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

Where Photographer and Subject Become Artist Together: A Preview of Gerry Melendez’s Whole

“There’s power in photography.” - Gerry Melendez

In the coming weeks, Stormwater Studios will host Whole, a photography exhibition by award winning photographer Gerry Melendez. There will be an Opening Reception this coming Saturday, February 25th from 6–9 p.m., and a closing reception on Sunday, March 5th from 12–3 p.m. 

Melendez is a Salvadorian photographer and filmmaker with over thirty years of photojournalist experience under his belt. He has won numerous awards and accolades over the span of his career, including the honor of Photographer84 of the Year twice by the South Carolina Press Association and six times by the South Carolina New Photographers Association. Recently, he was awarded a Southeastern Emmy for his short documentary entitled Donna’s Story (2022). 

This exhibit is a stunning collection of black and white photography—stripped down portraits with a focus on the individual subject. With regard to his artistic vision, Melendez says, “The premise of the exhibition is really to bring everyone down to the same level in a technical way.”  

He establishes this base level through not just the choice to shoot in black and white, but through the simplicity of the background of the photographs, the lighting, and the literal “stripping down” of his subjects. In essence, Melendez wants to limit our ability as viewers to make assumptions about the subjects as much as possible, saying, “Here, all you get is this one black and white moment in time. That and bare skin.”

Interestingly, Melendez believes his subjects to be very much a part of the artistic process, almost as if they are artists themselves. “The magic or uniqueness is what each subject brings to the table during their shoot,” he says. “Their personality and pose. The energy they show. What they're feeling at that moment. How they want to be perceived. I try not to direct too much and just allow this to happen organically.”  

He gives his subjects freedom of expression, facial or otherwise. He believes in the power of their stories, and the ability of his camera, in collaboration with his subjects, to capture it effectively and provocatively. 

One of these stories is that of Mary, a woman who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 28 years old and had to have a tumor surgically removed from her chest. 

“It took a few years to be a proud member of the ‘zipper club,’” Mary says, “but the scar from the removal of that tumor is part of my story, my fight to be here, and it reminds me each day how strong I am and that it’s just one part of who I am.” 

As for Melendez’s general artistic attitude, he describes his driving force as such: “I want to create art that makes you feel something. Hopefully, it leaves you feeling good. Maybe it inspires you. Maybe it moves you to tears. Maybe it forces you to act. Whatever it does, I have this gift and I want to use it in the best way possible and hopefully leave this world in a better place. You know, Nick Ut's photo of the napalm girl helped end the Vietnam war. There's power in photography.” 

More information about Whole can be found on the Stormwater website.

Photog Caleb Brown of Saucewithspoons Photo-Documents Jasper's 1st House Show - October 2022

Last Saturday, Jasper board member and local arts leader Bekah Rice hosted a house show at the One Columbia co-op as a fundraiser for the upcoming issue of Jasper Magazine. Featured bands included Death Ray Robin, Opus and the Frequencies, and Joseph Hunter Duncan, all of whom blew the crowd away. And by the way, let’s send out one more happy birthday to Joseph Hunter Duncan and thank him for spending his special day on our stage.

Featured artists included Gina Langston Brewer, David Dohan, Adam Corbett, Emily Moffitt, and Olivia Pope, who showed their work pop-up style inside the house at 1013 Duke Avenue, the old Indie Grits homeplace. This is the same place where Al Black hosts his monthly Front Porch Swing Sunday afternoon concert series as well as his once-a-month Jasper’s Tuesday night Poetry Salon.

By the way, Gina Langston Brewer is Jasper’s featured artist-in-residence at the Jasper First Thursday Gallery at Sound Bites in November — and David will be in residence in January 2023.

The bands were sponsored by board members Libby Campbell and Paul Leo with Eric Tucker, the wine and popcorn by Coal Powered Filmworks, and the beer by Muddy Ford Press. We also had a boat load of new helpers, most of whom were friends and family of Bekah. We can’t thank all of these sponsors and volunteers enough. You all rock!

But we were also lucky enough to be visited by local photographer Caleb Brown of Saucewithspoons who grabbed some pretty fabulous shots of the night. Caleb shared some of these shots with us; now we happily share them with you.

Renowned Artists Saunders and Jeffcoat Featured in Upcoming Show at Rob Shaw Framing and Gallery

From our friends at Rob Shaw Gallery

On Friday, October 7, from 6 to 9 p.m., Rob Shaw Framing and Gallery, 324 State Street in West Columbia, will host a reception to launch a month-long exhibit and sale of works by artists Boyd Saunders and Russell Jeffcoat. 

The show’s title, La Femme, recognizes this visual celebration of the eternal feminine presence. Artists throughout history have been inspired to depict women, honoring them both as the source of life and as the embodiment of physical grace and beauty.  

Saunders’ work spans more than fifty years. Painter, illustrator, printmaker, and distinguished professor emeritus of art at the University of South Carolina, he was born on a farm in Tennessee. Winner of multiple awards, Saunders has exhibited around the world, from Argentina to China. He began the printmaking program at the UofSC and has long been a fixture in the art scene throughout the Southeast.

Jeffcoat, a native of South Carolina, specializes in portraits and fine art photography of the South, rendered with a painstaking attention to detail. His subject matter ranges from classical portraits to luminous figures and reflects his expert understanding of a nearly lost artform: the use of vintage cameras and film.

The celebration of the feminine form can be traced as far back as the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf and includes the marble Statue of a Woman from ancient Greece and the many renditions of the Madonna during the Italian Renaissance. Saunders and Jeffcoat have often returned to this time-honored form of artistic expression that remains prominent in contemporary art.  

Rob Shaw Framing and Gallery is a full-service frame shop and fine art gallery. Since opening his gallery in April of 2019, Shaw has hosted monthly exhibits to showcase South Carolina’s many talented artists.

Book Presentation/Discussion--The Verdict: The Christina Boyer Case by Jan Banning @ 701 CCA

Book Presentation & Discussion:

JAN BANNING:

The Verdict: The Christina Boyer Case

Featuring Richland County Chief Public Defender Fielding Pringle

701 Center for Contemporary Art director Michaela Pilar Brown and

world-famous Dutch photographer Jan Banning

Monday, May 16, 2022

7:30 pm

Admission Free

Richland County Chief Public Defender Fielding Pringle and 701 Center for Contemporary Art director Michaela Pilar Brown will lead a conversation at 701 CCA with world-famous Dutch photographer Jan Banning during the first American presentation of his new book, The Verdict: The Christina Boyer Case. The conversation and book presentation will take place Monday, May 16, at 701 CCA.

Banning, a former 701 CCA artist in residence who has had two solo exhibitions at the center, makes the case for Boyer’s innocence in the death of her three-year-old daughter Amber in Carrollton, GA, in 1992. Boyer has been incarcerated for three decades after she accepted – under duress and after receiving poor legal representation – a prison sentence without pleading guilty to avoid a death penalty trial.

“For decades I have admired Jan Banning’s socially focused and engaging portrait projects on menial professions and human conditions otherwise ignored,” said Anne Wilkes Tucker, curator emerita of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, one of many museums that has Banning’s work in its collection. “This moving book calls for what should be and could be done for Christina.”

Boyer’s “heartbreaking case infuriates me,” Tucker wrote, “but came as no surprise. Bullied and abused as a child, she is one of thousands of women without resources who weren’t believed, and had inadequate defense.”

The plight of especially poor defendants in the United States’ judicial system, in which 95 percent of cases never go to trial, will be part of the conversation with Banning. Public attorney Pringle has decades of experience representing indigent defendants.

Banning’s book presents a complex and multi-layered approach to the Boyer case. Two chapters, by Banning and Georgetown University law professor Marc M. Howard, discuss the case and the American judicial system. Photographed pages from the local newspaper provide media context and show the papers’ biased reporting on the case. “The Family Album” shows family photos of Boyer and her daughter, while another section shows hand-written pages from Boyer’s prison diaries. In “Imaginations,” Banning presents interpretive and conceptual photographs, mixing photojournalism and staged art photography, to illustrate aspects of the case, though not literally. “Christina’s Associations” presents Boyer’s written responses to Banning’s photos of the Southern environment, an environment that Boyer has not seen in person in decades.

Banning came across Boyer’s case when he was making portraits of inmates at Georgia’s Pulaski Women’s Prison for his 2016 book Law & Order: The World of Criminal Justice, which examines crime and punishment in five different countries through photos and text. Since then, Banning – by training a historian, with decades of experience as a photojournalist – has spent years researching the Boyer case, spending more than six months in the small town of Carrollton, Carroll County, and elsewhere in Georgia.

New York Emmy-winning production company Latchkey Films, contributors to the Netflix series The Innocence Files, is making a documentary about the Boyer case and Banning. Banning’s and Boyer’s exhibition about the case, The Verdict: Beyond A Reasonable Doubt?, opened in February at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, the national Dutch Photo Museum, in Rotterdam.

Banning was born in 1953, in Almelo, The Netherlands. His work has been exhibited in some 30 countries and is in the collections of many museum, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Atlanta’s High Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Banning has published more than a dozen books of photography. Among his books and exhibitions are Bureaucratics, about government officials in several countries, including the United States; Comfort Women, about Indonesian women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II; Traces of War, about forced laborers who survived the Japanese Burma and Sumatra Railways building project during the same war; and Down and Out in the South, about homeless people in Columbia, SC, Atlanta and the Mississippi Delta. Both Bureaucratics and Down and Out were exhibited at 701 CCA, where a residency for Banning provided the impetus for and beginning of the Southern homeless project.

701 CCA is a non-profit visual arts center that promotes understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of contemporary art, the creative process and the role of art and artists in the community. The center also encourages interaction between visual and other art forms. 701 CCA is located at 701 Whaley Street, 2nd Floor, Columbia, SC 29201.

Something Blue at 701 Whaley Hallway

1st Place - Kim Kim Foster

2nd Place - Kim Kim Foster

3rd Place - Russel Jeffcoat

Better Days by Kim Kim Foster

PhotoSC presents Something Blue featuring the work of 15 local photographers interpreting of the concept ‘blue” in a photographic exhibition which opened on Thursday, April 7, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. in the Community Hallway at 701 Whaley.

The prospectus asked photographers to address the concept of blue – “a color – what shade, tint or hue? An emotion – what does it feel like? A time of day – dawn or dusk? A memory of who, where or what?”

Photographers juried in the show include Sandy Andrews, Kimberly Case, Steve Chesley, Kim Kim Foster, George Fulton, Susan Hogue, Latrease Holman, Russell Jeffcoat, Mathew John, Tracy Martin, Fred McElveen, Maggie Mullin O’Hara, ML Miller, Yeshua Perez, Ed Shumnes, and Sam Wolfe.

Kim Kim Foster is awarded the first and second place prize in the show, beautifully illustrating both the color and the emotion in her two photographs, ‘Better Days’ and ‘Where from Here?’ Dark and moody, these two photographs reach out to the viewer in on an emotional level as well as thru her color palette.

The second place went to Russel Jeffcoat, a well-known Columbia photographer, for his unique cyanotype print, ‘Abandoned,’ an image of old tires heaped in a pile. Cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic processes with a distinctive blue color, often used for botanicals, it is known as a blueprint.

The exhibition was juried by Leslie Burns, a noted alternative process photographer from Charleston, SC. Burns has been exhibited internationally and published in Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice by Christina Z. Anderson. She has been featured on Fotosavant.com, Lenscratch.com and OneOneThousand.org. In June 2012, Burns was named as one of the “100 Under 100: The New Superstars of Southern Art” by Oxford American Magazine. She has been an Instructor of Photography at University of Georgia, Trident Technical College, College of Charleston and Redux Contemporary Arts Center.

The juried exhibition features 31 images that span the genres of abstract, architecture, alternative processes, fantasy, landscape, nature, portraiture, still life, and street photography and will hang thru the end of June 2022 in The Hallway at 701 Whaley.

PhotoSC is a 501C3 non-profit arts organization dedicated to the exploration of photography and visual culture. Supported by the SC Arts Commission, our long-term plans are to illuminate the general public and the art community about the photographic canon through education and gallery shows, to address visual literacy and photography’s role in society, and to create spaces where photographers can reveal their work to a larger public thru in a dedicated facility