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January Issue 2006

University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, Features Alumni Exhibition

The University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, is presenting the USC Alumni Exhibition, on view in the McMaster Gallery from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10, 2006. The exhibit features the works of fifteen accomplished USC Art Department Graduates, including: Tarleton Blackwell (NC), Clay Burnette (SC), William Dooley (AL), Mark Flowers (PA), Kristi Higby (PA), Brian Hively (FL), Gary Keown (LA), Larry Lebby (SC), Tom MacPherson (NY), Linda McCune (SC), Jane Nodine (SC),  Jean Gallagher Somers (CA), Tom Stanley (SC), Michael Tice (NY), and Aggie Zed (VA).

It is through the accomplishments of alumni that result in educational and artistic merit, that the success of an art program may be measured. The artists included in this exhibition represent a small window into the wealth of talent that has studied here in the USC Art Department. The fifteen mid-career artists included were selected from names submitted by the Art faculty with care taken to represent the many areas of study that the Department has offered since its inception. We are privileged to witness the lifelong growth and expanding creativity of our alums as they share their work in this exhibition.

Tarleton Blackwell graduated from Benedict College in Columbia, SC, in 1978. In 1988 he received an MFA degree from the University of South Carolina. After completion of his education Blackwell taught art in the public schools while continuing to devote himself to painting. Recently he left public school teaching to become the Martha Beach Endowed Chair in Painting and Visiting Professor - Artist-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina Pembroke.

Blackwell's paintings explore the icons of the region, appropriating elements from art history, children's tales, stereotypes and commercial images. A native of Manning, SC, where he grew up on a farm Blackwell populates his artworks with hogs, opossums, wolves, pit bulls often combined with images inspired by his experience as an art teacher and his interest in the seventeenth century Spanish School of painting.

Clay Burnette attended USC where he received a BA in Marketing and Art Studio in 1982, and a MA in Library and Information Science in 1999. Today Burnette is a Grants Director at the SC Arts Commission and has maintained a fiber studio in Columbia since 1977. He has been included in over 130 exhibits nationally and internationally. In 1987 he received the SC Arts Commission's Craft Fellowship. His works are included in numerous collections including the White House Ornament Collection, the Columbia Museum of Art, the SC State Museum, the SC History Center, and the SC Arts Commission's State Art Collection. 

Burnette's works are included in numerous publications that include: Contemporary International Basketmaking (Mary Butcher, Craft Council, London, 2000); Baskets: Tradition and Beyond (Leier, Peters, Wallace, Guild Publishing, Madison, WI, 2000), and Craft in America: Celebrating the Creative Work of the Hand (Phyllis George, Summit Group, Fort Worth, TX, 1993). 

William Dooley earned his MFA in Studio Arts from USC in 1980. Dolley served as Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at Knight Gallery, Charlotte, NC. In 1988 he joined the faculty of the Art Department of the University of Alabama. He has curated numerous exhibitions for the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art featuring internationally acclaimed artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Krasner, Cora Cohen, Carrie Mae Weems, Gregory Amenoff, Mel Chin, Ida Applebroog, Deborah Willis, Chakaia Booker, Sally Mann, Tony Scherman and Vernon Fisher. Professor Dooley teaches Drawing within the studio arts curriculum. His own artwork has been included in over 50 regional and national exhibitions. He currently serves as the Alabama regional editor for Art Papers Magazine.

Mark E. Flowers earned his BFA in Studio Arts from USC and his MFA in Painting from Western Michigan University in 1979. Flowers has exhibited his work throughout the United States and twice in Europe. Since 1984 he has had six solo shows with the Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, NC, and Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, NC, which also represents him. Flowers's work can be found in 23 public and over 250 private collections. Throughout his career he has won numerous awards for his art in both regional and national competitions. Most recently he was named one of the 100 Art Alumni for the Centennial Celebration at Western Michigan University.

Flowers' successful art teaching career parallels his art making. He has taught art at the secondary and postsecondary levels since 1979. While he has been a teacher of art, he has also chaired two Fine Arts Departments and one Painting Department. His most recent teaching award is the Allen Zearn Distinguished Teaching Award at Mercersburg Academy where he has been at for the last 15 years.

Kristy Higby received her bachelor's degree in Studio Art at USC in 1977. Subsequently she has taught digital arts and drawing, both formally and informally. Over her career she has worked in fibers, bookmaking, painting and now documentary film. Recently her documentary, Flag Day, received a juror's honorable mention at the AFI/Discovery Channel SILVERDOCS Documentary Conference and Filmfest held in Silver Spring, MD, in 2005. Throughout Higby's career she has won numerous awards both regionally and national. These include: Individual Artists Fellowship Award, SC Arts Commission; Zearn Award for Outstanding Teaching, Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, PA; and most recently, Judges' Commendation for Excellence in Structure, Imagery & Content, Book Explorations 2001. Higby and her husband, Mark Flowers, a painter, divide their time between Mercersburg, PA, and Asheville, NC.

Bryan Hiveley received his BFA from the University of Minnesota and his MFA from USC in 1999. He has been an Artists-In-Residence at Arrowmont School of crafts. He currently teaches at the Miami International University of Art and Design. Hiveley's work has been exhibited in solo and juried group national and international exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad, and is included in public and private collections, among them: the State Art Collection of Florida, the Tweed Museum of Art, MN, University of Wisconsin, and the Appalachian Center for Crafts, TN. Hiveley's ceramic work consist of biomorphic forms that are influenced by nature and the environment. His work can be seen in texts such as The Craft and Art of Clay, Electric Kiln Ceramics and The Ceramic Design Book.

Gary Keown received his MFA from the University of South Carolina in 1979. Keown is an Associate Professor of Digital Design and Director of the Digital Arts Center in the Dept. of Visual Arts at Southeastern Louisiana University. Keown's graphic designs have included brochures, posters, CD and corporate identities for regional and national agencies. His exhibition sites have included: the Matrix Gallery in Sacramento, CA, a solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Techno Seduction at Cooper Union in New York City and the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, FL. Keown has done presentations concerning issues of graphic design and visual art in the digital age nationally, and internationally. Keown's work concerns contemporary technologies and social commentary through conceptual exploration.

Larry Francis Lebby developed and honed his artistic skills at Allen University in Columbia, SC, and the University of South Carolina, where he earned a BA in 1973 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1976. In 1973, USC professors Drs. John and Grace Jordan McFadden, who were early collectors of his artworks, sponsored his first solo show. Since then his work has been displayed throughout the United States in places such as the White House, the Smithsonian Institute, the United Nations and the United States Senate. In 1989, his work was displayed at the Vatican in Rome.

Lebby's work is included in the private collections of numerous entertainers such as: Eddie Murphy, Gregory Peck, James Earl Jones, Roberta Flack and politicians Senator Strom Thurmond and the former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young. His portraits of noted South Carolina educator and theologian Dr. Benjamin Mays and civil rights advocate Modjeska Simpkins hang in the South Carolina State House. Lebby's southern roots are evident in many of his works especially his paintings of the people, the architecture and the landscape of his native South Carolina. 

Thomas Mac Pherson received a BA from SUNY Oswego in 1973 and an MFA from USC in 1976. His work has been exhibited in solo and juried group national and international exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad, and is included in public and private collections, among them: the State Art Collection of South Carolina and the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC. Mac Pherson has been a Professor of Studio Art at the State University of New York-at Geneseo since 1985 and attained the rank of Professor in 2003 where he has received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, awarded by the State of New York in 1999, and the Harter Mentoring Award, an honor given by SUNY-Geneseo in 2003. Mac Pherson's figures focus on the expressionistic issues of social identity and cultural pessimism in a straightforward way.

Linda McCune received her BFA from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville and her MFA from USC in 1982. She has 25 years college teaching experience and has taught at several branches of the University of South Carolina, Walters State Community College in Tennessee, and Vermont College. She currently is on the faculty in the Visual Arts Department at Greenville Technical College in South Carolina. Her work has been exhibited in over 100 juried national exhibitions.  McCune has had twenty-eight solo exhibitions that include: the Columbia Museum of Art, University of South Carolina in Spartanburg, Converse College, Coastal Carolina University, Asheville Museum of Art, Zone One and Spirit Square in North Carolina, Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and the Carrol Reese Museum at East Tennessee State University. McCune's public collections and commissions include the State Art Collection of South Carolina, the Embry's Foundation and the South Carolina Archives and History Center in Columbia. McCune resides in Greer, SC, where she maintains a studio.

Jane Allen Nodine received her MFA from the University of South Carolina in 1979. She is a Professor of Art and Gallery Director at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally and abroad. Nodine has been recognized with numerous awards including an NEA/SECCA Southeastern Seven IV Fellowship from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, two South Carolina Artists Fellowships, and the 2002 Belle W. Baruch Visiting Scholar Fellowship to Hobcaw Barony Plantation, Georgetown, SC. In 2004, Nodine received the SECAC Award for Teaching Excellence. Her  recent work involves computer manipulation of digital imagery and techniques for merging traditional photography and drawing with new forms of imaging and print technology. Examples of this work were included in the South Carolina State Museum's TRIENNIAL 2004 exhibition and the 2005 Appalachian Corridors Exhibition at the Avampato Museum in Charleston, WV. Nodine enjoys traveling and she is the director of the USC Upstate Visual Arts Study abroad program in Italy.

Jean Gallagher Somers received a Doctor of Arts in Installation Art from New York University, NY, in 1993. She also earned a MFA and a BFA in painting from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 1980 and 1975, respectively. Somers has had numerous national exhibitions in galleries, alternative spaces, and museums in the US and abroad. She has been an artist grant recipient numerous times; sponsoring institutions have included The National Endowment for the Arts, The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Artist's Space, The South Carolina Arts Commission and California State University. Somers has been a professor of painting in the Art and Art History Department of California State University, Chico since 1991.

Tom Stanley is an artist and director of the award winning Winthrop University Galleries. Stanley's curatorial projects have included New South Old South Somewhere In Between for Winthrop and the Levine Museum of the New South; Still Worth Keeping at the South Carolina State Museum; Portraits et Personnages in collaboration with the Collection de l'Art Brut; and upcoming Edge to Edge, an exhibition that focuses on the 1960s for Bank of America's Charlotte and San Francisco galleries. Stanley's own work was recently in Homegrown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and at Gallery twenty-four in Berlin. This past year his Floating series was exhibited in the South Carolina State Museum's Triennial Exhibition and in 2004 at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. In 2002-03 Stanley exhibited at La Galerie du Marché in Lausanne, Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre in Paris and the Halsey Gallery in Charleston, SC. Stanley will also open an exhibition at Raleigh, NC's Glance Gallery in May, 2006. His paintings have been published in New American Painting 28 and 46; The Carolinas Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Geneviève Roulin; and The Drama.

Michael Tice is an artist working in a variety of media - primarily in painting, drawing, and printmaking. He received a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of South Carolina in 1975, and did graduate work in Painting at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with Peter Plagens in 1982-83, as well as graduate work in Painting at NYU with David Humphrey and Georgia Marsh in 1991-93. Tice was given a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, in 1979 and received an artist's fellowship from the SC Arts Commission later that same year. He moved to New York in 1980. Tice has been included in many group exhibitions in galleries, museums, and alternative spaces in and outside New York, and has had 14 solo exhibitions. He has recently been working on a suite of monotypes at the Lower East Side Printshop in Manhattan, and is currently working on a series of etchings in addition to paintings and drawings.

Aggie Zed received a BFA in Painting and Sculpture (cum laude) from the University of South Carolina in 1974. In 1976, she moved to Richmond, VA, where she came to enjoy the camaraderie of members of the faculty and students of the Art School of Virginia Commonwealth University. In Richmond Zed discovered a natural environment in which to work as an artist, developing her ceramic sculpture as well as her painting with which she has been able to make a living for over twenty years. Her work is shown in a number of galleries across the country. Zed received a Virginia Commission for the Arts Professional Fellowship in 1982 and a National Endowment for the Arts professional Fellowship in 1986, both of these for sculpture. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions over the years, and her work is included in collections worldwide. Today Zed lives and maintains a studio in Virginia.

For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, contact Mana Hewitt, Gallery Director at 803/777-7480 or e-mail at (mana@sc.edu).

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