Artist travels world for collection
The Brunswick News
July 2003
By Jack Morse
Patsy Smith Roberts is not your usual arts and crafts vendor.
People pursuing the booths at the Sunshine Festival, held Wednesday through Sunday on St. Simons Island, or at any similar event, for that matter, will walk among tables and shelves of pottery and paintings, woodwork and jewelry. There are usually toys for kids, too: wooden rifles that shoot rubber bands or your usual sling shoots, ammunition not included.
The artists and artisans who have crafted such work no doubt usually have done so in the comfort of their workshops at home. In such settings they are rarely in danger of say being trampled by an elephant. Or eaten by a lion.
Ms. Roberts, a St. Simons Island resident and African wildlife photographer, cannot say the same for herself.
On Friday, she walked among her framed photographs in her booth at the Sunshine Festival and talked eagerly about her experiences on the Dark Continent.
‘It’s not for everyone,” she said. “But when I’m in that bush country, I love being with the lions. I’m just mesmerized by them”.
She indicated a close-up photograph of a lion with a shock of shaggy mane encircling his head.
“I was about six feet from him”. She said.
“He stopped and roared, and it shook the whole vehicle. It was that powerful. It was very exciting. I just get chill. “
Often she can hear them at night, roaring in the distance, away from the tent. She can also hear the elephants who come through the camp at night, looking for food (pods, usually, which they find in the trees). Ms. Roberts sounded surprisingly cheerful when she explained that the elephants would “tear down fences.”
“But they won’t destroy your tent,” she said. They just go around it.
To hear Ms. Roberts tell her stories, it seems as if she has really been in danger only once. She and guide were parked in an open Jeep beside three lions who began fighting over a day-old elephant kill. The trio rolled into the side of the vehicle where Ms. Roberts was sitting there said, "Don’t move. Because any sudden movement with the lions, and you’re gone.”
But usually, her African outings are much more mundane. Or as mundane as they can be, anyway, when one is six feet away from a lion.