The Private Views Across My Desk
with Brenda Durant
June 2023
This time of year is hard. Along with everything we do, we have to close out our fiscal year and start up a new one. Plus, there is nominating, budget, Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony, Private View. And of course there is Arts in the Heart. Yes, that small Festival that brought in 100,000 people last year. Currently I am calling on sponsors, renewing past and recruiting new companies who will have access to our attendees and our extensive marketing campaign. I love catching up with our festival family—time consuming but so very rewarding.
This June we say thank you and good bye to Lillie Morris who has been coordinating our Private View events since inception. We had to figure out how to make this program new and how we would manage it for the coming Year. Heather and I made a call to Drake White who opened a jewel box of a gallery on the 1100 block of Broad Street, CANDL. We were just asking Drake to host our fall event, but (!!!) he had bigger plans! So, for the coming year all our Private View events will be at CANDL with the
featured artists talking to our group as well as a new talk on collecting each quarter. This is exciting for us, and we hope you will like the planned changes.
One part of this season I love is Camp. It’s so fun to see all the Arts Camps cross my desk. I loved the summer my grandson Hank went to the Gertrude Herbert Camp. In his deep voice he would talk about the “Grutrude Herbert”. I was happy to see the Gertrude Herbert camps along with the Morris Mural Camp with Jason Craig, Karen Brown’s camp at Sand Hills, the Imperial Theatre is hosting their Technical Theatre Camp and the plethora of art camps all over town. Jessye Norman School is programming an astounding number of camps. Yay!
I hope you have a great summer. Enjoy our outdoor concerts taking place all over town. The arts scene in Augusta does not rest. We filled the calendar at www.augustaarts.com with events, gallery shows, classes and camps. And then, there is Fall, right around the corner. I am getting notices about Fall Season subscriptions. Chase what you love, try something new, and mark your calendars for September 15-17 for Arts in the Heart of Augusta festival.
Onward
-B