Woven by Leslie K. Rech
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
May 18 – August 5, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Leslie Kendall Rech received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Carolina, Columbia in 1998. Her artwork has been published on the cover of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women and she has received artist fellowship grants from the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York and the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain.
Ms. Rech has exhibited site-sensitive installations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and Michigan. Her next solo exhibition is scheduled at the Delaplaine Arts Education Center in Fredricksburg, MD. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.
Woven is a mixed-media installation created for the Lipscomb Gallery at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, SC. Inspired by the location of the Governor’s School, amidst the ruins of a former textile mill on the Reedy River, the work consists of 15 narratives printed on vellum. The narratives are oral histories describing life in southern textile mills from Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls: Personal Histories of Womanhood and Poverty in the South, by Victoria Byerly. For the installation, the narratives were hand copied by the artist, her mother, sister, aunt and good friends. A pair of pants pieced together from the woven text hangs from the ceiling. The garment is a symbol of the products of the textile mill as well as visual reminder of woman’s struggle for equality in the home and workplace.
“My artistic interests of the last five years have included the manner in which environment strengthens visual metaphors. The majority of my work consists of mixed-media installations using both found and hand-made objects. I use installation as a vehicle for concepts involving gender, history, and memory. By suggesting a distinct environment, I can provide a context for a variety of objects. When successful, an installation artist creates a reality that functions as a metaphor and reveals the relationship between life and the imagination.”
Paintings by Mary Moody
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
May 18 – August 5, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Mary Moody earned a BS degree from Francis Marion University in 2002, majoring in Art Education. She is in her eighth year of teaching visual arts for the Darlington County School District, currently teaching at Darlington High School. Her preferred medium is acrylic paint, using a variety of canvases such as the traditional cloth canvas, skulls, bones, metal, and wood.
“As a young child I used to gaze at a painting my parents had in our house. It was of a beautiful gypsy woman with dark black wavy hair and brown eyes. Her tan skin glistened as she showed a glimpse of her breasts peaking through her peasant blouse. I remember how intrigued I was of this image. She stayed with me though the years and has inspired my imagination and creativity. After painting ‘to please others’; I have recently discovered that I have found my true self through artwork that I create for myself. My most recent work encompasses my heart, soul, and mind- my marvel of the human body, my love for pure vibrant colors, and repetition of natural elements. I take my aesthetic experiences and transform them visually onto various canvases such as bones, skulls, furniture, plywood, and the traditional cloth canvas. The human body has always interested me because of the intricate contours that have a repetition of theme or melody with various embellishments and elaborations. I simplify these contours and often exaggerate them. My use of vivid color is used passionately throughout my artwork. I love the positive energy of brilliant colors as they convey my delicate and feminine sense of being a woman. My feminine intuition unknowingly leads me to soft and bold colors, repetition of organic and geometric shapes, intense contrast but with unity, and real and implied texture. As I am painting, I subconsciously make up rules for each element but I always have to bend a rule or two to keep the source of inspiration within me. I often sit and stare at my work in progress before I determine my next stroke. Henri Matisse and Frida Kahlo have always been artists that I admire. Matisse’s artwork is full of sensual color and primitive figures. Kahlo’s artwork is deliberately naive and filled with feminism. I want you to feel the inner identity of each and every painting because they are all a part of my dynamic passion for life.”
Biomorphic Inquisitions by John Whitman
The Goddess Within: Ceramics by Linda Wiegert
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
August 24 – November 11, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
John Whitman
John Whitman grew up in a rural area outside of a small town called Port Royal in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Juniata High School in 1995 and continued his education at Kutztown University. John earned a B.S. at Kutztown with a degree in Education and a major in Art Education. After substituting for a couple of years, John moved to South Carolina in 2000 and started teaching full time in 2001 at Mullins High School. At Mullins High, John currently teaches eleven different Visual Art Electives including Advanced Placement Studio Art and is the acting Department Head of the Fine Arts Department. While teaching art, John has been awarded the Promising Young Professional Award and Teacher of the Year in 2006. He also sponsors chapter 959 of the National Art Honor Society. For the last three years he has written and been awarded the Arts Curricular Distinguished Arts Program (DAP) Grant for Mullins High School. Currently he is a board member of the Marion County Arts Council and will be acting as secretary for the upcoming year.
“My artwork is an investigation of nature from different points of view. I want the viewer to pull from their own personal experiences when analyzing my work. I don’t like to give just a straight forward subject or idea. I try to keep a certain degree of realism sometimes mixed with abstraction. The beauty of the medium must always be present and work as one with the subject matter. I don’t use any stains in my wood, but always bring out the true color by using natural oils. I also try to use basic hand tools as much as possible whether working in wood or stone. It’s a much more personal process when working directly on the media with your hands. I like to invoke the sense of touch with my work. I think that three dimensional work to be fully appreciated should pull from both the sense of touch and sight.”
Linda Wiegert
Linda Wiegert received her BFA in studio arts from Austin Peay State University with concentrations in painting and ceramics. She went on to acquire an MA in secondary education while remaining an active teaching and producing artist. Her home and studio are in Marion, S.C.
“Growing up I learned a diverse range of skills not limited to those traditionally categorized as women’s work. This foundation triggered my pleasure when a university professor angrily informed me, ‘You have not done one damn traditional thing since you got here.’
“Working in the visual arts makes me feel vital yet humble. Clay fills a niche in my soul that feels as old as the clay itself. Paint energized me. Creating ‘art,’ for me, is a discovery and release of my spirituality, the unshackling of restrictive traditions and my verbal barriers…. In the end, I wish to release something from myself and stir something within the viewer.”
Small Surveillances: Works by Gregory G. Fry
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
August 24 – September 23, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Greg Fry was born on October 14, 1964 in Goshen, Indiana and found at an early age that he had a propensity for creating artwork. In 1985 he attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan and worked on forming a strong design foundation. In 1988 he returned to finish his BA undergraduate degree at Indiana University in South Bend, Indiana. In 1998, he went on to obtain his MFA at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota.
After finishing my MFA, Greg taught a year at the University of Nebraska Kearney in Kearney, Nebraska from 1998 to 1999. He went on to teach at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa from 1999 to 2002. He has been teaching in visual communication at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina from 2002 to current. Fry maintains a studio in Florence, SC where he is working in visual communication and print. His work has shown in over sixty exhibits since 1992.
“In my latest work much of the content comes from aspects that are happening in my own life that include both external events, which happen in the larger world and internal events, which I like to think that I have more control over. Some of the issues I am dealing with are of terrorism and disease. This relates to the impact on the
environment and those that live in it. There are a number of Greek references in my work that making a strange connection of mythology to NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) warfare. All of my work connects to the environment in which I live and some of the art remains somewhat esoteric. Much of my work contains typographical elements, which connects to the content in a non-linear fashion, although the presentation remains (in most cases) traditional.
“The processes included in my work are: digital, intaglio, lithograph, serigraph, collagraph, monotype, and other techniques that may be included depending on the design. These prints are small editions or one of a kind works of art. The process of printmaking is very important to me in terms of being systematic and having a personal connection. However, I find that by using multiple techniques in my prints I can find the true nature of the print through transformation.”
Recent Works by Honor Marks
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
September 28 – November 11, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Honor Marks grew up in Charleston, SC and remembers slogging through the marshes of the lowcountry as a child searching for rare wildflowers with her family. Through the years they photographed hundreds of wildflowers all over the South. Today, she continues the journey through her artwork.
Honor received her B.A. with honors in fine arts from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. As a commercial artist, Honor painted for Habersham, a nationally renowned hand painted furniture company and then took a design position which allowed her to work with the Nature Company, Talbots, and The Plaza Hotel. In 1999 after years as a commercial artist, she devoted herself to oil painting full time. Honor was awarded Best in Show at the 2003 Piccolo Spoleto Juried Outdoor Art Exhibit, received the 2005 Griffith Lowcountry Artist Award, and in 2006 an exhibit of her native and endangered species paintings was narrated by Rudy Mancke, host of television’s Nature Scene.
Her work appears in private and corporate collections across the country and is available at Trowbridge Gallery in Ojai, CA, and online at www.HonorMarks.com.
“I try to reveal the work of God that we see in the world around us. The unfurling of a leaf, the structure of a stem, the majesty of a single fading flower are such amazing and complicated creations. As wild places disappear, we are increasingly surrounded by landscapes and places that are manmade. How will we retain a sense of wonder, awe, mystery, or humility when everything that was created by something greater than us is gone? We truly take for granted the miracles that surround us. My work celebrates those miracles.”
Noun: People, Places and Things
Senior Shows by Graduating FMU Visual Arts Majors
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
November 16 – December 18, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Each Visual Arts major is required to exhibit work and write an artist’s statement as part of a senior exhibit.
Artists included are Leah Anderson, Jessica Baxley, Kendal Floyd, Vati Johnson, and Bethany Luhman. The five artists have completed design, photography, and paintings for the exhibit.
The senior exhibitions are presented on the FMU campus as small group shows during the final year of enrollment. Each student’s portion of the group exhibit is comprised of works from the student’s specialty area and is prepared under the direction of the student’s specialty area professor and serves as partial fulfillment of Art 499: Senior Seminar.
Student Works by FMU Ceramics Classes
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
December 6-18, 2010
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Visual Arts studio courses typically culminate in a public exhibition so that students may have their work adjudicated by their peers, faculty, and the FMU community.
Hello World: Interactive Cross Media Exhibit by Lucas Charles and Charles Jeffcoat
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
January 11 – February 10, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Lucas Charles
Lucas Charles was born in Memphis, Tennessee and spent his formative years in Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. He studied graphic design at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and North Carolina State University, College of Design. Lucas graduated with an MGD in 2002. He has been an educator at the University of Memphis for seven years teaching courses including Interactive Media I, II + III, Principles of Time Based Media, Typography I + II, graduate studio and seminar courses and several others. While teaching Lucas ran his own studio in Memphis for four years (The Commissary), working on a variety of projects including websites, posters, catalogues and identities. In 2006 he formed Faculty of Design.
Lucas’ work has been published and has received many awards including Gold, Silver and Bronze Addys from Knoxville and Memphis Ad Federation, Gold, Silver and Bronze metals from the Aiga Ten Show and Design Excellence awards from Push and UCDA. His work is featured in 1,000 Greetings: Creative Correspondence Designed for All Occasions, 1,000 Type Treatments: From Script to Serif, Letterforms Used to Perfection, Adbusters Magazine, Screenfluent.com, CSSmania.com as well as other publications.
Charles Jeffcoat
Charles Jeffcoat earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design from The University Of South Alabama in 1994. After working in the field of advertising and design for several years he was asked to take an adjunct position in design at The University Of South Alabama where he taught for two years. From there, Charles moved to earn his Master of Fine Arts in graphic design from The University Of Memphis in 2005, where he also taught in an adjunct position. Currently Charles is an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. His classes have included Interactive Communication I and II, Typography I and II, History of Graphic Design, as well as numerous others.
Throughout his career Charles has maintained a professional freelance design business through his own company, Visual Ventricle. His clients included The National Civil Rights Museum, Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Movie Gallery, Sony Music, Universal Records, and Warner Music, The Florence Symphony Orchestra, Francis Marion University, and others. He has also donated his time and design work to several charitable organizations including St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the National Civil Rights Museum.
Besides his applied professional design practice, Charles’ current research is in the area of the cross-mediation of hypertextual environments and the two-dimensional printed book. This exploration and research will cause us to ask specific questions concerning narrative, authorship, linearity, and believability and from it we can gain knowledge applicable to the future of both the two-dimensional printed book and the hypertextual environment.
Becoming: Photography by Jennifer Appleton Ervin
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
January 11 – February 10, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Born in rural New Jersey in 1971, Jennifer Appleton Ervin moved to South Carolina in her formative years. Originally a painter, Ervin earned her BA in Fine Art from Francis Marion University in 1995. She then went on to receive her MFA in Graphic Design in 2002 from Boston University’s School of Visual Arts. At the end of that year, Ervin returned to South Carolina with her husband. Motherhood soon followed, initiating the re-creation of a more personal, creative path for her through photography as medium. Ervin worked as a freelance portrait photographer from 2004-2009 and left to focus on her own creative endeavors. In August 2009, Ervin was awarded the Jo-Ann Fender Scarborough Award for first place in the 56th Annual Pee Dee Regional Art Competition, the longest running art competition in South Carolina.
“Becoming is an on-going project I began in 2004 after the birth of my first child. It is a study of transitory moments, the spaces between expressions, to explore motherhood and my relationship with my children. These photographs are slivers of time in their life and mine ~ abstractions of reality, yet an essential part of the real. They describe childhood experience, theirs and memories of my own, through observations of relationships between family, objects and our environment. Some capture ephemeral spaces of time and reveal a sense of ambiguity that celebrates the power of choice and how each decisive movement translates to the next, impacting our life’s direction. While these moments bring awareness to the impermanence of life, they simultaneously connect the mystery of our humanness and keep us moving, even in stillness.”
USC Ceramics: Creation and Innovation
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
February 15 – March 31, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
USC Ceramics: Creation and Innovation highlights ceramic work from current students and Virginia Scotchie, head of the ceramics department at USC. These students recruited by USC have worked diligently to create, learn, and grow as artists.
The program in studio ceramics has flourished greatly since 1992 and the progress achieved could not have been don’t alone. Through support of talented and dedicated USC College of Arts and Sciences Administration, faculty, staff, and students, we have been able to build a program in ceramic arts that is both nationally and internationally recognized.
This exhibition highlights some of the great ceramic work created by current students at USC. Included will be works by Allison Brown, Christina Carlisle, Dana Childs, Danny Crocco, Frieda Dean, Hayley Douglas, Robin Jones, Jon McMillan, Katherine Radomsky, Stetson Rowles, Justin Scoggins, Virgina Scotchie and Laura VanCamp.
The ceramics program has attracted students of the highest caliber from not only the southeast, but from all over the United States. Recently, the program has also encouraged international involvement within programs established at institutions in Taiwan, China, and Australia.
It is both an honor and a pleasure to present this exhibition including MFA and BFA works in Ceramics from the University of South Carolina.
Prints by Larry Schuh
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
February 15 – March 31, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Larry Schuh is a producing artist and educator living in Crowley, Louisiana. Currently an associate professor at McNeese State University, he has taught courses in drawing, printmaking, gallery internship, screen printing, photo itaglio and lithography. His work has been featured in dozens of national and international exhibitions, and he is in demand for panels, lectures and workshops around the country.
“I made a decision to work in a variety of processes a long time ago. The evolution of my concepts grew with my increasing ability to draw and conceptualize. Printmaking and drawing, along with painting, were my areas of interest.
“Images and ideas come to me often. So, rather than casting past ideas aside, I find it refreshing to go back in and bring some of those images from my ‘image bank,’ back to life.
“The computer has been a wonderful tool for me. I do not use it exclusively to make art. I do use the technology at times to prepare for an original print. My printmaking experiences have given me an advantage when working digitally. Some people actually will argue with me that some finished digital prints are screen prints when in reality they are digital prints. That is a sign of success for me.”
“Figure It Out” – Figurative Ceramic Sculpture Symposium
Lowrimore Auditorium, Cauthen Educational Media Center
March 5, 2011
6:30-9:30 pm Saturday
Internationally recognized artists, Cristina Córdova, Sergei Isupov, and Janis Mars Wunderlich will lecture on their work. This will be followed by a panel discussion on the topic of developing personal imagery with the artists moderated by Howard Frye and Doug Gray from Francis Marion University’s Department of Fine Art.
Senior Shows by Graduating FMU Visual Arts Majors
Jared Beauchamp
Jessica Carroll
La’Kia Williams
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
April 5 – May 7, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Each Visual Arts major is required to exhibit work and write an artist’s statement as part of a senior exhibit. The senior exhibitions are presented on the FMU campus as small groups shows during the final year of enrollment. Each student’s portion of the group exhibit is comprised of works from the student’s specialty area and is prepared under the direction of the student’s specialty area professor and serves as partial fulfillment of Art 499: Senior Seminar.
There will be an opening reception at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 5.
3-Dimensional Work by FMU Ceramics and 3-D Design Classes
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
April 25 – May 7, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Fri
Visual Arts studio courses typically culminate in a public exhibition so that students may have their work adjudicated by their peers, faculty, and the FMU community.
“Morning Walk in the Pee Dee — Images of Wildflowers We Don’t See” by Donna Goodman
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
May 10 – August 11, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Thurs
Raised on a twenty-mule team tobacco, cotton, pig and cow farm on the cusp of a Carolina Bay, Donna H. Goodman is a native of the Shiloh Community, Sumter County. She is Professor Emeritus of Art at Francis Marion University. Donna, her husband Dewey Ervin and their Jack Russell terrier, Eloise, live in the Pocket Road area near Florence in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
Goodman started producing digital images in 1993. Since then, her work has been included in over seventy-five nationally juried exhibitions and twenty international exhibitions. The images in the “Morning Walk in the Pee Dee” series now number in the thousands.
“Forms and Surfaces” by Roger D. Dalrymple
Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery
May 10 – August 11, 2011
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Mon-Thurs
Roger Dalrymple received degrees in architecture and in art from K.U. and K.S.U. He expanded his southwest studies at Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti in Arizona and studied at the L.A. Design Center and the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked as an artist, architect and teacher in Oklahoma, Colorado and Alaska prior to moving to Greenville, S.C.
“My forms are an expression of my life long exposure to the American Indian Tribes of the Plains and Southwest United States, the Haida and Aleut Tribes of the Pacific Northwest, the Inupiat, Eskimo and Athabascan Tribes of Alaska and the Maori, Aboriginal People of New Zealand and Australia. Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff and Fay Jones work influenced my architectural dreams as all three architects had projects under construction around Tulsa during my formative years.”
