Congratulations to Jasper Project Board President Wade Sellers for Being Honored as a 2025 Recipient of the SC Governor's Award for the Arts!

CONGRATULATIONS WADE!

The SC Arts Commission announced today that the Jasper Project’s own president of our board of directors, Wade Sellers, is the 2025 recipient of the South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts in the individual artist category!

Wade Sellers (Artist Category) is an independent filmmaker in Columbia who produced his first film within months after graduating from USC in media arts. As the South Carolina Arts Commission’s first media intern, Sellers assisted with the Southeastern Media Institute where he later became an instructor. He became an in-demand lighting director and gaffer on commercials and corporate projects. His short film Gordon’s Ride was featured at the Independent Feature Film Festival. Sellers co-founded the non-profit Hybrid Films in 2002 to function as fiscal agent for underserved filmmakers in the region. Hybrid Films’ largest accomplishment was the Beg and Grovel Film Festival, the first true independent film festival in Columbia. His first Southeastern Emmy Award nomination came with South Carolinians in World War 2, a project he was commissioned to direct for South Carolina ETV. Sellers formed his production company, Coal Powered Filmworks, collaborating with local filmmakers and promoting independent filmmaking in South Carolina. In 2013 he founded the 2nd Act Film Project, helping 84 films be created by S.C. filmmakers solely for screening at 2nd Act. He has supervised more than 25 interns from USC and Benedict College since 2008, lectured and taught in the USC media arts department and was named a distinguished alumnus from the USC School of Visual Arts and Design in 2020. He has served as the board president for The Jasper Project since 2019.

Other 2025 honorees include Dr. Gail V. Barnes, professor of music education and director of the USC String Project. The organization Engaging Creative Minds which was established in 2012 as a private-public partnership resulting from a community planning process led by Charleston County School District; the College of Charleston; the cities of Charleston, Mt. Pleasant and North Charleston; the Charleston Regional Alliance for the Arts; the Youth Endowment for the Arts; and Crystal-Barkley Corporation. The Koger Center for the Arts at the University of South Carolina (Government Category) which supports exceptional art by hosting and presenting transformational experiences that enlighten, educate, entertain and inspire.  The Sumter County Gallery of Art (Organization Category), a non-profit, community-based institution formed in 1969, with a mission to present and promote diverse visual arts and artists, to increase knowledge and to provide art education opportunities to Sumter, Clarendon and Lee counties—an extensively rural region of the state, isolated from the major art centers in the U.S. by geography and economics. The SCGA is currently under the executive direction of Karen Watson.

Congratulations to all the award winners!

Jasper is delighted to share this news and we look forward to celebrating with Wade throughout 2025!

Announcing the 2015 JAY Gala Line-up

It's no coincidence that we patterned this week's 2015 JAY Awards Gala after the Italian Renaissance--a fertile time of humanism, art, architecture, science, and literature. In so many ways, we've been living through our own renaissance over the past several years in Columbia and we want to celebrate this fact at the same time we celebrate the 15 artists honored as Jasper's Artists of the Year Finalists and Winners.

Join us for an evening of Renaissance inspired food, drink (open bar), and entertainment, and the announcement of the Jasper Artists of the Year in Dance, Literature, Music, Theatre, and  Visual Arts.

• Musical performance by the classical guitar duo Duo Cortado who will be playing Renaissance tunes and more
• Renaissance inspired spoken word performances by members of Jasper's Wet Ink Spoken Word Collective, featuring Kendal Turner, Debra McQueen, & Kenneth Denk
• Mini cello concert by Catherine Hunsinger
• Impromptu performances by Al Black and Catherine Hunsinger
• Leonardo daVinci (Michael Krajewski) will be creating his own version of the Mona Lisa from a live model
• Michelangelo (Alex Smith) will be our guest throughout the evening embodying the Enlightenment, inciting evocative conversations, inspiring us with his multiple talents, (and maybe even creating art!)
• Roving Renaissance entertainment from the Trustus Apprentices will keep the spirit of the Enlightenment alive and a smile on your faces
• Il Magnifico's own Court Jester (Chris Carney) will meet you on the walk with fire eating demonstrations
• USC Theatre Students are cooking up a surprise performance for us all
• Bier Doc (Bob Jolley) has a rich selection of special biers and wines
• Be sure to arrive in time to sample the Editor's Punch, created specially for this gala
• Enjoy a sample feast of Renaissance-inspired dishes created by Chef Joe Turkaly
• And, of course,the announcement of the Jasper Artists of the Year!

Tickets are $25 in ADVANCE and $35 at the door. Or join us at 6 for a special champagne reception in which you can sip bubbles, nosh on special treats, and hob nob with some of the greatest of the city's artists.

Come out and support your local arts magazine, celebrate its release, and congratulate the Jasper Artists of the Year Finalists and Winners: Martha Brim, William Starrett, Dale Lam, Eileen Blyth, Kimi Maeda, Russell Jeffcoat, Jullia Elliott, Ray McManus, Al Black, Jordan Young, Craig Butterfield, Heyward Sims, Dewey Scott-Wiley, Jennifer Moody Sanchez, and Kendrick Marion.

Special Thanks to Coal Powered Filmworks, Mouse House, Bert Easter of Easter Antiques, Richard Durlach and Breedlove of The Big Apple,  and Singing Fox Event Planning.

Journey to Japan–Part III in a Series of Guest Blogs by Columbia Filmmaker Wade Sellers

(editor’s note:  Jasper loves it when the work of local artists takes them away from Columbia–as long as they come back home and are generous enough to share their adventures with us while we’re waiting on them. Local filmmaker Wade Sellers’ newest project has taken him to Japan where he’ll be working for the next ten days. Lucky for us, Wade has agreed to post a series of blogs detailing his journey and his work while away. This is the second post in that series.)

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Today was the day off. We did have a pre-production meeting with our PR representative from the Army where we refined our production schedule. There is a lot of tension between the US military and the local population. This is easy to understand as there are F-18s flying over our hotel quite a bit. They are not quiet planes. To us this is relevant because we will be filming some at some residential areas that were battle sites during Ted Bell's time here during WW2.

Anyone who tells you that food doesn't play a big part when traveling for a production is lying. Jeff and I chose not to travel far from the hotel and visited what's called “American Village”. It's basically Broadway at the Beach. It has all the american fare you can imagine and caters mainly to the soldiers and their families based here. Arcades, clothing stores and souvenir stands also crowd the area. By no means however does this mean that the local mom and pop food stands are of any less quality. We had lunch at a small Japanese food stand that had a great teriyaki chicken salad with just chicken, rice, lettuce and an amazing mayonaise sauce. For dinner we joined our Army rep and the Bell's and Jeff and I shared a knock out seafood stew.

Riding in the van, back to the hotel, Ted noticed a giant ferris wheel in the area. We asked him if he wanted to give it a try. His response- “I didn't travel all this way just to die on a ferris wheel.”

We begin production tomorrow and have a busy few days ahead of us. MW.