Columbia’s if ART Gallery’s December exhibition, One / Group: Michael Cassidy + Mark Flowers + Jaime Misenheimer + Jay Owens, is now on view. The show opened December 4th and will run through January 2, 2016. With the exhibition, if ART Gallery presents four artists who are new to the gallery: Michael Cassidy, Mark Flowers, Jaime Misenheimer, and Jay Owens. Cassidy and Misenheimer will be giving a gallery talk on Saturday, December 12th at 2 pm.
West Columbia resident and Michigan native Michael Cassidy has lived in the Columbia area for more than a decade. He earned an MFA from the University of South Carolina. Cassidy was included in this year’s 701 Center for Contemporary Art’s South Carolina Biennial 2015.
South Carolina native Mark Flowers, who lives in the Ashville, N.C., area, has been a presence on the South Carolina art scene for decades despite having taught for more than two decades in Pennsylvania. Flowers used to show at Columbia’s Morris Gallery, which closed more than a decade ago, where he had his last solo exhibition in 1999. The current exhibition at if ART Gallery presents a new entrance into his home state for Flowers, who earned in BFA from the University of South Carolina. His work is represented in museums throughout the Carolinas, including the Columbia Museum of Art, the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Gibbes Museum in Charleston.
Columbia resident Jaime Misenheimer, who is from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, in 2014 received her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, one of the most prestigious MFA programs for painting in the country. She holds BFA and BA in History from the University of South Carolina, where she teaches art.
Upstate South Carolina native Jay Owens, who lives in Travelers Rest, S.C., attended Winthrop University before earning his BFA from Utah State University. He traveled to Niger, in West Africa, to study pottery. He also studied ceramics at the Peters Valley Craft Center in New Jersey and Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine and worked as a studio assistant at Penland School of Crafts.