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Poetter Hall was purchased by the SCAD founders in March 1979. Classes began in September of that year.  
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The Arts

Student opens the door when opportunity knocks

An illustrations by Jason Abramson

One of seven illustrations created by graduate illustration major Jason Abramson for the Massie Center’s permanent collection.

By Hannah Pittard
Published: Friday, February 14, 2003

Graduate illustration major Jason Abramson will tell you that the opportunity to create seven works of art for the Massie Heritage Interpretive Center’s permanent collection simply fell into his lap. He’ll tell you this, but there is reason to suspect that enthusiasm and talent played a much larger part in the opportunity than the artist lets on.

Abramson first began working for museums during winter quarter of his senior year at SCAD when he took a museum studies class to fulfill his art history elective requirement. Part of the class’ assignment necessitated that he do work for a local museum. "I did an interview/brochure packet for the Ships of the Sea Museum, which is now being used for the Introduction to Museum Studies Class," said Abramson. After doing other work for the Savannah History Museum and Ships of the Sea Museum, one thing led to another and — poof — the Massie gig fell into his lap.

"The stuff I did for the Savannah History Museum got me the job with the Massie School, as the people at Massie had heard good things about my stuff and myself," said Abramson, who took a quarter off between his undergraduate and graduate education to relax. "I felt it best to take the summer off because in the month before graduating, I was working on about 30 things, seriously, which included class work and outside work. It was weeks on end of very little to no sleep."

Of the seven illustrations Abramson created for the Massie Center’s "The Debatable Lands: Native Americans in Coastal Georgia" series focusing on the early days of Savannah, all were sent to Virginia where they were enlarged, printed on double-sided laminated film, mounted on a special type of primed wood, outlined and mechanically cut. "This was to give more depth and to make the pieces and text stand out more … Some of the pieces were actually situated lower (at the museum) for children, and all of the pieces had text directly underneath so they could read the text without stretching up to try to read it," said Abramson. Two of the illustrations (one of James Oglethorpe and the other of Tomochichi) were enlarged to be life-size and now stand at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the exhibition. The exhibition will be on permanent display at the Massie Center and is meant to help teach students — specifically eighth grade and higher — from all over about the area and its history.

In creating his historic images for the center, Abramson’s decision of which techniques to use were calculated. "The choice in media was based on the information given to me about each piece," he said. "I didn’t want them all to be in the same technique and medium. I didn’t, however, want them to be so separate that … they didn’t fit with the setting." Abramson alternated between pieces done in water, ink and gouache and pieces done in color pencil, pencil, acrylic and oil. "The idea I had in my head was to try to keep the pieces semi-dated — like you would see in old picture or history books — and combine that with the look would see in National Geographic illustrations."

Abramson’s plans for the future involve a possible teaching position in Atlanta and the completion of a handful of books. "I would like to mainly stick to children’s books, humorous and spot illustrations, but I wouldn’t mind doing various types of art."

Abramson’s work is on permanent display at the Massie Heritage Interpretive Center, 207 E. Gordon St.