Backroads/Backrooms: The Saving of a Southern Treasure

After lunch at SoHo Restaurant on Broad Street we’ll carpool to Cairo to the Laura Pope Forrester homestead. Between the early 1900s and 1953 folk artist Laura Pope built an extraordinary garden around this rural antebellum residence with her 12-foot-tall sculptures gracing the front of the home. Both the eccentric home and property are in the middle of a huge restoration and you will get an insider’s look at the progress. We will watch oneof the finest master painters in the Southeast, Mary O. Smith, create a painting of the garden and statues. You can even try your hand at forming a mini-statue in Laura’s style.