Walking the Trolley Route

Yesterday morning I grabbed a Savannah Trolley Tour brochure. Inside they had the path by which they were to show Savannah and so instead of paying 22 dollars I somewhat followed the tour on foot, for free.

I passed through River Street and saw the statue of the Girl in the Wind. Most of the bars and tourist traps were already displaying St. Patrick's day fare, including but not limited to "I got Riverfaced on Shit St. in Savannah on St. Patrick's Day" T-shirts. Not that anyone sober would actually buy that shirt. They also turned the water green in Forsythe Park:


With a few hours till I could get back into the hostel, I decided to spend a some time with the other sun-worshipers on the lawn of the park. Later I walked to a gallery opening. The gallery was displaying Wynne Hodges' Luminous Oak exhibit. Wynne Hodges is a professor at SCAD who learned blacksmithing at the John C. Campbell Folk School and created chandeliers inspired by the twisting, turning, and looming oaks of Savannah:


I talked with her for a little and she turned out to be a very down to earth art-professor. She does not worry herself with the craft vs art debate and instead makes things that satisfy her artistic passion and possibly the appetites of potential buyers. Thus she creates functional art.

After the gallery I was invited by a Parisian, who I friended in the NotSo Hostel, to a concert that his friend was putting on. It turns out his friend was in a production called Seeing Sound where a small pit orchestra provides the inspiration for artists to paint in real time before a crowd. I think I enjoyed the music more so than the painting.

On each of the blank pieces the artists put masking tape in intersecting lines and patterns. I originally thought they would wait to pull off the tape till the very end thus exposing strict uninhibited straight lines in a piece of commotion and inspired strokes, dabs, splatters and sprays. However, they took off the tape half way through and ruined what I thought were to be works of art. And then there was the artist's painting on the far right, it looked like she was trying to capture the essence of vomit, with an ice scraper.

Being able to spend some more time talking with Jean-Luc was good. He's an artist himself and works two days a week in Paris selling "ghetto-clothes" to discoteque-going-teens and other young people. What I found most entertaining is he thought that when Americans talked they sort of sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher.