Artique at Lexington Green has just opened a stunning art exhibit, celebrating an extraordinary island to which many Lexingtonians - - including Artique owners Mike and Kathy Stutland - - feel deeply connected. Titled "Common Threads and Changing Tides," the exhibit's art was inspired by Cumberland Island.
The southernmost of Georgia's barrier islands, Cumberland Island was a winter getaway for the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Candler (Coca-Cola) families. The remote location and lack of hotels (save one very expensive small inn) have always guaranteed privacy for residents and visitors.
Cumberland Island is a place of wild horses galloping past white sand dunes flecked with sea oats. Cumberland Island is a place where there's nobody else on the pristine beach, but look closely and you see the tracks of a raccoon or turtles. It's a place where a fisherman like Artique owner Mike Stutland catches redfish under the watchful eyes of egrets and ospreys.
The exhibit features exquisite photographs taken by Lexington residents Sally Dodd and Mary Lloyd Ireland, the self-billed "Cumberland Sisters." Known for her black-and-white photographs of animals, Dodd got her friend Ireland interested in photography.
Then the two women began to spend so much time taking photographs, exchanging cameras, that they couldn't remember which one took which picture. It was simpler just to share credit, for Cumberland Island is all about the simpler life, about finding joy in nature's gifts - sunsets, whippoorwill calls at night, a deer family barely visible in the misty dawn.
"It's the nearest place to heaven that I can imagine," said Lexington resident Elaine Wolf, who has been visiting the island for years. "To sit on the beach and see the beautiful sand dunes with sea oats blowing in the breeze, the ocean with its two [distinct] shades of lighter and deeper blue, the waves coming in and then to look north and see the white billowy clouds coming down to the horizon - - it takes your breath away."
Ireland, a local orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, brings her clinically-trained eye to photography. Look for her picture of an egret taking wing, its white pleats of feathers unfolding as it rises. The viewer feels as though she can hear the water droplets falling from the bird's feet as clearly as she sees them.
The exhibit's poster photograph draws the viewer into the narrow sand road which is lined on either side with dense live oaks and palmettos. But who left the solitary bicycle sitting in the midst of that dark green wilderness?
Another photograph shows one wild horse grazing in front of the moss-covered stone ruins of Dungeness. This Gilded Age Carnegie mansion was set afire by vandals in 1959. The subtle colors of a well-worn hammock hanging on a sun-bleached wooden porch with the marsh meandering in the background make another photograph evoke tranquility.
Asked what about Cumberland Island inspired her photography, Dodd said, "There's a sense of spirituality on Cumberland Island I've never felt anywhere else. That's what draws me back."
The third Cumberland Sister, Leslie Dodd, has in the exhibit some of her vibrant paintings of life on Cumberland Island. This Dodd uses bold lines and vibrant colors to show sun-splashed scenes reminiscent of summer New Yorker covers. She paints happy, relaxed people such as her sister Sally sunning on a chaise lounge and Stutland looking out to sea while surf casting.
The exhibit includes sculpture, paintings, jewelry, and photography. Other artists with work on display include Ann Tower, Robert Tharsig, Guy Mendes, Gogo Ferguson, Jennifer Zing, Terry Simijis, Rolin Karg, Kathy Stutland, Helena Michael Pappas, Frogman Tim Cotterill, Susan Snodgrass, Sandra Baker-Hinton, Chris Simpson, and Adam Kain.
Exhibit viewers will also have a rare chance to see family photographs and other memorabilia from the private collection of Carnegie descendant Joe Graves. The needlepoint tapestry of the island, created in 1944 by his ancestor Lucy Carnegie, is the "changing threads" of the exhibit's title. Other Lexingtonians have also loaned Cumberland items from their private collections for this remarkable exhibit.