Shooting Match Coming to Saluda Shoals Park

I admit it. I’m a shutterbug. I’m also just a tad competitive, so it’s like catnip when a photography contest comes around. You may have heard that the always breathtaking unearth celebration of nature and the arts is returning to Saluda Shoals Park at the end of September, and festival organizers are seeking submissions for their unearth Amateur Photography Contest. Do I hear bike trip? My son and I soon will trek to Saluda Shoals in pursuit of that winning photo because, to qualify, photos must be taken at Saluda Shoals Park. The judges will be looking for images that capture the magic and natural beauty of the park. You can take pictures of trees, the river, trails, animals, and even people enjoying the park (but be sure to get photo releases if you submit any pictures with identifiable people in them; the critters, however, probably don’t have legal representation).

While I’m on the subject (and although I’m merely a hobbyist at this point), I would like to offer some tips for shooting your best nature photos. Did you ever notice how most sunset photos tend to look alike? Sure, they’re pretty and all, but boring unless there’s some special, different element to them. And while it’s great to stand back and see the “big picture,” I’ve had some surprising success focusing on tiny, off the beaten path treasures I happen upon. There is so much beauty everywhere you look as long as you just see. Fungi are among nature’s most fascinating ‘sculptures,’ and they come in all sort of shapes and colors. Don’t overlook the lichen on tree bark, insects, small reptiles, even the tiniest of flowers. Focus your lens on them and see what happens.

Earlier this year, I took a hiking trip to Jones Gap State Park in the Upstate. I just happened to bring my camera with me. Here are a few examples of what I found there (and shot on sight) over the course of just a couple of hours.

See. It’s OK to get down and dirty, play a little Pachisi with the beetles. There’s a lot that’s below (or even above eye level). Anyway, I was pleased with these shots.

OK. I know a lot of you will want to join me at the unearth photo contest AWARDS CEREMONY on Thursday, Sept. 29. Photos will be exhibited at the park’s Environmental Education Center throughout the entire unearth weekend, Sept. 30 – Oct. 2. Cash prizes will be awarded in Adult and Junior divisions in each of four categories: General Nature, Human Nature, and Digital Creativity. The deadline for entries is Saturday, September 17, at 5:00 p.m. For a copy of contest rules, go to www.unearthsaluda.org or call (803) 772-1228.

And if I see you on the trails at Saluda Shoals Park between now and the 17th, well, … bring it!

- K. Hartvigsen

PS -- While we have your attention, see that little box over to the right? Have you had a chance to submit your email address so that "What Jasper Said" can come directly to your mailbox everyday? Why not go ahead and do that now? Just takes a sec -- and then Jasper can visit you everyday and keep you up to date on all the arts happenings in town. Thanks!

Check out the official Jasper website at

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Vino & van Gogh? Yes, please.

This past Friday, my parents and I went to Greenville to a place called "Vino & van Gogh." Essentially, Vino & van Gogh is a place where an individual could go to drink wine (or another beverage of choice) and paint with acrylic on canvas. Usually there is a theme each night, so each person in the class would paint the same subject. The theme for the night we visited was "Starry Night Greenville." Vincent van Gogh is one of my absolute favorite artists and his "Starry Night" is by far my favorite painting, so naturally this was right up my alley. What could be better than wine, van Gogh, and "Starry Night"?

As I was painting my Greenville-style "Starry Night," I started chatting with the owner, Marquin Campbell, and began to wonder why Greenville has two places like this -- Design with Wine and Vino & van Gogh -- while Columbia has none. This makes no sense to me.

Columbia has an active arts community yet little that actually allows people to create even modest works of their own for fun. Sure we all love going to art openings and seeing art by individuals we all know and love, and even art by those we do not know. So why not have something that allows people to express themselves on a blank canvas with things they love -- drinks, good friends, and paint? One doesn't even have to know how to paint or be good at painting to enjoy this.

So when is Columbia going to offer an experience similar to the one I had at Vino & van Gogh?

--Lenza Jolley

Lenza's mom, Kim Jolley, is pictured with her work in progress

For more of Jasper Magazine visit our website at

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For more info on Vino and van Gogh, visit vinoandvangogh.net.

David Yaghjian's Everyman Conjures a Connection

 

While gazing last night at repeated depictions of the central character in David Yaghjian’s wonderful new exhibit, “Everyman Turns Six,” I kept thinking that somehow I knew this bald, pot-bellied, middle-aged man who preferred being naked or wearing only his underwear. Everyman is a loose cannon, that’s for sure. He’s the scary neighbor who is sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous. The one you hear talking to himself while he’s unfolding cheap lawn furniture. Tom Waits’ “Buzz Fledderjohn.” Mike Cooley’s “Bob.” No, wait a second. I’ve got it: He’s Charles Bukowski.

Bukowski was the heavy-drinking, womanizing waster who scribbled poems between (and during) sessions in the seediest bars of Los Angeles. He lived in flophouses and flea-bit hotels. His best friends were winos and prostitutes. He was the Everyman of poets. Like Yaghjian’s creation, Bukowski could have easily fired up a leaf blower in the front yard while wearing nothing but his tighty-whiteys. I can hear him now, screaming a verse over the leaf blower to a passing girl on the sidewalk, “Your swagger breaks the Eiffel tower, turns the heads of old newsboys long ago gone sexually to pot; your caged malarky, your idiot’s dance, mugging it, delightful --- don’t ever wash stained underwear or chase your acts of love through neighborhood alleys!” (From “Plea to a Passing Maid,” 1969)

For years, academics have panned Bukowski’s work, but regular folks who like an occasional verse or two, have found his poems honest and refreshing, as well as disgusting and titillating. I’m no art critic, and my association of Bukowski with Everyman is certainly not derived from some deep understanding of Yaghjian’s thought-provoking paintings. The connection was simply triggered by physical similarity and a shared artistic weirdness I sensed from the paintings.

That’s one of the things great art can do: Dust out the back corners of your mind and help you make creative connections you might not have otherwise. “Everyman Turns Six” runs through Sept. 6 at 80808 Gallery in the Vista.

Here’s another (R-rated) Bukowski poem to be going on with, one called “Drunk, ol’ Bukowski, Drunk.”

I hold to the edge of the table with my belly dangling over my belt

and I glare at the lampshade the smoke clearing over North Hollywood

the boys put their muskets down lift high their fish-green beer

as I fall forward off the couch kiss rug hairs like cunt hairs

close as I’ve been in a

long time.

--Mike Miller

For more of Jasper Magazine, please visit our website at www.jaspercolumbia.com

Jasper says, "Arms be bound with rope and shame"

One thing about Jasper, he gets his hands dirty. Sometimes he comments about the art he sees and hears, but sometimes he’s got his hands down in it, making something. So sometimes we’ll write about what we’re doing.

So: I’ve been cutting up Jesus. Will I go to hell for this?

I’m working with a collaborative of artists –visual artists, filmmakers, performance artists—on a show called Saint Sebastian: From Martyr to Gay Starlet. The one-night-only gallery show will be Sept. 1 at Friday Cottage Artspace downtown (1830 Henderson). (Yes, we know, we know: same night as First Thursday.) The event was planned in conjunction with SC Gay Pride on Sept 3; the idea was to add an art element to the week of events.

The show, conceived by Alejandro García-Lemos and Leslie Pierce, explores the quirky iconography of Saint Sebastian, martyred twice (the first time didn’t work—Saint Irene pulled all the arrows out), his eyes always raised to heaven but his body writhing across this history of Western art in masochistic ecstasy. How does a Christian martyr become a gay icon? What is it about his story, his image, the representations of his martyred body? (The publicity art—which juxtaposes a male pin-up with stained glass, by Leslie Pierce—captures, I think, some of the weirdness of this icon.)

There’s a great image of Sebastian in the Columbia Museum of Art. The Virgin and Child are pure Byzantine, blue and gold and flat, but Sebastian is looking over the Virgin’s shoulder like the Renaissance, naturalistic, a real body, the cords of his strong neck.

The Sebastian show will include visual art, performance art, photography, film, a small souvenir chapbook of original art and poetry, a DJ, a cash bar, and a couple of boys standing around with arrows.

I’ve been writing poems about Sebastian—some about the image and history, some responding to specific works by the other artists. The interactions and collaborations have been rich and rewarding. (Note to self: there should be more interdisciplinary artist collaborations. Such a great way to generate new work.) A film visually responds to a poem which responds to a print, the film incorporating a voiceover of the poem and the imagery of the print. A photo documents a performance art piece which uses a poem which responds to a print (the poem projected—performance art into film—onto a male body).

I was asked to turn a small room into a poetry chapel. I’ve got icons, prayer cards (with a prayer to Sebastian.) Among other things, I wanted some prayer banners. My partner found some huge folk religious art canvases at a local auction—interesting because the artist was painting traditional Christian images, but clearly had a special interest in the textures of men’s bodies—the veins on arms, the carefully painted chest hair on an apostle. (And that carefully draped loincloth across the fisher of men, looking so like a wardrobe malfunction about to happen, the hand of Jesus so carefully positioned there, as if he’s about to rip it off.)

So for the banners I cut up bodies—Jesus, apostles, thieves on crosses. Something wicked and vaguely erotic about it. Disembodied arms. An arrow (real arrow) in the side. Wrists bound with golden rope. A prayer. “Arms be bound with rope and shame.”

-- Ed Madden

Jasper likes beer and boogieing just as much as he likes art -- Thank you CMA

For too long, too many people have made the erroneous assumption that the arts are not for everyone – that those of us who appreciate the arts and incorporate them into our daily lives are snooty or elitist. The term, artsy fartsy comes to mind.

Most of us who love the arts know nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, we enjoy our visual arts, our ballet and theatre, but we also enjoy our brew and our boogieing, too. Thank goodness, the Columbia Museum of Art recognizes this, and their efforts to bridge the chasm between art junkies and museum novices have been nothing less than valiant.

Witness tonight’s event cleverly called Arts and Draughts. (It’s a play on words. Get it? Like arts and crafts, but with draughts?) A huge series of successes last year, Arts and Draughts brings beer drinkers, boogiers, and art lovers together for Friday night fun throughout the school year.* And the beauty is, you only have to enjoy one of the above to attend. (But by the night’s end, it’s likely you’ll be a fan of all three -- especially Tom Hall and the Plowboys, tonight's featured musical guests and Jasper's dear friends.)

Check out the details of tonight’s event below, ripped straight from the event’s Facebook page. The Jasper clan will be there – and we hope to see you, too.

 ___

 Arts and Draughts is back, and it’s sure to be better than ever! August 5th marks the date for the triumphant return of your favorite event of the month at Columbia Museum of Art. See art. Hear music. Drink beer.

($8/ $5 for members, join or renew that night and get in for free!)

This time we’ve got more in store for you including: performances by local favorites The Plowboys, New York Disco Villains, and a special guests throughout the night. All the while this is going on be sure to catch a unique perspective tour by “all around good guy” and conceptual artist Shigeharu Kobayashi through the Artist’s Eye galleries.

This month’s beer tasting: Kona Brewery. We’ll have food inside by Earth Fare and food outside from the Bone-In Artisan Barbecue Truck on Wheels and the 2 Fat 2 Fly food truck. Don’t miss the new video installations created for Arts & Draughts by the Moving Image Research Collections News Film Library and students from the UnSchool.

Need more art? Participate in a live figure drawing session brought to you by Dr. Sketchy’s Columbia! Join in on our DIY postcard project, design a postcard and send it to a stranger and sign up to receive one yourself.

Come early on 2 wheels and join in on our downtown bicycle ride brought to you by

Cycle Center! http://www.columbiamuseum.​org/artsanddraughts/

 *(Jasper hopes Arts and Draughts will continue through next summer, but we’ve got time to put that bug in someone’s ear, we think.)