Richmond Hill and Arts on the Coast

Art on the Hill

The show is called Moulin Rouge. It’s currently on display at Arts on the Coast. My piece is called “Memory of the Dance.” It’s an 8x10 photograph of a red satin evening gown. Here’s the story: The gown is an old dress, pushed back in a closet. Forgotten. Wrinkled. But, one night she decides to live, once again, her former splendor - the excitement, love, and romance. There in the dark, she softly glides out of the closet and begins to dance. Empty but gracefully swirling and twirling in the Memory of the Dance.

“Memory of the Dance”

The frame is a vintage box-frame that was abandoned in the attic of a very old house. The frame now lives again, too. And, yes, I had permission to take several old frames from the attic when the property was sold. I’ve added more details on the piece at the end of this post.

Yours truly with my piece from the show.

So now, where am I?

So, where is here? Where is Arts on the Coast? When we were deciding where to move over the last 2 years, we looked at LOTS of houses and neighborhoods. I researched small towns and cities from Summerville to St Mary’s. That’s a range of about 200 miles on the South Carolina and Georgia coast. In each place, I looked at the arts community. In fact, I researched everything. All the boxes needed to be checked and art was just one of those boxes.

We ended up in Richmond Hill, Georgia for a number of reasons but two of them were the historical and the cultural. During one of our house shopping trips, I ran across a booklet/magazine of local art. It was a nicely done publication, unlike anything from our previous town. Our old town used to be an art center but growth (and traffic) had been allowed to run rampant with history being an afterthought rather than feature. The old town has become a real estate town, not a cultural town. So, we were glad to relocate to Richmond Hill.

So, a little about Richmond Hill. It’s in Georgia. (That’s my home state. My gran’momma was from Hinesville, which is just down the road a piece.) Richmond Hill is still a small town but it’s not all pokey and beat up. It’s famous for Henry Ford and they celebrate it. It has a smorgasbord of many churches. It’s friendly. (We went to an event a few weeks ago and ended up sitting with the Mayor. We had no idea who he was. There was no pomp or snotty. Just a nice man sitting with his wife.) The population in all of Bryan County was 44,738 as of the 2020 census. For perspective, the county we moved from has a population of 187,117. Big difference. Yet, historic, romantic Savannah is a few minutes away and so is shopping. It’s really the best of both Hometown Georgia and Big City convenience.

Richmond Hill is much smaller than my old town, but, in many ways, it’s more rounded. The artist community is proliferating. It might even be called lush. Several years ago, a small group of artists started a non-profit gallery called Arts on the Coast. It’s been a work of love and loveliness by the efforts of many caring people. I recently joined the gallery as a new member and then promptly participated in their first show of the year. I also took the opening night photos for said event, which you can see here.

This gallery is located in Henry Ford’s historic bakery. It’s now the Visitor’s Center for the town and in 2019, the Richmond Hill Convention and Visitors Bureau invited Arts on the Coast to hang a gallery inside of the Visitor Center.

So, if you’d like to know more about the cool little place called Richmond Hill, you can click here and learn. There is a video on that page with lots of information on the bakery building. I’d advise you to seek a real estate agent and join me here ASAP. In fact, let me send you to Shelbi McKinzie. She’s a young realtor who knows the area like the back of her hand. Contact her here. In the meantime, when you get time, cruise on down to The Hill and let’s go get coffee. See you when you get here.

Thanks for reading,

Love Nancy

PS. Details on the art: It was shot with one ceiling-mounted strobe in my studio. Right now, I have no other copies of this piece anywhere else. The image is an artist-printed giclée with pigmented inks and signed en verso. The gallery display is the only one… and only in that frame. It’s $327.00. To purchase I can send you a QR code and, once payment has processed, I’ll ship it to you. If you want a bigger print, please let me know. They can be available sometime after April 2025.