Feature Articles
 For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..."


August Issue 2004

Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, NC, Offers New Exhibitions for the Summer Season

Three new exhibits have settled in for the summer at the newly reopened Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, NC. Grabbing the visitor's attention at the entrance is So Big, a show of large-scale paintings by Jimmy O'Neal, Tom Spleth and Katie Walker; Spleth is also exhibiting his well-known ceramic art. Downstairs in the Stage Gallery is Married to Their Art, an all-couples show featuring paintings and mixed media works by Jen Bandini and Hooper Turner; prints and paintings by Patti Brady and Phillip M. Garrett; sculpture by Fred and Kato Guggenheim. Too Long at the Fair in the Small Works Gallery is an exhibit of representational paintings by Connie Bostic and Linda Larsen executed on site at the North Carolina Mountain State Fair.

"We developed these exhibits to bring color, experimentation and a super-sized experience to gallery visitors," says Nancy Holmes, chair of the Curating Committee.

Jimmy O'Neal lives in Marshall, NC, and is represented exclusively by the Joie Lassiter Gallery in Charlotte, NC. He has participated in numerous exhibits including two significant shows in 2003 at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, and the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Boston. His sophisticated work is distinguished by roiling lines of mirror paint on plexiglas in shades of white, black and brown.

Tom Spleth lives in Penland, NC, where he creates energetic black and white abstract paintings and elegant, off white ceramic vessels. Katie Walker is a Greenville, SC, artist whose specialty is huge paintings of geometric shapes in bold colors; she is associated with the artists' studio cooperative called The Artbomb. She is represented by Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, and Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA.

Jen Bandini and Hooper Turner are working towards MFA degrees from the University of Georgia. In 2004 Bandini has exhibited at Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, City Art Gallery, Columbia, SC, Fayetteville Museum of Art, Fayetteville, NC, Stage Gallery, Merrick, NY, and others. Turner won First Place Overall in the 2004 Anderson, SC, Annual Juried Show; in 2002 he won First Place in the Upstairs Gallery's Small Works juried show.

Patti Brady and Phillip Garrett live in Greenville, SC, where they are full-time artists. Both are represented by Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte and City Art Gallery, Columbia; Brady's work is also at the Pelter Gallery, Greenville. Brady is primarily a painter while Garrett is a printmaker.

Fred and Kato Guggenheim collaborate on sculpture of concrete, glass and steel in predominantly architectural forms. The Asheville, NC, couple studied glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.

Connie Bostic was the owner of the prestigious Zone One Gallery in Asheville for many years. Larsen has exhibited up and down the East coast and is in the permanent collection of the Asheville Art Museum.

For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery at 828/859-2828 or visit (www.upstairsgallery.org).


[ | Aug'04 | Feature Articles | Gallery Listings | Home | ]

Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.