A Portrait of Connection at The Do Good Fund By Monica Jones There’s something powerful about walking into a gallery and realizing you might be part of what hangs on the walls. So this March, The Do Good Fund isn’t just presenting an exhibition — it’s inviting Columbus to step into it. From March 3–11, The Do Good Fund Gallery will transform into a portrait studio for Mixed Doubles, an ongoing photographic series by New…
Read More
Still Boxing By Monica Jones Some people slow down at 88. Jerry Farber books another show. “I’m still in the ring,” he said. “It’s late rounds, but I’m still boxing.” He was in Atlanta for a run of shows when we spoke — quick, warm, already moving — still stacking gigs like it’s a competitive sport. That’s Jerry. When I asked him how he’s still doing it, he didn’t go for the easy line. No…
Read More
By Monica Jones I caught him in the car. Between stops. Between obligations. Between fifty years of service and a television crew waiting downstairs. And somehow, in that in-between space, Calvin Smyre was calm. Grateful. Reflective. The Columbus Museum is currently presenting The Puzzle of Politics: Calvin Smyre in Service, 1975–2025, honoring fifty years of public service. Forty of those years were spent in the Georgia Legislature. He later served at the United Nations General…
Read More
By Monica Jones You don’t have to know much about art to recognize when something is worth your time. You feel it when a room slows you down. When the work asks you to stand still. When beauty, history, and craft meet you without explanation and quietly say, stay with this. That’s what happens inside We Are the Drum and the Scribe, now on view at the Bo Bartlett Center. Drawn from the Black Art…
Read More
Baddie, Spelled with a V By Monica Jones Some people leave Columbus and never look back. Most of us are not those people. Most of us are boomerangs – we go, we grow, we test ourselves somewhere bigger, louder, faster. Then, one day, we circle back to the place that built us. Not because we failed, but because we finally know what we’re building, and we want to build it here. That’s the energy behind…
Read More
How Sydney Helms Built a Growing, Glowing Local Empire Rooted in Community By Monica Jones There’s a verse in the Bible about a mustard seed. Tiny. Unassuming. Easy to overlook – and yet, when planted with care, it grows into something far larger than anyone expects. For Sydney Helms, the mustard seed wasn’t just a name for her shop. It was a philosophy. Long before she owned multiple businesses, before her spaces became known for…
Read More
Why an Old Place Is Quietly Opening Its Doors Again By Monica Jones For a while, it felt like Westville existed mostly in memory. People spoke about it in the past tense. School trips. Blacksmith forges. Quilts, looms, and the smell of iron and wood smoke clinging to a warm afternoon. Then the pandemic came, and like so many cultural spaces built on shared presence, Westville went quiet. Now, quietly and deliberately, Historic Westville Village…
Read More
The 18th Amendment’s Bootlegger’s Ball Is the Place to Be This NYE By Monica Jones There’s something about The 18th Amendment that separates it from every other bar in Columbus—and it’s not just the dim lighting or the polished wood or the fact that it’s a speakeasy hiding in plain sight. It’s the way the place feels when you step inside, like you’ve slipped past the noise of the world and into a pocket of…
Read More
More Than Just Tradition By Monica Jones Our Chattahoochee flows through a city which is itself built on the movement of people – from the military figures who established Fort Benning to those passing through on their journey. For generations, the body art of the sailors, soldiers, and civilians calling our city home has mirrored Columbus’s history, embedding itself into the local lore. The city’s military foundation and its history as a hard-working mill town…
Read More
Inside Columbus Ballet’s 29th Year of Holiday Magic Images provided by the Columbus Ballet (@braxleestudios) By Monica Jones Each December, just as Columbus starts to glow with lights and wreaths, another kind of magic begins to stir at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts. Backstage, pointe shoes are being broken in, tutus sewn and resewn, and young dancers run their variations again and again until the counts live in their bones. This year, that familiar ritual…
Read More