A “Billy Roper: Visual Storyteller” exhibition in the North Georgia College & State University Fine Arts Gallery in the Hoag Student Center will continue until February 22, 2007. A reception and book signing of the exhibition catalogue will take place on Jan. 18, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Gallery Director Pam Sachant said that Roper, currently an artist-in-residence at NGCSU, will be featured in the February issue of Southern Living magazine.

“Roper’s paintings offer him a means of twice telling a story – on the front, in the form of a visual representation, and on the back, as a written narrative,” Sachant said. “He sees the two as complementary, and does not consider one to be a complete telling of his story without the other.”

Working in a variety of formats and styles in two- and three-dimensional media, Roper’s subject matter, Sachant explained, “ranges from minutiae of his childhood memories to contemplations on his cultural heritage, and from an accounting of the day’s events to reflections on the nature and meaning of life.”

The exhibit catalogue was written by Sachant. The publication, the first published by the University Press of North Georgia, was edited by Sachant, Donna Gessell and B.J. Robinson. With a foreward by NGCSU President David Potter and an introduction by local craftsman Thomas Scanlin, the book explores the intrinsic link between the visual and the verbal in Roper’s art, and the notion of his paintings as a form of visual storytelling.

The exhibition and the catalogue are funded by the NGCSU Appalachian Studies Center, the University Press of North Georgia, the Nix Family Living Heritage Fund, and the Buisson Family Foundation.

The gallery is open weekdays, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday, 12 - 4 p.m.  For more information, please call 706-864-1512.