Promoting the arts and humanities in Georgia since 1980
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Café Apollinaire
Named for Guillaume Apollinaire, a poet, playwright and author, who encouraged emerging artists arranging their first exhibits during the Surrealist Movement in Paris. He coined the term Surrealism, and was a champion of Cubist painters. Café Apollinaire is held in the Ciné Lab in Athens, where tables are arranged like the outdoor cafes of Paris, where artists gathered nightly to discuss their art and new ideas.
ATHICA Residency
The Georgia Fine Arts Academy took over ATHICA in July 2023. Our energy and enthusiasm filled the space with workshops, presentations, performances, and more. We used our residency to demonstrate the range of offerings we provide as we go forward, as a proof-of-concept and an invitation to old friends and new to take part in our collaborative and innovative vision that’s been going strong for over 40 years.
Classical Athens Institute
Classical Athens Institute is a plan to turn Athens, Georgia into a virtual living museum of Classical Athenian Festivals the first part of which was staging two of Plato’s Dialogues – First Alcibiades and Ion – on September 24, 2012 (the first time in 2,400 years Plato’s dialogues have been staged).
Academy Without Walls
Academy Without Walls offers Classes/Roundtables/Discussion Groups on relevant topics modeled after those held at Harvard University Institutes, as well as modeled after the tutorial method of Oxford University. Our mission is to recreate and emulate Plato’s Academy in Athens, Georgia, which was named Athens by the visionary founders of the University of Georgia in 1785 with the intention that it would be like the Athens of Socrates and Plato in Ancient Greece.
My first introduction to GFAA was through the founder himself, William “Bill” Bray, during my time at UGA. It was 2014 when Bill and I met as I performed my own music at GFAA’s Café Apollinaire. We would meet nearly every weekend to have breakfast or coffee and chat about both of our future endeavors. Being with Bill reminded me that you are never too old to create new goals and challenges for yourself. He is one of the reasons I continue to challenge myself in new ways as I continue to grow.
Bill was someone who encouraged me to think as far outside of the box as possible when creating new ideas. Bill was one of my biggest mentors at UGA, and it was clear that he was implementing the methods he used when he founded GFAA with me in this one-one-one setting to foster my growth. He always made sure I was focusing on how I could be even more creative than I already was being. Bill challenged me in a nurturing way.
When I left Athens and moved to New York, I had no idea I would never get to see Bill again, but he lived on in me and I always felt his presence with me, both before and after his passing. Most recently, I started a job as a swing performer in the national tour of the Broadway production of Les Misérables, and when I passed through Baltimore recently, I felt Bill’s presence the most I had since seeing him in person back in Athens in 2016. He spent many years there fostering the arts and promoting artists of all kinds.
Having a spirit like his to have founded this organization means that the Georgia Fine Arts Academy will not disappear into the ether, because Bill will never disappear into the ether. He will always be around to inspire others through me, through Bowen Craig and Joy Ovington, and through the countless other lives he inspired to be the great creatives they are meant to be.
