Feature Articles
 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..."


July Issue 2005

Arts Council of Beaufort County Offers Exhibit at MARS, the Real Estate Store, in Bluffton, SC
 
The Arts Council of Beaufort County will present the exhibition, No Blues on Sundays, an exhibit featuring the husband and wife team of visual artist Diane Britton Dunham and Gullah native vocalist and musician Phil Griffin. This mixed media exhibit will examine through paintings, photographs, live music, and recordings the incredible passage from African American slave songs such as field hollers and work songs to spirituals, gospel, and contemporary R&B. The exhibit will run from July 2 - 30, 2005.

African Americans in the South knew the healing and spiritual power of music, to summon freedom, love, peace and joy, and to comfort pain and sorrow. The blues was born out of the suffering, anguish, and hopes of 300 years of slavery and evolved to spirituals and country string ballads to becoming the base of American music today.

Throughout the week, roaming solo musicians on acoustic guitar or banjo and on Saturday night could court one with the harmonica or piano at the local juke joint. But come Sunday, you went to the praise house to sing and shout.

The exhibit is inspired by Griffin and the Griffin family stories of growing up on Port Royal Island, SC. Griffin began singing and playing guitar at a very early age with the renowned Griffin Brothers, the family combo who gained regional notoriety in the Gospel arena during the sixties and seventies. Their story is one of an amazingly gifted and strong family who lived the blues experience, from working in the fields to owning their own successful business. It was Griffin's recollection of his parent's strict enforcement of "No Blues on Sunday" which has inspired this exhibit.

Diane Britton Dunham, a self-taught artist, is best known for her paintings of rural African American and Gullah life. Her work has appeared in many national and regional publications, her paintings are in collections internationally. Dunham has deftly merged her Louisiana roots with that of the Gullah culture of the Sea Islands to create vivid paintings of a rapidly vanishing way of life.

The exhibit will also include sweetgrass baskets and works of several other guest artists. During the month exhibit it will include a lecture, sidewalk sales and guest performances by Blues and Gospel artists with dates to be announced later.

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or contact Arthur "Art" Segal, Arts Council board member at 843/9363 or by e-mail at (DrArthurSegal@aol.com).


[ | July05 | Feature Articles | Gallery Listings | Home | ]

 

Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 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© 2004 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.