Rob Shaw Opening Reception at Motor Supply THIS WEDNESDAY 6-8

Rob Shaw

You’re invited to join the Jasper Project and special guest artist Rob Shaw on Wednesday, October 21 from 6 - 8 pm at Motor Supply Bistro for a casual reception celebrating the opening of Jasper’s new Rob Shaw exhibition at the bistro. Motor Supply Bistro is located at 920 Gervais Street, and Shaw’s art will be featured in the space through the end of 2026.

Shaw is an award-winning fine artist from Columbia, SC. A graduate of the University of SC with years of experience in the local art scene, Shaw is highly respected for his palette-knife paintings, custom framing, art handling and hanging services, and monthly palette-knife classes.

When he was 15-years-old, Shaw aspired to become a professional artist and began painting daily. As a studio art major at USC, he studied painting and began selling his work. After college, Shaw managed a large art gallery, and in 2018 he opened Rob Shaw Framing and Gallery.

Shaw began his artistic journey by creating realistic paintings that could take as long as a month to complete. Shifting from paint brushes to palette knives allowed him to paint more loosely and quickly. The results were transformational: not only was he able to create paintings more efficiently, but he also found greater joy in the process and began to sell more of his work. 

Shaw never considers any painting a failure: "Mistakes lend history to the canvas," he says, and he often paints new works over old ones. At times he intentionally alters an image to lend character to a painting; he will, for example, drag a sheet of plexiglass across a wet painting to achieve a certain effect.

What Rob loves most about being an artist is “the challenge of taking a blank canvas and turning it into a work of art that people will enjoy for years to come.” Equally important are his relationships with other artists and art collectors.

Rob Shaw Gallery and Framing is at 2123 Park Street in the Elmwood Park Neighborhood.

Announcing The Jasper Project's 2026 Gallery Schedule

Artist - Patrick Parise

For those of us here at The Jasper Project, one of our most satisfying ongoing projects is the monthly and quarterly rotation of artists and their work through our gallery spaces across town. Through the generosity and hospitality of restaurant owners, leadership at the Koger Center and Harbison Theatre, and the management at the Meridian Building downtown, we have been able to arrange for the showing of hundreds of Midlands area artists over the years. For some of our artists, The Jasper Project has guided them through their very first showing. This is a wonderful thing to have the privilege of experiencing and we appreciate our artists trusting us with this honor. And once an artist has shown their work with us, it seems we always become dear friends with both them and their entourage, whether it be family members, longtime supporters, or old friends who come out to cheer them on. Yes, programming, promoting, and handling all the paperwork involved in putting art on walls about town is time-consuming and arduous work. But it’s all worth it when we see the joy and pride on the faces of artists once their exhibition is open and on view.

For 2026, our team has assembled another 40+ individual artists who will exhibit their work in our designated galleries. (This does not include the visual artists we work with in our one-off projects, such as Degenerate Art II and the Peter Lenzo retrospective, coming up this spring at Gemini Arts and Stormwater respectively.)

Without further ado, we are delighted to announce The Jasper Project’s 2026 schedule of exhibiting artists!

Artist- Sonya Diimmler

The Nook Gallery at The Koger Center for Arts

January - Najee Reese

February - Easel Cathedral

March - Cait Maloney

April - Sarah Scruggs

May - Kathryn Morganelli

June - Ginny Merett

July - Sonya Diimmler

August - Isaac Udogwu

September - Patrick Parise

October - Keshoan Johnson

November thru December - K Wayne Thornley

Artist - Harry McFadden

Motor Supply Co. Bistro

February - Harry McFadden

April - Thomas Crouch

July - Katie Chandler

October - Kelley Pettibone

Artist - Clayton King

Jasper’s Tiny Gallery

January - Clayton King

February - Amy Kuenzie

March - Becci Robbins

April - Lucy Bailey

May - Tracey Seibert

June - Betsy Halford

July - Sarah Hilton

August -  Faith Mathis 

September - Jana Willis

October - Wendy Diaz (Inti Eclectic)

November - Megan Tapley 

December - TBD

Jasper’s Tiny Gallery, begun in 2019, is a virtual gallery open 24/7 where you can shop online at your convenience. Tiny Gallery art cannot be larger than 15” in any dimension and must be priced les than $250, with the majority of pieces in the less than $100 range. We developed Jasper’s Tiny Gallery as an entry level space for new collectors and working folks who want to build an art collection on an artist’s budget. By limiting the size of the art we are often able to program some of the area’s most high profile artists who create smaller, more affordable work specifically for this gallery.

Artist - Wilma Ruth King

Harbison Theatre Gallery

Spring - Walker Canada

Fall - Wilma Ruth King

Artist - Lucas Sams

Sound Bites Eatery*

January - Anna Herrera

February - Anna Herrera

March - Lucas Sams*

April - Jessica Ream*

May - Barry White*

June - Michael Morris*

July - JJ Burton*

August - Terri Birthday Show

September - Jackie Bobo*

October - Bonita Strickland*

November - Cam Moore*

December - Emily Moffitt*

*Jasper was disappointed to learn that our gracious host at Sound Bites Eatery has made the difficult decision to close their doors effective February 6, 2026. We can’t thank Terri Mac and her team enough for making all of us at Jasper, and all the artists we represent, feel so at home (and well-fed!) since the very beginning. While we all mourn the loss of this home-base gathering space for artists and arts lovers, we are delighted to celebrate our final artist on the Jasper wall who, coincidentally, is Anna Herrera, the owner’s daughter and a fine artist! (Ironically, we had scheduled Anna’s exhibition as part of the 2026 lineup prior to hearing the news that she would be our final First Thursday artist at Sound Bites Eatery.

We are currently in search of other public walls on which we can show the fully-programmed 2026 roster of Sound Bites artists, so we are announcing that roster with our fingers crossed that the proprietors of a future space will make themselves known. We’d love to hear from you!

** The Jasper Gallery Sidewalk Gallery in the windows of the Meridian Building downtown is currently being developed. We look forward Making the announcement of our first artist roster very soon!

CALL for Visual Artists -- Jasper is Accepting Applicants for the 2025 Jasper Galleries Series

We’re looking for a few good artists!

It’s already time for Jasper to plan our schedule for the 2025 Jasper Galleries Series and we want to hear from YOU! Just follow the instructions on the handy graphic above to let us know you are interested in sharing your work with the Jasper Project and your adoring fans.

In addition to our online 24/7 Tiny Gallery, Jasper has gallery spaces at Motor Supply Bistro, Sound Bites Eatery, The Nook at the Koger Center for Arts, the Lobby Gallery at Harbison Theatre, and at the Sidewalk Gallery in the Meridian Building Windows at Washington and Sumter Streets in downtown Columbia.

Application Deadline is October 15th.

We’re looking forward to hearing from YOU!

Special thanks to the good people at Motor Supply Bistro, Sound Bites Eatery, Koger Center for the Arts, Harbison Theatre, and the Meridian Building for supporting Columbia’s visual arts community by opening their walls to the Jasper Project for programming. We encourage you to support these businesses with your patronage. And if the walls need some love in your place of business, please contact our

Galleries Manager, Christina Xan at cxan@JasperProject.org,

to make plans for a Jasper Galleries arrangement custom created for you and your clientele.

Darren Young Creates Textured Familiar Paintings for Jasper Galleries at Motor Supply Bistro

Opening reception Friday July 12 6 pm

Local painter Darren Young is Jasper’s newest featured artist for Jasper Galleries at Motor Supply Co. Bistro, where for the next three months, patrons can enjoy their farm-to-table meals alongside a curated selection of beautiful oil paintings.  

Young received his BFA in Painting at East Carolina University and his MFA in Painting at Indiana University before studying with Wolf Kahn and Janet Fish at Vermont Studio Center. Now a resident of South Carolina, he paints and draws from observation. Specifically, he is “primarily concerned with creating interesting compositions with shape, color, and light” and his “subject matter is usually of places and people [he is] familiar with.”

“The way that I think of style is it’s basically a person’s point of view on how they want to express their feelings on a canvas,” Young shares. “Years of looking at other great painters does have an effect on an artist, but at the end of the day, you go within yourself and let the mind in the heart express your point of view of how you relate to the world.”

Young’s work—mostly oil, but some acrylic—shifts as the viewer walks across its line of sight. Wide brushstrokes and thick layers create unique texture, causing the images to shift and take shape as one strides up to, and walks back from, the painting.

“I want a painting to look like it was painted, and impasto or building up layer after shows that process very clearly—much the same way that an artist like Frank Auerbach does,” Young details. “Artists like Paul Gauguin and [Henri] Matisse excite me for their color use, and I think about using that kind of an expressionist palette for the most part because it feels natural as a reflection of who I am”

Viewers of Young’s current show will find both natural landscapes intimate to Young—like sunsets and lighthouses—as well as spaces he traverses in his day-to-day life—like he and his family’s living rooms, dining rooms, and porches. 

“What others consider ‘mundane’ I try to exalt to a ‘higher level,’ amplifying those things around me that I live with day-to-day similar to how an artist like Edward Hopper did,” Young shares.

Darren Young’s work is now up at Motor Supply in the Vista and will be up until the end of September. Join us for his Opening Reception on Friday, July12th from 6:00pm—8:00pm.