Seacoast Artists Guild Swing Into Spring Show - March 16, '10

The Sea Coast Artist Guild is sponsoring it's Swing into Spring  Juried show this month.  We attended the Opening Reception at the ArtWorks Gallery in Litchfield on March 16th.  The categories for awards were Three Dimendional,  Photograghy,  Professional, and Non-Professional  Fine Art Paintings.  I don't envy the judges ( Linda English: Fine Arts and 3-D, and Kara Stovall: Photograghy) their task of jurying the many fine entries.

Above: Guests enjoying the colored Photograghy and Non-Professional Fine Art.

Above:  Guests and Artists discussing the entires in the Hall of Professionals.

 Below: BJ viewing the black and White Photography exhibit.

Yawkey Wildlife Center March '10

Several Artists had told me about what incredible photo ops the Yawkey Wildlife Center  on Cat Island offered  for artists who wanted to get some reference photos of  primitive barrier islands around the Winyah Bay. I decided to follow through with a call to their visitor information center, and soon found myself on a guided tour .

Invited tour guests are asked to meet at a dock on the banks of the Intercoastal .  The wait provides an interesting place to all of the large ships traversing the waters in an out of the Georgetown Harbor.

  I hadn't realized there was that much large shipping on the Inter-coastal.Waterway.

Eventually a small boat arrived at the dock to taxi us across to the Island.

Once on Cat Island, we were introduced to our Tour Guide and 

loaded into vans.

The tour began immediately as our guide began to explain the various ecosystems and subsystems we were passing through..  Much of it was forested land, but there were also a lot of early colonial archeological sites along the way.

Like this grave-site  of the Hume family (above)
or the rice chimney below

I had hoped to get some really good photographs on this trip. The guide did not have a problem letting us out of the van, but warned us that even this early i the year, the insects were voracious.
He was right.  I took the photo below then decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The remainder of my pictures were taken from the within the insect proof van.

 We drove down the dikes that separated the former rice fields while the guide explained  what life was like for slave and master alike on a rice plantation.

  He also explained how  dam projects on the Santee River had reduced the out flow of fresh water allowing more sea water to come in with the tides and salinating the soil so it was no longer arable for crops. Today the fields are seeded to help act as a sanctuary for migrating birds.
and the canals act as protected havens for some of the largest alligators in South Carolina.

Everywhere  we saw evidence of a healthy ecosystem where the nature had begun to reclaim the land and wildlife was flourinshing

Continuing on we visited the portion of the preserve where the caretakers of the island live and where Tom Yawkey  had his lodge. My friend Linda and I both enjoyed the chance to stretch out legs after the long van ride.

As a final stop we drove to the point on the island where we could look across Winyah Bay at the  Lighthouse on North Island.

I was disappointed that I hadn't been able to get better pictures, but I gain an immense appreciation for the place. I did take a lot of photos, and I am sure some of them will serve me well for jogging my memory of the place. should I wish to paint it.

Hobcaw Barony Oyster Havest Class 2 '10

Our nearby nature preserve, Hobcaw Barony, offers a  one day workshop

 on how to harvest and prepare  local oysters and clams

After listening to a brief discourse on the life cycle of oysters, a naturalist drove the attendees to Clam Bank Landing   in the preserve where he  pointed out the the beds where we would be harvesting the clams and oysters

It looks simple but when the ground is wet, as it was on this rainy day,  the  pluff mud gets very soft due to liquefaction

One can quickly sink up to one's knees in odoriferous saturated soil

As one of our  classmates found out .

We literally had to pull in out of his boots, then dig the boot back out of the mud for him.

We all arrived back at the classroom  a lot muddier and hungrier than when we left.

A guide showed up how to clean the oysters

and how to prepare the oysters and the clams  in several different ways like the clams casino above

 and  a low country oyster roasted below

Neighbors Robert LeClerc (above)

and Harry Susla ( below)  were more interest in the good part

Getting to eat them