With the season racing to a close, the Augusta State track and field teams are looking for a finishing kick.

The squads competed in the inaugural Peach Belt Conference Championships on the campus of Shorter in Rome, Ga., April 19-20. The men’s team earned a sixth-place finish while the women came in eighth, said Joey Warren, Augusta State’s athletic media relations director.

Adam Ward, the head coach of the men’s and women’s track and field teams in addition to both cross country programs, said the men were victimized by injuries during the championships.

In the 10K race on the first day of the event, senior Jaiden Brandt rolled his ankle while leading the race and ended up finishing in fifth place, Ward said. The team experienced more bad luck a day later in the 5K when Dustin Ross suffered cramps in the final laps and was unable to finish.

Despite the misfortune, Ward said he was pleased with the way his team hung tough.

“We did pretty well when you consider all the adversity we faced,” Ward said. “We actually picked up some points in places where we weren’t expecting it. Ryan McCarty and Jim Hull stepped up big in the (8K), finishing fifth and sixth respectively, and in the throes, Austin Hendricks and Julian Brown really helped us out.”

The Lady Jaguars got a couple of surprise performances of their own, Ward said.

“We were expecting to get some points out of (Nwanneka Naka), but she actually ended up finishing second in the hammer (throw), which is a brand new event for her,” he said. “Tracy Aifuwa, from the women’s basketball team, just learned the javelin in a week, and she did really well, too.”

In addition to her strong showing in the hammer throw event, Naka also placed fifth in the women’s shot put and eighth in the discus throw.

Although its final standing in Rome may have looked underwhelming, Ward praised the women’s team for overcoming roster limitations. He said the squad has been short staffed in its inaugural campaign, often barely scraping together 14 players, the minimum requirement to compete in events.

Though the conference championships are in their rearview mirror, the track and field teams still have plenty of work ahead of them in the coming days. They will compete at Clemson’s Bob Pollock Invitational Friday and Saturday and then will take a trip to either Georgia Tech or Virginia a week later, Ward said.

“Because you are trying to qualify for nationals on time, you end up having a series of races at the end of the season,” he said. “We have these last three weekends to try to qualify, and you’ll see teams going all over the place. At one point, I even thought about trying to send some folks to Stanford to try and qualify in some of the distance events because I looked at the results from last year, and a lot of the top-20 people in the nation who qualified for nationals ran there.”

The coach identified Brandt as someone who could earn a spot at nationals in the 10K race with a strong finish. He said Brandt must rank in the top 20 nationally in the 10K and run a provisional time of 30:52 in order to qualify for the event in Pueblo, Colo., May 23-25.

“We just want to push it as hard as we can these last few weeks and see where we end up,” Ward said.

Regardless of how the rest of the season shakes out, Warren said, the teams have set a strong tone for the future in their first seasons.

“Any time you have a program in its first year, there are going to be a lot of ups and downs,” he said. “But there have definitely been some highlights and some really good individual performances.”

The vice president of special projects for Artspace Inc., Roy Close, gives a presentation to a room full of art enthusiasts at the Old Academy of Richmond County on April 24. | SI-LONG CHEN

The artists’ community in Augusta envisions development upon the connection between Augusta Regional Collaboration project and Artspace Inc.

The ARC project is an urban redevelopment group that is trying to promote social and community development across the county in four main areas: culture, education, innovation and green jobs, said Matthew Kwatinetz, the executive director of ARC project, while the Artspace project is part of the culture portion, focusing on artist’s development of workspace.

“ARC project was created as (a) public-private partnership between the city, commission, mayor’s office, development authority of Augusta, Starbucks Corporation, Hull Storey Gibson Real Estate Company, ADP … and APD Urban Planning and Management,” he said.

Artspace is specifically focused on developing artists’ live-and-work space as a part of the cultural ecology work, Kwatinetz said, including artistic organizations such as the Miller Theater, the Imperial Theater, Davidson Magnet School and Jesse Norman School.

“We’re trying to empower all of those organizations, and then also we’re working on building audiences and educational institutions around culture,” he said. “So Artspace is the front of the charge, because it’s a very long-range project, to start finding out who is the artist population, not just in Augusta-Richmond County, but also state-wide, to start creating Augusta as a destination for all artists in Georgia.”

Artspace is based in Minneapolis, and is working to create, foster and preserve affordable space for artists and arts organizations, said Roy Close, the vice president of special projects at Artspace Inc.

With the company being established in 1979, Artspace has completed 32 projects in the country.

The Augusta project will be finalized after going through several phases. First is space feasibility – to determine if the project is possible in the community, Close said. The second phase is the market of housing, he said.

“The kind of project we’re talking about in Augusta would either be a live-and-work project or a mixed-use project,” he said. “Live-and-work is (an) apartment building for artists, and it’s larger than a normal apartment so that the artist can turn it into a studio. Every apartment in a live-and-work project has that extra space. Mixed-use has nonresidential activities on the ground floor, and that can be a space for an art organization, commercial galleries, a coffee shop or restaurant.”

The project will help the market for housing, leadership and engagement in the artistic organizations, Close said, as it will also benefit communal growth, including economic revitalization of a neighborhood, repair and make use of old abandon buildings and put it on the tax role again.

In March of 2012, Artspace visited Augusta to see what the need was and what the city has to offer with regard to its artists and creative community, urban designer of APD Urban Planning and Management Abbie Rickoff said.

The launch survey was scheduled on April 24 at the Old Academy of Richmond County, and is for public interest. It is distributed online to further understand the needs and desire of the artistic in Augusta, Rickoff said. It is for all type of arts: musicians, singers, actors, dancers and many others in the community.

“We’re excited to get the surveys out there,” Rickoff said. “Recommendations will be given according to survey results.”

Before the project can begin, it is necessary to know where artists are living and working, whether they need work space or living space, practice or studio space, temporary or permanent space, she said. Support from creative businesses and institutions and the involvement of the Augusta community is very important.

“This is not just limited to artists,” Rickoff said. “We would love to support creative businesses, people who work at these creative business, anyone who is involved in the creative community in Augusta. The art community isn’t limited just to the artists. We’re being as inclusive as possible with regard to students at schools and businesses and to reach out to everyone who has an interest.”

The launch survey serves to recruit organizations statewide and to understand how artists are living and responding in society today. After the launch, surveys will be sent out to organizations outside of the city and it is open to all, Kwatinetz said.

Local band, Mama Says, performs in front of guests at the Blue Porch Revival from the back steps of the Old Academy of Richmond County on April 27. | MEGAN STEWART

From the back porch of the Old Academy of Richmond County in Augusta, Ga., the people of the Westobou festival brought in a day full of signature drinks, food, blues music and art.

The Blue Porch Revival was a joint effort between Cathead Distillery and the Westobou, in order to raise money toward Westobou’s October festival.

The fundraiser focused on the local aspect by including artwork by a local artist, Rich Menger; beverages by Cathead and the liquor store White Horse Wine and Spirits in Surrey Center; local band Mama Says and a blues-inspired brunch by Kitchen 1454, a local restaurant on Walton Way.

The event is something that Cathead strives to do with all of the places its product is distributed, since the distillery is a supporter of arts and music, said Ross Merriman, the marketing manager of Cathead.

Cathead is a craft distillery based out of Jackson, Miss., Merriman said, and the name was derived from the association of blues music in that region.

“Being out of Mississippi, it’s safe to say the blues were born there … (and) these musicians would refer to each other as blues cats, or cats, as a term of endearment, so cathead is, sort of, a play on words and a tribute to that blues heritage,” he said. “On the bottle, there’s a silhouette of a cat’s head, basically, and it represents delta folk art musicians.”

In its process of distillation, Merriman said the company strives to provide a sweet flavor by distilling it six times while also charcoal filtering the vodka six times.

“It’s a sweet corn grain,” Merriman said. “Charcoal filtering kind of gives way to creaminess, a little bit of vanilla almost, and same with the corn. It gives sweetness.”

With being the first and only legal distilled vodka in Mississippi and only being in production for two years, Merriman said the distillery has had a great start and has already reached out to have its product sold in eight states along the Southeast. The company donates $1 per bottle of vodka sold toward local music in the state that it is sold in.

In an attempt to further spread the name of the product, Cathead was looking for organizations to couple with.

Cathead decided to team up with Westobou after discovering the festival’s website, said Mary Hull Palmer, the marketing and event coordinator for Westobou.

“Someone sent them our promo video from 2012 and they liked it so much that they got in touch with us,” she said. “We just love their products and wanted them to get more familiar with the festival, so we decided to get together and have this fundraiser.”

Cathead was not the only vendor pouring drinks for the crowd, however. White Horse was there with two bars set up, one beside Merriman and the other on the back porch with the band.

Faulkner Warlick, the owner of White Horse, said that he frequently teams up with Westobou for events such as these.

Alongside products being served to the people, Menger filled the main entrance room with about 40 pieces of artwork for sale.

The idea of a majority of his work was musically influenced, while also having some that presented trial and error, with him attempting to construct something he was unsure if he could do. With many of the pieces being older work, Menger said that he was just glad to be able to fill the room and have everyone see his work.

Guests filled the rooms and wandered back and forth between the bars, table of food and music on the back porch. Entrance was $25 while Westobou was also raffling VIP tickets to the fall festival for a $5 charge.

This was the first event for Westobou for 2013, leading up to the festival in October, Palmer said. Westobou will be looking to announce the line up for the fall either on or by May 15.

April showers bring May flowers.

In this case they brought the flowers early, in the form of the annual Sacred Heart Garden Festival, which was a mix of tradition and evolution according to Judy Evans, Sacred Heart’s gift shop and art hall manager.

“This (was) a combination of an idea in the mind of Emily Sheftal Cleckley,” Evans said. “She was a lady who was very involved in garden work in the Augusta, Ga., area, and in the 1990s she wanted to have something that highlighted gardening in Augusta.”

Evans said that the festival was set up in Augusta, and what patrons see today, all these years later, was the evolution of the garden festival. Not only has the festival evolved over time, but also the turnout has grown from just local to regional.

“It (was) a good turnout,” Evans said. “It (was) advertised all over the Southeast and this year it is one of the 20 top events in the Southeast recommended for people to come to in the spring.”

Sandra Fenstermacher, the executive director of the Sacred Heart Cultural Center, said she hoped that the weather would be nice and beautiful to help with the attendance for the event, which for the most part it was.

This was the center’s largest event for this year, said Kim Overstreet, the program director for the Sacred Heart Cultural Center.

Another aspect of the festival was that each year they highlight different areas in the CSRA, she said.

“Each year we feature different gardens, and this year we (had) seven,” Overstreet said. “One is Aquinas High School, and it is several acres (with) students working with the horticultural professor, Joe LeVert. He worked with them on developing a lot of that land.”

There is always something for everyone, Overstreet said, and you don’t have to have a green thumb to enjoy what is offered during the festival.

“You can learn, be inspired and just appreciate the different spaces,” she said.

The gardens ranged from large ones, such as the Aquinas garden, to smaller, more intimate gardens, Overstreet said. There were different types of gardens and different aspects of gardens to look at during the event, with a lot of different features to view.

Gardens were not the only thing that the festival had to offer. Fenstermacher said there were close to 40 vendors at the festival, some from as far north as Pennsylvania and as far south as Florida, but it didn’t stop at just vendors.

“We (had) a wonderful offering of speakers,” Overstreet said. “The individual who created the encore azalea, Buddy Lee, (was there) to talk about gardening and azaleas.”

However, speakers, vendors and garden tours were just the beginning of the festival’s components. Overstreet said during the time of the festival, the Sacred Heart Cultural Center would be transformed.

“Here at Sacred Heart, landscapers come in and they transform our great hall and the parking lot into these oases of landscape plots,” Overstreet said. “So not only can you learn in individual’s homes but you can also come down here and see what the landscape professionals are doing.”

The event officially started on Friday and ran through until Sunday, with a their preview party hosted Thursday at 7 p.m. The preview party included a silent auction of sculpture made by students from Augusta Technical College.

A local community center for children hosted its annual Burger Battle in order to give thanks to contributors.

The organizers of the Boys and Girls Club have hosted the Burger Battle for many years in the Harrisburg community. This event was once known as the Steak and Burger Dinner, which celebrated its 50thanniversary this year. The Burger Battle consisted of six local eateries in town, competing to see who would receive the burger belt for this year’s best burger.

“It’s our annual fund raiser and we use this event as an opportunity to thank our regular donors and to build awareness in the community,” said Kim Evans, the financial director for the Boys and Girls Club. “The proceeds support all of the Boys and Girls Club programs and services.”

Tickets were available for purchase on the club’s website for a donation of a $100 which allowed entry for the donor and a guest of their choice. Donations were also taken up at the Coca-Cola table where the club workers provided drinks to the public.

Upon walking through the gate, donors were supplied with red tickets that allowed them to place their vote for their favorite sandwich. While having many treats available, donors walked around surveying which stand to visit first. After they chose which sandwiches they liked the most, they placed their ticket in a glass jar on that vendor’s table.

The vendors offered a variety of different sandwiches from restaurants such as 5 O’clock Bistro, Rooster’s Beak, Calvert’s, French Market Grille and Very Vera, whose cake resembled a giant burger.

The winner of the battle was officially announced as Rooster’s Beak, who had a food truck used to cook burgers in, with a continuous line as far as the eye could see.

The full article will be available to see later this week online.

While many Augusta, Ga., residents often drive by a stray dog or cat, one local woman decided to take the problem into her own hands and her own household.

Elizabeth Cullinan, who lives in the downtown area, recently encountered and took in a pregnant stray dog when she and her family moved into their home this spring.

“She had resided here before we moved in,” Cullinan said, who already has two dogs of her own. “She was very, very sketchy and scared of everybody. It took me a couple of weeks to get her used to coming to me, and I’d start giving her hot dogs and giving her some food and bringing her closer and closer. Finally, she’d start letting me pet her, but she wouldn’t let anybody else touch her, though.”

Not long after making a home for the dog, Cullinan said she gave birth to 15 puppies, three of which soon died. She attempted to find homes for them through the CSRA Humane Society, but they told her the space was at full capacity and could not take in the mother or her litter.

“I hated to have for her to go, but there was no way we could afford her and our dogs and 15 puppies,” she said. “When the pound came and got them, he took pictures of them. But he told me as soon as he went around the corner he would have to put them down because there are just so many of them.”

Graduate student Jaimie Edwards, who works on the Health Sciences campus of Georgia Regents University, recently discussed homeless animals with her boss who previously lived in Ohio.

“She said they don’t have that problem there because animals are required to be licensed,” Edwards said. “That cuts down on all the strays and the strays they do have are picked up by the county and the government pays for it due to the fact that the licensing pays for all that. It’s also another source of revenue. She said she’s never seen anything like the South.”

Another Georgia Regents student, Maryetta Beck, also noted the difference between how Augusta and other cities manage their homeless animal population.

“If you have an animal, like they do in Phoenix now, that you can’t produce animals unless you have a license,” Beck said. “In other words, you can’t just breed them. You have to have permission to breed.”

Natalie Lanham, who moved to Charlotte, N.C., after graduating from Augusta State University in 2012, said if she ever encountered homeless dogs, they were usually in the downtown area.

“A lot of times you see them and they’re not wearing collars,” Lanham said. “You kind of have to wonder where they came from, if they ever had a family, and they probably didn’t, because they weren’t wearing collars.”

However, outside of the downtown area, residents say they don’t encounter a lot of stray animals. Beck, who resides in Martinez, Ga., said she has rarely seen homeless animals in her neighborhood.

“Usually, if we have a cat dropped off, one of the neighbors adopts them,” said Beck. “We don’t allow any stray animals around. I’ve been there 30 years, and in 30 years, we’ve only had to call the pound once. Most of the time people in our neighborhood take care of animals. If we have a stray, someone will usually pick it up.”

During the seven years Lanham lived in Augusta, she said she doesn’t recall seeing many stray animals in her neighborhoods.

“For a while I lived in Grovetown, Ga., and it’s very suburban and residential there,” she said. “I didn’t really encounter a whole lot of stray animals probably because they would have been somebody’s pets and somebody would have been looking for them.”
She then moved to an apartment in the Summerville area, noting that cats were the only stray animals she saw there. However, she did not experience the same anxiety around them as around dogs.

“We think of cats as more independent and, therefore, can take care of themselves,” Lanham said. “We think of dogs as requiring a home and humans to support them. We have domesticated these animals over thousands of years.”

While she doesn’t notice any stray animals in her new home in Charlotte, she does recognize a need for people to intervene to help control the homeless animal population.

As for Cullinan and her family, they decided to keep two of the newborn puppies from the mother they took in from the streets.

“It has worked out well,” she said. “It’s a lot of taking care of. It’s just like a child.”

JAMIE LOWE | STAFF

Augusta, Ga., welcomed its latest clothing store, Fab’rik, to Surrey Center with the fashion boutique’s grand opening Thursday.
Fab’rik welcomed customers with decorated cookies from Two Moms cookies and a plethora of hors d’oeuvres and beverages,
as people packed into the crowded store, overflowing its dressing rooms and creating a sizeable checkout line. The store sells
everything from Hudson and Paige denim, to bracelets and rings, to Hanky Panky panties.

LEIGH BEESON | STAFF

LEIGH BEESON | STAFF

LEIGH BEESON | STAFF

JORDAN WILLIAMS | SPORTS SECTION EDITOR

By Jordan Williams, Sports Editor

Rape Crisis and Sexual Assault Services hosted its annual Tack Back the Day 5K Run/Walk early Saturday morning, April 20, as a part of sexual assault awareness month.

The event began on campus at Georgia Regents University with registration and a kickoff ceremony. Following the ceremony, all the patrons took their marks on the intersection near the Career Center and followed the course until it ended at University Hospital.

The 5K served as a way of visibly showing that sexual violence will not be tolerated in the community, said Karen Belk, a sexual assault awareness month committee member and the director of student development. It was also an opportunity to raise money for Rape Crisis and Sexual Assault Services, a nonprofit organization.

The sexual assault awareness month committee assists with programming and plans, and Belk said she assisted with the kickoff ceremony. The ceremony took place 15 minutes before the actual race and served as a mini pep rally to express the purposes of the event and excite the participants.

This year’s event was unique from any other Tack Back the Day event since it started back in 2010 because the running component was added. In previous years, patron would only walk, but this was the first time bringing in a competitive element, Belk said.

“The benefits of adding a run this year was that we received more participants because we have so many runners in our community,” she said. “The benefits of the walk again provided another element of people that would like to participate and give back to the community.”

At the start of the race all runners lined up first, with the walkers taking up the rear. All runners had their times marked at the finish line, and prizes were given to those with the best finish times.

Belk said that each year the event gets more popular and that they may have had the biggest turnout this year as people brought their families and pets. Even students from Georgia Regents came out in large numbers to support the cause, especially those in women’s studies and nursing programs.

The patrons said they thought the 5K was a great event and had a fun time supporting their cause.

“I think it’s great because it’s for rape and sexual abuse,” participant Riddhi Patel said. “So I think it’s a good way to raise money and help people out.”

Patel also said that being part of the event gave her a good feeling because it required time consumption instead of just giving money.

The fact that the running component was installed had other participants excited, they said.

“I love it,” participant Michael Anchor said about being able to run. “I love to get out here in the morning; it’s a nice morning although it’s a little chilly out, but you get to run and you get to exercise.”

Anchor said he always tries to find races that benefit the community and had even done a few of the Jaguar jogs, but this was his first time being a part of the Take Back the Day event.

The assistance from sponsors who helped finance the event went a long way in making it possible and allowed the sexual assault awareness month committee to successfully execute another charity run, Belk said.

“The proceeds from the walk can help the Sexual Assault Services provide counseling services, various programming throughout our community, as well as provide more awareness in our community,” Belk said.

Outside of the 5K, the sexual assault awareness month committee also holds a Take Back the Night event. The differences are that Take Back the Night is more of a visual event in which participants are more sympathetic to the survivors and victims of sexual assault and a chance for law enforcement and city leaders to participate and share their ways of reinforcing safety in the community, Belk said.

Every spring and fall the Augusta Canal National Heritage Area hosts the Moonlight Music Cruise Series, which features live performances aboard the canal’s Petersburg boats.

The moonlight music cruise is one of many recreational activities the canal has to offer. It has been a program operating for seven years and provides an array of musicians and musical styles every Friday evening during the open season, said Rebecca Rogers, the director of marketing and external affairs at the Augusta Canal.

Over the span of her time directing the program, Rogers has gained a lot of familiarity with the local music scene and said she mostly chooses performers who have a following that can sell out the seats, but she also tries to find new bands and musicians in order to add variety.

“The most unusual event we’ve done was African drumming,” Rogers said. “Everybody sits around on the boat and everybody plays on that one. It’s really a lot of fun and very different from a typical event.”

Before booking a performer Rogers always takes a glimpse at the music through various media outlets such as YouTube, ReverbNation or Facebook. However, this luxury of instant access to musical talents has not always been available, she said.

“Back when we got started…it wasn’t quite so easy to know what your local talent sounded like,” Rogers said. “But things have really changed and made our jobs a little easier now.”

When first starting the music cruise, Rogers addressed her need for performers by reaching out to people who were already in the booking business. She interacted with individuals such as Coco Rubio, the co-owner of Sky City, and Joe Stevenson, the executive director of Gluestick, to learn who was popular and could draw interest.

Now, while in the current season, the music cruise has been able to bring in talent from outside of Augusta, Ga. Some of the musicians in the spring line-up include artists from Nashville, Tenn.; Greenville, S.C.; and Atlanta.

Robert Foster, a jazz musician and a professor music at Georgia Regents University, plays on the canal cruise sometimes as a duo with another jazz musician named Not Gaddy, who plays percussion while Foster handles various wind instruments.

Foster said the experience is simply beautiful.

“It’s right close to the city when you start leaving the dock, but in a very short while it seems like you’re totally emerged in nature,” Foster said. “Sometimes I’ll just stop playing for a little while and people can hear the sounds of nature, you know, the birds (and) the water going by or like an otter in the water.”

Foster said that playing on the Petersburg boats does provide some small challenges because performers are required to adapt to the limitation of a sound system and sometimes compete against outside noises such as the boat engine.

The Petersburg boats were designed as exact replicas of the old cargo boats used by the canal, Rogers said. The only differences are they now run on electricity,are made out of fiber glass and are strictly used to take people on tours.

In 1845 when the canal was first built, it essentially gave life to a dying city, said Holley Madden, the manager of the gift shop and visitor service.

“Augusta probably wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t dug a canal,” Madden said. “Times were getting hard. There was a lot of competition and (the canal) brought industry to Augusta, which was rare to have a large canal.”

Other services the Augusta Canal National Heritage Area provides include the Interpretative Center Museum, a hands-on interactive museum that teaches the history and uses of the canal, as well as an extended three-hour boat tour available Saturday nights, Madden said.

HOLLEY MADDEN | CONTRIBUTOR