A One-Woman Exhibition Featuring New Works by Local Artist Jennifer Buckley McCall Opens at ABAC’s Museum Gallery
Thursday, January 9th, 2025
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Choosing to take the long way home often guarantees the most meaningful trip. A new exhibit opening at the Gallery of ABAC’s Georgia Museum of Agriculture aims to prove that. “Jennifer Buckley McCall: The Long Way Home” is a stunning showcase of rural scenes, landscapes, and animals, all captured in exquisite detail and using oil paints. While local audiences follow McCall’s artistic journey online, many of the pieces in this exhibition will be on public display for the first time. “In this spectacular study of rural landscape, Jennifer will teach us to choose to take the scenic route, inhale deeply, and appreciate the beauty around us,” said Museum Curator Polly Huff. “This body of work was created specifically for this exhibition, with some of the scenery pulled from the rural landscape around the Tiftarea, and others created on Jennifer’s Plein Air easel right here at the museum.” |
The exhibit’s opening reception on Saturday, January 18 will feature a food sampling of “farm bites” inspired by the paintings, and an artist talk by Buckley McCall will take place at 5 p.m. inside the GMA Gallery. Guided tours of the exhibit led by the artist and the museum’s curator will take place immediately after the talk.
McCall is a professional artist in Tifton who specializes in rural landscapes with an emphasis on her style of Romantic Realism. She graduated from Wesleyan College in 1998 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts where she studied in Graphic Design, Illustration and Painting. For the next 20 years, she worked as a graphic designer for organizations throughout the Southeast. In February 2018, she decided to pursue her artistic passions full-time and opened her studio.
She has been painting "en plein air" (outdoors and on location) for over 20 years. She also participates in plein air competitions. In 2023, she was awarded second place at the Olmsted Georgia Color PaintQuick, and grand prize at the Turner Center for the Arts ARTOber Plein Air Competition in Valdosta. In addition to competing and commissions, McCall teaches a variety of mediums to adults and children from her home studio in Eldorado, where she lives with her husband, Walter, youngest daughter, and their two dogs and three cats.
Guests will be able to take in and appreciate the beautiful and often unseen vistas which reveal themselves when taking “the long way home.” In addition, McCall will offer an unprecedented look inside her artistic process through a display of her personal sketchbooks and some of the materials she uses in her work. Hand-drawn coloring pages created by the artist will be available to those who visit the exhibition during its run at the GMA, and guests can interact with, and color in, a public “mural” drawn by the artist.
After opening night, the exhibit will remain on display until May 23. For the remainder of January, the exhibit will be open on Saturdays from 10-4, after which the GMA's normal operating hours will resume. After January, exhibit hours will be 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Saturdays. This special exhibit will be included in daily GMA admission tickets, and free with a valid GMA Season Pass. Tickets and season passes are sold at the Museum Country Store. For more information about this and future exhibits, interested persons can contact Huff at [email protected].
