St. Simons Lighthouse and Christ Church have made the island a popular wedding site. As a travel destination, St. Simons Island has received recommendations from a number of travel publications and websites, including Condé Nast Traveler, Travel+Leisure, Smithsonian Magazine, Coastal Living, Country Living, and TripAdvisor. Arts and culture A wide variety of creative artists are drawn to St. Simons Island as both residents and visitors. Painters and photographers work to capture the scenic landscape, and their work is on display in several island galleries. Glynn Visual Arts is a non-profit organization serving local artists with exhibits, festivals, and classes in several media including painting and drawing, pottery, photography, mixed media, jewelry, and many others. The Literary Guild of St. Simons Island supports writers with literary and cultural events. A non-profit theater group, The Island Players, schedules productions in the Pier Village Casino Theatre. Craft shows are held throughout the year in Postell Park in front of the Casino Building at the Pier Village. There is a vibrant music scene on St. Simons Island, with local bands and musicians appearing in several venues, including summertime concerts on the oceanfront lawn by the Lighthouse, and classical music concerts sponsored by the Island Concert Association. Novelist Eugenia Price visited St. Simons Island as she was driving from Chicago to Jacksonville in 1961. Fascinated by the island, she spent the next few years doing research that eventually resulted in three novels known as the "St. Simons Trilogy." She lived on St. Simons from 1965 until her death in 1996. The film Conrack (1974) was partly filmed on Saint Simons Island. Black American heritage After the American Civil War, a number of Geechee people who had been enslaved remained on St. Simons Island, subsisting on whatever they could harvest from their gardens and the surrounding waters. Many later found jobs with the lumber mills starting in the 1870s. They attended the First African Baptist Church, construction of which was completed in 1869 by former enslaved people from St. Simons Island plantations. Regular services are still held today at the original site on Frederica Road, which has been diligently cared for and renovated through the years. In October 2000, at the First African Baptist Church, a group of island residents and property owners formed the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition to protect and preserve the history and heritage of African-Americans on St. Simons Island. Today,