Artists Majett Schille and Jeannine Cook wanted to depict the natural beauty of Sapelo Island, one of Georgia’s barrier islands, when they proposed the idea of “Sapelo Sojourns.”

“What they did was go to the island and spend several seasons in it and record the landscape at different times of the year,” said Ana Pozzi-Harris, the gallery director at North Georgia College & State University there the exhibition is on view at the Bob Owens Art Gallery.

Pozzi-Harris said the works all were either created on-site or sketched there and completed in the artists’ studios.

“Majett creates mixed media, watercolor mixed with pencil or pastel oils, and ink works, graphite,” said Pozzi-Harris. “Jeannine Cook works with silver point, which is a Renaissance drawing technique, an old master technique. It consists of drawing with silver, quite literally, and with a point that is made of silver.”

Pozzi-Harris said silver point is a very challenging technique.

“When you draw with silver, you make permanent marks that cannot be erased, and they change color over time,” she said. “It’s a very painstaking technique because, you know, you have to be very well trained, because you cannot correct anything.”
Because of the threat of development on Sapelo Island, which until now has been well protected, Pozzi-Harris said the exhibition has an “environmentalist approach.”

“In a way the exhibition is recalling the natural aspect of the landscape and trying to preserve it in some way,” she said.

Pozzi-Harris said NGCSU art department students participated in the exhibit’s organization.

“They researched the work of the artists and they interviewed them and then they wrote their papers, and some of the wall text that is displayed in the exhibition was created by the students,” she said. “What we tried to do was involve our program and our students in the show, so we’ll try to continue to foster that even more every year.”

Pozzi-Harris said the visual arts department also plans to expand exhibits in the coming year.

“We are going to have longer exhibits, six weeks or so, and in each of them we are going to have more than one event,” she said. “We are going to try to have workshops or more artist presentations to get people more involved.”

The next exhibition at NGCSU will be “Art from Georgia Schools,” an annual exhibit that showcases grade-school teachers and their students. The exhibit will open Feb. 11.