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April Issue 2007
City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, Offers Emerging Artists Exhibit
Alyssa
Millard
City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, once again presents exceptionally talented emerging artists for School's Out IV: Emerging Artists of the Southeast. The exhibit opens for Artista Vista on Apr. 26 and continues through May 31, 2007.
Jerome
Provence
For the fourth year City Art has conducted a competition seeking recent MFAs, BAs, and BFAs of the southeastern region, and now looks forward to presenting its fourth generation of talented new artists. The exhibit features work that encompasses a variety of media and that exemplifies exciting new directions in contemporary art.
Lee Swallie
School's Out IV results from a process in which City Art asked studio art faculty members throughout Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama to nominate their most talented graduating artists - those who have enough potential to compete in contemporary art culture. City Art chose artists that display high levels of professionalism and whose work, when shown together, exemplifies the tempo of the contemporary visual culture in the Southeast.
Max
Miller
The emerging artists have worked with diverse media ranging from experimental printmaking and photography to traditional painting and drawing. Artists have chosen to express subject matter ranging from deeply personal experience of life and nature to social and political commentary and satire. Artists' work shows stylistic trends from a range of Southeast schools which includes University of South Carolina, Clemson University, College of Charleston, and University of Tennessee with that of more distant institutions, namely the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Chicago Art Institute and Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy.
Megan
O'Conner
The artists to be included in the 2007 exhibition are Alyssa Millard and Max Miller of College of Charleston; Bethany Flagg Pipkin and Claudia Wilburn of Clemson University; Erin Ramsey, Jerome Provence, and Lee Swallie of the University of South Carolina; and Meghan O'Connor and Stephanie Mustric of the University of Tennessee.
Alyssa L. Millard graduated from The College of Charleston with a BA in Studio Art in 1998, a BS in Psychology in 2003 and recently graduated with an MA in Art Therapy (MAAT) from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in May of 2006. She is primarily concentrated on printmaking, specializing in mezzotints, but is also exploring painting and various mixed media. In her prints, Millard addresses the disastrous issue of human encroachment and materialist urban influence on surrounding wildlife. She uses a play of texture and pattern to show how the two worlds associate with one another. In spite of the dark subject, Millard presents the issue in a whimsical, colorful, almost comical play of pattern and expression.
The exhibition also features the figurative paintings of College of Charleston graduate Max Miller. When first studying art, Miller experimented with sculpture, photography, and printmaking. Upon exposure to European classical painting, he was inspired to receive training in contemporary classical painting at the Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. Miller's work is often influenced by his dreams and is primarily concerned with joining metaphysical concepts with objects and subjects of the corporeal world. He feels that personal "truth" is obtained through association of thought and observation, for which painting is the perfect medium.
The work of University of South Carolina graduate student Erin Ramsey is also included in the exhibit. Ramsey discovered that art is her primary interest during her undergraduate education at Coastal Carolina. Being very passionate about the creative process, Ramsey claims that art is a "neurotic", obsessive-compulsive activity that fulfills an inner need to organize her chaotic thoughts. Delighting primarily in the limitless world of textures, the figurative subject matter of her drawings, paintings, and prints is deliberately not deliberate.
Meghan O'Connor is enrolled at Clemson University as an MFA Candidate for printmaking, with an expected graduation in the Fall of 2007. At the upcoming Frogman's Print and Paper Workshop, she will be a returning assistant to the instructor as well as continuing her studies. Her art expresses through symbol and animal imagery her observations of society. She depicts the 'great machine" of which we are all either gears and levers or unwilling and detached participants.
After retiring from a career in the military, Joe Provence receives his BFA degree from University of South Carolina in May of 2007. Choosing oil on canvas and panel as his preferred medium, Provence's work is focused generally on the still-life genre. His paintings show a mastery of the subtle interplay of distinct color fields and delicate texture of flowers, reminiscent of van Gogh's approach. He has applied similar concepts to his landscapes of water lilies and starry nights.
After having studied painting and film at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Savannah College of Art and Design, Lee Swallie is now expanding his artistic horizons at the University of South Carolina, studying drawing and printmaking. The manner in which he creates his volumetric figure drawings demonstrates his interest in the studies of High Renaissance greats as well as being influenced by USC's gifted artistic anatomy instructor Deanna Leamon. In his work, Swallie is primarily interested in how the self-portrait may be used to illustrate faint nuances of emotion.
The emotional collage work of Claudia Wilburn is introduced to City Art as well. Her series of "word art" taken from forgotten letters, notes, and old photographs, reveals how nostalgia plays an important role in her life. Wilburn is concerned with transposing a longing for the past to others through visual and other sensory association. Having received her BFA in Visual Arts and Drawing from Clemson University in 2004, Wilburn is now earning her MFA in Drawing from USC.
After studying in Florence, Italy and receiving her BFA at the University of Dayton in Ohio, Stephanie Mustric is currently earning her MFA at the University of Tennessee in Painting and Drawing. Mustric explores issues of women and power in the context of World War II and how these concepts apply to women today. Her Warholesque paintings are particularly inspired by the writings of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. Frank's approachable, powerful and highly descriptive diary attracted Mustric to other iconic women the early 20th century. Mustric depicts influential women that assert their influence purely by their image and bearing, and not necessarily their status in society.
Finally, Bethany Flagg Pipkin's dynamic drawings are premiered in this exhibit. Having graduated with honors from Clemson University in May of 2006, Pipkin's fascination with the Microcosm led her to create stunning depictions of an amazing and complex world that exists around and within us but for the most part goes unnoticed. Having experience in a wide range of media, Pipkin experiments by combining various printmaking and drawing techniques. She is concerned with enlivening her imagination by applying her observations of a beautiful yet objective world and discovering meaning and irony in art.
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