The works of Dwain Shaw and Ashley Long will be exhibited at the Firehouse Center beginning Thursday, Jan. 15.

The opening reception, from 6 to 7 p.m. will follow the annual meeting of the Arts Council at 5:30. All Arts Council members are encouraged to attend the annual meeting. The public is also invited to hear about the progress of the Arts Council in the past year and the plans for upcoming events in 2009. A big plus is the opportunity to meet the artists and view the splendid work of these two sons of Bainbridge.

Dwain Shaw is a native of Bainbridge, having moved here with his parents, Vernon and Evelyn Shaw, in 1955. Following graduation from Bainbridge High School in 1964, Shaw went on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia and a Master’s of Science in Technology from Georgia Southern University. Along the way, he married his high school sweetheart, the former Betty Shellman, in 1968.

Following a 24-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army, he joined the staff of the Information Services Division, the Medical College of Georgia, in 1992. He is currently a Director of Information Services for the Medical College of Georgia Hospital and Clinics in Augusta, Ga. His avocation has always been photography, where he has won numerous national and local awards, along with exhibiting his work in many galleries throughout Georgia and Florida.

He is the past president of the Columbia County Artist’ Guild and is currently the president of the Columbia County Council of Arts and the vice president for the Artists’ Guild.

His most recent endeavor was with the inaugural Augusta Photography Festival, where he was responsible for and taught many of the workshop events over the course of the four-day national festival. He also teaches digital photography for the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art and co-sponsors a photography workshop in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

His philosophy of sharing an avocation with a vocation is that “we do what we do so we can do what we want to do.”

Adding, “In fact, when I grow up, I will teach what I like to do and do what I like to teach.

“I would have liked to be a painter, but I always had trouble getting the image I saw in my head out of my hand,” Shaw said. “There was also an early interest in photography, but the passion did not grow until the last few years. I learned there were things I saw that did have an appeal to others. More recently, a move to digital photography, I combined the disciplines of my art and technology backgrounds so that control of the image, from the click of the shutter to the framed print is my creation and whether it be good or bad, it is all my own. The opportunity to study digital photography with several of America’s best nature photographers, George Lepp, Adam Jones, Tom Bol, Bill Campbell and Bill Fortney, has taken me to another level and a continued desire to pursue the perfect image as well as teach others the fine art of digital photography.”

The paintings of Ashley Long, a graduate of Bainbridge High School and a recent graduate of the University of Georgia with a major in art, will be featured upstairs in the Nussbaum Room. Ashley is a talented painter who plans to attend graduate school and teach at the college level.