Cain will be selling the last of Connatser’s work from Cobitz’s private collection and also showcasing some of Cobitz’s prints, paintings, and drawings that Cain has stewarded since Joan’s 2005 death.

In email, Cain noted that all the works are being offered at “exceptional” prices.

When I moved to Savannah in 1995, I was Joan’s neighbor on East Gwinnett Street, but I didn’t see much of her those first months. Her longtime partner Larry Connatser was ill and dying. After his death in 1996, I saw a lot more of Joan and have many good memories of her, including the fascinating stories she told me of her life while I helped paint the edges of her living room ceiling. Sometime during this period, I first met Betsy as well.

When I bought my current house in late ’96, Joan gave me a housewarming gift: a particularly nice rock. I have it on the floor in the living room to this day.

I continued to see Joan regularly, especially in the early years of The Sentient Bean.

In 2002, Joan co-curated a retrospective of Larry’s work: sSouthern Melodies at the Telfair Museum of Art. Check out this 2002 feature piece in the Savannah Morning News. Click here to read Joan’s reflections on Larry’s work.

All the contact info is on the postcard embedded here (again, please note that the hours are from 9 a.m. till noon, not till midnight).

I’m sure I’ll be dropping by Cain’s studio one morning this weekend.

It’s a remarkable trip through the sketchbooks of 122 artists — mostly quite young ones, primarily including some SCAD students or recent graduates, along with artists and illustrators from around the world and around the country.

Given the course work at SCAD, I’m sure there are many sketchbooks out there filled with perspective studies, gesture drawings, and other more academic work, but most of the Sketchbook Show!!! doesn’t fit neatly into those categories.

Some are subtle, some bawdy, some vulgar, some finely detailed, some obviously created roughly and quickly, some striking in incomplete ways — like one would expect from ideas being worked out playfully and informally.

I ended up buying pieces by Xavier Robles de Medina, Jon Taylor, and Emily Quintero.

Highly recommended.

There are myriad things going on this weekend, but I just wanted to post a reminder about two notable ones going on tonight: The Sketchbook Show!!! opening tonight at Ashmore Gallery at 412 MLK and Seersucker Live at 7:30 p.m. upstairs at The Sparetime at Congress and MLK.

Seersucker Live is a reading and performance series that has thrown fuel on the increasingly vibrant literary scene in Savannah. From the event Facebook page:

Kick off your Friday night with Brand New Writing and Performances by:

Stephen Corey
Poet & Editor of The Georgia Review

Liza Wieland
Author of Quickening & A Watch of Nightingales

Alice Friman
2012 Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry

Hosted by:
Christopher Berinato & Zach Powers

With:
Joseph Schwartzburt & Erika Jo Brown

Music by:
Brian Dean

The action starts at 7:30pm sharp, bar open at 6:30

Tickets:
$10 ($5 with student I.D.)

This is the second year for the Sketchbook Show!!!, which features a ridiculously long list of artists — a total of 122 — whose sketchbook pages will be plastered throughout the three-story Ashmore Gallery, right next to Creative Approach on MLK.

Click here for the Facebook invite with the full list of contributors, many of whom are SCAD students.

Click here for Jason Kendall’s recent interview with show curator Justin Harris.

A few images of last year’s show at the former Little Beasts Gallery — a much smaller space than Ashmore:

And one of a 1,000 or so pieces you’ll see tonight — or later in the week. The show runs through next week with a closing reception next weekend.