Charlie Ellis, bon vivant, artist, junk-o-phile and creator meets me at Pojo Point, his beautiful marsh view home at the tip of Turner’s Rock.
Much has already been written about the devastating electrical fire of 2019 which destroyed the original property built as a weekend getaway by his parents in the early 1950’s.
But now, just over two years later, the new bright and airy home which he shares with his longtime love Julie McIntosh is already brimming with artwork and found objects.
Ellis, eighty-two going on twenty-two (he went water skiing to celebrate his last birthday), first gives me a tour of the open downstairs portion of the house which he calls his “undercroft.”
I have memories of his first home bursting at the seams with a vast cluttered collection of outsider art and scavenged objects. Despite the tragic loss of decades worth of pieces, it seems his cache is rapidly, and daily, being replaced!
We look at a disparate collection of funky hand painted furniture.
“I take all these chairs and stools, paint them, and they will be for sale. They’re cheap because I want people to take them home and for them to be free advertising.”
He is referring, of course, to advertising SLAM (the Savannah Local Artists Market) held during March over the last three years, and this year also being held on Oct. 16.
The consummate marketer, Ellis paints signage for the show (and was perversely flattered earlier this year when someone stole a hand painted sign from a palm tree on Victory Drive!) For October’s show he has also printed colorful SLAM tee-shirts and all artists will be “highly encouraged” to wear them – “It will be very photographic!” he tells me with glee.
A longtime supporter of the arts, Ellis says “I was just looking for a project and I was driving around and went by the Salvation Army site and thought ‘that’s the perfect place for an art show.’ It’s a circle, its open. Artists can display their work on the surrounding fences, and there’s lots of streets for parking. Major Paul (Major Paul Egan, leader of the Salvation Army) asked me, ‘how many do you think you might have?’ and under the table I crossed my fingers and said, ‘thirty-five?’ We had sixty the first year. The next year there were seventy. This past March it was back to sixty due to Covid.”
This October, the artist count is back up to over seventy-five.
Like many of us, Ellis was saddened by the cancellation of the Isle of Hope Art Show held each October in Paxton Park and on beautiful Bluff Drive.
The energetic and enthusiastic octogenarian stepped up to organize a second art SLAM in 2021 to fill the void. News of this fun event spread like wildfire through social media: artists have signed up and food trucks and musicians have been procured. Alongside Ellis’s funky furniture, he will again have a “community canvas” with art supplies, and attendees are encouraged to paint their own masterpiece. He shows me the one from this past March and is charmed by the more innocent images and marks at the bottom created by children who were not tall enough to paint at the top.
“They get a little older and a little taller and the art gets better the higher you go,” he laughs.
When not organizing or showing at SLAM, some of Ellis’s collection of found objects, his signs and his art can be found in his booth at Merchants on Bee.
“It’s mostly STUFF,” he says, “It’s overflow from here. Things I might find at a garage sale and bring back and fix and paint.”
He visits garage sales, junk stores and flea markets. He reclaims driftwood and occasional debris from the marsh—he shows me a collection of discarded paintbrushes that he has rescued from around the shipyards in Thunderbolt and repurposed into an art piece.
I ask him if he still goes out on the river most days, and he answers, “No. I used to. The older you get, the more you use the word ‘usedto.’ I ‘usedto’ do this and I ‘usedto’ do that. But most days I’m at home fiddling in the undercroft.” And, of course, he has many friends who call him before they discard anything to see if may be interested. (He usually is.)
We climb the steps up to the main house (wisely, he and Julie installed an elevator in the new home because, as he says, “I ‘usedto’ be able to climb stairs all day long. But not so much now.”)
As we enter the light-filled open living/dining and kitchen area he offers me a hand painted SLAM baseball cap and hands me a Pojo Point pin.
Ellis explains that “Old time South Carolina people called a great blue heron a pojo because it was ‘poor’ or ‘po’ eating.”
The walls of the home display pieces from many of the SLAM artists—a beautiful canvas from Helen Durant, a fabric piece from Shawn Turner (the subject of my next column), and paintings by Jay Ellis, Wayne Cunningham, Deborah Miller, Charles Boniface, and more.
Clearly, Ellis not only has a passion for promoting local artists but also for collecting their work.
Come out and meet this force of nature and share his passions at the joyous SLAM this Saturday.
Ellis says to expect, “Food trucks from Molly’s Fish and Chips, the Food Boxx, Flirt with Dessert, Rita’s Ice Cream…. music by The World Famous Crabbettes, blues guitarist Peter Schmid and guitarist Bill Starrs from Atlanta…. balloons and flags flying …the Community Canvas and even a stilt walker!! It’s gonna be SLAMTABULOUS!!”
The outdoor SLAM (Savannah Local Artists Market) is this Saturday, October 16, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. at the Salvation Army Baseball Field, 3000 Bee Road in Savannah. Food trucks, music, free admission, and free parking. Sponsored by the Savannah Art Association, Sulfur Studios/Arts Southeast, and Loop it Up Savannah. Masks will be required.
OCTOBER SLAM PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
(alphabetical by first name):
Ali Long
Ana Barragan
Annette Archie
Annissa Roland
Bernard Nolan
Beth Logan - yes!
Callie Beale
Carol Hartley
Cathleen Campbell
Charles Boniface
Chris Roberts
Christina Blair
Connie Lane
Crystal Travaille
Dana Stickler
David Littman
Debbie Houchens
Deborah Miller
Elliott Edwards
Erin Vernon
Gretchen Ernest
Heather Shiver
Helen Durant
Holly Montford
Jack Wilson
Jacqueline Penney
Jane Rice
Javette Laremont
Jeanne Newton
Jennifer Nolan
Jeri Gale
Jessica Loyd
Jessica Anderson
Jessica Trevett
Jim Cone
Jeanne Newton
John Newton
John Miller
Josh Brown
Juliana Smith
Justine Ferreri
Kim Owens
Kristen (K.K.) Chmela
Kristie Silva
Lisa Rosenmeier
Liz Juneau
Loop It Up - Sponsor
Marcee Musgrove
Margaret Mulligan
Margarete Froeichlier
Mary Marshburn
Mary Mewborn
Maurice Powers-Turner
Merrill Neace
Paul Downs
Peggy-Jo Aughtry
Peter Roberts
Polly Cooper
Rocking Chairs Rhythm Revue’s ‘Music in my Paintbrush’
Rosie Laney
Ryan Dashiell
Savannah Art Association - Sponsor
Sharon McIntosh
Shawn Turner
Shelley Smith
Sibel Alpaslan
Stacie Jean Albano
Stella Ranae
Sulfur Studios/Arts Southeast - Sponsor
Susan Diaz-Vedrani
Sydney Busch
Tatiana Von Tauber
The Irritable Pelican Gallery
Tiffany O’Brien
William Bernzott
