You should take a couple of good friends to see the art currently on display at the Averitt Center for the Arts.
One should be a bit older and the other quite a bit younger, as one needs to talk and the other listen.
It isn’t just that art is accessible for all ages, but also that the work in this show highlights our shared relationship to the land, and memorable stories are sure to crop up. The work was selected from more than 50 artists’ works, of which 21 were selected by a juror, Dr. William Eiland from the Georgia Museum of Art.
Eiland spoke, at the opening reception, of his drive through the state to Statesboro. Seeing the cotton fields, the stately old homes and slave quarters, he mused that an artist would never need to look any further for inspiration.
The selection is diverse, ranging from photography to watercolor, oil painting and mixed media. Kathy Shepherd provides a vision of the sweet onion crop in her Merit Award winning photograph balancing earthy colors and bulbous forms as onions await harvest. Equally simple and compelling, Jill Broughers’ modest lemons and oysters remind us of the harvest of the ocean and the Lowcountry.
Abundance is a common theme as seen through Becky Blalock’s still life of rows and rows of pickled produce, as well as Merit Award winner Glen Haynes’ lush watercolor of grapes dangling on the vine.
Artists Drew Cottril and Scott Foxx wander into the tall tales and fuzzy memories common to front porch recollections with visions of Brer Rabbit and symbolic cotton plants, thorny and fluffy, the hand of a laborer suggesting history.  One of Foxx’s cotton images received the Best of Show award, featuring the common cotton boll against a richly textured background titled “Cotton Icon.”
Stop by soon and spend a moment in the gallery, perhaps while at the Mainstreet Statesboro Farmers Market, and share a few stories between young and old of your own, about the land and its bounty.
The generous sponsors for this exhibition are Steve and Debra Chester. “Farmer’s Bounty” will be on view through Saturday, May 3. The Averitt Center’s hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The Averitt Center, at 33 E. Main St., opens at 9 a.m. on Saturdays with the Farmers Market.