Art exhibit Mar. 10

Selected works from Margee Bright Ragland’s “Bright Illuminations” will be on display Thursday, March 10, at 7 p.m. at the McRitchie-Hollis Museum, 74 Jackson St. in Newnan.

Ragland’s paintings and collages “are equally whimsical, eccentric, delightful, evocative, and transcendent,” according to a spokesperson. “Ragland’s work invites viewers into an alternate reality of anchored stars and floating damsels where metaphor and reality jostle for attention. She crafts surrealistic visual poems, with Bright Illuminations she invites poets and writers to join the dialogue.”

With this latest endeavor, produced in collaboration with her colleague Gayle Langley of the Mystic Order of East Alabama Fiction Writers, she commissioned 25 regional writers to bounce text  off her collages. The results range from flash fiction to intricate verse.

Featured readers include Margee Bright Ragland (GPC) , Nick Norwood (CSU), Scott Wilkerson (CSU), Melissa Dickson Jackson (UWG), Gayle Langley (Auburn), and Joanne Camp (Auburn).

Ragland earned her B.F.A. degree in 1970 from Auburn University and her master of visual arts degree in 1974 from Georgia State University in Atlanta. In 1975 she became a professor of art at Atlanta’s Georgia Perimeter College, teaching art appreciation, drawing, and watercolor. Bright-Ragland is also a professional artist and exhibitor whose works have been displayed throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Her fiber work “Birds in a Landscape” is part of Georgia’s State Art Collection.