Down Bohicket Road: An Artist's Journey. Paintings and Sketches by Mary Whyte, with Excerpts from Alfreda's World.

Artist Mary Whyte's Down Bohicket Road includes two decades worth of watercolors--depicting a select group of Gullah women of Johns Island, South Carolina, and their stories. In 1991, following Whyte's recovery from a year of treatment for cancer, she and her husband moved to a small sea island near Charleston, seeking a new home where they could reinvent themselves far removed from the hectic pace of Philadelphia. In this remote corner of the South, Whyte first met Alfreda LaBoard and her devoted group of seniors who gathered weekly to make quilts, study the Bible, and socialize in a small rural church on Bohicket Road. Descendants of lowcountry slaves, these longtime residents of the island influenced Whyte's life and art in astonishing and unexpected ways. Whyte soon began a series of watercolors depicting these women, honoring their lives and their dedication to family and faith. As her friendships with these women grew, their matriarch Alfreda LaBoard claimed Whyte as her vanilla