By Betty A. Little
posted
Aug 9, 2012
On Monday August 20 from 7-8:30 p.m. Betty A. Little, poet,
memoir writer and journalist, is giving a program for the
Killington Arts Guild, "South Carolina Perspective: Pawleys Island,
Brookgreen Gardens and Gullah Art," at the Sherburne Memorial
Library in Killington. The public is invited to attend.
Pawleys Island is south of Myrtle Beach, S.C and there you will
find Brookgreen Sculpture Gardens and wild life preserve. The
gardens are unrivaled by any other holding, public or private, of
American representational sculpture. Over 1,444 works by over 300
artists are displayed on 31 acres. The collection includes: one of
American's earliest sculptures, Greek Slave by Hiram Power;
Fountain of the Muses by Carl Mills; Pledge of Allegiance by Glenna
Goodacre and Len Ganeway by Derek Wernher.
At the entrance are the famous Fighting Stallions by Anna Hyatt
Huntington. Anna and her husband, financier Archer Milton,
established Brookgreen during the 1930's on four former
plantations. The gardens were designed as a setting for Anna's
sculpture. Archer's poetry is mounted on marble tablets.
A total of 9,000 acres makes up Brookgreen including a beach
house along the ocean, woodlands, tidal swamps and preserves for
low country plants and animals. In the gardens there is a Live Oak
Allée, walkways, reflection pools, remnants of walls and rice
fields from plantation days.
Slaves managed these fields until after the Civil War. Hundreds
of them were buried in the pinewoods beneath wooden crosses without
names. Evidence of the hard life they lived. Some of their
descendants are known as the Gullah.
The program will include a slides presentation, memorabilia,
poetry about Pawleys Island, and a talk about Brookgreen and
conservation coastlands in the barrier islands south to Georgetown,
SC. For 10 Septembers Betty Little has gone to Pawley's Island to
tour the area and writes memoirs with her sister Martha F. McMullen
from Lakeworth, Florida. This year they will be working mornings in
a cottage on Pawleys Island Creek editing "Beyond Sisters" a joint
memoir about mental illness and the bond that can exist between
sisters.
Tagged:
KAG, Pawleys Island
