April/May 2024

Garden & Gun

Soul of the South

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Garden & Gun
David DiBenedetto Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief Creative Director Marshall McKinney / Photography and Visuals Director Maggie Brett Kennedy Executive Editor Amanda Heckert / Managing Editor Stacy Hollister / Deputy Editor David Mezz Art Dir
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Contributors
PHOTOGRAPHER Nigel Parry drove only about a hundred miles from his home in Charleston, South Carolina, to Savannah to photograph the painter and collector Andrew LaMar Hopkins (cover and p. 117), but he might as well have been entering another world.
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Red-Hot Talent
One evening at Virginia Commonwealth University, Corey Pemberton saw a glow coming from a room. It was a glassblowing studio; the aspiring graphic design and illustration student hadn’t realized his campus had one. But watching molten glass turn into
Garden & Gun3 min read
Voice From The Mountain
It’s another stormy day in Nashville, a city that’s seen its fair share of turbulent weather over the past few years. Last December, another brigade of tornadoes raked Middle Tennessee, including one Sierra Ferrell says almost hit her house. She has
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“And That Is What I Sang, Before My Mother Hauled Me Out Of The Church To Whup My Butt”
■ Find us on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok @gardenandgun THAT’S THE SPIRIT As a longtime bourbon aficionado and “armchair expert,” I thoroughly enjoyed your February/March 2024 issue. I especially liked the piece on bourbon b
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The Circle Holds
I have no clue what the upstairs neighbors must have thought. I wouldn’t call what I was doing at the time singing—more like a semimelodious howling while strumming a guitar. Back then I correlated sincerity with volume, and at twenty-three, I was no
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Painting the Pages
■ Follow me on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) @davedibenedetto I have been a morning person for as long as I can remember, a trait that plays well with my passion for the outdoors, on the water or in the field. But more often than not, it means I
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The Texas Heart of Terry Allen
■ Truckload of Art, Hachette Books, $34 The intersection of the rarefied world of fine art, with its gallery exhibitions and Chablis-sipping collectors, and the down-home world of country music, with its honky-tonk shows and Lone Starswigging boot-sc
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Thirty Years Past Midnight
In the late eighties, a Savannahian pulled the visiting journalist John Berendt aside. “As far as Savannah is concerned,” she told him, “being a writer and being from New York is a deadly combination.” “I understand,” he replied. “But I have no inten
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Raising the Bars
Tonya Council isn’t one to leave good enough alone. She likes to keep tinkering in the kitchen until she discovers something great. It’s a trait she learned at her grandmother’s elbow. It didn’t hurt that her grandmother was Mildred Council, the woma
Garden & Gun3 min read
The Tao of “Woo!”
Spring has sprung and the grass has riz, which means it’s bachelorette party season—the time when brides-to-be join forces with their besties to storm the streets in matching pastel outfits, feather boas, and tiaras increasingly askance as the night
Garden & Gun4 min read
Choo Choo Charmer
Chloe Wright and Ryan Smith’s first project, the Rosecomb, opened in the North Shore neighborhood of Chattanooga in the summer of 2021 as the oakleaf hydrangeas in the front yard bloomed. The pair, who have since married, decorated the garden house b
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Giving Gobblers a Wing Up
Georgia has done it. So have Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. South Carolina is considering doing it for the second time in recent years, with changes that would go into effect in 2025. Across the South and beyond, states are tightening
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Petal Pushers
While walking her rescue dog, Charlie, around her Birmingham, Alabama, neighborhood on a spring morning, Geri-Martha O’Hara passed a big honeysuckle bush bursting with blooms. One deep inhale of the aromatic blossoms and she knew just what to use for
Garden & Gun4 min read
A Wide Net
Wayne Edens fell in love with fishing as a young boy, prowling the salt water and fresh water of his home state, Florida. The sport was “a joy,” recalls the seventy-three-year-old retired insurance executive, who lives in New Smyrna Beach. A way of f
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Outdoor Voice
The moment Whitley Esteban saw the aging white cottage, tucked behind a thin picket fence and a bed of weeds in Pensacola’s Seville Historic District, she knew it was the one. “It’s like that dog at the shelter that has really big, beautiful eyes but
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Character Builders
ARTISAN ................................................. ROBERT THOMAS LOCATION ................................ NORTH CHARLESTON, SC COMMISSIONS .................... ROBERTTHOMASIRON.COM Charleston and its environs are steeped in ironwork, thanks t
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Show Me Love
People write books for many reasons: adventure, fulfillment, curiosity, passion, money. I wrote my new book, Dogland, for all those reasons. But also: I needed some dogs in my life. My wife and I had fourteen years with a yellow Lab mutt named Fred.
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Roadside Renaissance
My mother once purchased two paintings from an artist peddling her work in the hair salon. The way the woman glided around the women waiting to get their hair fried, dyed, and laid to the side fascinated me. She sold Mom the folk-style pieces and dis
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Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?
It’s an incredibly vulnerable thing for me to even admit, but for a long time, being a chef on TV saved me from being a chef in real life. So much so that by the time I turned forty, the restaurant that once upon a time couldn’t run without me—my fla
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Andrew Lathar Haplins
LOCATIONSavannah, GA MEDIUMPainting HOMETOWNMobile, AL I have known Andrew LaMar Hopkins since he was seventeen, and watched as he’s become the internationally known artist and force of nature that others meet today. Originally from Mobile, and a lon
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Patricia García-Vélez Hanna
On the side of Wynwood 25, a hulking building in Miami’s eponymous artsy district, three teenage faces gaze out over their neighborhood. Nearly nine stories high, the evocative mural can be seen for miles: exactly what Patricia García-Vélez Hanna env
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Chase Quinn
Question everything has long been Chase Quinn’s motto. He remembers his family sitting around the television, his grandparents lobbing coverage critiques at the nightly news. He later worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York; and th
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THE LEGACY KEEPER Raven Halfmoon
LOCATIONNorman, OK MEDIUMSculpture ALMA MATERUniversity of Arkansas Much like the Caddo Nation’s origin story—which recalls the tribe, led by a man named Moon, surfacing from Chahkanina, or “the place of crying”—Raven Halfmoon’s monumental artworks a
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THE LIFE PRESERVER Erica Heller
LOCATIONRichmond, VA MEDIUMTaxidermy HOMETOWNGreensboro, NC Not unlike an ambitious portrait artist, Erica Heller aims to capture the living essence of her subjects. But instead of brushes and paints, she first reaches for scalpel and fleshing box, a
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José Ibarra Rizo
LOCATIONAtlanta, GA MEDIUMPhotography HOME STATEGuanajuato, Mexico José Ibarra Rizo can replay every detail of the nearly two-thousand-mile journey he and his mother, Amelia, took from Guanajuato, Mexico, to Gainesville, Georgia, when he was seven ye
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THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE Benjamin Deaton and Anna Scott K. Masten
While New York and Los Angeles have long been the epicenters of the contemporary American art trade, Atlanta is making a strong case for joining that list. One combined force shifting attentions south: Benjamin Deaton and Anna Scott K. Masten, who, j
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Ryan N. Dennis
As a child, Ryan N. Dennis loved to wander through art museums in San Antonio, where she lived with her mother, and in Houston, where she spent summers with her dad’s family. “But early on,” she says, “I had the realization that I didn’t know who was
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THE ALCHEMIST Shan Kuang
LOCATIONFort Worth, TX PROFESSIONArt conservator A FAVORITE TOOLAntique surgical scalpel When Shan Kuang began pursuing a degree in chemistry at Yale, she planned to go to medical school, but she just couldn’t shake her passions for art and history.
Garden & Gun2 min read
Aaron Sanders Head
LOCATIONGreensboro, AL MEDIUMTextiles HOMETOWNGrady, AL When he drives along the flower-lined back roads of the Alabama Black Belt toward his house in Greensboro, Aaron Sanders Head doesn’t see weeds. Queen Anne’s lace looks like summer, and the firs
Garden & Gun9 min read
Chesapeake Chops
THE CHESAPEAKE BAY GLITTERS AT THE BASE OF the hill behind Mark McNair as he swings a small hatchet into a block of white cedar, which with each effortless strike looks more and more like a duck. “I make this look easy because I’ve been doing it a lo
Garden & Gun8 min read
Canvas of Grass
Shield Ranch lies in the heart of Barton Creek watershed, critical to the Edwards Aquifer, a major water source for Central Texas. Blake Murden, the 6,400-acre property’s CEO and manager, was driving us over the expanse in his pickup, stopping to sho
Garden & Gun15 min read
Masters Of The Green
IN A SMALL CARDROOM AT THE BACK OF A MUNICIPAL GOLF COURSE CLUBHOUSE in Augusta, Georgia, a handful of old men gather and reminisce. Do you remember when…? How about that time…? What about when Willie Peterson wound up on the cover of Sports Illustra
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Paint the Towns
1| “People have been coming to Berea for craft for a hundred and twenty years,” says Michelle Weston, who for decades has been transforming 2,050-degree molten glass into captivating, often aquatic-themed sculptures—jellyfish, tide pools, seahorses—a
Garden & Gun4 min read
Once More To The Park
The first time I saw Valle Crucis, in 2015, I was speechless, which had nothing to do with not knowing how to pronounce the name. My wife and I were riding with a friend down the twisting ribbon of Highway 194 out of Banner Elk, North Carolina, when
Garden & Gun10 min read
The Southern Agenda
“It’s going to be like Memorial Day weekend on steroids,” says Austin Albers, the president of the Buffalo Outdoor Center in Ponca. He’s referring to April 8’s total solar eclipse, when nearly two-thirds of the Natural State, including Little Rock, H
Garden & Gun3 min read
The Art of Marriage
The first time I saw Joan Griswold, I said, “Damn, she’s pretty. What does she do?” “Paint,” I was told. “You mean…?” “Yep. An artist.” “Well, where’s her ocelot?” You see, I didn’t grow up around artists. I did once happen upon Salvador Dalí, in a d
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Can One Text a Thank-You Note for a Wedding Gift?
When I texted friends, “Is it okay for a couple to TEXT thank-you notes for their wedding gifts?” I got three “OH HELL NO”s and one “HAIL NO!” (the latter from my friend in Florida who is such a Southern lady that she won’t curse in print). Some text

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