Q & A with Jasper's Featured Tiny Gallery Artist Mia Estrada

White Colt by Mia Estrada — Size: 4.5”x4.5”
Medium: Acrylic gouache on wood $30

Jasper: Tell us a bit about you. Where did you grow up? Was art in your childhood/family? What led you to art? 

Mia Estrada: I grew up in Lancaster, SC. It’s a small town, for fun you’d usually meet up at the Sonic or the Walmart as those were the only places to really go to. Art was a big part of my childhood; my mom has a print of a Henri Matisse painting that I would study when I was little. She also had a rule that all of us, us being me and my three siblings, all had to either do a sport or an art. My brothers chose music, my sister soccer, and I did art and horseback riding. I’ve been doing art for as long as I can remember, it’s just always been a part of me. 

 

Jasper: Tell us about your education as an artist.

Mia: I went to Andrew Jackson High School and Middle School for their Arts Focus program. That was the first time I really started to get better at art. Now I am a senior at the University of South Carolina getting my BFA for Graphic Design and Illustration. 

 

Jasper: What led you to your preferred medium? 

Mia: My preferred medium is acrylic gouache; I came about this through my internship at Iris + Marie Press. I used to mainly use watercolors and Prismacolor for my work, but the acrylic gouache is just awesome. It has all the benefits of watercolors but the coverage of acrylic paints. The colors are also very vibrant and create a great texture. Using these paints for my work gives me the flat yet vibrant look I prefer for my pieces. 

 

Jasper: What kind of styles do you use within your respective medium?

Mia: I used to struggle with my style. Originally, I thought all art had to be realistic which led to me thinking all my pieces had to be perfect. With the acrylic gouache, there’s almost an immediacy to the work and it makes me work a bit quicker. Now, I tend to create much more simple but colorful pieces, which I truly enjoy. 

 

Jasper:  Tell us about the themes or ideas you usually chase in your work.

Mia: In my work, I try to go for a more folk-art style. The simplicity of it is so comforting to me, along with my love for visiting the mountains and seeing that style brings me back to that joy. A subject that is heavily featured in my work is horses. Going back to my childhood, I have crude drawings of horses from when I was little. There’s a joke that artists hate to draw horses because of their awkward proportions, but I am the complete opposite. They are my absolute favorite things to draw. In a broader sense, I tend to stick to animals in my work. Translating them into my style is a bit of a process. I usually do multiple studies of a subject in pencil as true to life as I can, then I break it down until it is a bit simpler yet recognizable. 

 

Jasper: Tell us about the journey you embark on when you create, both emotional and literal/mechanical.

Mia: When creating, I like to put on a good playlist and mess around in my sketchbook. With my sketchbooks, I like to start the first page off by writing a paragraph of my intentions for the sketchbook. I usually have an idea of what I want to create, these ideas usually hit me in the most inconvenient times when I am away from my sketchbook. This usually gives me time to refine my head, from there I sketch and continue refining until I am happy. I start the final piece either right after or two weeks later. I usually feel finished with a piece a few days after I finish it. I let it live on my desk and look at it throughout the days, fixing and adding things as I feel necessary. 

 

Jasper: Tell us about this show specifically.

Mia: This show, which I’ve named “Small Joys,” are all paintings of subjects that bring me joy. These pieces are also smaller, so the name came naturally. All the works featured are made for this show. My favorite has to be “White Colt,” while painting him he just came off so sassy and full of personality. The mindset I had going into this show was to show flora and fauna that I have seen throughout my life that brought me joy. I love making people happy and bringing joy with my work, so in sharing subjects that bring me joy, I hope to bring that joy to others with this show. 

 

Jasper: If you’ve done any shows or won any awards you’d like us to highlight, let us know! 

Mia: I was an artist in the “Pen Pals” show at Good for the Sole in Five Points. 

 

Jasper: What’s your favorite memory and/or experience as an artist so far? 

Mia: My favorite experience as an artist was tabling at Soda City Market and seeing people enjoy my art. Having that in-person interaction and sharing my work with others is so rewarding and something that will never get old. 

 

Jasper:  What’s in the future for you? And where can we see your art after this show?

Mia: I will be moving to Washington, DC to live with my boyfriend and continue my art journey. I share my art on my Instagram (@mearts03) and will be making a website soon. 

 

Mia Estrada is a Latina illustrator based in Columbia, South Carolina. She specializes in digital art, but traditionally specializes in acrylic gouache, ink, and watercolor. Her art mainly features animals with a spotlight on her favorite, the horse. Mia currently attends the University of South Carolina as a senior and is majoring in Studio Arts with a concentration in Graphic Design and Illustration.

Check Out More of Mia Estrada’s Art at

Jasper’s Tiny Gallery Site

through March 30th!


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.

 

 

 

Marion Mason and Ginny Merritt at Jasper's Sidewalk Gallery

The Jasper Project has been delighted to include the work of two former visual arts educators, Marion Mason and Ginny Merritt, as well as that of Lucy Bailey and Judy Sellers in out Sidewalk Gallery at the Meridian Building on Washington and Sumter Streets in Downtown Columbia this spring.

About his work, Marion Mason says, “I am a visual artist who taught high school Art for
forty-two years. I earned the Bachelor of Arts Degree in studio art (sculpture concentration) from the University of South Carolina, and the Master of Fine Arts Degree (in sculpture) from the University of Georgia. In addition, I earned the Master of Education
(adult & community education) from Carolina. I began my 42 year HS Art teaching career as the artist-in-residence, and on-site coordinator, at the former Richland District One Artistically Talented and Gifted (ARTAG) High School Program. Currently I teach various visual arts courses and serve as the Fine Arts Department Head at White Knoll High School.
Since retiring from teaching in January, 2019, I am now a full-time professional artist again, and exhibit and sell my sculpture, pendants and earrings. Over the years I have shown and won awards at many local, state, regional, and national competitive and invitational exhibits.”

 

 According to Ginny Merett, “My collage work shows the deconstruction of beauty and an escape from reality inspired by stylish women in my life and around the world. I am nostalgic about family gatherings, women’s fashion in the early 1900’s and by personalities I meet day to day. My focus is on taking parts and pieces from current-day media to create present moments, social commentary, and new personalities. My art has been shown in solo and group exhibits at 701 Whaley Hallway: community art gallery, Stormwater Studio, ArtFields, Koger Center for the Arts, the Jasper Project, USC’s McMaster Gallery, SC State Library and Fair, and other local venues like Sound Bites Eatery, Trustus Theater, She Festival, Cottontown Art Crawl and Melrose Art in the Yard. Her work is published in the Jasper Project’s Jasper Magazine Spring 2019 and Fall 2022 editions, and in Sheltered: SC Artists Respond During the 2020 Pandemic; and in Bullets and Band-Aids, Vol. 3.”

 

Jasper's Sidewalk Gallery at the Meridian Building Featured Artist - Debi Kelley

The Jasper Project welcomes four new artists to our 24/7 gallery space in the large streetside windows of the Meridian Building along Washington and Sumter Streets in downtown Columbia. Our board of directors member and Sidewalk Gallery curator, Kimber Carpenter, shares the goods on a new artist each week. This week we’re featuring the artist, Debi Kelley!

Debi enjoys painting classic cars/trucks, wildlife and the colorful landscapes of the South. She is currently an Associate Member of the Pastel Society of America and a Master Pastelist with the Southeastern Pastel Society.  She is also a member of the Pastel Society of SC and the Crooked Creek Art League.  She has received awards in international, regional and local shows, including the Pastel Society of SC, Southeastern Pastel Society, Union County Arts Council, Fairfield County Arts Council, Spartanburg Art Museum, SC State Fair and Crooked Creek Art League.  Her work has also been exhibited at ArtFields.
"My goal as an artist is to draw the viewer in to the painting for a closer look by using liberal touches of color, unusual angles, and detailed drawing to capture movement and life.  I want my audience to create their own story while traveling through the painting."

Join The Jasper Project for Dogon Krigga’s Closing Reception and Artist Talk at Koger

The Jasper Project and the Koger Center for the Arts have teamed up to showcase the work of Dogon Krigga in The Nook, the rotating Jasper Gallery in the latter’s second floor lobby. The work will be up until the third week of March, but we will host a Closing Reception and Artist Talk for the exhibition on March 13 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Dogon will be present to give a talk about Afrosurrealism in art, what inspires them to create, and the intentions behind each piece. Additional prints and merchandise of Dogon’s will be available for purchase during this reception! We are excited to work with Jared Johnson, the onsite photographer and reporter, for the evening, who will be moderating the talk.

Dogon’s Artist Statement:

I use vinyl, paper, and other media on a variety of surfaces to create mixed media collages and murals printed on vinyl, paper, and other adhesive substrates. I draw inspiration from spiritual principles and esoteric concepts found across the African Diaspora to create surrealist artworks at serve as portals into other worlds, and viewsations of Queer, Black people, culture, and identity in an alternate dimension. I use these materials and approaches to encourage the viewer to experience and seek the subtle and unseen worlds, while reflecting on their place in it. I use my work to challenge the status quo and disrupt the conventions of what we know to be cisgendered, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideologies, while offering something beautiful and uplifting in its place. Through this creative process, I seek to make a real way of being in, thinking of, and viewing the universe that celebrates, preserves, and restores historically excluded communities.

Opening Reception for Anthony Lewis at Harbison Theatre - Friday, March 1st

Anthony Lewis at Harbison Theatre Gallery

  • Friday, March 1, 2024

  • 6:30 PM 8:30 PM

  • Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College7300 College Street

  • Irmo, SC

Join The Jasper Project and Anthony Lewis as we celebrate the opening of his exhibition in the gallery space at Harbison Theatre. 
 
At 6:30 PM, Anthony will speak briefly and give you the opportunity to enjoy his work prior to the opening curtain for The String Queens. During intermission, you’re invited to revisit the art and speak with Anthony individually. His artwork will be available for purchase. Learn more about Anthony and his work below.

The exhibition is free and available for viewing from March through May 2024.

About Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis is a South Carolina based abstract figurative painter and photographer. Lewis studied at the School of Visual Art and Design where he graduated from the University of South Carolina with his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Art with a concentration on painting.  

Anthony, a multi-disciplined visual artist, likes to explore the good the bad and the injustices around the black folks' experience in the United States such as, mass incarceration, black on black crime, police brutality, mental health, suicide, the beauty of being black and the everyday struggles of the black man, woman, and child dating back to the early 1900s throughout the great black migration, Harlem Renaissance and well up into the 70s.  He enjoys the concept of being able to travel back in time and capture the being of black folk. 

He likes the use of different techniques and mediums such as acrylic, oil, charcoal, mixed-media, assemblage, and black and white film photography. He merges small scale vintage black and white photographs and larger scale paintings of black people in his paintings to form a collage. He enjoys the exploration of the creative process so he can stretch the limits of his ingenuity, flexibility and mediums needed to be successful during the process. He admires the thought of not being confined in an innovative box.  

Artist Statement

As a visual artist, I like to explore the good the bad and the injustices around the black folks’ experiences, such as, mass incarceration, black on black crime, police brutality, mental health, suicide, and the beauty of being black and the everyday struggles of the black man, woman, and child. His African American men and women dating back the early 1900's, the Black Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance. 

I have always enjoyed thinking about what my life would have been like if I could time travel and live in a different time and place, how I would have existed, loved, struggled, and breathed in another climate, so I named this series, “Blk Beingz-Essence of Matter’ as a need to revisit the existence of black children from different times in the past, like the renaissance era, slavery, the early 1900s and the great migration. 

This series will introduce you to the work I have done over the course of my BFA program at the University of South Carolina. This body of work includes different techniques and mediums such as oil, graphite, mixed media, collage, assemblage, black and white photos. 

I enjoy the exploration of the creative process so I can stretch the limits of my ingenuity, flexibility and mediums needed to be successful during the process. I also admire the thought of not being confined to an innovative box. 

Some of Anthony’s influences are, but not limited to, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Augusta Savage, Bisa Butler, Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Romare Bearden.