| 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..." |
October Issue 2005
Spartanburg County Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC, Offers Several New Exhibitions
The
Spartanburg County Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC, is pleased
to present a suite of printmaking exhibits. The exhibit, Southern
Masters of Printmaking, on view through Oct. 30, 2005, is
drawn from a private collection in Spartanburg and is complemented
by the educational exhibit, Exploring the World of Printmaking
through our Contemporary Area Printmakers, on view through
Oct. 23, 2005. A third exhibit, Paintings and Prints by Doug
Whittle of Madison, Wisconsin, will juxtapose the small intimate
prints of Doug Whittle with his larger landscape paintings on
view through Oct. 23, 2005.
In Southern Masters, approximately 90 works produced from the 1890s through the 1960s depict life in the south, and illustrate the range and versatility of relief, intaglio, and lithographic printing processes. Among the artists represented in the show are Sigmund Abeles, George Aid, Thomas Hart Benton, August Cook, James Fowler Cooper, William Halsey, Alfred Hutty, Margaret Law, Corrie McCallum, Antoinette Rhett, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Anna Heyward Taylor, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, and Stephen Young.
The exhibition, Exploring the World of Printmaking, uses works by a few of our area's fine printmakers to illustrate informational panels about the Four Great Divisions of Printmaking. Ann Dergara of Brevard, NC, Boyd Saunders of Chapin, SC, Steven Chapp of Easley, SC, Carl Blair, Phil Garret, Mark Mulfinger, and Harrell Whittington, all of Greenville, SC; and Jim Creal, Pat Kabore, and Andrew Blanchard of Spartanburg, are represented in the show.
Grouped by division, each section of works has at least one print next to the plate from which it was pulled. A DerGara monotype plate, a Mulfinger linoleum relief plate, and a Saunders lithographic plate as well as etching plates from Creal and Whittington add to the educational component of the displays by creating mirror images of the works that hint at the magic moment when the printmaker lifts the paper from the plate and sees the resulting impression.
Progressive proofs from Saunders' illustrated book of William Faulkner's short story Spotted Horses and color separations from Mulfinger's print Mill House Twilight underscore the exacting and often tedious nature of designing and producing a successful print.
In size, scale, subject matter, and medium, the third exhibit, Paintings and Prints by Doug Whittle of Madison, Wisconsin, presents two very different sides of the same artist.
According to Whittle, formerly of Spartanburg, "In the Reformation Series (of etchings) I wanted to depict characters out of the catholic reformation as contemporary cultural icons in order to draw comparisons between the late 19th and mid-16th centuries. I hoped that taking a tongue-in-cheek look at those individuals, and their earnestness, may shed some humility on our 'edge-of-the-millennium-now-we-know-everything' attitude." "Likewise, Nasty Habits, Adam and Eve and Samson and Delilah are a more introspective look at relationships. The symbolism and metaphors are not particularly elegant, perhaps, but they work for me."
In contrast to these smaller, thought provoking works are Whittle's large panoramic landscapes of the marshes and waterways of our southern coastal area.
The Annual COLORS Student Exhibition will be displayed in the Museum hallway through October, and will be dedicated to the memory of its former Director, Thomas Parham (1949-2005). COLORS is a free after-school art studio for at-risk youth, and has been recognized in Time Magazine and featured on the national morning program FOX After Breakfast.
For more info check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 864/582-7616 or at (www.spartanburgartmuseum.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2005 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© 2005 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.