Arts & Literature

North Metro Academy of Performing Arts Settles into Peachtree Corners

Published

2 years ago

February 22, 2023

Arlinda Smith Broady

North Metro Academy. Photos by George Hunter

Gwinnett County’s first themed elementary school aims to incorporate arts education into a robust, imaginative, and collaborative environment.

“The arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing, and arithmetic. Music, dance, painting, and theatre are all keys that unlock profound human understanding and accomplishment.” — William Bennett, former US Secretary of Education

Those words were declared many decades ago, long before students and even some staff members at North Metro Academy of Performing Arts (NMAPA) were born. But the sentiment rings as true today as it did then.

Gwinnett County Public Schools’ first themed elementary school, NMAPA is still somewhat of a hidden gem. Dr. Rodriguez Johnson, principal since the school was established in 2014, along with students, staff, and the community are working to change that.

“It’s amazing that we have over 40 different elementary schools represented in our community here. We have kids that come from Lilburn and Lawrenceville and Duluth and all over to attend our school, and it’s really about that close-knit family community,” said Johnson.

“We have our kids learning the same curriculum that they do at every other elementary school,” he continued. “I think it’s just really our personal connections that really separate us from our sister schools.”

The purpose of the K-5 school, open to every Gwinnett County resident, is to give students the opportunity to develop unique interests, uncover hidden talents, experience satisfaction in accomplishments, gain a sense of responsibility and pursue education as a way of life through educational programs tailored to their own specific needs, according to the school website.

This hidden gem didn’t pop up overnight. It has been a dream of lifelong educator Beauty Baldwin. After decades of dedication to educating students in Schley, Muscogee, and Gwinnett counties, Baldwin retired in June 1994 as the first Black female superintendent of Buford City Schools, as well as the first in the entire state of Georgia.

Her commitment to education and her community is evident with a school and a municipal building named for her. In 2016, the Gwinnett County Board of Education dedicated Baldwin Elementary School in Norcross in her name. In 2020, a ceremony was held to dedicate Gwinnett County’s newly- renovated elections office as The Gwinnett Voter Registrations & Elections Beauty P. Baldwin Building.

Perhaps her passion for education and commitment to children and the community is most evident in the former Hopewell Christian Academy that opened in 1997, shortly after Baldwin thought she had put away her educator hat. Many years later, she admitted that one never stops being a teacher.

Baldwin served as Hopewell’s administrator for 16 years until it became a Gwinnett County Charter School. The move to the public school system came with a name change — North Metro Academy. In May 2021, the Gwinnett County Board of Education approved transitioning NMAPA from a public charter school to GCPS’s first themed elementary school.

But the work doesn’t end there.

Room for everyone

North Metro Academy of Performing Arts engages students in instruction that integrates the academics and performing arts in ways that address the unique needs and interests of each student, said Dr. Johnson. He added that, unlike the fictional school of the arts in the movie “Fame,” there’s no auditioning for a spot at NMAPA.

There is currently no wait list and no child within Gwinnett County is turned away.

“Before we moved onto this campus, we had around 320 students. We expect to continue to increase our enrollment each year,” Johnson said. “We’re really excited about our future and our continued growth. And we’re extremely excited about being here in Peachtree Corners and Norcross.”

Although Peachtree Corners is considered a more affluent area than many other parts of the county, the student body is quite diverse and there’s a place for everyone.

“I think a lot of families choose us because they know that when they come here, we are an extended part of their family and there is no judgment. Every kid is one of our students and we make sure that we build a rapport with all of them,” said Johnson.

“We have such a small staff that I think that really helps us build those relationships, too,” he added. “Our parents know the teachers and we treat everyone like family.”

The first group that started kindergarten at NMAPA will be transitioning from fifth grade to middle school at the end of the academic year.

He said he gets requests from parents who want to see the theme extended to middle school, and perhaps even high school. However, Johnson is focusing on the ones in his care and preparing them for their best futures.

“Right now, we’re just trying to embrace our new space and continuing to grow our program,” he said. “Hopefully, one day, we will have so many students on the waiting list that we’ll have to have a bigger building.”

Photos by George Hunter

Related Topics:Gwinnett County North Metro Academy of Performing Arts Peachtree Corners

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Arlinda Smith Broady

Arlinda Smith Broady is part of the Boomerang Generation of Blacks that moved back to the South after their ancestors moved North. With approximately three decades of journalism experience (she doesn't look it), she's worked in tiny, minority-based newsrooms to major metropolitans. At every endeavor she brings professionalism, passion, pluck, and the desire to spread the news to the people.

Around Atlanta

The High Museum to Showcase “Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind”

Published

1 week ago

December 12, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Oil on paper artwork by Terry Winters. A large red circle with smaller blue circles on top of it and gold/yellow accents. All of it on a dark brown background.

The special exhibition of the Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will run January 17 through May 25, 2025

In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston, along with his wife and collaborator Loraine, began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works.

In 2025, the High Museum of Art will present Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection, featuring their collected works, which is a promised gift to the museum. Featuring artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, the exhibition will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye.

“The Johnstons have been friends of the High for a very long time. They’ve also built an impressive collection featuring works by many of the 20th century’s most significant abstract artists,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are honored that they have promised to leave their collection to the Museum where it will be preserved for future generations — and we are delighted that they are sharing it with our audiences now, hopefully inspiring the next generation of art collectors and supporters.”

A curated collection

The Johnstons’ story is a testament to, in the words of the High’s Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, “knowing the difference between what is right and what is almost right” when building a collection.

Although the Johnstons acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting in 1972, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawing, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation.

Ink drawing by Anne Truitt, rectangular lines and shapes made with black ink on off-white background — Anne Truitt (American, born 1921), *Ink Drawing ’59 [11]*, 1959, ink on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Estate of Anne Truitt / The Bridgeman Art Library / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Rooks added, “Med and Loraine’s collection struck me at once by its single-minded focus on a specific moment in time, which was essentially the time of their contemporaries. The artists in their collection are like close friends to the Johnstons — in fact many are or were. What is equally astonishing about the collection is the Johnstons’ dogged pursuit of quality. Their in-depth knowledge of each artist’s practice combined with their understanding of specific qualities to look for — or more appropriately, to hold out for — will be a revelation to emerging collectors.”

The Johnstons have built their collection with the High in mind as the benefactor of their passion and discernment. For them, their collection “is a labor of love, pursued over more than 50 years, and we are delighted to be able to help the High Museum document and celebrate these important artists working during the same decades as our lives.”

About the exhibit

Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will be presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.

The exhibit is organized by the High Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of sponsors:

Premier Exhibition Series Sponsor Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Premier Exhibition Series Supporters Mr. Joseph H. Boland, Jr., The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation, Harry Norman Realtors and wish Foundation
Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporters Robin and Hilton Howell
Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Loomis Charitable Foundation and Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters Farideh and Al Azadi, Mary and Neil Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, Megan and Garrett Langley, Margot and Danny McCaul, Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller and Belinda Stanley-Majors and Dwayne Majors.

Support has also been provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund and USI Insurance Services.

About the High Museum of Art

Located in the heart of Atlanta, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs.

Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 19,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from prehistory through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper.

The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process.

For more information about the High or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.

Top image: (from the collection) Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Orb, 2020, oil on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Terry Winters, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Around Atlanta

City Springs Theatre Company Presents the Hit Musical Jersey Boys

Published

6 months ago

July 3, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

The megahit musical Jersey Boys is making its regional premiere with the City Springs Theatre Company in a five-week run.

The megahit musical Jersey Boys makes its regional premiere in City Springs Theatre Company’s (CSTC) first-ever, five-week run at the Byers Theatre in Sandy Springs.

Directed by Atlanta’s-own Shane DeLancey, and choreographed by Meg Gillentine, Jersey Boys tells the rags-to-riches story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. The show details their remarkable journey from the streets to the top of the charts, to their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Leading the cast of Jersey Boys is Haden Rider as Frankie Valli. Rider is a City Springs Theatre Company veteran, with recent roles in both Legally Blonde (Emmett) and Fiddler on the Roof (Perchik).

Presented by Resurgens Spine Center, Jersey Boys runs from July 12 through August 11, and shines a special spotlight on home-grown talent, as the show’s four leading men are all Atlanta-area residents.

With phenomenal music, memorable characters and great storytelling, Jersey Boys follows the fascinating evolution of four blue-collar kids who became one of the greatest successes in pop-music history.

“City Springs Theatre Company is very proud to be the first in the southeast region to present Jersey Boys,” said CSTC Artistic Director and Tony Award-winner Shuler Hensley. “Our audiences have been asking for this particular show since we opened. The production is truly stacked with talent onstage and off, and we’re pulling out all the stops to bring audiences an experience that will rival any previous version of the show.”

Jersey Boys premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2005, prior to its 13-year Broadway run, from 2005 to 2017. There have been productions of the show in Las Vegas, UK/Ireland, Toronto, Melbourne, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, Japan, Dubai and China.

Jersey Boys features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, and lyrics by Bob Crewe.

Individual tickets to see Jersey Boys are on sale now ($42 – $108), with discounts for seniors, students, groups and active and retired military personnel.

CSTC’s Box Office is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Call 404-477-4365 or visit CitySpringsTheatre.com for more information.

This production contains adult language and is recommended for mature audiences.

Performance schedule:

Arts & Literature

Local Students Show Off Their Artistic Creations

Published

7 months ago

June 2, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Courtney Escorza, Colleen Nikopour, Laura Hwang, Jennifer Jackson, Norcross. Laura ELizabeth Martin, Payton Hirschmann, Paul Duke HS

From May 11 through May 18, the Norcross Gallery & Studios kicked off a fantastic exhibition, Reflections at Rectory, which showcased the works of 36 rising stars: AP and IB art students from our local high schools.

The opening reception celebrated their creativity and dedication. Gallery director Anne Hall presented a dozen awards generously sponsored by the community, a testament to the local support for these young artists.

One prestigious award, the Terri Enfield Memorial Award, holds special significance.

Established by Terri’s daughters, it recognizes not just artistic excellence, but also leadership, work ethic and the spirit of collaboration. Last year’s winner, Aidan Ventimiglia, even played a part in selecting this year’s recipient Jasmine Rodriguez.