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December Issue
2008
Sumter County
Gallery of Art in Sumter, SC, Features Works by Sarah Hobbs and
Loren Schwerd
Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter, SC, is presenting the exhibits: Sarah Hobbs: Modern Angst and Loren Schwerd: Mourning Portrait, both on view through Dec. 31, 2008.
Working in conjunction with Solomon Projects, Atlanta GA, the Sumter County Gallery of Art is proud to present a major solo exhibition by Sarah Hobbs, a photographic artist based in Atlanta. The exhibition in Sumter comprises 13 works including two new works of art. Hobbs holds a BA in Art History and a MFA in Photography from the University of Georgia.
Kate Bussard, Assistant Curator of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago states: "Sarah Hobbs's work explores and gives form to various human behaviors and compulsions. She carefully stages and photographs scenes that are meant to embody phobias, neuroses, and obsessions. Her intricate tableaus are simultaneously profound and witty, reflecting Hobbs's understanding of human psychology. In her renderings of personality traits, ranging from nosiness to overcompensation, she depicts only the objects and backdrops that indicate these characteristics, never specific people. By refusing to identify the behavior with a particular person, Hobbs suggests that human idiosyncrasies are as universal as they are individually unique."
Hobbs's work has been in several solo and group exhibitions including, Does This Sound Like You?, Solomon Projects, Atlanta, GA, 2006, SubUrban: Sarah Hobbs, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, 2004, Small Problems in Living, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY, 2004, Slightly Imbalanced: Sophie Calle, Mike Kelly, Bruce Nauman, Sarah Hobbs, et al, Independent Curators International, New York, NY (traveling exhibition), 2008, and On the Scene: Kota Ezawa, Sarah Hobbs, Angela Strassheim The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2007. Her work is in many important public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.
Hobbs's work has been reviewed in national publications such as Art in America and Artpapers. She was included in the prestigious 2006 Phaidon edition Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography a survey of 121 emerging photographers.
Loren Schwerd is a sculptor and mixed media artist who is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Louisiana State University. Mourning Portrait is a series of memorials to the communities of New Orleans that were devastated by the flooding which followed Hurricane Katrina. These commemorative objects are made from human hair extensions of the type commonly used by African-American women that the artist found outside the St. Claude Beauty Supply. The portraits draw on the Victorian era tradition, in which family members or artisans would fashion the hair of the deceased into intricate jewelry and other objects as symbols of death and rebirth. Working from photographs she took of abandon homes, Schwerd wove the hair to create small models of the vacant houses of the Ninth Ward neighborhood, thus venerating the city's losses, both individual and collective. Hair acts as the central metaphor to evoke a sense of intimacy and absence, and speaks to the racial politics that have paralyzed the city's recovery effort.
Schwerd received her BFA in Studio Arts from Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, and her MFA in Sculpture, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Although now at LSU, she was a longtime instructor/visiting professor at the College of Charleston (1999-2005) and contributed much to the visual arts in South Carolina. Schwerd has been in many solo and group exhibitions including Either Side of the Skin, Penland Gallery School of Crafts, Penland, NC, 2008, 60 Seconds of Play, Traveling Exhibition, Sarai Media Lab, India, Tilt Gallery and Project Space Portland Oregon, Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2006, Homegrown: Southeast, Southeastern Contemporary Art Center, Winston-Salem, NC, 2005, and Thresholds: Expressions of Art and Spirituality, (traveling exhibition of five Southern states, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky NC, and SC) curated by Eleanor Heartney.
The exhibition in Sumter will include nine small-scale dwellings and a wall installation of brightly colored, human hair beads draped on steel "branches". This exhibition will travel to EJ Bellocqu Gallery, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA and to Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Schwerd's Mourning
Portrait work is featured on the cover of the Nov/Dec issue
of FiberArt with an accompanying article.
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery
listings, call the Gallery at 803//775-0543 or visit (www.sumtergallery.org).
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