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December Issue
2010
Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter,
SC, Features Works by John Hull and Linda McCune
The Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter,
SC, is presenting two solo exhibits including: John Hull: Big
Bad Love and Linda McCune: Resilience, both on view
through Dec. 31, 2010.
John Hull
The Sumter County Gallery of Art is excited
and honored to present an extensive exhibition of paintings by
John Hull. Often described as contemporary realism or narrative
in nature, these works evoke a visceral and psychological response,
through the recognition of familiar yet unsettling situations
and landscapes.
Hull received a BA from Yale University in 1977 and an MFA from
the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 1981.
Hull's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally
in numerous solo and group shows since 1981. Including exhibitions
at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, the Butler Museum of American Art, National Gallery of
New Zealand, the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum and the Wichita Art Museum,
Wichita, KS; The Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; Tatischeff
& Co. and Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, NY.
Hull has received numerous awards including: four National Endowment
for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowships, a Maryland Arts Council
Visual Artist Fellowship, the Thomas Benedict Clarke Prize for
Painting in 2004 from the National Academy of Design, the 2000
Researcher of the Year at University of Colorado at Denver, three
Researcher of the Year Awards from the College of Arts and Media
at UCD, and the Achievement Award for Acrylic Painting in 1995
from American Artist Magazine.
Hull had the following to say about his work, "The paintings
that make up this exhibition were inspired by the stories of Larry
Brown and Jim Thompson. In their narratives visual impressions
succeed each other, overlap and over cross - you can feel the
force of human heredity and the flow of people who are capable
of almost anything - heroism or cowardice, tenderness or cruelty."
"The interactions between the characters in these paintings
are presented objectively, staged like soliloquies or speeches
by characters in a play," Hull adds. "At the heart my
attempt is the creation of associations for the viewer so that
they may go through an experience all the way to the end, and
if there is some meaning, so to speak, it will be like an inborn
painting that is invisible until it emerges."
Linda McCune
The Sumter County Gallery of Art is also proud
to present the work of one of South Carolina's most celebrated
artists Linda McCune. This exhibition will be comprised of a selection
of both monumental and more intimately scaled sculptures as well
as two dimensional works that address a variety of political,
social and aesthetic issues and that draw inspiration from personal
and autobiographical sources.
McCune was born in Dyersburg, TN. She received her Bachelors of
Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, and
her MFA from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. McCune
has held the lead professor positions in art history, fine arts
and art education, as well as serving as gallery director in the
Department of Visual and Performing Arts of Greenville Technical
College, in Greenville, SC.
When speaking of her works on paper, The Stress Series,
McCune states, "These works are visual documents of the language
and euphemisms of stress. Such statements as 'I am all tied up
in knots,' 'Everything is mixed or tangled up,' 'I have dropped
an important ball,' or 'I can't see the forest for the trees,'
are all commonplace communications."
McCune adds, "These stress drawings rely on the subtle shifting
of form, color and texture and the careful placement of objects,
which the artist has elected from otherwise unnoticed day-to-day
artifacts, within the compositions to communicate a variety of
emotions and associations both conscious and unconscious."
About her sculptural series, Natural and Theological Virtues,
she states, "These works are strongly symbolic objects with
a rich abstract and metaphorical language inherent in their use.
As objects, they have a ritual base, combining visually appealing
surfaces and an underlying message offering myriad possibilities
for the exploration of an emotional language."
McCune has been featured in over 60 solo exhibitions as well as
participating in over 350 group shows across the US, and internationally.
She was nominated for the AVA Awards, has won South Carolina's
state artist fellowship grant for artistic excellence and was
honored as one of the most influential artists of the last 100
years by the South Carolina Arts Commission.
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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