Seeing Newnan

Over the past few years, a friend and I have created what we call adventure club, where we look for interesting things to do around town. As you might imagine, that's a little harder in a pandemic. But today, we found a way.

Several of us went to see a public art exhibit, Seeing Newnan, of 17 portraits of residents taken in the town. May I just tell you: it was fabulous.

On their own, the pictures are well-done portraits on the side of buildings. But this was so much more than that.

The artist spent two years in the city, getting to know people and taking pictures. And the context for her project is really interesting; Newnan is a city of about 40,000 that's about 60 percent white; it was also the site of a neo-Nazi gathering in 2018. But as this story will tell you, the perception of the city hasn't kept pace with the population of the city. And that's where Mary Beth Meehan came in. Her website has really fabulous biographies of everyone she shot, and the context made for a really wonderful experience -- particularly, for me, in some of the placement of the portraits.

In this one, a fifth grader in her Cotillion clothes is on the side of a building she wouldn't have been allowed into in another era. And that's just one.

If you're in Atlanta, it's worth the field trip.

For me, the other thing that was so great about it was the humanness. No, I couldn't give my friends hugs, but I could walk around town with them (an acceptable distance apart) and have a picnic (same) in an empty park and share one of the only social experiences I've been able to of the pandemic.

Plus someone brought houseplants, so now there's something green (and alive!) in my house. Not shabby at all.