Dahlonega, Ga. — At Old Storehouse Art, a former retail space turned gallery on North Meaders Street, three young women have turned the simple act of looking into a form of testimony. Their exhibition, How I See Her, on view through Oct. 12, transforms the gallery into a portrait of friendship as a structure of survival, identity, and aesthetic invention.
The artists — Aida Alarcón, Isabella Martino, and Juleah Everglade — are best friends and graduates of the University of North Georgia, where they once lived together in a modest house in Gainesville. They began their collaboration during the isolating months of the COVID-19 pandemic, trading Instagram memes, sketches, and fragments of memory until a collective project emerged.
The resulting work feels both intimate and public. Their canvases mix self-portraits and portraits of one another with the language of nostalgia: hand-drawn mementos, borrowed motifs from pop culture, coded notes of affection. The effect is less about likeness than about trust. Each brushstroke suggests the possibility, rare, precarious, of being seen in the way a friend sees you, without pretense or defense.
The Dahlonega Arts Alliance
The Dahlonega Arts Alliance, which sponsors the exhibition, plays a role here worth underlining. Co-founded in 2019 by Meagan Garris, her husband, Bryan, and Beth Brightwell, the Alliance has positioned itself as a broad-strokes initiative, casting a wide net in its interpretation of art. Its programming spans the spectrum from belly dancing to traditional mediums such as watercolor landscapes. It measures value not by genre or pedigree but by talent in a given discipline, an approach that broadens the field while still maintaining standards.
Meagan Garris holding the framed woodcut of a local artist, presenting their work to the world. Garris is one of the founders of the Dahlongea Arts Alliance.
What the DAA offers instead is less a formal institution than a kind of indie platform — equal parts booster, broker, and instigator. Its markets like “Art in the Park” have gained recognition for bringing local artists and audiences together. By mounting How I See Her at Old Storehouse Art, the Alliance extends its mission: to connect artists with the communities that might sustain them.
Beyond the Student Show
This is not the first outing for How I See Her. The project began as a student exhibition on UNG’s Oakwood campus, before traveling to the Quinlan Visual Arts Center in Gainesville in 2024. But the Dahlonega presentation marks a first: a step into the town’s evolving arts circuit, a chance for the artists to test their work against a broader public.
The timing is not incidental. Everglade has moved into live-event painting, rendering weddings as they unfold. Martino has become active at the Purple House Gallery in Gainesville. Their trajectories underscore how an exhibition like this can be less a conclusion than a hinge, opening onto new professional and creative possibilities.
A Collective Act of Seeing
At the opening reception on Sept. 13, the three artists will be present to greet visitors, and again at a closing event on Oct. 12. But in a sense, they are present even when absent. Their works insist on the reciprocity of vision: to see and be seen, to depict and be depicted, to claim space for female friendship as both subject and method.
The exhibition is small. The ambitions behind it are not. In the landscape of North Georgia, where cultural infrastructure has long lagged behind natural beauty, How I See Her offers something elemental, the chance to look again, and to recognize yourself in the eyes of another.
Reservations for the event can be made, HERE. You can follow the Dahlonega Arts Alliance on Instagram, HERE.
