Capturing Memories: Kristin Holzer at Jasper’s Tiny Gallery this November -- By Liz Stalker

By Liz Stalker

Kristin Holzer, a Columbia painter, has had a passion for paint, and its power of visual permanence since she was a child. “Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved to create,” Holzer, who is completely self-taught, says, “I have always used my art as a way of capturing my memories. I would paint my pets, places I traveled to, and local landscapes that I loved.”

Following her move to South Carolina in October of 2021, Holzer found herself drawing further into her landscape work. “When I moved to Columbia, SC, I began to paint local landscapes and landmarks as a way for me to explore my new home,” Holzer says. Holzer has already painted a number of iconic state sites, from the 200-year-old Poinsett Bridge in Landrum to the lush marshes of Charleston, to the USC Horseshoe here in Columbia. Each of these pieces, which feature vibrant natural greens, bright lighting, and sharp shadow work reflect a deep appreciation for the landscape and keen eye for detail. This literal and artistic exploration has culminated in her current goal of painting every single one of the 47 state parks in South Carolina.

In addition to this goal, Holzer has found fulfillment in her commission work, saying, “I have found a love for not only sharing my artwork with others, but also painting other peoples’ pets and memories[…] I have been blessed to receive so much support from my local community, and it has been an absolute joy sharing my artwork with people who love South Carolina as much as I do now.”

Holzer’s show at the Jasper Project’s virtual Tiny Gallery, which marks just over three years of her South Carolina residency, opens Friday, November 1st, and is available through the end of the month.

Jasper Welcomes Olivia Pope to Tiny Gallery by Emily Moffitt

Our newest resident artist in the Jasper Tiny Gallery is Olivia Pope, an artist with many hats who primarily works with stained glass. Pope is no stranger to visual arts – she has taught herself dozens of forms of art and creation over the years, such as watercolor, sewing, cosplaying, oil painting, crocheting, and more. Over the last four years, however, Pope fell in love with the art of stained glass.

 
 

“I was initially drawn into working with glass by an initial spark of inspiration from watching a game show where glassblowers compete with one another,” Pope says. “The hands-on nature and sheer intensity of the whole process is fascinating, and one I hope I get the chance to try one day. Shortly after looking into glass as a medium, I realized creating art with stained glass was more accessible than I originally assumed.” Pope got to collect the necessary tools to break into the foray of stained-glass work, all in the comfort of her own home.

The process of creating a new work of art with glass is both meditative and exciting for Pope. It is also extremely rewarding. The versatility and variations within each piece of glass provide unique challenges that she encounters every time she comes back to work on a glass project. Throughout a lifetime of working with various media, Pope typically would learn to create something by starting with the basics, then learning from mistakes, and eventually stopping when satisfied with the project altogether, keeping the medium in the back of her mind to return to for a potential future project. Working with stained glass felt different, however. “Every step of stained glass is its own challenge with varying difficulty levels,” Pope says. “No two pieces are the same, even if they are literally the same pattern. There is always something to learn, a trick to discover, an “a-ha!” moment.”

Pope’s life has been surrounded by the arts and she engages in them almost every day. If there was one moment to pinpoint as a catalyst for the arts continuing to shape her life, she recalls a moment from when she was an anchor vendor and artist in the former NoMa Warehouse. “I was chatting with a shopper who told me that the work that I was creating will become family heirlooms – valuable works of art that deserve to exist from generation to generation,” Pope says. “That comment struck me in such a way that completely reframed my thinking on so many levels. The reality that visual arts have become—and will become—the legacy of so many people, even me, is profound.”

Pope’s artwork is available for purchase through the rest of October. She also plans to donate 10% of her sales to hurricane relief.

Emily Moffitt Bridges the Abstract and Illustrative for Jasper’s Tiny Gallery

Salted Heron - Emily Moffitt

Emily Moffitt has been a fundamental behind-the-scenes player for the Columbia arts community for years. A graduate of the University of South Carolina holding a BA in both Studio Art and English, Moffitt is both the marketing assistant and gallery curator for the Koger Center as well as the Secretary of the Jasper Project and the visual arts editor for Jasper Magazine. 

Beyond supporting the arts, Moffitt is herself a multimedia artist—an illustrator who works in primarily ink, gouache, and watercolor and whose work and art alike is “dedicated to developing the cultural landscape of Columbia.” 

Creating art as a mode of self-expression has been part of Moffitt’s roots from childhood, whether sharing melodies on her flute or crafting identities through cosplay. She grew up sketching characters and scenes from her favorite cartoons and video games—but in late high school and college, Moffitt began to realize how vital visual art was for her identity. 

Coral Cluster - Emily Moffitt

Specifically, visual art became a way for Moffitt to connect to her Puerto Rican heritage and, with this realization, she unlocked a path where she could create with intention and within overarching themes. These sinews keep her grounded as she explores the endless possibilities art allows, “combining [her] love for illustration and for abstract art in different ways, allowing [herself] to grow outside of the box and to experiment with different styles.” 

Though her first solo show, in a way, this Tiny Gallery serves as a way of coming home for the young artist. “This collection of work is a combination of getting back into the groove of creating, learning what works best for me, and work that I know I love to do,” Moffitt shares.

For this show, Moffitt has created a cast of characters in an almost visual linked-story collection. Here, fine line harpies gaze into the distance, mysterious jesters dance for an unseen audience, and fish sit in brightly colored tins and swim throughout thoughts alike.

“For this show I found myself drawn to comfortable colors like blue, and I wanted to use as many of my materials I already owned as I could,” Moffitt says. “I typically am the type of person who loves to control things, so using wet media like watercolor pushes me out of that boundary and makes me relax and let the medium work itself, rather than me overworking it.”

Fish for Thought - Emily Moffitt

Moffitt’s Tiny Gallery show will be up until September 30th and can be viewed 24/7 via Jasper’s virtual gallery page. Patrons can also follow her work on her Instagram @thewildflowermural.

Alex Ruskell Creates Whimsical Friends for Jasper’s Tiny Gallery

Nighthawks by Alex Ruskell

Alex Ruskell is a man who wears many hats, serving as the Director of Academic Success for the University of South Carolina’s Law School by day and parading around stages with his band, the Merry Chevaliers, at night. 

All the while, strange little figures plague his mind, and fortunately for those who call Columbia home, those whimsical dudes materialize into joyful paintings patrons can hang on their own walls.

 

Crooner by Alex Ruskell

“When I started painting, all I really wanted to do was make people happy,” Ruskell shares. “I know that sounds dopey and saccharine, but that was it—along with making enough money per art show that I could take my family out to dinner without feeling guilty about it.” 

For his Tiny Gallery show (which has made his work available to those nearly as far-and-wide as the outer space dwellers he often paints), Ruskell has put together 8 new works alongside prints of 2 popular pieces.  

On the gallery site, patrons will see dinos and dragons floating in space (with astronaut helmets for their tails, of course); crooning, karaoke monsters; and kings and goths alike just trying to get by. Essentially? The usual.

Spaced by Alex Ruskell

“The painting thing has worked out better than I could hope for,” Ruskell says. “I've got paintings in my yard that the neighborhood children have named; I see my paintings in the backgrounds of college dorm photos; and I get asked to do commissioned paintings for family birthdays, baby nurseries, and wedding gifts.” 

Alex Ruskell’s Tiny Gallery show will be live until August 31st, so be sure to check out his funky friends filled with heart before then on Jasper’s virtual gallery space. 

“Life is wonderful, but everyone has their down moments,” Ruskell says. “I like to think that a person might buy an alien eating a slice of pizza, stick it on his or her wall, and get a chuckle out of it now and again."

 

Kara Virginia Russo’s Planetary Soul Sketches for Jasper’s Tiny Gallery

Kara Virginia Russo is an emerging visual and performance artist based in Greenville and Columbia, South Carolina, who creates intimate portraits of her own and others’ inner selves. For the month of July, she is Jasper’s featured Tiny Gallery artist. 

Russo is a multimedia artist who works in ink, drawing, embroidery, collage, and found objects, both on paper and in sculpture and assemblage. This variety of style and texture allows her to parallel the rich images that flow and intertwine in her mind. 

Though she went to art school, afterwards, she “didn’t make art for around 12 or 15 years,” feeling like it was “a language [she] didn’t speak.” When she finally started again, she naturally gravitated towards circles.  

“I made circles because they felt incredibly symbolic. Everything in my life was changing all at once during that period, and the circles stood in for all the feelings and questions and explorations I was having around my ideas and beliefs about God,” Russo details. “The perfection of the circle, and the inability to draw a perfect one by hand…there was a lot of things I was playing with that I could make sense of visually and let go of needing to think verbally for a while.” 

Russo shares that, “upon her adult diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, she embraced her inner imaginative world and her love of symbol, pattern, and repetition and developed a visual vocabulary and the mixed media techniques to support it.”  

“I began exploring an imaginary world of my own, in which the planetary landscape gave me a visual vocabulary for interactions with myself and with God,” she describes. “I've always just thought of this place as simply The Planet. I'm still playing with those things, which is why much of my work feels planetary.” 

Russo uses these skills to craft not only the visions within her own mind’s eye, but to gaze at the energy of those around her, taking what they cannot see of themselves and reproducing it. Beyond her solo work, she has collaborated on several musical projects, contributing visual art and experimental film, as well as live ritual-based performances.  

Her style has taken a distinct shape, one formed from “filling up sketchbooks as fast as [she] could.” Though many of her works start in a sketchbook as individual pieces, she has even begun mounting and framing entire sketchbooks behind glass. 

“It makes the pieces feel like museum artifacts or something. Explorer's notebooks, like I've gone to the planet, looked around at how things work and look and grow and move, and come back with my explorers notes and diagrams and drawings,” Russo shares. “And of course, the planet is just a stand in, a way of exploring reality that tries to get behind things and into the essence. Or, thought about another way, I make windows into reality. The reality we can't see. In this way my work functions a little bit like religious iconography.” 

Russo’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in North and South Carolina and Germany, and responses to her work still overwhelm her: “I like to joke that if you make several thousand circles, eventually they become so interesting that people start wanting to pay money for them (which still amazes me. Every. Time.).” 

For her Tiny Gallery show, Russo has collected pieces from two of her series: Music of the Spheres and Tiny Sketchbook. Her Music of the Spheres series is a cacophony of shaded circles, given direct and relation by electric white lines. Her Tiny Sketchbook series expands these images with further texture and detail, as ink expertly bleeds and threads dip in and out of the paper. 

“Beauty has a way of putting things back together; my art practice is a way for me to throw open the windows of my interior and let the sunshine in,” Russo describes. “I'm always hoping that the finished art does that for other people too.” 

Virginia Russo’s work will be available to peruse and purchase via Jasper’s virtual gallery space until July 31st.

 

 

 

Jasper's Tiny Gallery Artist for June is Trish Gilliam

Trish Gillam is a multimedia artist and a lifelong resident of South Carolina, where she paints both individually and as part of Swirly Girl Arts—a painter duo consisting of her and her daughter Kimber Carpenter. (Full disclosure—Kimber Carpenter is a member of the Jasper Project board of directors.) 

After graduating in 1966 from University High School, Gillam studied business administration and eventually settled into a career in real estate and massage therapy. It was after retiring in 2016 that she decided to plunge into the art world. 

When it comes to art, she is completely self-taught and includes Jackson Pollock, Wassily Kandinsky, and Helen Frankenthaler among her influences. Particularly, three of her local peers—Alicia Leeke, Lee A. Monts, and K. Wayne Thornley—further influence her aesthetic.  

Gillam paints with a variety of mediums, including acrylic and ink, and finds inspiration in “the beautiful colors and dynamic shapes of nature—I spend many hours in my garden, walking in the woods behind my home, and enjoying time on the coast of South Carolina. These experiences have brought much joy and happiness to me, and it is my desire to capture them in my work,” she says.  

Gillam refers to her work as “free style,” which has an organic, unique flow. In her studio, she paints while listening to music, often dancing as she creates. It is this openness, joy, and freedom that she hopes to share with others through her art. 

She has shown her work—solo and through Swirly Girl Arts—across the Midlands, including locations such as the Robert Mills House, Cottontown Art Crawl, Art in the Yard, Rob Shaw Gallery, Musician’s Supply, NoMa Warehouse, The Artist’s Coop, Pitter-Patter Pottery, Artistic Aspiration, The Aloft Hotel, and The Land Banks Loft Historic Building. 

For this show, Gillam has put together a showcase of her various styles and talents. Patrons can see collaged girls with sassy expressions, textured landscapes, and whimsical homes—all with an array of bright colors and styles. 

Trish Gillam’s work will be up on Jasper’s virtual Tiny Gallery until the end of June.

Jasper's TINY GALLERY Artist, PAT CALLAHAN, Transforms Columbia Scrap Metal into Wearable Works of Art

May’s Tiny Gallery artist is local jeweler and creative Pat Callahan, who some may know by the name Entangled Jewelry.  

Making and fixing objects were staples of Callahan’s childhood, with “creativity, making, and ingenuity always encouraged & patterned at home.”  

“A small hutch was always stocked with colored and plain paper, crayons, glue, and such. My mother & maternal grandmother helped my sisters and I explore embroidery, crewel work, knitting, crocheting, sewing, and baking,” she recalls. “My father, a mechanical engineer, could fix and repair seemingly anything, had an amazing array of tools, and somehow found time to craft furniture and carve miniature-scale US Naval ships.”  

Callahan spent her childhood drawing, and as she grew, she began replicating the life around her in her drawings: livestock on farms, animals from the zoo, and her own family moving around their everyday life. It is no surprise, then, that she would study art—graphic design specifically—in college, receiving a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.  

After a career in graphic design, Callahan retired from USC Press—the university’s scholarly book publisher. Now having the time, she took her first jewelry class jewelry-making class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. At this time, she resumed a sketchbook practice and spent more time than ever in her studio. 

Callahan found her way to jewelry naturally through her figure drawing and sketching. In the 90s, she began figure-drawing with the group About Face, and this was her main form of creation for 15 years. 

“By 2007, I was building shadowboxes, which married my ingenuity with my love of nature findings, metal whatnots, and drawing. As part of this work I learned jewelry techniques to secure items in my boxes,” she shares. “In 2009 I moved my studio home after 13 years at Vista Studios, downtown Columbia, and soon surrendered to making jewelry with recycled, vintage, and metal finds. Through it all, my artistic expression beautifully counterbalanced a computer-based career.”

 This all led to Entangled Jewelry, where Callahan makes her creations through building off a special primary material: metal harvested from the streets of Columbia. She finds these materials to be “beautifully scuffed and abraded and rich with story” and believes “working with recycled and vintage elements honors [her] concern for Mother Earth.” She combines these with additional vintage and repurposed elements—and the rare gemstone—for edgy, industrial statement pieces.

The crafting process itself is organic. Whenever Callahan finds a particularly “tantalizing” piece, she keeps it on her work surface, and from here, pairings begin forming in her mind.

“Some pairings are immediate and assemble quickly; others evolve and demand I learn new skills or discover a tool,” she says. “This assemblage, one-of-a-kind approach feeds my creativity and curiosity. Possibilities are endless!”

 This industrial, innovative assemblage is apparent in her Tiny Gallery show. Washers and watches become wearable pieces of art in her necklaces. Metal you’d think nothing of as you walk over it on Main Street becomes the stunning centerpiece of a pin. Beads interspersed with charms and toolbox necessities transform into earrings.

“My Entangled Jewelry leans industrial style and genderless. This selection includes pins and clip pins as alternatives to necklaces and earrings,” Callahan says. “I believe in adornment!”

Some may be familiar with Callahan’s work from juried artisan markets such as the Rosewood Art & Music Festival, Sesqui Artisan Market, Cottontown Art Crawl, and Artista Vista Live Mart, and patrons can find her after the show as well at Art on State on May 10, 5:30 to 9:30, in West Columbia.

To purchase any of the works in this article, and to view the additional works in the show, head on over to Jasper’s online gallery space: Tiny Gallery.

-Christina Xan

 

Jasper Collabs with Richland Library for A BIG TINY GALLERY Art Exhibition March 15th through ARTISTA VISTA

The Jasper Project is delighted to join forces with Richland Library for A BIG TINY GALLERY, an art exhibition inspired by the Jasper Project’s Tiny Gallery series which originated in the Jasper studio at Tapp’s Arts Center in October 2018 and transitioned to an online only project early during the Covid pandemic. A BIG TINY GALLERY will feature a selection of previous Jasper Project Tiny Gallery artists who were invited to show and sell physically smaller pieces of art at affordable price points that would ostensibly be more attractive to beginning art collectors and other artists. No art measures more than 25 inches in any direction or is priced over $250.

The exhibition will open on Friday March 15th  from 7 – 11 pm during Richland Library’s OVERDUE: Curated for the Creative event, with a closing reception on Friday, April 19th from 6:30 – 8:30 as part of Richland Library’s celebration of Artista Vista.  Both events are free and open to the public.

Visual artist and Jasper Project board of directors member, Keith Tolen, is managing this project, working with Ashley Warthen, who is a librarian and arts coordinator at Richland Library.

Artist - Renee Rouillier

Participating artists include Tennyson Corley, Ginny Merritt, Chilly Waters (Richard Hill), Regina Langston, Benji Hicks, Ron Hagell, Christopher Lane, Keith Tolen, Lucas Sams, Lindsay Radford Wiggins, Thomas Washington, K. Wayne Thornley, Jeffrey Miller, Kathryn Van Aernum, Mary Ann Haven, Fred Townsend, Adam Corbett, Crush Rush, Vanessa DeVore, Pascal Bilgis, Michael Krajewski, and Sean Rayford.

Artist - Sean Rayford

The Jasper Project will oversee sales of art via QR codes, scannable with a smart phone anytime the library is open.  Proceeds go directly to the publication of Jasper Magazine.

The Jasper Project is an all-volunteer organization with no paid employees and a working board of directors who manage a number of multidisciplinary projects ranging from the Second Act Film Project to Fall Lines literary journal, the Play Right series, and many more one-off adventures. For more information please visit JasperProject.org.

Opening Friday March 15th  from 7 – 11 pm during Richland Library’s OVERDUE: Curated for the Creative

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Closing Reception on Friday, April 19th from 6:30 – 8:30 during ARTISTA VISTA

Jasper Tiny Gallery Artist Benji Hicks Profile: From a Singular Idea to Animals with Stories

Benji Hicks’s whimsical, personality-filled animals have been playing on Jasper’s Tiny Gallery site since the beginning of August. Keep reading to learn more about Hicks and how he makes his art! 

Hicks has considered Columbia his home since birth­—over 50 years now—having resided in West Columbia, specifically, since 1973. He is a completely self-taught artist, woodcarver, and woodblock print maker, though he can recall the act of creating being valuable to him from an extremely young age. 

“For as long as I can remember, I have always been an artist. Drawing with pencils and pens, and later, painting with watercolor” Hicks says. “Growing up, I got to spend many hours in my dad’s woodworking shop, learning to use tools and make things. This is when I found a love for wood carving.” 

Hicks’s professional work as a carpenter compounded with his self-driven exploration of art, ultimately leading to a new relationship with woodblock printmaking—and to handmaking unique frames for each individual print. 

A Japanese woodblock printmaking technique called Mokuhanga is what caught Hicks’s attention: “Mokuhanga can best be described as a multi woodblock printing technique where there is a keyblock (black outline) and a separate color block carved for each color in the print. My prints are made with anywhere from 2 blocks to as many as 21 blocks per print…since every print is handmade and shows subtle differences, each one is considered an original piece of art.”  

Mokuhanga is similar to other printmaking techniques in that the artist carves into solid surface before adding a colored medium and pressing some form of paper onto the surface before pulling it off to reveal a design. Since embarking on this journey, Hicks has also experimented with adjacent forms of printmaking as he becomes more comfortable with his personal style. 

When it comes to what Hicks likes to make, he is “always drawn to funny little characters and…animals doing human things,” he says. “With animals, it doesn’t matter what age they are. They can be young or old and wise, and still get away with being playful and silly or just out to have fun. I tend to let nature take its course and inspire me in my art,” Hicks says. “If you see a character show up in my artwork, then you can believe that I had an encounter with that sort of creature in nature, a dream or maybe even a song brought them to mind. Each idea is a seed. Once planted, it grows into a new series.”  

These series may emerge from a single seed, but it is just that—an idea. Hicks does not have a firm idea of how exactly an idea will emerge into its final physical form; he prefers to let the characters and their stories bloom organically. 

“If it makes me smile or even giggle a little, then I know I’m on to something. As I create one, I see the next,” Hicks says. “They lead one to another until the end of that path. Some paths are longer than others.”  

This Tiny Gallery show is a mix of old and new from Hicks—all coming together to tell a new story. A “woodsy theme” ties this collection together, with “Bear Loves Honey” being one of his favorites. 

“I was trying to make each print bring a smile and also evoke the imagining of the before and after. I try to capture the moment just before or just as the main event happens,” Hicks says. “You can imagine if there were more panels like a comic book, you would see the bear getting ready for a hike and packing his backpack to go look for honey. Afterwards, he would be happy with his found stash of honey. I tried to capture the moment he sees the bee and feels the anticipation of finding honey.”  

Hicks hopes that when people view the pieces, they “will recognize these moments and use their own imagination to fill in the before and after.” 

For more on Mokuhanga and the art of Benji Hicks’s, check out the fall 2023 print issue of Jasper Magazine, releasing October 2023 — details on release party are coming soon. In the mean time, Hicks’ Tiny Gallery show will be up until August 31st at Jasper’s virtual gallery site. 

After the show, you can see his work on his Facebook, at the Cayce Arts Guild, the South Carolina Artists Group, and the Meeting Street Artisan Market.

 

 

Tiny Gallery with Mana Hewitt – Aesthetically Pleasing, Conceptually Interesting

The month of June brings Mana Hewitt’s beautiful hand sculpted jewelry to Jasper’s Tiny Gallery. Hewitt is a recently retired Senior Instructor from the University of South Carolina’s School of Visual Art and Design, where she helped develop the jewelry making program in 2007. Other teaching endeavors include Columbia College for eight years and a year at a middle school. Her experience in painting, ceramics and metalsmithing has led to her cementing a prolific legacy in all disciplines. Hewitt grew up in a household surrounded by the arts; both her mother and grandmother studied art in college, and her and her siblings all grew to appreciate the arts through music and visual arts, passions that Hewitt eventually shared with her husband and daughter. Starting with oil paints and large-scale metals, she shifted to working with more small-scale media in 2006. This shift turned into the sterling silver/enameled jewelry work that Hewitt is so well known for to this day. Having an interest in the transformation of a section of metal can have lends to the endless possibilities for the jewelry design that Hewitt undertakes. “I am intrigued by metal’s transformation from rigidity to vibrant and fluid designs through hammering, etching, casting and effort,” Hewitt said.

Hewitt’s earrings are perfect statement pieces for those looking to spice up their jewelry collection. There are a variety of monochromatic pieces like the “Freeform” pairs, iridescent and colorful sets like “Drops” or “Fans” and even some statement piece sets like the “Rockets.” She always aims to meet her goal of creating jewelry that is both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually interesting. Working with metal for so long, Hewitt describes herself as someone who may just think with metal as well.

Aside from talent and drive, Hewitt has an abundance of ideas and inspiration when it comes to creating new works. “I have never had difficulty in finding inspiration or ideas,” Hewitt said. In fact, I probably have too many and feel there isn’t enough time to do everything I want to do.” Hewitt’s creations have been featured in both group and solo exhibitions across the Eastern U.S. She has collaborated with the Jasper Project before by being one of the featured artists in the Supper Table project, where she created a piece based on Eartha Kitt.

The marketability of jewelry and the small scale is appealing to Hewitt, who mentions that some of her favorite pieces are ones enameled in the champleve and cloisonne techniques. While very demanding, Hewitt says that "jewelrymaking provides endless challenges but provides such satisfaction when it all comes together.”

Hewitt’s earrings are available for sale on the Jasper Project’s Tiny Gallery site through the month of June. You can find more of her portfolio on her website.

Exploring Jasper Tiny Gallery Artist Tennyson Corley’s Whimsical and Charismatic Ceramic Creations

Tennyson Corley has been making art in Columbia for years, but in the past couple of years, a chance encounter with clay led to an exciting journey rife with whimsical characters. Her current Tiny Gallery show features a snack-hoarding hoodie-wearing raccoon, a photography-loving frog in stripes and a young opossum boy playing a dead cowboy. 

A few years ago, when Corley signed her son up for a homeschool clay class at the Columbia Art Center, friend, and artist Bohumila Augustinova convinced Corley to take her own beginner wheel throwing class—and she did—eventually having her own wheel at the center. 

“By the end, I didn't want to stop so I put my name on a very...very long waiting list and a year later I was playing in the mud again. Cut to 2022, I had just completed a mural for The Audubon Society at Folly Beach and that felt like a completion to my painting journey,” Corley shares, “I began experimenting with sculpting creatures and I gave them little stories. Like a golem, or something, they needed a story to bring them to life.”  

Though her 2D art may not always have made this evident, Corley has “always been drawn to the illustrative art of children's books, and even deeper, descriptions of folkloric creatures and mythology,” made even more evident by her penning of companion stories.

“I never felt like those concepts fit easily into my 2D work. Clay opened a door for my true, weird essence to flow in some respect. I also have a dark sense of humor. I think giving my creatures certain traits acts upon a social commentary of society,” Corley intimates, “Like, is it ok to act like this just because they are cute? Or this one is quite different, but hey, they're just like me! Can we look past appearances and accept what is below the surface. I enjoy coming at it in a playful way.” 

The process for making these creatures is always different. Corley jokes that her mind is always running to the point she wishes she could shut it off. She may start with a specific animal and then create a story around it, or she may have a story in her mind that needs a creature. Something as simple as a song lyric or a quote may “ignite a spark that becomes a flame that [she] can't damper until it is out of the kiln.”  

Though all art has a story, Corley’s pieces have full narratives pulled right from her imagination that describe the identities, characteristics, and backgrounds of the characters. While everyone, including her, tended to ask, “what is this painting about,” she wanted the characters to speak for themselves. 

“I wanted to open the introductory door, so-to-say, for the viewer, the patron, to be able to compile upon the story. I also like the idea of making them more like a quick read children's story for adults. And maybe hope that if a child reads them, they wouldn't get the dark bits,” Corley details, “It's also fun to see people at events linger over the sculpture and their stories and even strike up conversations with complete strangers.”  

In this show, Lulu Leatherhead, Otis the Opossum, Snack-coon, and Artemis are Corley’s current favorites—but her decision always fluctuates: “It is actually really hard for me to pick a favorite. I spend so much time with each piece. From idea, to construction, to glazing, and story. I feel like they are all my weirdo children. I know them, and then I have to see them off to collectors.” 

Corley’s creations have been catching eyes even beyond Cola lately. She was recently published in San Antonio’s Pepper Magazine and asked to be an Arts Contributor. Each magazine will feature one of her ceramic illustrations (sculptures) along with its story as an evolved/revolutionized comic strip.  

You can find her works on Jasper’s Tiny Gallery until May 31st and continue to follow her on her Instagram @tennyson_corley_art. Corley is currently planning a small workshop with the Columbia Art Center for the fall to introduce people to her process.

A Message from Cindi for Midlands Gives 2023

Jasper is an all-volunteer 501c3 with NO paid employees and NO overhead, so your donations go directly to the Columbia, SC arts community via events and publications.

Me with Jasper Project board president Wade Sellers and Elvis (aka Patrick Baxley) at Bernie Love 2023

Welcome to one of my favorite times of the year—the time for me to report back to you, our supporters, on how the Jasper Project has been using the funds you entrusted to us over the past year. It’s a joy to celebrate what we can accomplish together with your funding and the Jasper Project’s labors of love.

I always have a soft spot in my heart for Jasper Magazine, which was the seed of the Jasper Project and remains my favorite project of all. Last spring, we published a beautiful issue featuring Lindsay Radford Wiggins on the cover and Michael Krajewski as our centerfold artist. Kristine Hartvigsen wrote the piece on Lindsay, and I had the honor of writing about Michael who, actually, was the centerfold in the first ever issue back in fall 2011. This time, however, he is fully clothed!  We also featured a piece on Mike Miller’s new book, The Hip Shot, WOW Production’s first YouTube series,  Quincy Pugh’s Veteran’s Day Parade painting series, Carleen Maur’s experimental filmmaking, Artists for Africa, and two new books from Muddy Ford Press, (Jasper’s original underwriter before we became a non-profit under the leadership of Larry Hembree), including Night Bloomer by Jane Zenger and More God Than Dead by Angelo Geter. We wrote artist profiles on Lucy Bailey, Diko Pekdemir-Lewis, and Rebecca Horne; Music editor Kevin Oliver compiled a jam-packed article on 10 music artists to watch in the coming year; Will South wrote a piece on Tyrone Geter and his work and life in Gambia; and I had the honor of profiling David Platts, the ED of the SC Arts commission. Sadly, we also memorialized Wim Roefs and Mary Bentz Gilkerson.

Our fall 2022 issue of Jasper featured Wilma King on the cover and Jim Arendt in the centerfold. We wrote about Wideman-Davis dance, Baba Seitu Amenwahsa, Steven Chapp and Jerred Metz, Arischa Connor’s television successes, the Soda City jazz scene, Jamie Blackburn, poet Monifa Lemons and her stint as an actor on Lena Waithe’s film, Crooked Trees Gon Give Me Wings, Carla Daron’s new book The Orchid Tattoo, Amy Brower and the life of a casting agent, new theatre editor Libby Campbell, Dustin Whitehead’s new film Hero, Elizabeth Catlett, and included several poems and music reviews.

I don’t want to give too much away about the spring 2023 issue which is releasing on Saturday May 20th at the Artists Showing Artists event, hosted by Desirée Richardson of Death Ray Robin, but if you meet me that evening at the One Columbia Co-Op at 1013 Duke Avenue, you’ll get some fresh print featuring Philip Mullen, Olga Yukhno, Bohumila Augustinova, Katie Leitner, Dick Moons, Ivan Segura, Drink Small, Alyssa Stewart, and lots of surprises

Fall Lines volume IX - Cover art by Sean Rayford — https://www.seanrayford.com/

After the magazine my next favorite project has to be Fall Lines—a literary convergence. We just released our 9th volume and issued the call for our 10th. I’m incredibly excited to announce that, in addition to the Broad River Prize for Prose, which went this year to Tim Conroy, and Saluda River Prize for Poetry, which went this year to Jo Angela Edwins, that next year we will also be offering the Combahee River Prize to a SC BIPOC writer of poetry or prose. We’ve also formed an ad hoc committee, captained by poet Randy Spencer,  to study the best ways to grow Fall Lines as it moves into its 10th year.

Along the same lines we awarded the Lizelia Prize, named in honor of anti-Jim Crow poet-activist Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer, to Myrtle Beach poet Maria Picone. Maria will have her poetry chapbook titled Adoptee Song, published by Muddy Ford Press through a sponsoring relationship with the Jasper Project. Board member Len Lawson managed this project.

We devoted a lot of our time last summer to the Play Right Series, a project managed by board member Jon Tuttle. The winner of last year’s Play Right Series was first-time playwright, Colby Quick. After spending the summer working with Community Producers Ed Madden, Bert Easter, James and Kirkland Smith, Paul Leo and Eric Tucker, Bill Schmidt, Wade Sellers, and myself, as well as the cast of Colby’s winning play, Moon Swallower, we presented a heavily produced staged reading, directed by Chad Henderson, at the Columbia Music Festival Association in August. We were also delighted to invite the public to the reading and, via our relationship with Muddy Ford Press, offer published copies of Moon Swallower for sale.

Jasper Friends Dick Moons and BA Hohman pose with our host, Clark Ellefson, outside the Art Bar

In December, Clark Ellefson and Andy Rodgers hosted the Jasper Project at the Art Bar on Park Street where we staged our first official Santa Crawl, inviting all comers to don their Santa suits and drink like it was Christmas. We had a fabulous time and enjoyed a delicious house-created cocktail list with a portion of each sale going to the Jasper Project. Thanks Clark, Andy, and everyone at the Art Bar!

In February, the good folks in the Capital City Playboys invited us to partner with them on the fundraiser concert event, An Evening with Bernie Love—A Tribute to Elvis. We themed the event around Valentine’s Day and welcomed more than 100 folks to the 701 Whaley Market space where Marty Fort, Jay Matheson, Kevin Brewer, and Patrick Baxley as Elvis! We also hosted artists Jamie Peterson, Gina Langston Brewer, Cait Maloney, and Lindsay Radford Wiggins who showed and sold their work. At the same time, and thanks to Lee Ann Kornegay, we had reserved the Community Hallway Gallery at 701 Whaley for the month of February to stage an art exhibit we called Love Hurts/Love Heals featuring K. Wayne Thornley and Wilma King.

In March, created a new event called Artists Showing Artists. Artists Showing Artists is an opportunity for established artists to share the spotlight with other artists who may be emerging, new to the area, or who they want to highlight. The project encourages collaboration within and between disciplines and enlightens the community about both the featured artists and the art curation process. Our first event featured Saul Seibert who invited poet Alyssa Stewart (we’re publishing her first ever published poem in the next issue of Jasper Magazine - thanks Saul!), visual artist Virginia Russo, and rapper Keith Smiley.

Our next Artists Showing Artists event will feature Desirée Richardson of Death Ray Robin as our Artist Host. I hope you can join us on May 20th to pick up a copy of the spring issue of Jasper Magazine and check out all the artists Desirée has invited to join us!

In fact, our various gallery spaces across town have grown considerably, helping Jasper to spotlight the work of artists in small, captured spaces. We do a First Thursday artist-in-residence rotation at Sound Bites Eatery on Sumter Street that has thus far included Michael Shepard, Alex Ruskell, Kimber Carpenter, Ginny Merritt, Adam Corbett, Quincy Pugh. Marius Valdes, Gina Langston Brewer, Lindsay Radford Wiggins, Lucas Sams, Colleen Crichter, and Keith Tolen.

Steven White speaking to theatre goers at Harbison Theatre

In January, the Koger Center opened a space on the second floor of their building just outside of the Donor’s Gallery for the Jasper Project to show the art of Columbia-based artists. We opened with Thomas Crouch, then Lindsay Radford, followed by Quincy Pugh. We’ve scheduled additional visual artists to fill out the remainder of 2023 and are already programming into 2024 at the Koger Center as well as at Harbison Theatre in Irmo, where we’ve shown David Yaghjian, Steven White, Michael Krajewski, Lori Isom Starnes, and are currently showing Olga Yukhno. We also keep a running gallery at Motor Supply Bistro and in the sidewalk gallery at the Meridien Building on Main Street.  

I’m actually thrilled to announce that the Jasper Galleries helped put almost $18,000 into the pockets of working artists in Columbia since last March!

Board Member Bert Easter staffs the kegerator at a Jasper Project House Party

As the Jasper Project board of directors has grown, we’ve done a bit of reorganization. Christina Xan, whose work on the Tiny Gallery continues to be so efficient that we tapped her to manage all our gallery spaces, is now also serving as our treasurer. Emily Moffitt was also elected board secretary in January, just after officially joining the board, and Wade Sellers and Kristin Cobb both continue as board president and vice president respectively. Bekah Rice is officially our digital manager as well as our operations manager and, typically, our events director. We welcomed new members to the board including visual artists Ginny Merett and Kimber Carpenter, and Jasper Magazine theatre editor Libby Campbell

I’m sure I’m forgetting an event, a happening, or a party.

Please remember, it is your support of Jasper’s passion for supporting, promoting, and validating Midlands-area artists that allows us to do what we love. Thank you for your continued support.

Cindi

April 2023

 

Please enjoy a few more photos from the past year of the Jasper Project below —

Carla Damron at Richland Library leading discussion on her book, The Orchid Tattoo, for Jasper’s Nightstand Book Club

Me judging the Mad Hatter Art Show

Featured Artist Wilma King talks with artist Gerard Erley at the Love Hurts/Love Heals art show that she shared with K. Wayne Thornley— a Jasper Project with 701 Whaley

Lisa Hammond served as the poetry judge for Saluda River Prize for Poetry in 2022’s Fall Lines

Jasper was invited by the good folks at Curiosity Coffee to arrange a pumpkin carving contest among the city’s artists — it was a huge success, a lot of fun, and we had some beautiful (and terrifying) pumpkins result!

Point person = Bekah Rice

We featured the art of the four artists on the board at Artista Vista this spring - Ginny Merett, Kimber Carpenter, Laura Garner Hine and Emily Moffitt

Olga Yukhno speaking to theatre goers at Harbison Theatre for her spring exhibit

Our 2019 project, The Supper Table, is still touring. Here it is at the Myrtle Beach Gallery of Art just after being on exhibit at the Morris Center for Arts and History

Michael Krajewski with his exhibit at the Jasper Gallery at Harbison Theatre

Pure, Childlike Joy in Pascale Sexton Bilgis’ Little Flat People

This month, Jasper’s Tiny Gallery has featured the work of Pascale Sexton Bilgis, a French mixed media artist currently located in Charleston, South Carolina. She is predominantly concentrated on expressionist landscape paintings, which are inspired by the vast majesty of the French countryside she grew up in, and sculpture. 

Bilgis’ sculpture work is highlighted in particular in Tiny Gallery, which is currently showing a collection of works from her Little Flat People series. These Little Flat People are all made of the same clay, same color, fired in the same kiln at 2000 degrees, and if it weren’t for their various poses—and their surroundings made up of shells, rocks, and other bits of painted clay—they would all look virtually the same.  

Still, through these aforementioned other elements, the Little Flat People take on lives and personalities of their own, reflecting many of the lives Bilgis notices around her. Of her inspiration behind the Little Flat People, Bilgis says on her website, “I found my inspiration in humanity and the people I see every day; especially, the purity and innocence of children, and their innate empathy for others.”

This childhood innocence and purity is certainly reflected in many of Bilgis’ works, including “Flying on a Mushroom,” which depicts two Little Flat People holding each other’s hands at the peak of an oversized mushroom, positioned in a sort of Superman-esque pose with their legs dangling off the mushroom’s cap; and “The Oyster Playground,” which depicts several childlike Little Flat People climbing up stone steps and sliding down a playground slide made out of an oyster shell, all in various modes of play, their limbs turned about in wild expressions of anticipation and enjoyment. 

Throughout the entire series, the Little Flat People take on a variety of activities, from fishing to reading to playing to drinking to simply being with one another, like in the piece “Golden Green Dad and Son,” which depicts a Little Flat Person standing proudly with his Little Flat son on his shoulders, looking out over a little clay pot. Each of the pieces is imbued with a kind of pure joy; no matter the occasion the Little Flat People may find themselves in, the kind of joy that can serve as a reminder of the wonder of life’s little things or simply provoke a smile in whoever may be so fortunate as to gaze upon it. 

All pieces are available at the Jasper Project’s Tiny Gallery until the end of April and are priced between $25 and $50.

Vastness Captured in Small Scale: Nikolai Oskolkov's Tiny Gallery Art

St. Basil’s Cathedral

Jasper’s Tiny Gallery currently features the work of Moscow-born and Columbia-based artist Nikolai Oskolkov, also known as NikO. 

For this series, Oskolkov’s artistry met with the typical constraints of the gallery, most importantly that pieces must be under 15” x 15”, which is smaller than what is typical for an oil painting—Oskolkov’s preferred medium. The artist says that he “love[s] working on small artwork for every benefit that it offers,” and through this collection, he demonstrates a wide variety of approaches that actually utilize this size constraint. 

Interestingly, many of the pieces in this collection are landscapes, which evoke an impressive expansiveness for paintings that are so physically small. The perspective work in these pieces does a lot to contribute to this feeling.

In a painting entitled “Midwestern Plains,” the sky with its large puffy clouds looming over the diminutive strip of grassy plains down below, dotted with buildings in the distance, takes up most of the painting surface. In another painting, “Lagoon,” the lower part of the canvas depicts gently rippling water, which reflects a distorted image of the architecture in the painting’s upper third.  

Laagoon

“This expansiveness is also reflected in a number of pieces portraying Russian architecture from historically and culturally significant monuments, like St. Basil’s Cathedral and Kremlin, to more industrial features, like Downtown Moscow and War Train. These architectural features stretch across the canvas, impressing the viewer with their intimidating stature, seeming at once close and yet far removed from the natural world they’re in front of, in many ways rivaling it.  

In contrast to these vast landscapes, Oskolkov also examines significantly smaller subjects in close ups. The piece Fallen Angel depicts an angel figurine, lying face down, its golden head reflecting something indiscernible. Its upper back is chipped, just behind its wings, and the hole left behind is sizable, offering a glimpse of the darkness in the hollow of the figurine. These details evoke a kind of vastness as well, emphasizing just how much there is to even the smallest subject. 

Be sure to check out Nikolai Oskolkov’s work at the Tiny Gallery here through the end of March! All pieces are under $200, and the artistry is sure to amaze you.

Jasper Talks with Sean Rayford on Inspiration, Favorite Photographers, and Tiny Gallery

“I rode my bicycle on Willie Nelson's ranch —” 

 

This month, we’re showing off some stunning photography from award-winning and Time Magazine Best Photos of 2021 feature photographer Sean Rayford. Hear more about his life and his current show with us below.

 

JASPER: Did art come to you young, or did you find it later in life? 

RAYFORD: Shortly after my birth in Annapolis, Maryland, my family moved to a small town in the center of the Australian Outback. If you draw crosshairs on the continent, you'll find the town of Alice Springs on the southern edge of the Northern Territory. Downtown, if you might call it that, there was a photo lab, and the print machine was placed in the front window of the storefront. I remember standing on the sidewalk watching with intrigue as tourists’ photos dropped out of the machine. Every errand downtown was highlighted by the opportunity to see this in action, and if there were no photos being printed, it was a disappointment. 

We moved back to Maryland when I was five. My older brother was into art and me, I was into sports. During one stretch, he was processing film in our basement closet. In high school I’d take an intro class to black and white photography, probably the same one that inspired him to process film at home, and I'd join the school newspaper. 

 

JASPER: Did you continue to study it officially or did it remain more so a personal project? 

RAYFORD: I came to the University of South Carolina in the late nineties as a computer science major and planned a career in that field. During my first week on campus, I joined the Gamecock Newspaper and by the Spring semester I had taken on the role of the photo editor. Here, I had special access to an endless stream of subject matter, a digital film scanner, and most of the time I'd get reimbursed for the film expenses.  

I earned a Bachelor of Media Arts degree from USC, but there's little art background in my education. Early in photography I was just experiencing life, playing (practicing) with a camera, being curious, documenting things, learning, and making mistakes. Art wasn't a concern of mine. I just enjoyed playing with light, shapes and color and experiencing what the world had to offer, in person. I didn't know what I was doing. I probably still don’t, and I guess that's the beauty of it. There’s always a chance to learn and apply it to the next time.

  

JASPER: What did you do after graduation? 

RAYFORD: After I graduated from USC, I interned and freelanced at The State Newspaper, where I came into regular contact with photojournalists approaching photography with different artistic approaches, definitely more thoughtful than I. They each had their strengths and weaknesses, and those different styles heavily influenced my approach. To my knowledge, I was the last contributing photographer at The State Newspaper who regularly shot assignments on film, processed and scanned negatives. Back then, whenever I processed photos on film, I thought about how I wasn’t making photos. The darkroom was awesome - but cumbersome.  

Here, photo editor Chuck Dye pushed me to look more into the traditional art components of photography. Chuck brought me in with Robert Frank’s American’s and pushed me to look at great painters. I watched a bunch of lectures and presentations on YouTube while I continued to freelance and take on personal projects. This gave me consistent opportunities to apply what I was learning. Now, I’m more likely to be listening to audiobooks about the creative process.

 

JASPER: And what kind of experimenting do you like to do now? 

RAYFORD: Before I became a full-time photographer in 2015, I bartended at New Brookland Tavern where I occasionally hosted arts and crafts night when we didn't have shows. At the least, most people would color in the weird coloring books I acquired. We’d paint and experiment with all sorts of mixed media in a very social manner. They were typically slow nights, so I had time to participate. But it’s been a while since I’ve consistently done anything like that. I took one of Michael Krajewski’s classes this year though. That was fun. Now, I feel too much pressure as a freelance photographer to find the next paying gig or find the next personal photo project to pick up those types of projects. 

 

JASPER: What makes photography such a special medium for you? 

RAYFORD: I kinda see photography as a five-dimensional Tetris game, with color and light joining our three standard spatial measurements. Introducing people to the mix, increasing the speed at which your blocks fall. n my primary field of photojournalism, my art form isn’t photography, but rather visual storytelling. And when it's time to "be creative" there is no backing out. You have to perform and deliver. It's somewhat like sports in a way, but there aren't measured winners and losers for each performance. The friendly competitiveness and the continuous repetition using cameras, taking lots of assignments, taught me a lot about photography and especially about photographing humans. However, you won’t see any people in the pieces here in this Tiny Gallery. Most of the photos here are what most folks might call landscapes. I would call them natural "scene setters" in my visual story-telling process. And for much of these, they were made for that purpose. 

 

JASPER: Along those line, are there any particular ideas you aim to express with your work? 

RAYFORD: I don’t think I’m trying to express many of my ideas with photography, but I can't escape the fact that I'm bringing all of my personal experiences into my photo making process. I'm organizing visual components to tell a story — and my life experiences heavily influence that process. I’m trying to take the viewer to where I’m at, at that time. And if I’m making photos as a photojournalist, I also have to do this within our ethical boundaries — like not moving items and not asking folks to perform for the camera (portraits excluded). 

There are always recurring themes and subject matter with my photography, but it's extremely varied because of what I'm tasked with as a documentarian. And all those different things that I photograph influence one another, both in how I approach it as a human and someone practicing an art form.

 

JASPER: Tell me a bit about the logistical aspects of your creative process.  

RAYFORD: My creative journey begins when I have my cameras in good working condition, batteries charged, and with appropriate memory cards ready to roll. I should be hydrated and fed. As technology advances so do the tools that I use. Logistics and planning are huge factors. With photography, you physically have to be somewhere at a specific time, and there are no do-overs. It’s typically impossible and would definitely be unethical.  

There's an old adage that luck sits at the intersection of preparedness and opportunity. My creative journey cannot ignore the preparedness aspect. That’s so key because once you get out into the field doing your thing, you shift into your highest gears and need to rely on the brain-hand-camera connection, where fractions of seconds matter.

 

JASPER: With all these “fractions,” how did you select the photos for this specific show?  

RAYFORD: For the Tiny Gallery I chose photos from recent visual explorations of the natural world here in the Carolinas, from the Midlands to the North Carolina mountains. 

The photos were made as recent as Oct 31st of this, and the oldest about 3 years ago. There is a group of single exposure photographs of "snappy syncs" or synchronous fireflies (photuris frontalis), a rare species that inhabits central South Carolina. 

 

JASPER: Is there anything specifically you hope people get from viewing these images? 

RAYFORD: I hope the collection will inspire people to explore. We spend a lot of time inside with technology. Go see neat things. Congaree National Park is a time machine. The mountains of North Carolina — epically ancient. 

 

JASPER: Hard question, I know, but could you pick a favorite photo in the show? 

RAYFORD: My favorite photo may be the most recent photo, the only one here from Congaree National Park. That excursion has been on my calendar for several months, and just when I was at the right spot, I was blessed with gorgeous light. So many times, it doesn't work out that way. 

 

JASPER: Speaking of favorites, who are your favorite photographers, or artists in general? 

RAYFORD: My favorite photographers are William Klein, Henri Cartier Bresson, Jill Freedman and Saul Leiter — to name a few. Outside of photography, Edward Hopper and Goya got my attention as a kid, and they still do. 

 

JASPER: Do you have any real “wow” moments in terms of recognition? 

RAYFORD: A photo I made covering the Ahmaud Arbery story was included in Time Magazine's "Best Photos of 2021." 

 

JASPER: Most random moment related to your photography career? 

RAYFORD: At some point in my journey as a photographer, I rode my bicycle on Willie Nelson's ranch. 

 

See Rayford’s Tiny Gallery show at Jasper’s virtual gallery until the end of November.

 

Announcing Tiny Gallery’s 2022 Ornament Show

Last year, Jasper had its first Tiny Gallery Ornament Show, and this year we’re doing it again with five artists across disciplines. From ceramics to acrylic to trolls, these handmade works make a perfect gift or addition to your own holiday decorations.

Check out our lineup and mark your calendars for when their work goes on sale December 1st!

Adam Corbett

Photo by David Russell Stringer

Adam Corbett is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and visual artist from Lexington, South Carolina. After releasing numerous records, helping to produce a musical, and taking a break from his career as a music teacher, Adam branched out into visual art as a way to cope with the COVID-19 lockdown. Throughout that period, he has experimented with various mediums in a variety of formats focusing always on exploration, play, and following his muse.

Tennyson Corley

Tennyson Corley is a contemporary artist from the heart of South Carolina. Her current work is what she describes as "ceramic illustration." Sculptural story-book creatures with a healthy dose of Beatrice Potter and Orwellian Animal Farm influence, each with their own, at times, humorous back story.

You can check out her work on Instagram @tennyson_corley_art and on her website: https://www.tennysoncorleyart.com/

Michael Krajewski

Michael Krajewski is a self-taught artist who has shown in numerous galleries, collaborated on large, commissioned pieces for museums, painted live at art events and been the subject of magazine and newspaper profiles. He was Jasper Magazine’s first centerfold in 2011. His style has been called neo-expressionist and compared to Jean-Michel Basquiat's, though Krajewski says he is less interested in defining, more interested in producing. He’s had solo shows at the HoFP Gallery, Frame of Mind, and Anastasia & Friends in Columbia, SC, and participated in a two-person show at the Waterfront Gallery in Charleston and in a group show at 701 Whaley.

Holly Rauch

Holly has always had a creative streak, starting as a child sketching characters from the Sunday comics, and enjoying cross-stitch needlework and paper crafts as an adult. Her recent interest in acrylic painting began by attending “paint parties” with friends. With no formal art education but wanting to learn more, she used online tutorials to teach herself dot art, palette knife work, fluid acrylics, one-stroke, and other acrylic techniques. She’s most enthusiastic about abstract designs, but also enjoys painting landscapes, scenes of nature, flora, and fauna. In 2006, Holly lost her only child, Lyssa, to cancer. Lyssa was 20 years old and a sophomore at Winthrop University in Rock Hill SC, studying technical theater when she passed away. The Lyssa Rauch Memorial Scholarship was established in Winthrop’s Department of Theater and Dance, funded entirely by private donations. But when the scholarship experienced financial difficulties, Holly decided to start selling her art and use her hobby to benefit a worthy cause. Now the proceeds from the sale of Holly’s art directly funds this scholarship. A $1,000 award is presented each spring to a rising 4th or 5th year student, keeping Lyssa’s memory alive, and helping future artists follow their own passions in the arts. Holly is a member of the Cayce Arts Guild. She lives in Lexington SC with her husband Todd Leger, Alexandra the Golden Retriever, and three crazy cats: Jaime, Tyrion, and Cercei. You can view Holly’s entire body of work at her Facebook page “Heartisan Love”: htps://www.facebook.com/HeartisanLove

Lucas Sams

Lucas Sams is an award-winning Columbia, SC multi-media artist working in painting, sculpture, film, digital/multimedia, and installation art. Sams works have been exhibited locally and regionally in major art festivals, galleries, and alternative spaces, and featured in Jasper Magazine, the SC State Newspaper, Garnet and Black Magazine, and the Timber Journal of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Tiny Gallery Artists Debora Life Converges Love for Gardening and Pottery in Her Ceramic Creations

This month, we have been delighted to showcase Debora Martin Life’s ceramics during out October Tiny Gallery show. Learn more about her and her work below! 

Debora Life grew up in Adena, a small coal-mining town in Ohio. She recalls her father having his own trucks and employees—while her mother kept both the books and the home—and cites observing them as one of her early influences: “That may have been an early exposure to seeing how things worked and what it took to keep a business up and running.” 

Though her first real exposure to art, and pottery specifically, would come after a move to Marietta when she was 11. This larger school brought hands-on experience with pottery and various mediums. In terms of training, though, art is not what Life went to school for—on the contrary, she is a trained nurse. 

Her first love of creation was really with plants. Life remembers “early passions include[ing] seeing the country by way of motorcycle riding with our daughters in a sidecar, then progressing to backseat passengers as they grew. We made several cross-country trips, falling in love with the West.” 

After moving to Arizona, Life became a Master Gardner and then became involved with a Cactus Society that met monthly at the Botanical Garden in Phoenix. As she learned about the world and its nature, she came to a conclusion: “with plants you need pottery.” 

Life began taking ceramic classes with every instructor she could at Arizona’s community colleges, and even after she moved to Columbia a few years ago, she continued this new love, working with pottery regularly at the City of Columbia Art Studio, which she still frequents. 

“My work has evolved as I have improved with practice and having the time to explore new avenues. Working a few evenings at the City Studio every week, friendships have grown also,” she shares, adding that her love of gardening and pottery have begun to merge, “Using leaves and textures are often incorporated into my artwork. I also have chickens and vermiculture at my Rosewood home.”  

In this Tiny Gallery show, Life has presented a plethora of practical yet beautiful pieces. Butter dishes and serving trays are lined with bright hues of cerulean or carved with individual faces and cities. The occasional pendant, animal, and even creature makes an appearance too.  

This is only the most recent in South Carolina opportunities Life reflects on as poignant to her. She has attended various conferences, a pottery exhibit at the Chandler Center, and was a vendor at the Phoenix Botanical Garden during a Cactus Society Show and Sale. 

On creating ceramic work, she reflects as such: “While I think of myself as someone who can carry out a task in a prompt fashion, pottery has been the most humbling of crafts that I have taken up.” 

You can view Life’s work until October 31st at Jasper’s virtual gallery: https://the-jasper-project.square.site/tiny-gallery  

In the future, you can see Life’s work at the State Fair (10/12-23), Sesquicentennial State Park (11/6), Melrose Art Crawl (11/20), and Midlands Clay Art Society and Cottontown Art Crawl (11/23).