Our community needs safe places to process and celebrate life, while eliminating creative control.
Home Is Where the Art Is
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A True Homecoming
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Dear reader, I hope you find this not as much as an informative piece, but rather a sincere invitation to a celebration. Saturday, October 15th I’ll be performing at The Loft Green Room Stage to celebrate the release of Play It Loud So the Stars Can Hear in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. I’ve lived in Nashville since 2018, so it’s certainly a homecoming in that literal sense...
Sunday Q&A: Paige Martin Swift Executive Director, Nature Now
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New nonprofit will host popular annual event, the nationally touring Wild & Scenic Film Fest, August 19-21. How did the last local Wild & Scenic Film Festival in 2019 become its largest ‘On Tour’ event?“I think it’s because of the way we choreograph it.And the capacity potential we’ve got. We have an amazing urban footprint downtown now that’s walkable, with all these amazing outdoor...
Sunday Q&A: Rabbi Beth Schwartz of Temple Israel
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What does International Holocaust Memorial Day every January mean to you and the congregation here at Temple Israel? “In the spring, within the Jewish world, there is an observance called Yom HaShoah, That is timed to coincide with the uprising at the Warsaw ghetto uprising. That’s mostly observed within the Jewish world, but World Holocaust Memorial Day makes everyone stop and think about their...
Sunday Q&A: Karen Ouzts Proprietor, Heritage Art Center
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How did you come up with the name, Heritage Art Center? “I wanted to pay tribute to my dad, Roger Williamson, who passed away. He always wanted to pursue art but he worked in the mills all his life, putting in lots of hours first at Fieldcrest and then the majority of his career at Swift. My dad loved woodworking. He made incredible furniture; he did phenomenal cabinetry. He always...
Start Us Up
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(start us up and we’ll never stop)* Columbus is doubling down on the bet that entrepreneurship is the economic engine that will power the regional economy in the 21st century. In classic Electric City fashion, both private companies and public entities combine to form the full scope of recent local investments cultivating small-business start ups. StartUp Columbus Programs Director Ben...
Najee’s Art in Columbus (and America)
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When Najee Dorsey talks about Black Art in America, he talks not in the singular but in terms of “Us,” “We” and “Our.” “Our greatest strength is our flexibility, our agility,” the 45-year-old Arkansas native says of his critically, culturally and commercially booming business. “If we were a corporation, it would take too much time to cut through all the bureaucracy. If we’re more agile...
A Rock and a Hard Place: Stuck Way Down in the Stewart County
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When she reported for work each day at the Stewart County Detention Center, Latifa Craword recalls, “I didn’t know what to expect.” Hired as a case manager when the facility first opened in October 2006, Crawford was assigned to Level 4 detainees—”drug dealers, rapists, murderers, child molesters, and I didn’t feel safe. My working conditions were too “open” for a detention center.” Crawford then...
Art with a View
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Swinging open the doors from the fourth-floor conference room at Troy University-Phenix City Campus onto its expansive adjacent balcony, Vice Chancellor Dr. David White presents what is perhaps the best view of the Columbus riverfront. Instead of the bird’s-eye perspective on gleaming whitewater and impressive edifices for both home and office, however, White points toward an undeveloped lot that...
Local Starts Farmers Market to Support Low Income Families
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“Food can bring us together. This much I know. But in our neighborhood and many others like it, there’s an inexcusable divide that needs to be bridged. In the North Highland district near our home, 12,000 residents live in one square mile (compared to an average of 860 in the rest of the city). The percentage of folks below the poverty level is 61%; it’s 16% elsewhere in Georgia. For those...