“Really, my art is no different from other nonobjective artists,” Stromberg says. “I’m about process and exploring, just like them. My work is just more dramatic—almost like performance art. I enjoy the challenge of non-conventional materials.” One thing that separates him from other artists, he admits, is that he only has a matter of seconds during which he has control over whatever combustible substance he happens to be working with. Consequently, there’s a lot more exhaustive planning, beforehand, from acquiring his mercurial materials before finally using them. The next tempestuous force he wants to conquer is the ocean, hoping to manipulate its crushing pressure on steel and aluminum plates.

Stromberg draws inspiration from all around him, embracing everything from TV, movies, stories, to historic reference. Nevertheless, it’s not hard to fathom that he always had an interest in pyrotechnics. Of course, he also looks back to the old masters. He references da Vinci, who he says was actually a kind of arms designer, drafting early plans for helicopters and tanks at the behest of kings seeking an edge in battle. Stromberg is a foundations professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He reconciles his unique artistic vision with the rigidity of teaching by insisting that his students “play” instead of “work” because, in his opinion, that’s the only way for them to truly find themselves in their art. “I tell them that there is no practice, only the process of making art itself. That’s your practice right there: process. They either love me or they hate me,” he laughs. He believes artists should strive, like practitioners from the Baroque period, to elevate the heart, mind and spirit, and to get people to ask questions. “That’s what I try and pass on to my students. And that’s what school is for: to teach them to communicate better.” He concludes with this final self-assessment: “It’s all about a journey or adventure but always with a lot of testing, training and exhaustive research. When I complete a piece of work, it’s not far removed from a traditional landscape, or a painting of a horse. At the end of the day, I have a document record.”

Images by John Fulton
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

SM: You grew up here. How has a Southern upbringing helped you?
TA: You know, I’ve really appreciated a Georgia upbringing because in all parts of the world and country, they may not have appreciated me, they may not have appreciated the message of the music, they may not have appreciated my reputation, but they’ve all appreciated the good manners I learned as a Southern boy. My mama raised me all right, and that transfers very well. Everybody likes that.

SM: Your stint in rehab, where you infamously met Lindsay Lohan and battled addiction, made national news for quite a few months, if not years. Was it hard to have your personal problems broadcasted?
TA: It was a double-edged sword. It was horrifying and embarrassing. I went from walking in the park to running in the lion’s den. In hindsight, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because it made me realize you can’t hide behind [anything]. All of my [stuff] out there. This is what I did. What are you going to say about me? It helped me realize how sideways life can go. I saw it firsthand just explode. And it took a long time to get over that personally, professionally.

SM: What was the real deal with Lindsay?
TA: We dated for a while. I didn’t ever admit that at the time because I was going through a divorce, but it’s very much in the open now. It was jaw-dropping because our band was just starting to break and then suddenly there is this whole other level of celebrity. It freaked me out that people would jump out of bushes and follow you in cars. I was bewildered. How do you live in this bubble? How does that go on? They chased me all over Atlanta one time.

SM: What did that do to your life, personally and professionally?
TA: I’ll tell you what it did. I had so many offers, for lots of money, to sell stories, to sell pictures, and I sat back, and Scott [Michael] and I talked; and if you look back in history, you’ll see I did two interviews, period. I said, “You’ve got to knock this off. You’re not getting anything out of me.” I literally had seven figures thrown at me, and I said, “You know what, I will never be taken seriously as a musician if I’m Lindsay Lohan’s flavor of the day, or three months, or whatever.” So we had to sit on a lot of music—for a year—to separate me from that.

Images by Andy Silvers | Hair by Nick Gorlesky
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

One of Savannah’s 19th-century squares has a surprising, decidedly modern, secret; it’s home to some of the 20th century’s most iconic pop figures: Marilyn, Liz, Judy and Jackie, all famously rendered by another contemporary icon—Andy Warhol.

The pop art portraits are part of an impressive collection of Andy Warhol pieces amassed over a span of almost 40 years by Herbert Brito.
In addition to being an interior designer, historic preservationist, furniture designer, and since last August, dean of SCAD’s School of Building Arts, Brito is a storyteller. “Why do we love Savannah? Savannah tells us a story. The architectural continuum tells us a wonderful story,” he says. And similarly, Brito’s Savannah home tells a story. It tells his story, what he’s passionate about.

“Herbert’s collection is magnificent,” says Paula Wallace, president and co-founder of SCAD. “It’s a reflection of the man himself: effortlessly sophisticated yet radiating warmth.”
Born in Cuba, Brito came to Miami when he was 7 and first became interested in Andy Warhol after spending a summer with cousins in Los Angeles. “They took me to see a show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and there were all these fabulous artists—Jasper Johns; George Segal, the sculptor; Frank Stella; and Andy Warhol. I was fascinated by the fact that the art was totally consumer based.”

Brito bought his first Warhol—a purple silkscreen Marilyn (1967) for $250—when he was just 20 years old, a junior studying at Birkbeck College, University in London. “Every day on the way to school, I would pass this gallery and see her. I saved and scrounged my British pounds. And my roommate saved and scrounged his British pounds. Well, he bought a tailor-made suit at Savile Row that summer and I went and bought the Marilyn. Years later, we laughed, I said, ‘Whose investment was better?’ He didn’t even know where his suit ended up!” The Marilyn is still Brito’s most cherished Warhol. “It gives me joy to this day,” he says.

Of the 1967 portfolio of ten Marilyn screenprints that Warhol created ($250 each), Brito owns five—the black and white, the pink, the blue, the purple, and the green. While they clearly have aesthetic value to him, Brito also finds value in the story behind their creation. “Warhol manipulated a publicity picture of Marilyn as if she would appear in black-and-white TV. He would play with those three buttons that were on the TV: Color, Tint and Hue,” he explains. “He would twist them; he gave her a purple face and red face, etcetera. It was his commentary on the advent of color televisions.”

Admittedly, it would be easy to dismiss a wooden bear carving standing 7 feet tall as the work of some mad forest recluse. This, however, becomes an increasingly remote possibility when in the presence of the forces that created it — both the chainsaw and its wielder, Thomas Bland.“I wake up every Saturday morning, around 1 or 2, and just carve all day,” says Bland, unfazed by the uniqueness of his task. “It’s become quite an obsession, actually. Every night I’m thinking of what to do next.” Bland, a forester by trade, appears naturally suited for the peculiar art of chainsaw carving and its unorthodox process. As part of his profession, he’s spent a lot of time walking through the woods, literally appraising tracts of timber, surveying the forest’s quality, much like a real estate agent appraising a house. However, Bland’s transition to wood sculpting enthusiast wasn’t as obvious a leap as some would assume. His calling didn’t take flight until just a few years ago. “About five years ago, I was in the mountains of Tennessee and for a hundred bucks I brought home this strange little bear carving,” Bland recalls. “After a while of looking it over, the details and the technique that went into it, I began to think to myself, ‘Wait a minute. I can do this, easily.’”

View the complete story on our latest issue!
Written By: Travis Morningstar
Images By: John Fulton

Preston Russell had been painting for 40 years before he moved here in the early 1970s. “I previously had never seen anything real like Savannah,” he said. “It blew my socks off. And any place I love, I like to paint.”

That includes France and other places in Europe, but Russell never paints on location. “I’m a studio artist,” he explains. “When I travel, I take photographs not an easel. It takes a week to do a small painting—and up to three months for a major one.”

Russell has sold hundreds of paintings, mostly of people and buildings, interiors and street scenes from Savannah to Paris. Yet he says he didn’t become serious about his work until he settled here, and the first time he felt like a real artist was when he helped co-found Gallery 209 on River Street.

Now one of Savannah’s best-known artists—his works are in Southern museums and in homes throughout the country, and three of them were selected by the French government for the 1976 Americans in Paris exhibit—Russell still experiences the occasional dead end.

“I work on only one painting at a time,” he says. “I’m too absorbed in that one painting;  all my intensity goes into that. I sincerely believe this. However, more than once I’ve given up (on paintings) and have ditched them as hopeless.”

An early riser, Russell prefers to work in the mornings. “I tend to paint in early mornings. I wake up about 6 and head to the studio, paint until around noontime. After that I’m pretty well shot. I’m mentally tired, starting to make mistakes,” he explains.

“When I go to bed, I’m generally feeling pretty satisfied. In the morning, I’m thinking, I’ll finish it off. But after about five minutes in the studio the next day, I can see what’s wrong. Then I start to lose it or become absorbed or confused. It’s like when you rearrange your furniture and then the next morning it looks OK except that one chair should be moved 2 feet that way.”

His studio takes up most of the ground floor of an 1866 carriage house near Forsyth Park. Against a well-lit backdrop of sandblasted brick, works-in-progress stand easel-to-easel with finished pieces.

Also a writer as well as a historian, Russell co-authored, with his wife, Barbara, Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733 (now in its sixth printing) and has 15 years’ worth of a novel stuffed into the proverbial desk drawer. He’s now working on a book about George Washington and Lafayette (the French aristocrat who served under Washington during the American Revolution), envisioning a father-son relationship he says is not all that far-fetched. To see more of Preston’s work, prestonrussell.com

To read more on Preston Russell, pick up the latest issue of South magazine!

Photo by Josh Branstetter

Some people were meant to be Southerners. Most of them, quite naturally, are from the South—but not all.

Born in Philadelphia and raised in South Florida—which she is quick to point out is “not the South”—Patti Callahan Henry has been hailed as a “fresh voice in Southern fiction.” The irony isn’t lost on the forty-something minister’s daughter.

She’s called Georgia home since the age of 22, but Alabama was where The New York Times best-selling author discovered her Southern “roots.” A petite blonde, whose beauty isn’t the least bit subdued by a pair of stylish reading glasses, Henry often uses self-deprecation to ward off flattery. But she’s gracious—the epitome of Southern graciousness.

“Auburn [University] is where I decided I was a Southerner, where I started my impersonation,” she says, with just a hint of a smile.

If it’s an act, she’s doing a great job. Henry’s books overflow with the timeless tides of the Lowcountry, and that setting has been an important factor in her success. Readers clamor for her literary-meets-commercial novels, which now number six—Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets and Driftwood Summer. Her latest, a novella called The Perfect Love Song, was published in October and bears a local impression. Two of the characters get engaged in Savannah.

Henry is just writing about what she knows. Like her characters, she too became engaged on the Creative Coast. The young Patti Callahan had met Patrick Henry at Auburn. He proposed to her on nearby Daufuskie Island, in front of its historic lighthouse.

The pair eventually bought a home there. They have since sold that property and re-purchased another in Palmetto Bluff, which Henry owns with photographer Sandee O. Bartkowski, wife of Steve Bartkowski, former quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons.

“It’s an outdoor paradise,” she says of their beach-themed writer’s retreat. “It’s been used exactly the way we want it to, which is a little bit of an artist retreat, a little bit of a family retreat and a little bit of an outdoors retreat. I use it when it’s time for me to edit or brainstorm.”

To read more about Patti Callahan Henry, pick up the latest issue of South magazine!

Photos by Shawn Heifert

Held on the second floor of the Telfair’s Jepson Center, this exhibit features the work of more than 100 local artists of all ages. Children created much of this year’s exceptional work, and artists worked both in groups and independently.

“This is not just a show of art,” says Harry DeLorme, the exhibits coordinator and the muesum’s senior curator of education. “This is a show of the healing power of art.” The museum does not curate the show, allowing the artists to create alternative art, folk art, fine art, in whatever form or genre, in whatever medium, that best expresses their thoughts. The focus lies on the meaning of the piece. All visual mediums may be used and the opening reception includes a written and a performance program. DeLorme says it’s an opportunity for those participating to tell stories. “And it helps individuals connect with others. There have been some very emotional readings, and the families [of those in recovery] participate as well,” he adds. Additionally, some artists are no longer associated with the sponsoring rehabilitation programs yet are still able to showcase their therapeutic works in the museum, continuing their healing process.

The opening reception, which takes place on the first Sunday of December, will include comments, demonstrations by the artists and readings from different participants. “Most would not call themselves artists,” says DeLorme. “[This is, for many of them], their first time at art.” I Have Marks to Make seeks to showcase the greatest powers of art, stepping away from traditional, highbrow aesthetics and bringing the public the most remarkable aspects of the creative subconscious, reminding us that art has the power to transform lives. “Personally, I’m always interested in this healing power,” DeLorme says. “[The exhibit] allows the artist to exert some kind of control over their lives.”

I Have Marks to Make opens Sunday, Dec. 5, with an opening reception from 3 to 5 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. The exhibition will continue through Jan. 3 at the Jepson Center for the Arts.

207 W. York Street, 912.790.8800, telfair.org

A grandfather furrows his brow in determination, with a stern, stoic expression on his face; a helpless mother is pictured next to him, with her head in her hands, exhausted and most likely grieving the death of her soldier husband. Far away, an innocent little girl leans on her grandfather’s arm for support, both physical and mental.

The painting “Relics of the Brave” by Arthur Hacker depicts the aforementioned scenario and is one of many paintings helping Savannah doctors perfect their observation—and therefore healing—skills.

Visual Thinking Strategy, a concept developed in the late 1980s, is a widely recognized teaching method that specifically uses art to develop critical thinking and increase observation skills, as well as speculative abilities. First used predominantly in education, VTS expanded into the medical field when a group of Harvard medical students started meeting weekly at a museum to observe and analyze sculptures. The Telfair Museum of Art now offers this same method to physicians here in Savannah.

“Visual Thinking Strategy is another way of learning and another way of looking at learning,” says Kristin Boylston, director of marketing and public relations at the Telfair Museum of Art. “Today, doctors are on a tighter schedule than ever, and VTS helps to sharpen their listening and observing skills and making them even more aware of things.”
Telfair staff members have been using VTS for a while, gearing it more toward their tour programs, since it is currently more of a force in education. Introducing it to the medical community has been only recent.

“I’ve always been interested in the potential of art in healing,” says Harry Delorme, senior curator of education, also at the Telfair Museum of Art. A few months ago, after being asked to implement a training session with a group of Memorial University Medical Center residents, Delorme presented a series of images to the group and encouraged the participants to engage in a facilitated discussion about each particular piece of art.

“We ask them to look at the piece in silence, then discuss what’s happening, what the people in the piece might be thinking or feeling and back up their comments,” Delorme says. “We want them to bring their knowledge of the world into the discussion.”

A behavioral scientist at Memorial Health Family Practice, Sherri Schumacher’s role in the practice is primarily “teaching the residents how to be better doctors.” She made the initial call to Delorme after Dr. Robert Pallay, director of the Memorial University Medical Center’s Family Medicine Residency Program, gave her some educational information from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The cover piece was Peter Paul Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” a chaotic snarl of anguished, biblical citizens, experiencing a variety of emotions, as told by the Gospel Matthew.

“I believe there is a lot of art in being a doctor, especially a family doctor,” Pallay says. “Doctors need to learn the art of physical diagnosis, and figure out how to use that part of their brains. It’s often easy for them to learn the science part, but harder to learn this art.”

Read more in the latest issue of South magazine!

Photography by Shawn Heifert