Head to the Starland District this Friday for a free evening of art and music featuring the immense talent of dozens of Savannah artists. Desotorow Gallery will feature two group shows: Gendered, a juried exhibition of art on the themes of gender and identity, and Strut, a showcase of work by local artists.
In addition to the group shows, Starland-based artists Raabstract, Kellie Walker and Matt Hebermehl will open their studios to the public. Open studios are always intriguing for artists and lay-people alike, because they provide an opportunity to see the unique environments that artists create for themselves, as well as glimpses into the process of making art.

Tucked deep in the conglomeration of historic districts and intricate systems of one-way streets and squares, is what some people refer to as “the art and soul” of Savannah. All located in and around the four blocks of City Market, there are over 35 working artists’ studios where patrons can browse unique exhibitions, observe works-in-progress and often meet a local artist. The walls of the galleries adorn works from both prominent masters of art as well as undiscovered artists, so there’s always something interesting hanging on the walls. Home to the South’s oldest art museum, the Telfair Academy, and the internationally recognized Savannah College of Art and Design, South presents a guide to some of our hometown favorites.

To find out more, pick up the latest issue of South magazine.

Where art meets design and form meets function, students at SCAD become professional designers.

Happening into a hip Baltimore boutique, Savannah College of Art and Design student Kay Wolfersperger was surprised to find a particular collection of geometric melamine dinnerware on display. In espresso brown, slate gray, teal and gecko green were the patterns of diamonds, layered circles and block-in-line designs she herself rendered by hand and computer. “This is really happening,” she remembers thinking, standing before The Kay Collection chargers, salad plates, bowls and tumblers. “The scale to which my line was being marketed and sold across the country did not hit me until I saw it [then] … and it wasn’t just limited to Savannah.”

With brush in hand, Anna Fox Ryan explores the gritty relationship between man and machine.

“What if nothing changed and industry continued chugging oil, choking our economy and churning out pollution? What if the machines that destroy us become the relics of our existence?”

Pondering—and painting—these questions is a full-time job for Savannah-based painter Anna Fox Ryan. Her work, which touches on apocalyptical circumstance, directly questions the costly behavior of big business, the wastefulness of our society and the destruction of natural habitats. Intending to spread awareness, Fox Ryan renders power poles, smoke stacks, wind turbines and fire as motifs for a collection-in-progress.

She came to Savannah from Charlottesville, Virginia for the same reason as many other students: To obtain a degree that would allow her to have a career that is both creative and financially secure.

The South celebrates an artist who forges a uniquely artistic look for Savannah’s historic district.

On Wayne Street, a pair of Camellia trees stand in eternal bloom. Swaying branches support individual petals and delicately veined leaves. These life-size trees are the forged steel creations of renowned metalworker John Boyd Smith. Welded together, the trees form a carport gate at a private residence. Metalwork of this caliber, where flowers of steel bloom in three-dimensional form, is unusual, first in its artistic achievement and second, for its practical purpose.

Unlike traditional metalwork, which commonly features scrolls and simple designs, Smith’s creations depict elements of nature with sculptural nuances and careful detail. Smith renders metal into “realism.” Only a handful of American blacksmiths can produce this caliber of work—“Maybe less than five,” Smith says.

Savannah artist Elena Madden has been in “a blue mood.” But she’s not looking for pity “That’s a good thing for me,” says the 33-year-old painter. “Sometimes I go crazy—monochromatic. Lately I’ve been feeling that cerulean blue color.”

“That cerulean blue” leaps off the surface of recent works in Madden’s Ring Series— abstract mixed media paintings of large, shimmering overlapping circles in rich teals, blues and reds covering canvasses three- to four-feet square and capturing a juxtaposition of elements that the artist has made her own—the intersection of water and light.

In the 13 years since receiving her painting degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design, the Ring Series is perhaps Madden’s best-recognized and most lasting body of work.