The Department of Fine Arts sponsors the Kassab Art Gallery Series, hosting varied shows of two and three dimensional works showcasing local and regional artists. The Art Gallery Curator selects exhibitions that support and enhance the academic goals of the visual arts program at Francis Marion University, providing a non-profit institutional setting in the service of both students and the wider community.
Pee Dee Sampler – a selection of works from regional artists
May 9 – August 10, 2017
Pee Dee Sampler, a selection of works from regional artists, will be on exhibit in the Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery at Francis Marion University from May 9 through August 10 as part of the Art Gallery Series.
Artists include ceramicists Jane Crossman, Douglas Gray, and Sasha Federer, painters Anna Coe, Matt Cook, Lynda English, John Lehum and Jackie Wukela, photographers Anna Baldwin, Dewey Ervin, Donna Goodman, and both photographs and acrylic paintings by Tari Federer.
The Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery is open from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Thursday (note that the University is closed on Friday during Summer classes.) Francis Marion University is located at 4822 East Palmetto Street, Florence S.C., 29506. For more information contact 843-661-1385.
“Rasa Kruti” figurative art by Vilas Tonape, and Jewelry by Kate Furman
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
August 22 – September 28, 2017
Artist Reception 6:30 pm Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Vilas Tonape
Fayetteville, NC
In Sanskrit, Rasa means Aesthetics and Kruti means Visual Art. Aesthetics of Visual Art is the intended refrain of this show.
Vilas Tonape finds figure the most intriguing genre to work in. He expresses, “human form to me is a very engaging form. Even more captivating is the uniqueness and idiosyncratic perfection of each member of our human race”. This is true, even while we might acknowledge that Mother Nature is interested in creating a perfect species, not perfect individuals.
Tonape states, “in painting, my style has emerged through intense exploration and practice of interpretive images – seeing and painting simply the shapes that enchant the eye”. He continues, “becoming an artist has been a defining aspect of my life”. His approach is best described as classically inspired contemporary realism. He aims to continue to be deeply embedded in the classical mode, yet breaking new ground.
He received his BFA in Drawing and Painting with distinction from the Sir J.J. School of Art, University of Bombay, India. He earned an MFA in Painting from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. His work has been exhibited internationally, including venues in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Ontario and Bombay. Tonape has won numerous awards throughout the United States and India, and his work has been critically acclaimed. Palm Beach Post says: “Tonape’s painting can be described as classically inspired, contemporary-realism—interpretive images that enchant the eye”.
A native of India, Tonape resides in North Carolina, and chairs the department of art at Methodist University in Fayetteville.
Kate Furman
Greenville, SC
Kate Furman was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. It was at Greenville’s Fin e Arts Center that she was introduced to metal-smithing. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Jewelry and Metalworking from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. She went on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, where she received her Master of Fine Art in Jewelry and Metal-smithing. Kate also spent time raft guiding, skiing and teaching art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and apprenticing under established jewelry designers in New York City. Currently, she works full time in her Village of West Greenville studio and teaches jewelry at Greenville Center for Creative Arts.
“My pieces tell stories. They tell of storms weathered and turbulent whitewater navigated. I collect things while I am wandering in wilderness, seduced by the cast off flora generously littering the ground beneath my feet. They are scored with lines and scars depicting their histories and hinting to aspects of the primitive environment we deprive ourselves of. They are a part of the natural cycle, undisturbed and unprotected, and I aim to highlight their undulations and ornate subtleties. Each piece in my series evokes the place where it was found and what I was doing there. Their presence alone serves as a sketchbook, or journal, of where I have been and what I have seen.”
Abstract Works by Colin McNaught
“Wonky Ground” – Ceramics by Kelly King
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
October 3 – November 9, 2017
Colin McNaught was born in 1952 in Glasgow, Scotland and attended Glasgow School of Art, studying drawing and painting from 1973-1977 where he first obtained a Bachelor of Art, then went on to complete a Post Graduate Master’s Degree in 1978, receiving the Cargil Award to study mosaics in Greece.
On his return, he accepted the position of assistant Town Artist in the New Town of Livingston, a planned community built to ease the overcrowding in the nearby city of Glasgow. As assistant Town Artist, he painted murals and incorporated art in many recreation facilities and he was awarded the Saltire Award for Art in Architecture in 1979 for interior murals commissioned by the Bacofoil Laminating Company.
In 1980, with a partner, Colin opened a store in Glasgow “Flip Original American Clothing” selling new and vintage clothing imported from the USA. The store was the first of its kind in Scotland, and with its unique concept and design became a mecca for local musicians and young people looking for style and originality. Soon the business expanded throughout the rest of Scotland, England and Ireland and Colin started designing a successful range of his own brand “Flip” clothing.
Having sold the clothing business, Colin has lived for the past 12 years in Charleston SC, where he is producing abstract art on framed geometric-shaped Gator Board, using acrylic paints. His paintings are very colorful with both contrasts and complementary colors, with lines and shape creating a floating effect.
Kelly King received an MFA (Ceramics) from the University of Georgia. She makes and teaches both sculptural and functional ceramics. Her hand-built ceramic objects often combine drawing, sculpture and the utilitarian form.
She has taught classes in Ceramics in both a college and community setting for over 15 years. She has led many workshops including the Potter’s Council Series “Focus on Function” and her work has written about in publications such as Ceramics Monthly magazine. She is currently the Ceramics instructor at the Fine Arts Center of Greenville, SC.
“My new body of work titled “Wonky Ground” is a series of objects and vessels that explore the ways that we arrange the natural landscape. Typical aesthetic conventions such as lawns, curtains and architectural styles serve to visually unify the suburban landscape. These choices create meaning and they also influence how we relate to the world around us. Walkways, doors, fences, and lawns can be placed to invite or to create barriers. Cracks can expose imperfections in a given structure or solidify its relationship to the movable but ever-present ground that is built upon.
“The malleable properties of clay easily assume the likeness of objects in the natural world –the material can be rigid and sound yet vulnerable to cracks and imperfections. Like bricks and mortar, clay comes from the earth and can be used to achieve structures that are built for symmetry and longevity. Eventually the shifting forces of nature push against these structures, leaving an inevitable mark upon them.
“Constructed from a material that is enduring yet fragile, the sculptures in this series possess an underlying instability. A thin skin is wrapped taut over a house’s skeletal structure. Rigid constructions soften as they lean in to one another. With this tension I hope to make connections between the ways that we organize our surroundings and the human impulse to communicate with others.”
Journey: Senior Shows
by Graduating FMU Visual Arts Majors
Mara Beasley, Rashauna Chestnut, Ashley Duff, Kaitlin Elmore, Sydney Lawrimore & Chase Kirby
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
November 14 – December 16, 2017
Senior shows are required of all students majoring in Visual Arts. These shows give students hands-on experience in selection and installation of artworks, publicity of exhibition, and external review by the University community and the general public.
Works by 3-D Design Classes
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
November 14 – December 16, 2017
Students taking Three-Dimensional Design classes investigate organization techniques, with special emphasis on the plastic controls of form and space. They learn to use a variety of tools and various sculptural media, including wood, plaster and clay.
Flesh and Bones by Neva Campbell
Anthro/Botanical ceramic sculpture by Elaine Quave
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
January 9 – February 15, 2018
Opening Reception 6:00 pm Friday, January 12
Neva Campbell considers herself a modern impressionist using bright colors to convey emotional light and density. Her primary medium is acrylic paintings and ink/watercolor illustrations. Her work’s complexity does not come from estimating its conceptual meaning but finding connections through shared human experiences of beauty, truth, and emotion. Portrait artist Bob Johnston has said about her art, “There is a sensitivity to her work that inspires the viewer to participate in the messages of her creations.”
She studied at The Art Institute, where she discovered her love of the intricacies of color and texture. After moving to Charleston, she strengthened her techniques by working with several artists who helped her hone her skills with acrylics and push her boundaries through new media. She is a native of South Carolina, where she finds inspiration in the South’s dark history, gorgeous vistas, and briny waters.
She was recognized as an Artist of the Month in 2013 by Grand Strand Arts, participated in ArtFields 2014, 2016 and 2017, was chosen as Best Artist for the 2016 Grand Strand Happening List, and she has displayed and sold her work in South Carolina since 1994. She currently lives and works in her hometown of Myrtle Beach.
Elaine Quave received a BFA in crafts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an MFA in ceramics at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She currently teaches ceramics at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities (SCGSAH), where she was a graduate of the inaugural program of the residential high school. In addition to experience as a 3-D and ceramics instructor at Tyler, SCGSAH, and the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, SC, Mrs. Quave has also assisted for workshops at North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft and Pilchuck School of Glass in Washington. Elaine Quave is the 2015 recipient of the Regina Brown Teacher Development Award through the National K12 Ceramic Exhibition. Mrs. Quave’s work has been exhibited nationally at venues including the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Baltimore Clayworks, the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Lee Gallery of Clemson University, and Thompson Gallery of Furman University.
Her ceramic sculptures “evoke a garden, one reminiscent of a bleached coral reef in which the reflection of our own human nature is both terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Porcelain bones are arranged to resemble plants, each implying their own unique stories of our personal interactions with them. The work calls for us to recognize loss of biodiversity and the extinction that is quietly happening around us in the current geological age – referred to as the Anthropocene – an age characterized by the impact of human related activities on the ecological balance of nature.”
92/20: Altered Realities: Photographs by Aspen Hochhalter
SC Clay > Higher Ed
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
February 20 – March 29, 2018
Aspen Hochhalter was born and raised in Chipita Park, Colorado. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Photo Based Media at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina and her BFA in Photography from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She is an Associate Professor of Art and the Photography Area Coordinator in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Her work explores the crossover between digital technologies, historic processes and the use of experimental materials through appropriation, self-portraiture, and collaborative projects. Recent accomplishments include work published in The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes: 3rd Edition, McColl Center for Art + Innovation Residency, exhibits at Pease Gallery CPCC, Castell Photography Gallery, East Carolina University, Kiernan Gallery, The Light Factory, and many other venues across the country. She serves as the Light Factory’s Board of Directors Vice President and is active in the Society for Photographic Education, serving as a member of the National Board of Directors.
“92/20 is a collection of 92 wet plate collodion ambrotype self-portraits created in 20 days during the summer of 2011. These very personal self-portraits speak to the construction and deconstruction of feminine identity. It was also an experiment in returning to not only the roots of photographic expression by utilizing one of the earliest photographic processes, but also a return to the bare essentials of photographing: a reliance on self, silver and the sun. Yet, since wet plate collodions have to be coated, exposed and developed in a matter of minutes–all while the light sensitive photographic emulsion is still wet – this nineteenth century process has an intriguing parallel to the instant gratification of our current digital age.
“The images themselves are elusive sketches of a “self,” playing to the camera, flowing in and out of poses and clichés–juxtaposed with unexpected flaws, irregularities, missing pieces and unsettling cuts and tears. I revel in the mistakes, the odd textures and unexpected chemical smears and veils that emerge on the photograph–most of which serendipitously occur over an eye or mouth–chance deletions and desecrations of the form that create an intense emotional content for which I couldn’t have planned. With the 92 plates, I am now reconstructing what I deconstructed and fragmented with the camera, creating odd approximations of a whole. A sometimes unsettling reconstruction of self emerges: dismantled, fragmented and then stitched back together.”
SC Clay > Higher Ed is an invitational exhibition featuring the ceramic artwork produced by 22 individuals teaching ceramics at 14 colleges and universities in the state of South Carolina. Serving as a cross section of contemporary ceramic art in the state, this exhibition reflects both the highly individualized work being produced by these artist/educators and also the depth of ideas and techniques explored within the curriculum of the various statewide institutions. Participants include: Deighton Abrams (Winthrop University), Joanna Angell (University of South Carolina: Beaufort), Daniel Bare (Clemson University), Mary Carlisle (Converse College), Bob Chance (Furman University), Jim Connell (Winthrop University), Daphne Cuadrado (Coastal Carolina University), Chotsani Elaine Dean (Anderson University), Hayley Douglas De Gonzalez (North Greenville University ), Carolyn Ford (Limestone University), Douglas Gray (Francis Marion University), Jean Grosser (Coker College), Elizabeth Keller (Coastal Carolina University), Bri Kinard (University of South Carolina), Jennifer Mecca (Winthrop University), Ralph Paquin (Presbyterian College), Virginia Scotchie (University of South Carolina), Sandy Singletary (Lander University), Blake Smith (North Greenville University), Mike Vatalaro (Clemson University), Denise Woodward-Dietrich (Clemson University), Valerie Zimany (Clemson University).
Senior Exhibition by Graduating Visual Arts Majors
Works by Graduating Senior Art Majors Katie Belflower, Corey Hall, Sydney Hogg, Margaret McCall, Kathleen Powell and Jordan Stuckey
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
April 3 – May 5, 2018
Opening Reception 6:00 pm Tuesday, April 3
Senior shows are required of all students majoring in Visual Arts. These shows give students hands-on experience in selection and installation of artworks, publicity of exhibition, and external review by the University community and the general public.
There will be an opening reception at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 3.
Works by Ceramics and 3-D Design Classes
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
April 3 – May 5, 2018
Students in ceramics classes learn processes and techniques in both wheel-throwing and hand building in the art and craft of pottery. Throwing leads progressively toward stoneware clay tooling, decorating, glazing and firing. As they advance through the curriculum, students add ceramic fabrications methods of slab-work, modeling from solid masses, and press molding. Multi-part forms and porcelain formula clay bodies are created as artistic discipline develops along with the individual’s philosophy, critical awareness and aesthetics.
Students taking Three-Dimensional Design classes investigate organization techniques, with special emphasis on the plastic controls of form and space. They learn to use a variety of tools and various sculptural media, including wood, plaster and clay.
Befoul: Prints on Cloth by Jeff Murphy
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
May 24 – August 2, 2018
“My current body of work is entitled Befoul and deals with ecological issues involving the global fresh water supply. As the earth’s population grows, pollution, drought, and waste will all adversely affect the availability of fresh water and this is a matter of critical importance.”
This series of work mixes charcoal drawing with photographs in heavily edited collages with some charcoal drawing printed on fabric. All works in this series incorporate images of the sea, often including images of animals, some washed up on the shore. The images can be whimsical as well as disturbing, as in “Surfcasting,” in which a figure casts a line into a rough sea while standing atop the eye of an alligator.
Most of the works are on poplin cloth mounted to wood and covered with wax, a presentation that gives them a distinct strong texture, while others are printed on sateen cloth and displayed as large wall hangings.
Jeff Murphy is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he teaches digital imaging, interactive design, photography, video, and animation. He received his BFA from the Ohio State University and his MFA from the University of Florida.
Jeff’s work has been published in a diverse array of publications including WIRED Magazine, World Art Magazine, and the textbook Exploring Color Photography. He has received individual artist grants from the Arts and Science Council, the Ohio Arts Council and the North Carolina Arts Council. In addition to over 40 National solo exhibitions, his digital images, videos, and installations have been seen in the United States, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and Brazil.
The Art of Original Research: Restoration & Preservation at Belle Baruch’s Hobcaw Barony
June 30 – August 17, 2018
A new exhibit at Francis Marion University in the Kassab Gallery will open on June 30 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., showcasing the 1920s riding attire worn by American heiress Belle W. Baruch.
Among the first research projects inspired by the newly-created Baruch Institute for South Carolina Studies, the exhibit features Ms. Baruch’s original riding coat, waistcoat, and breeches, presented alongside reproductions created by Professor Allison Steadman and students of costume design in FMU’s Theatre Arts program.
The exhibit reveals the processes of restoration and reproduction that enrich student learning and produce tangible historical artifacts for university visitors to enjoy. Working collaboratively with a professional textile conservator, Steadman and her students have studied each detail of the garments, from the fabrics and stitching to the engraved buttons.
Further research provides an understanding of each detail. Measurements underscore the necessity of free movement during equestrian sporting events. A hidden ring inside the collar anchors a thread attached to the rider’s top-hat. The engraved images on the buttons signify specific fox hunts or hunting clubs.
Companion pieces, retrieved from the same location at Hobcaw Barony near Georgetown, SC, include many of Ms. Baruch’s checkbooks, receipts, and business documents, all shedding light on her philanthropy, meticulous estate management, pastimes, and serious pursuits. Her most notable gift is the protection of 16,000 acres along South Carolina’s coast, preserving it in perpetuity for research and education by state universities and colleges.
It is in her honor and as a tribute to her foresight that the Baruch Institute of South Carolina Studies invites visitors to the Kassab Gallery to view these sample artifacts from Belle Baruch’s history. They serve as sources for original research and as symbols of the artistry of scholarly endeavors.
