Hudgens Center for the Arts

Gem of a place. My experience with their Toddler Friday program has been exceptional.

Nice little gallery that I heard nothing about until I went to JapanFest. We kind of wandered through Animé Village and ended at the end right into the Hudgens Center. The friendly gentlemen welcomed us and informed us about the exhibits there including The Cup Show and the UGA Clay Now exhibit. I love museum, so I got side tracked from JapanFest and decided to check it out. The Cup Show was an exhibit showing handmade ceramic cups. About two hundred ceramic cups were on display on shelves in the Kistner Atrium. There were plenty unique cups and really detailed pieces on display. Best of all patrons could purchase those cups. Each cup was numbered and if it had a red dot on it somebody has purchased it. Prices ranged as low as $ 15 to high as $ 200. The average price range I saw was $ 35 – 50. That day was the last day of the exhibit so people could purchase and take it home with them that very day. There were so many that I liked including the Best in Show (of course somebody has purchased it). At the end, I decided to purchase a beautiful bright orange flame cup and my friend a carved detailed green cup. It took a bit to check out since the ladies at the gift shop, where we paid was unsure if we were allowed to take the pieces home that day or not. Neither of the women knew so one had to go out and find the manager to see if we could take it or not. If not, we would had to pay to have them shipped which was an additional $ 15. The manager was found after about 10 minutes but we were able to take it home that day.
Meanwhile back at the ranch…
When we were waiting I took the opportunity to check out the gift shop. Nice little shop and pricing were not bad at all. They must specialize in ceramics and pottery because there was a display of ceramics made by local artist for purchase in the shop. Now I want to go back, there were some plates and bowls I wanted to get but, I had no room to carry back to my car. plus I had yet to go to JapanFest. At the end, I purchased some art supplies plus the cup I bought.
Overall, the exhibits, gift shop, and staff made the experience great. I will come back to check out the new exhibits, maybe, look into the art classes, and of course check out the gift shop. I’ll be back.

I LOVE this museum! The artwork is always amazing and I love the reflecting pool outside. They have really neat activities for kids and do a lot of assemblies for elementary schools.

signed up a class for my daughter. I signed her up as a member in case we will continue to take classes there. But the class was cancelled. They didn’t bother to call me. We live about 10 miles away!! Now they refuse to refund our membership.
Please stay away from them, so you don’t get hooked like us.

This place is great for those who live in the Gwinnett area. Especially those who like to visit art galleries without making that incredibly long drive to downtown Atlanta to see art.
Hudgens offers a great variety of artist’s works in many different formats. Those artists who contribute a great amount of work to the center even have their own sections dedicated to their works.
Although I am not too big on «art galleries,» I did find the Hudgens center to be somewhat interestingly captivating. Some of the paintings actually made me hallucinate just looking at them, because of the vivid trance causing design the artist created.
I really liked the metal sculpture outside the building created by Rita Blitt named «The Passionate Gesture Retrospective Exhibition.»