15 Mar Art Adventure: Monkey Business Scavenger Hunt
Art Adventure: Westobou Monkey Business Scavenger Hunt
by Jamie Jackson
What’s a mama and her boo to do on a beautiful Friday afternoon in March?
On March 12, 2021, an email pinged into my inbox from Westobou announcing that Porkchop’s new temporary art installation “Monkey Business” was being installed that very morning and the email included a nifty scavenger hunt!
This scavenger hunt is all things Porkchop in Downtown Augusta and if you turn it in soon you might win a prize or be entered to win cool prizes down the road.
Immediately, my little guy and I had our course charted. We printed the connect-the-dot puzzles, cut out and dressed the paper doll monkeys and hopped in the car to head downtown to snap all our pictures. This was all right after I put on my best “ode to the ‘Chop” outfit including: shorts, mismatched socks, high-top sneakers, and a favorite t-shirt. Out the door we went.
Because I am always doing more than one thing we stopped first at Furman Jeweler’s Watches & Clocks. This is the only company I trust with my watch batteries and we stopped in so that I could get a new watchband. The folks at Furman always take great care of us and my toddler is a special friend of the shop’s shy, loving dog.
From there we started down Broad Street on our trek to mark off all our scavenger hunt items. We stopped in at Changing Up to see if we could find a flannel shirt to complete my “ode to the ‘Chop” outfit as there weren’t any in my closet. We found the perfect one, paid a very reasonable price and went on our way.
Throughout our meandering we visited; the “Keep Augusta Funky” mural; the Book Tavern (for a happy button); the giant HAPPY robot mural outside Tire City Potters; took pictures with the new Porkchop installation; we stopped briefly to chat with Ooollee, owner of Vintage Ooollee; popped into Field Botanicals for some cotton facial rounds made by the lovely ladies at Sew.co (after taking our picture with the moon mural); and we visited the Westobou Seeds gallery just in time to turn in our scavenger hunt and get a darling pink robot pin. The pins look like the new temporary installation’s pink monkeys! The first handful of people to complete the scavenger hunt will get one for free and they’re also available to buy for $10.
We chatted with the gallery staff at the Westobou gallery and we even convinced them to show us the life-size monkey prototype they have in the building that is identical (or close to) the orange monkeys that are part of the new installation at 1051 Broad Street.
I cannot stress what a perfect afternoon this was to spend #monkeyseemonkeybou with my little boo. We loved exploring downtown Augusta and getting to introduce little man to some of the iconic Porkchop pieces up and down Broad Street. It is an exciting way to spend some time with the people you love.