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.