Two new exhibits

The Fendig Gallery at the Carnegie Center has a new art show, an exhibit of works by DeMotte artist Judy Crawford. She works in oil, pastel, and charcoal and paints or draws people, animals, landscapes, and still lives.

Her work is on display until November 5. 

The Gallery hours are on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon until 4:00 pm.

Most of the works in the show are for sale.

The other recent exhibit features the written word. The Jasper County Historical Society has an exhibit featuring Jasper County authors. There are at least two authors with Jasper County roots that achieved national fame and were successful enough as writers to support themselves as authors, Edison Marshall and Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson. Both moved from Rensselaer as children, but Eleanor came back in death. She is buried in Weston Cemetery.

There are a number of other authors that have interesting stories. Jim Ellis told his in a autobiography that tells of his life in the advertising business. He ran the advertising for Buick from the mid-1930s until the mid 1950s. 

Elmer Dwiggins is a strange character from a strange family. You can read more about him here and in the links at that post. Note the mention of this blog at the end of the description.

One of the very first settlers in Rensselaer was a Samuel Sparling. His grandson, also Samuel Sparling, earned the first Ph.D. from the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wrote several books and although he lived the last twenty or thirty years of his life in Alabama, he is buried in Weston Cemetery.

I have read books of Atkinson, Dwiggins, and Ellis.  Atkinson is a very gifted writer. Ellis has a fascinating life story. Dwiggins wrote a sci-fi book about a trip to Mars that is interesting partly because it shows how little people knew about Mars and outer space in the 1890s.

The exhibit is impressive and took a lot of work to put together. It features about 60 authors (I think) and it is too much to take in on one visit. It mixes important authors that published with major publishing houses and sold well with minor authors who have sold few books (like me). This is an exhibit that might actually be better on-line where people can leisurely read through the descriptions of the authors and their writings.

The Historical Society Museum is open the first and third Saturdays of the month from 10:00 am until 1:00 pm.