“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!

The A-lister hot spot is situated in the art deco hub of South Beach, with modern nods to the era with its use of Shanghai brick and bronze, teak, stone and art. The rooms and suites feature in-room bathtubs for personal spa treatments, rain showers, teak floors, Lavazza espresso machines, personalized housekeeping service and a 24-hour concierge, among other luxury amenities.
It’s off-season during the hot, summer months, and deals are easy to find. The Setai’s Girls’ Getaway and Gentleman’s Retreat packages offer private shopping experiences, spa treatments, breakfast, complimentary spirits and VIP access to Miami’s nightlife. (Rates begin at $595 per night with a minimum two-night stay.)

To tone down on price, but not on style, stay at TownHouse Hotel. Smack dab in the middle of South Beach, flanked by high-end neighboring hotels, sits TownHouse. “It’s great because of the location,” says Colleen Graham, director of sales. “It’s nestled in with the big guns [and is a real] home away from home.”

Highly utilized for studio and magazine production shoots, TownHouse is as much appreciated for its creative, minimalist lines, and all-around fun and flirty decor as it is for its comfort and unassuming prices.
Brought to South Beach at the turn of the millennium by Jonathan Morr, who is well-known for his Manhattan eateries, Republic and BondST, this 69-room, two-suite, Parisian-designed boutique hotel is frankly a steal at $145 a night midweek, and $175 a night on the weekends, through August and September. A Parisian breakfast is included.
The rooms are clad in white, with striking pops of color, and hallways, specked with benches, comics and other good reads, are engulfed with cool soundtracks. The rooftop, fitted with various table settings and lounge chairs, transforms at night into one of South Beach’s hottest weekend hangouts, and the highlight is sushi sent up from the ground floor BondST Lounge. Zagat Miami has named its tuna “the best on the planet.”

Images by Sean Murdock
Written by Melanie Bowden Simón
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

Playing high school sports is about much more than scoring points and winning championships. Often times the real glory comes in bonding with teammates or reaching set goals. Similarly, coaching is about much more than winning or losing games. Often times the real fun comes in seeing a student sign scholarship papers. Coaches have the amazing ability to keep students on track, inspire them to do great things and make a lifelong impact. Here are a few of the MVPs when it comes to coaching in the Lowcountry.

Images by Shawn Heifert
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

It was the “pop” heard around the world: the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble that began as a slow leak in 2006 and had completely imploded by the summer of 2008. The domino effect from an out-of-control derivatives market that caused the collapse of the subprime market eventually impacted mortgage, credit, hedge fund and even foreign bank markets. For homebuilders, home supply retailers and real estate professionals who had profited for years on booming home valuations, the braking of the markets would result in a particularly long skid.
But as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. One of the toughest names in Savannah real estate has proven to be relative newcomer Judge Realty, which opened its doors in June 2005, at the height of the market.
Lori Judge, owner of Judge Realty, remembers fondly the easier days at the company’s outset. “Our first month in business we profited $5000,” she says. “The following months it was three and then ten times that. We were off to the races.”
But the salad days would not last long. In the summer of 2008, Judge, along with realtors across the region, began to feel the impact of the now widely publicized financial crisis. “It happened so fast,” says Judge. “It seemed as though everything came to a halt overnight.”
Savannah’s real estate landscape has noticeably transformed since. “The economy has affected our market in every way, from our neighborhoods to our values,” explains Judge. Countless brokers have found part-time jobs or new lines of work altogether. Housing-related businesses have been forced to close their doors or consolidate with other companies. Out of necessity, others have expanded their services to include aspects of the job that they used to farm out.
Judge Realty has been no different. To weather the storm, the company has had to cut costs, streamline systems, and work harder than ever for their clients. “This was like a near-death experience in business,” says Judge. “It forced us to understand the new conditions we were working in, to go beyond the conventional and get creative, and to implement survival tactics.”
“Like many people in this business, I had to face down my greatest fear: the fear of failing. But once you get past that fear, there is only opportunity. This challenge made me open my eyes to the possibilities that are out there.”
Adaptive approaches for Judge Realty have ranged from the expected to the highly progressive. Their brokers are now experts in foreclosures and short sales. And property management—once the “red-headed step-child” for many firms—has become one of the company’s foremost undertakings. “We now manage more than 200 properties,” says Judge. “And that makes sense to us in the overall picture of what we do, because tenants eventually become buyers and, likewise, buyers become landlords. So we’re really a soup-to-nuts real estate company.”
Providing the most current online technology for clients has helped Judge stay ahead of the property management competition. Their interactive website provides comprehensive, user-friendly access, so property owners stay abreast of tenant activity and screenings, billing and maintenance issues.
On the more progressive side, Judge is one of the only certified EcoBrokers in the area, a unique designation for brokers who are trained to educate clients on reducing their carbon footprints through energy efficient and environmentally sensitive design in properties.
“At the end of the day, it’s about personal relationships,” says Judge. “We’re all in this together—brokers, buyers, sellers, renters. So the crisis has gone a long way toward building camaraderie among industry professionals as well as longstanding relationships between brokers and clients.”

Written by Summer Teal Simpson
Photography by Tim Johnson
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

At 20 mph, barely a sound is audible save for the dirt road crunching beneath the tires and the good-natured voice from the driver’s seat. The voice belongs to Charles Davis, president of The Earth Comfort Company, and the tires to his Chevrolet Volt, which is one of two in the state of Georgia. As he drives slowly around his Guyton, Georgia, property, Davis explains the many perks of the electrically powered car: one of the catchiest being its incredibly low maintenance requirements, as in an oil-change-after-24,000-miles low maintenance. After parking beside his house, Davis removes a cord from the vehicle and connects it to a charging station on the exterior wall noting that it’s “the same charger Jay Leno installed in his garage.”

Davis’ house is far from typical of other homes in Southeast Georgia. It’s a customizable, prefab structure and, like his car, it exhibits his commitment to renewable energy. After purchasing it as a foreclosure in the Atlanta area, Davis had the house delivered to his one-and-a-half-acre property in Guyton. The property is one of nine and the first step toward the goal of creating a zero-energy community (a working organic farm already exists on site). The prefabricated, modular “i-house” is a model made by Clayton Homes, the largest manufacturer of modular homes in the United States. With clean lines and a modern sensibility, the i-home is advertised as being “built from the ground up to be environmentally friendly” without sacrificing aesthetics or comfort. From its specialized roof designed for the collection of rainwater and the installation of solar panels to energy efficient windows and insulation, the i-house is clearly geared toward efficiency aficionados. But that’s only the framework upon which Davis crafted a system that allows him to bring the first net-zero energy home to Savannah.

The Man Behind the Plan

Originally from the Macon area, Davis points to his college days as the beginning of his passion for renewable energy. “I was in college years ago and Jimmy Carter was going to have a war on energy; that got me fired up. This was going to be the future and the next thing you know it’s never mind.” While some of the social and governmental drive toward renewable energy may have lost some steam, since those days, Davis’ interest in putting the concept into action hasn’t flagged.
The Earth Comfort Company was born 18 years ago while Davis was working for a LaGrange based electric cooperative and travelled to Washington, D.C., to learn about geothermal heat pumps with the goal of returning to teach Georgia companies about the technology. Geothermal heat pumps are a renewable energy technology that have existed since the late 1940s and function by taking advantage of the fact that the earth’s underground temperature is constantly around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
With several different variations, the pumps circulate water or fluid through a piping system placed a few feet underground, often in a series of loops, by means of an electric pump. Using 40 to 60 percent less energy than conventional systems, geothermal heat pumps pay for their installation within five to ten years and have an estimated 25-year service life, with the underground components extending to 50 plus years, according the U.S. Department of Energy. As an added bonus, enough hot water is produced as a free by-product to cover 60 percent of usage. Owners of geothermal heat pumps also receive a 30 percent federal energy tax credit, which Davis points out almost pays for the additional cost of installation.
After learning about geothermal technology, Davis put his passion for energy efficiency to work and began The Earth Comfort Company, basing it in Savannah. Today the company provides a variety of energy efficient installation services, including solar, wind and insulation, and prides itself on being “the go-to source” for geothermal heat loop systems. Focusing primarily on larger scale commercial projects, The Earth Comfort Company has completed numerous projects including the installation of a geothermal system for Florida State University’s Sustainable Energy Science and Engineering Center, one of 14 off-grid zero emissions buildings in the country.
In 2008, Davis joined The University of Georgia’s Marine Extension Service in Brunswick in an ongoing effort to provide a tangible example of efficient energy use through various renewable energy equipment. He helped get geothermal, solar, and energy efficient lighting technologies on a 16,000-square-foot building built in 1991. With the bulk of construction finished in December of 2010, the associate director for the Marine Extension Service, Keith Gates, who has since retired, says of the project, “The geothermal [heat pump] is fantastic; it dropped our electric bill around 50 percent, which is pretty amazing. And not only were we improving energy, the idea was to teach folks down the road about the whole operation.”

Photography by Shawn Heifert
Read more on our August/September Issue now!

Any number of issues may dominate this year’s municipal election: classic election year staples like the economy, jobs, and business-friendly conditions in Savannah, as well as more nebulous puzzles like racial harmony and City Council transparency and accountability. South magazine recently spoke with Savannah’s five mayoral candidates to get the long and short on whom should be the next person to set up shop at 2 East Bay Street.

Read the full story on our June / July Issue!

One of the quickest, most reliable ways to make money in today’s economy, franchises offer a business model that provides proven success, in-depth training and brand recognition. Adopting this concept, a string of local, hungry entrepreneurs have opened thriving eateries and succeeded. They all credit their success to being willing to clock in at 7 a.m. and out at 1 a.m., seeing past the stacks of paperwork to the bigger picture and having experienced the entire range of positions—from cashier to manager. Each of their backgrounds may be different, and their levels of success may vary, but they all share a common goal of making good money from good food.

View the full story on our June/July Issue!

Steve Weathers has been in Savannah working as the president and CEO of Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) for only about eight months, a short amount of time to do business in a tight-knit community notorious for operating by long-standing family and friends connections. But you’d never guess it by watching him command a room full of the heaviest hitters in the city, a group that collectively governs over the sea, land and air in the Creative Coast.

During the succession of meetings he’s been having with local leaders, he’s calm and direct. He stands at the head of the room sharply dressed, with well-managed hair and a trim figure, indicating his level of attention to detail. He’s a man with a grand plan for the city and everyone can sense it.

“Should we get plugged into world trade?” he asks. It’s a question he’s been asking a lot lately—to community leaders, to himself, to business owners and world trade experts. And by that he means, Should Savannah’s next big economic move be to bring a world trade center to the city? It’s a sexy idea, he admits.

“There’s a big world trade center in Dubai, UAE, and there’s also one in the small town of Missoula, Montana. And they do business. Can you imagine any other reason those two places would have to ever communicate? It’s amazing,” Weathers says. And it’s true. An instant connection into world commerce is intriguing. Add on the fact that Savannah has a prime location, a range of industries already heavily involved in importing and exporting, and a tourism driven economy, and it seems like a perfect idea. Right? Some local leaders think so and are throwing themselves behind the campaign. However, others, including Weathers, aren’t sold just yet.

View the full story on our June/July Issue!

-I went to elementary school, junior high, high school here and Armstrong, which was downtown at the time. Then I went on to law school at Georgia in Athens. That’s a town I never wanted to leave.

-I’ve always enjoyed complicated litigation because it’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle or a Rubik’s Cube.

-To run for legislature is a real endurance test. I went door-to-door three to four miles a day. You’re doing everything you can to get elected. So at the end of two terms, children and family were number one. Internally, I knew it was the right thing to do.

-When I was in legislature, we passed the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Bill, and I got a lot of hate mail then, so we had to turn it over to authorities. So you have it in your mind that people do stupid things, but I still walk in my neighborhood with my dog at night and do certain things.

-As a judge, I’ve learned that people will be back to you and back to you if you don’t do something to stop the cycle.

-The most frequent place that they catch people who didn’t show up for court and have warrants against them is the county jail. They go visit somebody. To them, not showing up is like missing a doctor’s appointment. That’s their mentality.