Masters Week presents chance to show off fine arts to visitors

Augusta always likes to put on a show for Masters Week visitors, and this year there is plenty to see off the course.

Molly McDowell is presenting paintings by Edward Rice and Luke Allsbrook through April 11 at 461 Highland Ave., in the lower level at Surrey Center. The hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Both artists have achieved international recognition and are favorites with Augusta collectors.

Art Rosenbaum will be featured at noon Friday in the Morris Museum of Art's Art at Lunch series. The professor in fine arts at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia is a painter, muralist and illustrator in addition to a collector and performer of traditional American folk music. He will discuss his experiences collecting and researching Georgia folk music and will play samples from his Grammy-nominated boxed set, The Art of Field Recording .

Al's Family Restaurant is catering the lunch, and advance reservations are required. Call (706) 724-7501.

Works by Wanda Steppe, of Rock Hill, S.C., are on display at the Aiken Center for the Arts.

"My work employs symbols that are open to interpretation: trees with their skeletons exposed, birds in precarious positions, overripe fruit, birds' nests exposed and vulnerable, even the landscape that surrounds and engulfs me. All of these ... create a personal mythology that attempts to make sense of the twists and turns in life," she said.

Also featured in the main galleries at the Aiken center are works in clay by Harrison Hickman and watercolors by Judy Adamick .

Emmy Award-winning screen and stage actor Anthony Zerbe will present It's All Done With Mirrors , illuminating the poetry of e.e. cummings, in a show that has been called part P.T. Barnum, part William Faulkner, and an uncommon mix of theater and salon. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Etherredge Center on the University of South Carolina Aiken campus, and the cost is $15 for adults and $5 for students.

Louise Keith Claussen is Morris Communications Co.'s corporate art manager, former arts editor, former art museum director and longtime advocate of Augusta's cultural arts community.