February 2011

City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston, SC, Features Works by Joseph Holston

The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs is presenting the exhibit, Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad, on view at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston, SC, through Mar. 4, 2012.

Depicting the stories of the Underground Railroad, some of the most powerful stories in American history, Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad features 49 paintings, etchings and drawings by Holston that capture the courage and determination of slaves, required of them to escape to freedom.

The exhibition is a visual interpretation and expression of a range of human experiences and emotions within the framework of this particular period in American history. The exhibition consists of four movements that track the flow of events in the lives of those traveled along the Underground Railroad: The Unknown World, Living in Bondage, The Journey of Escape, and finally, Color in Freedom.

Holston’s cubist abstractionist style has evolved over a fine arts career spanning over thirty-five years. A critically acclaimed artist, he has exhibited at the Washington County Museum of Fine Art in Hagerstown, MD; the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture, Baltimore; the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC; the Fort Worth Museum of Fine Art, Texas; the African-American Museum of Philadelphia; the Arts Program Gallery at the University of Maryland University College; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC A & T State University; Delaware State University; the APEX Museum, Atlanta; the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida; and the DuSable Museum, Chicago.

Holston has also exhibited and been a guest lecturer at DePauw University, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, the University of Dar es Salaam, Howard University, Delaware State University, Bowling Green State University, Villa Julie College, and the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida. He has also been artist in residence at North Carolina A & T State University, and at the Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. His work has been commissioned by North Carolina A & T State University, the AFL-CIO, the Miller Brewing Company, the National Urban Coalition, the National Medical Association, Gallo Winery, and the Washington Urban League.

Works by Holston are included in numerous museum, institution and private collections. Among these are the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Washington County Museum of Fine Art, Maryland; Butler Institute of American Art; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Banneker-Douglass Museum, Maryland; the King-Tisdell Cottage Museum, Georgia; the Lyndon B. Johnson Library at the University of Texas; DePauw University, Howard University, the University of Maryland University College, the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland; the AFL-CIO, Washington, D. C.; the Hubert H. Humphrey Collection, the Evans-Tibbs Collection, the Donald Byrd Collection, and the Jean and Robert Steele Collection.

Color in Freedom was developed by University of Maryland University College and toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Gallery at 843/958-6484 or visit (http://citygalleryatwaterfrontpark.com/).

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