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July Issue 2005
Arts Council of Beaufort County Offers Exhibit
at MARS, the Real Estate Store, in Bluffton, SC
The Arts Council of Beaufort County will present the exhibition,
No Blues on Sundays, an exhibit featuring the husband
and wife team of visual artist Diane Britton Dunham and Gullah
native vocalist and musician Phil Griffin. This mixed media exhibit
will examine through paintings, photographs, live music, and recordings
the incredible passage from African American slave songs such
as field hollers and work songs to spirituals, gospel, and contemporary
R&B. The exhibit will run from July 2 - 30, 2005.
African Americans in the South knew the healing and spiritual
power of music, to summon freedom, love, peace and joy, and to
comfort pain and sorrow. The blues was born out of the suffering,
anguish, and hopes of 300 years of slavery and evolved to spirituals
and country string ballads to becoming the base of American music
today.
Throughout the week, roaming solo musicians on acoustic guitar or banjo and on Saturday night could court one with the harmonica or piano at the local juke joint. But come Sunday, you went to the praise house to sing and shout.
The exhibit is inspired by Griffin and the
Griffin family stories of growing up on Port Royal Island, SC.
Griffin began singing and playing guitar at a very early age with
the renowned Griffin Brothers, the family combo who gained regional
notoriety in the Gospel arena during the sixties and seventies.
Their story is one of an amazingly gifted and strong family who
lived the blues experience, from working in the fields to owning
their own successful business. It was Griffin's recollection of
his parent's strict enforcement of "No Blues on Sunday"
which has inspired this exhibit.
Diane Britton Dunham, a self-taught artist, is best known for
her paintings of rural African American and Gullah life. Her work
has appeared in many national and regional publications, her paintings
are in collections internationally. Dunham has deftly merged her
Louisiana roots with that of the Gullah culture of the Sea Islands
to create vivid paintings of a rapidly vanishing way of life.
The exhibit will also include sweetgrass baskets and works of several other guest artists. During the month exhibit it will include a lecture, sidewalk sales and guest performances by Blues and Gospel artists with dates to be announced later.
For further information check our SC
Institutional Gallery listings or contact Arthur "Art"
Segal, Arts Council board member at 843/9363 or by e-mail at (DrArthurSegal@aol.com).
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