Lucid Dreamscapes: Shadows & Specters
Savannah, GA
February 4-10, 2024
ArtVentures
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Today we got up and went to breakfast at Broken Egg in Asheville.
Because we have all the time in the world for travel today, we got ourselves onto some state highways for our trip to Savannah. This led us to stopping at a pretty cool flea market and antique mall in South Carolina where we managed to spend some money.
Our hotel in Savannah is the Hotel Indigo Savannah Historic District. Finding it was relatively easy and we decided to valet park our van even though it will cost us $48 a day to park our car.
The area of Savannah where we are living has a downtown square full of restaurants. We decided on Sorry Charlie’s Oyster Bar which proved to be excellent.
Starting Mileage: 122,446
Ending Mileage: 122,781
Miles for the Day: 335
Total Miles for the Trip: 1133
Friday, February, 2, 2024
Today our sampling of local breakfast cuisine led us to Goose Feathers Café.
Our first stop of the day was the Georgia State Railroad Museum.
Next we bought an all-day pass to the triple threat of art museums: The Telfair.
We started at the Telfair Academy, a 1819 mansion that was donated to the Georgia Historical Society in 1875. It has housed art ever since. Its emphasis is European classic art. However its number one item is it has Bird Girl, the sculpture featured on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which had to be removed from the Bonaventure Cemetery because of over-tourism.
The second stop on this single ticket purchase was the modern sister institution, the Jepson Center located just one block away. Of A Feather: Birds in Art was the main exhibition. There were quite a lot of art students from SCAD sketching in the museum and I joined them with this study of the staircase.
The third stop, and last on our admission ticket, was the Owens Thomas House and Slave Quarters, built in 1819. At the Jepson there had been an exhibition of glass from an upper class household which made the point quite clearly that the responsibility for these rich people’s belongings, whether it was use, cleaning or preserving, lay with their slave labor. Now at the mansion, we got more of that story when it was made clear the role of slave labor in the preservation of this family.
Then we went for a walkabout.
Folklorico, a world market, was our next stop. While sitting outside that store and searching the map to find the next store to visit, we noticed a mansion in the neighborhood that we did not have on our list so we walked over there.
The Mercer-Williams Mansion was started by General Hugh W. Mercer (the great-grandfather of song writer Johnny Mercer) in 1860, sold unfinished after the Civil War and completed in 1868 by John R. Wilder. It then lived out is life until it was abandoned by the late ‘60s when it was bought by a rich antiques dealer and preservationist, John A. Williams. Yes, it was not until we were this far into the tour and standing in the office ot this man when it was revealed he is the central character of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (No pictures are allowed in this museum).
Next we walked to a fascinating vintage ephemera store called V & J Duncan. I spent most of my time there looking at vintage maps, text and images from the state of Wisconsin.
Last night while going to the square for our oyster dinner we noticed Jazz’d Tapas so we ate there tonight. Then it was back to the hotel for some college basketball on the TV.
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