My Sunday column

“The Tertiary Glyph of the Ascension.”
I have no idea what that means.
“The” and “of” I know.
“Tertiary” and “Ascension” I can use in a pinch.
“Glyph?”
Beats me.
Combined into “The Tertiary Glyph of the Ascension,” as in the title of an eye-catching mixed media piece by William T. Payne, and I am puzzled.
Puzzled and pleased.
Payne’s vision surges off the wall of the Creative Arts Guild, as do other fine pieces being showcased as part of the CAG’s two-day Festival 2008.
Intrigued? Drive over and check it out for yourself. The festival continues today. Take the kids — there’s plenty for them to see and do — but carve out a few minutes of quiet “study time” in the main gallery upstairs.
If any of you are feeling particularly generous, peel off a few bills and purchase Martha Williams’s gorgeous “Spring Rains.” Step under the cooling waterfall and drink in those rich greens and reds. Then package it and give it to me for an early Christmas gift. It’s my favorite this year.
My wife and I are regulars at the festival. We came for the first time in 2002 and have come back every year since. For the past three years we’ve been accompanied by our daughter, who gets her face painted, eats delicious sweets and authors her own kiddie art, under the watchful eye of her helpful mom. This year they worked in plastics — cheap beads and empty bottles.
As for me, I mostly eat too much. And talk. And look at the pretty pictures.
Among the prettiest this year is “Above the Cove” by Whitfield Countian Brooks Lansing. The former DSC professor and county commissioner is like the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols. Put Pujols in the lineup and he’s going to deliver plenty of hits and lots of runs. Put Lansing in the lineup and you’ll get a striking landscape. “Above the Cove” is another of those pieces, this one bathed in the alluring greens of the Appalachian countryside.
I swear I’ve walked down the “Appalachian Trail” conjured by Evelyn Marie Williams and hope never to venture onto the spooky “Cumberland Island” imagined by Alan Mogenson. You can’t tell me there aren’t some scary critters in those woods.
And while trippin’, make sure you get a look at David Aft’s eye-catching dip into the realm of other-worldly sci-fi cheese, “Lance of Terra #49.”
Down the hall from the big folks’ art are two rooms full of work done by local school students.
Capturing the Espy Blue Ribbon is “Castle of the Pink Pigs” by Mrs. Bearden’s class at Westside. This brilliantly engineered castle was made from discarded cans and toilet paper and paper towel cones. “Minter’s Tornado” by Mrs. Minter’s class finishes a strong second.
I hope these kids enjoyed the act of creation as much as I enjoy the act of admiration. And one day I hope their work moves down the hall into the main gallery, where it can please generations to come.
I don’t really have a working definition of what good art is. But I know what makes me smile and laugh and think and wonder must be a good thing.
A very good thing indeed.



Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen.