car to get here. As it happens we are two doors down from where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born and two blocks down from Ebenezer Baptist Church! Quite a place to be on election day! And we’re so happy for the outcome.
Friday we hop on the train with our bikes for New Orleans, and then from there to Austin for Xmas!