701 CCA presents - South Arts Southern Prize & State Fellows 2021

Shared by our friends at 701 Center for Contemporary Art

Marielle Plaisir R. Bridges.

An exhibition series that in 2019 originated at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, S.C., and is rapidly becoming the most important annual show of contemporary art made in the U.S. South is coming to 701 CCA for the second time. South Arts Southern Prize & State Fellows 2021 will open at the center on January 20 and run through March 6, 2022. Due to an increase in COVID-19 cases in South Carolina, there will be no opening reception, but 701 CCA hopes to present several events to accompany the exhibition. The show will include Charleston, S.C., artist Fletcher Williams III, who was the 2021 Southern Prize Finalist, or runner-up, and Florida’s Marielle Plaisir, the 2021 Southern Prize Winner. After 701 CCA, the 2021 exhibition’s second stop, the show will travel to North Carolina and Florida.

701 CCA initiated the first Southern Prize exhibition in 2019 in partnership with South Arts, the umbrella organization for state arts agencies in nine Southern states. South Arts launched the Southern Prize & State Fellows awards project in 2017, the first two years without an exhibition component. The inaugural 2019 exhibition traveled from 701 CCA to the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Ga., which since also has hosted the 2020 and 2021 exhibitions.

“Each year that South Arts makes these awards, we are awed by the depth and artistry in our region,” South Arts president and CEO Suzette M. Surkamer, a former head of the South Carolina Arts Commission, wrote in the exhibition catalogue. When South Arts in 2017 launched the first cycle of Southern Prize and State Fellowships recipients, Surkamer wrote, “we did not know what to expect and were positively blown away by the response.” The current cohort, Surkamer wrote, reminds us “what it means to be resilient.” The emotionally taxing times of COVID-19, political upheaval and urgent calls “for long overdue justice and equity” did not stop the 2021 South Arts fellows, Surkamer added. “Each artist took what 2020 gave them and declared that 2021 will be brighter and stronger.”

For the Southern Prize, artists from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina and Tennessee can submit a portfolio of their work. An independent jury selects one fellow from each state, from which a second jury panel selects two finalists for the Southern Prize. Each state fellow receives $5,000, the Southern Prize runner-up receives and additional $10,000, and the winner, and additional $25,000. Both finalists also receive a residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Ga. South Arts has so far awarded $400,000 through the project to contemporary artists living and working in the South.

Joyce Garner Pears

In addition to Williams and Plaisir, the artists in the current exhibition are Tameca Cole of Alabama, Raheleh Filsoofi of Tennessee, Joyce Garner of Kentucky, Myra Greene of Georgia, Jewel Ham of North Carolina, Ming Ying Hong of Mississippi and artists duo Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick of Louisiana.

The 2021 cohort of South Arts fellows is the most diverse group to date. Of the six American-born artists, all but Garner are African American. Filsoofi is from Iran, Plaisir was born in France but has roots in Guadeloupe and Hong was born in China but raised in Los Angeles.

Saturday, January 20 – March 6, 2022

More about SC artist Fletcher Williams III

North Charleston, SC, native and resident Fletcher Williams III (b. 1987) has shown his work in more than two dozen exhibitions since receiving his BFA at New York’s Cooper Union in 2010. Among the mixed media artist’s five solo exhibitions are Traces at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, SC, in 2018 and Promise Land in 2020 at the historic Aiken-Rhett House in downtown Charleston, SC. The latter was a venue-wide exhibition in which Williams engaged the urban plantation’s grounds and indoor spaces with his paintings, sculptures and installations. Among the group shows that included Williams’ work are those at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, the Caribbean Cultural Center and Cooper Union, all in New York City; Gateway Project Spaces in Newark, NJ; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art + African American Museum of Fine Art in California; the Mint Museum and Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, NC; the Mann-Simons Site and McKissick Museum in Columbia, SC; and several venues in Charleston and elsewhere in South Carolina. At the Mint Museum, Williams was included in Coined in the South, a 2019–2020 overview of art in the US South. Williams’ work is in the permanent collection of Charleston’s Gibbes Museum, where he was a visiting artist in 2019. He worked on the set of the Amazon Prime series The Underground Railroad, and his work has been discussed in some two-dozen publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

This Month in the Jasper Project's Tiny Gallery -- Welcome Back GINA LANGSTON BREWER!

After a nearly sold-out show in 2019, Gina Langston Brewer returns to Tiny Gallery with a new, intimate show.

The Columbia-based artist has created nearly her whole life and has been painting in our city since returning in 2018. Though proficient in multiple mediums and styles, she is known for her abstract paintings.

This collection of 10 paintings homes in on Brewer’s belief system that inspiration and creativity can be found everywhere. From a stain-glassed face with eyed closed as they bathe in the light refracted on them to a white cat, curious and intent, as it prances across the canvas to a woman donned in blue, sitting tilted forward on a chair, beckoning, each piece is as mystical as it is real.

The pieces are all acrylic on either canvas or wooden board, save for one acrylic mixed media piece, and range from $30 - $75. 3 of 10 have already sold, and the show will remain up until the evening of January 31st. View the show at Jasper’s virtual gallery.

Jasper Chats with Beethoven & Blue Jeans Special Guest Violinist - Rachel Lee Priday

The South Carolina Philharmonic presents Beethoven & Blue Jeans January 15, 2022 at 7:30 PM at the Koger Center for the Arts. This annual event is often the highest-attended concert for the orchestra each season, and this year’s installment features a blockbuster lineup of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Barber’s Violin Concerto, op. 14 and Carlos Simon’s contemporary composition Fate Now Conquers. The Barber will feature critically-acclaimed and internationally-known guest soloist Rachel Lee Priday on violin. All concerts this season are presented in person and livestreamed.

Barber’s Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 were originally slated to be performed in January of 2021, but due to the orchestra’s need to pivot programming due to the pandemic, these pieces were postponed and programmed for this season’s Beethoven & Blue Jeans. Music Director Morihiko Nakahara was drawn to the exuberance and excitement of the Beethoven symphony paired with the lyricism and melancholy of the first two movements of the Barber concerto.

Guest violinist Rachel Lee Priday will be performing the Barber concerto with the SC Phil. As an artist who has toured internationally, she has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Strad, Los Angeles Times and Family Circle. Priday previously performed the Barber concerto with the SC Phil during the organization’s music director search which began in 2007. When Nakahara met Priday in Maine last season, he was enthusiastic to bring her back to Columbia for this season’s Beethoven & Blue Jeans.

The concert will open with Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers. Commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2020, Simon composed this piece as a direct response to Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, utilizing Beethoven's harmonic gestures in the 2nd movement of the symphony. The title, a quotation from Iliad, was found in one of Beethoven's journal entries. “Simon's piece is brief - around 5 minutes,” said Nakahara, “yet it packs so much power and drama. It is going to provide a perfect opener for this program.”

Jasper had the opportunity to chat with Priday about her upcoming show, which will be the third time the musician has performed with the SC Philharmonic. The first time was in 2005 when she performed the Bach Concerto with Nicholas Smith. In 2008 Priday performed the same piece she will be bringing back to SC for Beethoven and Blue Jeans on the 15th: the Barber violin concerto. Priday says that she is excited to be working with SC Philharmonic music director, Morihiko Nakahara, for the first time.

Priday studied with world famous violinist Itzhtak Perlman as a child and young adult, and continues a relationship with the conductor today. “He is an amazing human being,” she says of Perlman. “He is my favorite violinist, a huge mentor to me, and part of my life.”

Priday attended Perlman’s summer camp at Shelter Island on Long Island from age 13 to 18, and has continued to work and meet with artist as often as possible since her youth. “He has had a huge impact on my life,” she says.

Now the mother of a 4-year-old and a 10-month-old, Priday moved to Seattle in 2019 where she frequently performs locally , as well as traveling to perform in non-pandemic times.

She is looking forward to performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in C minor, op. 35 because it is “such a poetic work – the 3rd movement is a bit crazy – the orchestral part is quite challenging as well, both musically and artistically. The challenge is in capturing the beauty and color of this work. Every phrase is shaped in a really subtle nuanced fashion.”

“When I’m playing my mind and heart are all about showcasing the musical quality of this piece.”

The concert is Saturday, January 15th at 7:30 pm at the Koger Center for the Arts

Tickets are available from the SC Philharmonic.

~~~

More About Samuel Barber

from the SC Phil

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14                                              Samuel Barber                                                                                                                            1910-1981 

In early 1939, Samuel Fels, a wealthy Philadelphia soap manufacturer, commissioned Samuel Barber to write a violin concerto for his protégé, the young violinist Isaak (changed to Iso) Briselli. Barber’s commission was a hefty $1000 and he received half of it in advance.

This was Barber’s first major commission, and he immediately set out to fulfill it. But commissions, while usually sought after by composers, clearly carry their own conditions and risks. Things did not go according to plan, and what actually happened became a Cause célèbre. Since all the protagonists have died, it remained for a paper trail to ascertain whose version was the true one. In the process, a lot of egos got nicked.

According to Barber’s biographer Nathan Broder, by the end of the summer of 1939 the composer sent Briselli the first two movements, written in a conservative lyrical and romantic style. Briselli, however, considered them “too simple and not brilliant enough” and refused to accept them. Barber supposedly took his revenge by making the third movement fiendishly difficult. When he resubmitted it, Briselli declared it unplayable, and Fels wanted his advance commission back. At that point in the story, Barber summoned Herbert Baumel, a young violin student from the Curtis Institute of Music and an excellent sight-reader, and gave him the manuscript and two hours to prepare. Accompanied by a piano, the student supposedly demonstrated that the movement was indeed playable. The unanimous verdict was that Fels had to pay the rest of the commission. Barber, however, forfeited the second half and, in exchange, Briselli relinquished his right to the first public performance and never performed the concert in public.

Briselli, some 40 years later, told a different story, and a paper trail collected by his friends and supporters has essentially corroborated his account. According to Briselli, he was enthusiastic about the first two movements but his violin coach, Albert Mieff, was not and even wanted to rewrite the violin part so that it would be more in keeping with the technical expectations for a concerto, citing Brahms collaboration with Joachim as a precedent. Moreover, Briselli found the third movement too lightweight – rather than too difficult – and suggested that Barber expand it. The composer refused and he and Briselli mutually decided to abandon the project with no hard feelings on either side. For a while there was even talk of Briselli suing Barber for defamation of character over the composer's version of the controversy. (A full account of Briselli's side can be found on his website www.Iso Briselli.com.) 

The Concerto was finally premiered by Albert Spaulding with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941 and was a popular success from the start. The first movement, Allegro, opens with an expansive, lyrical theme on the violin alone. The second theme, introduced by the woodwinds, continues the romantic mood although it is syncopated and more rhythmic. The whole tone of the movement is that of a quiet discussion, with only occasionally raised voices in the middle, and ending in a tranquil whisper.

An extended cantabile oboe solo over muted strings opens the aria-like second movement. The violin eventually enters with a second theme that develops the mood introduced by the oboe. The violin then returns to the opening melody, rising to a climax, after which the quiet mood of the beginning returns.

The terse and fiery rondo Finale, Presto in moto perpetuo, creates a stunning contrast, placing tremendous demands on the soloist, who has to play at a breathless tempo for 110 measures without interruption. Throughout the perpetual motion, Barber subtly changes the meter and every so often inserts a jazzy syncopated refrain.

Fall Lines Volumes VII and VIII FINALLY Releasing on Sunday January 23rd, at 2 pm at Drayton Hall

After too many Covid-related postponements, the Jasper Project is delighted to release the combined Volume VII and VIII issues of Fall Lines- a literary convergence on Sunday, January 23rd at Drayton Hall on the campus of the University of South Carolina. The event will begin at 2 pm.

Strict Covid protocols will be in place. Masks are mandatory except when reading. Only vaccinated contributors and guests are invited to attend.

Contributors to the 2020 and 2021 issues of Fall Lines are invited to choose one piece of their own poetry or prose from the dual-volume journal to read to the public.

Drayton Hall is located at 1214 College Street. Street parking is available. The public is invited to attend.

~~~

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Tune in and Turn on to the Poetry Society of South Carolina on Walter Edgar's Journal

Jim Lundy, outgoing president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina, sat down for an interview with Walter Edgar for his popular, long-running public radio show, Walter Edgar’s Journal to talk about his new book, The History of the Poetry Society of South Carolina, 1920-2021. The show was broadcast today (Friday, 1/7/22) at noon but you can listen online at anytime.

According to Edgar’s notes,

James Lundy's book, The History of the Poetry Society of South Carolina: 1920 to 2021, is a chronicle of the first 100 years of the oldest state poetry society in America, the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Founded in Charleston in 1920 by DuBose Heyward, John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Hervey Allen, and Laura Bragg, the Society's first 101 seasons run from the Jazz Age to the COVID era, where everyone from Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ogden Nash, Billy Collins, Sherwood Anderson, Jericho Brown, Thornton Wilder, Robert Pinsky, and hundreds of others appeared before the membership. Talking with Walter Edgar, Lundy, also currently the Society's president, gives us an insider's view, with insights into the inner workings and disfunctions of the organization and its slow progress from a Whites-only organization of the segregated South founded in the aftermath of World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic, through the Roaring Twenties, into the darkness of the Great Depression, World War II, a resurgence during the Atomic Age, the turbulent Sixties, the decline of Charleston, its rebound into a tourist mecca, and into the present day.

The 378 page book was published in August, 2021 and is available for purchase at Amazon.

Three Ways to Join the Jasper Family

Catching up with Visual Artist Abdullah Fairoozan

JASPER: How long have you been in the US and where did you live before coming here?

FAIROOZAN: I lived in USA for more than 12 years, before I move to USA I lived in Baghdad – Iraq

JASPER: What brought you to the US?

FAIROOZAN: I came to USA to pursue my dream as an artist and to become a global artist.

JASPER: Were you an artist in your homeland, too?

FAIROOZAN: Yes, I am a former art teacher with more than 15 years of experience, I finished a bachelor’s degree from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad, in Baghdad, Iraq

JASPER: When did you first begin your life as an artist?

FAIROOZAN: My artistic talents started from a young age and then developed during the study period, as I received support from the school and my family. During my university studies in the field of art, I received a lot of encouragement from my professors at the university to pursue the profession of drawing

JASPER: Are you self-taught or did you take lessons or go to school?

FAIROOZAN: Including to my talent in art, I finish 4 years bachelor degree in art from Baghdad university of art. also my former job as an art teacher and interact with students for many years helped me improve my art skill

JASPER: Who inspires you?

FAIROOZAN: I was always impressed by the different colors of nature (like trees leaves colors, flowers, sky and many others) so nature is my inspiration

JASPER: Do you have any shows or events coming up that we can help promote?

FAIROOZAN: My artwork "Everything has changed" has been accepted into Artfields 2022 at Lake City, South Carolina. I also planning my personal art exhibit in Charleston SC.

Catching up with Visual Artist Gerard Erley

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”  - Paul Cezanne

 Homeward - oil on linen panel - 10 x 10 inches

Jasper: Can you tell us about your background - where you were born and raised, where you went to school, and how you came to live in Columbia?

 Erley: I was born in Springfield, Illinois. Progressing through a Catholic grade school and an all-boys Catholic high school, I went to college an hour from home, getting my undergraduate - and later my graduate - degree in art from Illinois State University. I worked various jobs, my longest (other than self-employed artist) being as a graphic artist for the Illinois Department of Corrections. 

Over ten years ago, I came to Columbia with my partner (now husband) Lemuel Watson when he accepted a deanship at the University of South Carolina. I taught art at USC for a few semesters, before devoting myself solely to painting. I felt the role of teacher could be filled by another, whereas only I could create the paintings signed with my name.

Matter-of-Fact Nude - oil on linen panel - 14 x 11 inches

Jasper: Where does your life as an artist fit into this trajectory? 

Erley: I was drawn to art making early on as a way of comprehending the world. If I could picture something, I felt I could begin to understand it. As one of eight kids, drawing also allowed me a quiet retreat away from the bustling family, a place where I could get to know myself as an individual and not just one of the herd. 

When the idea of choosing a profession later presented itself, I was debating between the life of a Catholic priest and that of an artist. Contemplating a future life of celibacy just as I was beginning to explore my own sexuality quickly turned my career choice toward the arts. Nonetheless, I do regard art as a spiritual calling, the studio as a church. I can’t help recalling Van Gogh’s failed attempt as a preacher before becoming a painter. 

Once I was set on the life of an artist and I got my college education, I worked part-time at various jobs, which allowed time in the studio. When fortune smiled, art sales alone sustained me.  

Aside from landscape painting, which is my bread and butter (though the slices can be thin at times!), I also paint still lifes, figures, portraits, and the occasional abstract piece. While generally my landscapes and abstracts are totally invented, the other work uses a different muscle, one requiring a deep look into what lies immediately before me. Meditating on an apple or a face, the world opens up in a surprising way. That has worked to my advantage in winning the ArtFields portrait competition in Lake City where I needed to complete three consecutive one-hour portrait in three rounds.

Dark Day Dawning - oil on canvas - 36 x 48 inches

In exploring the idiom of landscape painting, my vision sometimes takes a somber tone. "Dark Day Dawning" is perhaps a cautionary tale, an omen of a future born of present-day missteps.

Jasper:  When did you start realizing accolades as an artist and, of them, what has been most  meaningful to you? 

Erley: I received a silver dish (engraved with the obscure phrase “Best in Junior Miscellaneous”) for a drawing at the Illinois State Fair when I was fourteen or so. Since then, I have been the recipient of over 120 prizes, grants, and purchase awards. I am most proud of those I received from representatives of the St. Louis Art Museum, the Indianapolis Art Museum, the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To have those “in the know” get your work is indeed validating. However, it is the hundreds of people who have chosen to live with my paintings that holds the most meaning for me. I truly believe my job as a painter is not finished when a work leaves my studio. Instead, it requires an engaged viewer to complete it, to coax out its ultimate meaning. To know that so many people have chosen to take on that task is indeed humbling. 

Jasper: Who have been and continue to be your greatest artistic influences, how have they influenced you, and do you see them in your own work? 

Erley: Perhaps my greatest artistic influence has been George Inness, the 19th-century American landscape painter. His poetic and painterly approach sets him apart from earlier landscape painters. He chose to steer away from detail for detail’s sake, as well as the grandiose compositions favored by his contemporaries of the Hudson River School, such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt. Instead, he focused on semi-abstract compositions based on an underlying spiritual philosophy. Light infuses the scene to create a sometimes-mystical mood, though it is often married with an undeniable veracity to nature. 

Aside from him, there is J. M. W. Turner (British), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French), and Caspar David Friedrich (German). All share a romantic vision centered on a transcendent quality of light.  

A contemporary painter whose work I enjoy is Joan Nelson. She will “quote” pieces of old master paintings in her intimate paintings. When I feel myself stretching in a more abstract direction, Brian Rutenberg’s colorful compositions inspire me.

Jasper: What have been your greatest artistic challenges and how have you met them or how are you meeting them? 

Erley: My biggest challenge is to remain fully engaged and juiced by the process of painting. Like any act of love, it requires an openness and awareness to what is called for in that moment. I fall short of the mark when I am distracted, uncertain, when I’d rather be someplace other than in the studio. 

I know that viewers will only be excited by my work if I am. That’s something that can’t be fudged. I’ve seen so many glib, slick, uninteresting paintings in my life, I just feel it does the profession a real injustice. To be invested emotionally and to embed those emotions in paint is always my goal.  

To learn more about Erley’s work and see additional paintings visit his website at gerarderley.com.

The Lost Wiseman by Ed Madden

Editor’s Note: Every year since I have known him, my friend and Columbia, SC’s first ever city poet aureate, Ed Madden, has written a Christmas letter that, if you’re lucky enough, he shares with his friends. It is always a treat to read about what Ed and his husband Bert Easter, who is an antiques expert and a member of the Jasper Project board of directors, have been up to in the previous year and what Ed’s reaction to those experiences might be. Over the past few years Ed’s annual Christmas letter has taken on more of the qualities of an essay than a Christmas letter, which makes it an even better gift in my opinion. This year, Ed wrote about a lovely little wise man statuette that he found at one of Bert’s auctions. The wise man served as the catalyst for what would become Ed’s 2021 Christmas letter. Jasper appreciates Ed’s willingness to let us share this sweet missive with you, our readers.

The Lost Wiseman

Dec 2021

Friends, 

I found him at an estate sale Bert was running, a family so devoted to Christmas that one bedroom had to be set aside just to display the Christmas décor for sale. There were multiple artificial fold-out trees, boxes of ornaments and lights, each box lined with tinsel and glitter and broken glass. There were three nativities, complete, in good condition, and these sold, as did all the little Joseph-Mary-Jesus-in-the-hay trios. But this one was on his own, a wise guy separated from his two amigos. Whatever ensemble he had been part of was either long gone to someone else’s home, or more damaged even than he was and discarded. Chips on his back and arm, the knuckles of his left hand, a broken fold of cloak, all revealed the plaster, only sign of that greater disaster. Of everything in that room—the trees, the bells, figurines, strings of tiny lights—this was my favorite thing, an orphaned wiseman.  

I don’t know how old he is, how far he has come. He has earrings, a thin Van Dyke beard, brown skin. His dark eyes are tired and sad. He wears pointed blue shoes, each with a rough gold embellishment—a buckle, a fat tassel. His purple robe drags in the dirt, over that a knee-length tan tunic trimmed in gold, and over it all he has thrown a sand-brown cloak. The chips in the finish are mostly on the left, as if at some point he had fallen on his side against something hard, tipped over, or was stored unwrapped, banging about in a box as he ascended to the attic to wait in the darkness for another year. A turban is wound tight on his head and draped around his shoulders, topped by a flat gold crown the size of a quarter with ridges rather than points, like a worn-down reamer-juicer, a vintage cocktail muddler—or like a small star pressed onto his head, as if what he sought, what he followed, is who he is. 

To be clear, I’m not talking Artaban, the Other Wiseman, that contrived little Victorian fable about a fourth wiseman who sold all he had for jewels to give the new king, missed the boat (the caravan), got there too late, spent 33 years wandering the Holy Lands, selling off jewels and doing good deeds. When he finally made it back just in time for Golgotha (the symbolism is pretty heavy-handed), he got sidetracked, selling off his last big pearl to save a woman (“a daughter of the true religion”) from being taken into slavery, then got conked on the head by a falling roof tile and died. But not before Henry Van Dyke (a minister who believed slavery brought the Africans to Jesus) tied everything up in a sentimental Christian bow. No. Not that one. This wiseman is orphaned, left behind. He is lost, he is damaged. He has a gift, and wisdom. He has nowhere to go and nowhere he belongs.  

In first grade I was a wiseman in a blue bathrobe, carrying a box of wadded aluminum foil, the gift I would give the child, some classmate’s swaddled doll. I can see it in my head—that weird sense of seeing the past that could be a memory or a dream, or someone’s home movie I have seen. And I wonder now would my parents have allowed it. Growing up fundamentalist, we never had a nativity in our house. Maybe that’s a reason they fascinate me now. Churches in town—those denominations, a word we said with such contempt, since our church was the original, the primitive, the true—they had living nativities like roadside displays, cars driving by in the cold to honk their approval. But no, not us. We speak where the Bible speaks, we are silent where the Bible is silent. The Bible does not say Jesus was born in December. So, belligerent and right, we’d sing “Silent night” some midsummer Sunday just to make the point. Later I’d learn that the date had something to do with Constantine and effacing old faiths and Christianity linking arms with imperialism. That old story. But I knew none of that back then when I stood front of a class in a bath towel turban, holding jewels of crumpled foil. 

Our journeys this year were small. There was that window in the summer when it seemed like everything was going back to normal. People would get vaccinated. Things would turn around. We were, of course, so very wrong, but we were double-vaxxed and excited to see old friends and we drove up to North Carolina for a wedding outdoors, rows of chairs facing into a cathedral of trees. She did and he did and it was lovely and lovelier still to spend time with the parents of the groom—old friends from grad school and family trips to Kiawah Island. On the way back we only ever ate outside, pulled off for a couple of small-town antique shops, where we pulled our masks and caution back on. I taught online all spring. Afternoons we walked the small circuit of the neighborhood we’d rehearsed all year. Evenings we walked out to the new pond, fed the fish, watched the water falling. Then in August, it was with a weird joy I walked across campus into a class of masked students. A few weeks into the fall, we walked out to the main lawn. We pulled off our masks and saw each other’s faces as if for the first time. 

Almost two years ago, just before the pandemic hit, I sat in a hot room in an airless building at the end of dirt road, darkness filling the trees. The room was packed, we were all waiting for something to begin, an Afro-Brazilian religious ceremony. That night, two men were to come back from the dead. Their friends were there to celebrate their return. Macio, from Brasilia, who sat beside me on the men’s side and spoke some English, explained it to me. His friend, an initiate among the eguns, had died a few years before, and that night he would appear again. He explained that it was January 6, Epifania, the Epiphany, when the kings from Africa would come from over the ocean—such a long journey—and the dead would make themselves known. Macio and I were the only white men in the room; they had positioned us beneath the room’s only rattling fan—the guest, the tender visitor. Throughout the overnight ceremony—we were locked in, the heat and drumming intense, hallucinatory—the eguns, spirits of the dead, appeared in their beautiful garments, garments made to hide their human features, head and hands and feet. They were faceless beings, dancing, twirling, stopping only occasionally to address the congregated people in their thin, alien voices. The men in the room were terrified: if one touched you, you were sure to die. The women called to them, held children up for their blessing. The spirits of the recently dead, the aparacás, edged into the room along the back wall as the eguns danced. They looked like flags with men inside, their arms raised to hold up the corners. My friend Taylor compares them to the playing cards from Alice in Wonderland. The two new ones were black with strange faces painted on like masks—one looked like a radioactive Pac-Man, the other like a pirate flag. They moved sideways, always facing forward. Macio leaned over to say: this is my friend. 

That was my second time among the eguns. At the first, just before Christmas, before the ceremony could begin, my friends from the arts institute and I were summoned to the front of the room. There was a white bowl of water and oil with herbs. Beside it, to the right, there was a plate. Charles told us to take off our shoes. We took off our shoes. The women went first. My friend Laura quietly translated for me. I was far from home, nowhere to go and nowhere I belonged. We were to kneel at the bowl, we were to place our offering in the plate, and we were to wash our eyes three times. Only then, we were told, could we see the dead. I knelt on the floor. I put my donation in the plate. I dipped my fingers in the water and three times I wiped them across my eyelids and brows. I wanted to be able to see. I wanted to be open to what the night might bring. I watched the men around me and learned the ritual gestures. When the eguns fanned the lappets of their elaborate garments in front of you—a blessing, a spirit, the moving air—you were to scoop up the blessing with your cupped hands, pour it over your head. Together the rows of men, scooping, lifting up the blessing, pouring it out over our heads. 

The wiseman on my desk carries what looks like a gold funerary urn, left hand cupping the base, right holding the urn close to his chest, a thumb holding the top closed. What is inside? He leans forward as if tired, as if about to say something, as if leaning in to see. As if about to pour out all that he has carried for so long on the ground at his feet. He has nowhere to go and nowhere he belongs—other than here, on the desk, beside ET with his glow-in-the-dark finger, Saraswati with her swans, a wooden Jesus pointing at his heart. The wiseman is lost, he is damaged. He has a gift, and wisdom, and I start to wonder if these things are connected. The wisdom that comes from being damaged. The gift of being lost. Sometimes we carry things so very far. Sometimes we carry them for so very long. Sometimes we don’t know what it is we carry, ashes or something precious. Sometimes what we seek is who we are. Sometimes we take our masks off. Sometimes we pour ourselves out. Sometimes we lift up the blessings we are given, pour them over our heads.

May The Flowers Fall At Your Feet By Saul Seibert

This is what I said in the doctors’ office before everything went to shit. 

"If I were able to go back and talk to the person I was then.... when it all started, we wouldn't be working through how it's all gone and why I am here...where I am, with you, in this fucking room, asking me these stupid, hypothetical questions that lead me to what ifs and guilt and regret!"

I scratched at a week-old track mark and noticed my left shoe was untied.

I was insulted and defensive…. just like a Narcissist. Two weeks later everything went to shit. The pandemic hit and everyone got pregnant, divorced, or died.

Eventually I started listening to my therapist and two years later I have finally begun to talk myself. 

The irony is that you have to talk to yourself to get healthy or better or find peace. I'd like to talk to you about it and I'd like to listen to you about it......so we can see each other honestly, with transparency......in the right light….with love……as it should be.

A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a few performances by some up and coming younger artists doing a short regional tour. There was so much talent on the stage.  

Every night the energy was electric. 

They were all so beautiful. 

They were buzzing and brilliant and they were superstars and I loved them.  

They wanted loved. 

I worshipped them. I adored them and their youth. 

I yelled at them like an old, dumb, proud parent. 

My heart was full. 

They stood strong on stage and owned the space....hiding themselves and then exposing themselves....so cool and so vulnerable. 

They poured out like the Passion and shoved their blood and guts into my face. 

The movement, the music, this ancient art was shed for us, for you and for me! 

Each creator a craftsman, perfect in their nuances. 

I was voyeuristic while they were being crucified, died, and would rise again....every night....for us......for you, and for me and on the third day of the tour I recognized these saviors as myself and I cried in their faces........these future creators. 

It was beautiful. 

It was pure and toxic. 

It was heaven on earth. 

It was perfect and it is broken.

 

This is the absurdity. 

There is an absurdity to it all and here is the conversation I would have had with myself eight years ago. 

“The lights. Beware of the lights. They are beautiful but beware. The lights are violent and will pick a fight with anything that is perceived as a threat or competes with its illumination.... of you. The flowers will fall at your feet and valuable things can get left behind in the promise of potential future illuminations…….and more flowers and more lights. These illuminations will present options and the options are infinite and the infinite options that the illumination has enlightened you to promise to provide a pleasurable feast for you...to feast on.....forever.”

 

Here is the abridged version. 

“There will never be enough.

There will always be more. 

It will end."

 

Learn what it means to say,  

“This is my portion. 

It is enough and I am grateful.”

 

If I could go back and talk to myself (which I have) I would tell myself to try not to take myself too seriously and to know what matters and that, ultimately, the lights don't matter but they will show you who and what you truly are ...and that matters. 

 

 

For almost eight years I've been telling bars and clubs to please avoid using strobe lights during my shows.  

This is due to my Epilepsy. 

It triggers seizures. 

Last week while playing one of our last shows....the lights slapped me in the face.

It felt like I had been struck by a bolt of lightning. 

I collapsed on stage in the middle of a performance and had a seizure in front of not a few people. 

It’s never pretty.  

There’s piss and blood and slobber and I cry and contort  and convulse and crumble into myself a thousand times over.  

I am emptied and it hurts everywhere because now everyone knows I'm just another meat sack like them.  

I recall dragging my fingers across a sweety piece of wood strung with steal trying to find sounds that made people move while I was quaking inside and singing with a marbled mouth and blurry vision. 

The lights.

Those goddamn lights.

 

 

The next day I woke up bruised and sore and confused and grateful. 

I began to talk to myself…….my present self and my future self. 

I said these words, 

"This is my portion, and it is enough. I will live in light of that freedom right now, today."

 

This is what I said.

This is what I would say now to you my dear friend.

 

May the flowers fall at your feet. It is good to be celebrated but then 

Pick them up, smell them, breath it in deep……. and then throw them at a yonder stage and remember that this moment  is your  portion, and it is enough." 

Announcing a new Jasper Project Endeavor -- the Lizelia August Jenkins Moorer Poetry Chapbook Prize for SC BIPOC Poets

In honor of the 20th century poet, Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer, the Jasper Project is delighted to announce a new project, the Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer Poetry Chapbook Prize for SC BIPOC poets.

Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (1868-1936) was a teacher and social activist in Orangeburg, SC. Born in Pickens, SC, she taught at the Normal and Grammar Schools at Claflin College for 40 years. Her published anthology of poems Prejudice Unveiled and Other Poems (1907) examined the Jim Crow South’s propensity for lynching, racism, and social injustice. Moorer was also an advocate for women’s suffrage in South Carolina, especially in the Methodist Church. 

The purpose of the Lizelia August Jenkins Moorer Prize, affectionately called the Lizelia Prize, is to offer a first-time BIPOC poet from SC a publishing contract with Muddy Ford Press to publish their debut chapbook under the guidance of an established poet. The vision of Dr. Len Lawson, who is a member of the Jasper Project board of directors and the author, editor, or co-editor of four books of poetry, Lawson will also serve as project manager as well as editor of the winner’s chapbook and will collaborate with the winner on the construction of the book.

SC BIPOC poets who have yet to publish a book of poetry are invited to submit 30-40 single spaced numbered pages in Times New Roman 12pt and include a cover sheet with your name and manuscript title. Your name should not appear on the manuscript. The winning submission will receive publication via Muddy Ford Press, a cash prize of $250, and ten author copies of the book. Submissions should be in the form of a Word doc and should be sent to lizeliapoetry@gmail.com no later than February 28th, 2022.

JIM CROW CARS.

by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

If within the cruel Southland you have chanced to take a ride,

You the Jim Crow cars have noticed, how they crush a Negro's pride,

How he pays a first class passage and a second class receives,

Gets the worst accommodations ev'ry friend of truth believes.

'Tis the rule that all conductors, in the service of the train,

Practice gross discriminations on the Negro—such is plain—

If a drunkard is a white man, at his mercy Negroes are,

Legalized humiliation is the Negro Jim Crow car.

'Tis a license given white men, they may go just where they please,

In the white man's car or Negro's will they move with perfect ease,

If complaint is made by Negroes the conductor will go out

Till the whites are through carousing, then he shows himself about.

They will often raise a riot, butcher up the Negroes there,

Unmolested will they quarrel, use their pistols,rant and swear,

They will smoke among the ladies though offensive the cigar;

'Tis the place to drink their whiskey, in the Negro Jim Crow car.

If a Negro shows resistance to his treatment by a tough,

At some station he's arrested for the same, though not enough,

He is thrashed or lynched or tortured as will please the demon's rage,

Mobbed, of course, by "unknown parties," thus is closed the darkened page.

If a lunatic is carried, white or black, it is the same,

Or a criminal is taken to the prison-house in shame,

In the Negro car he's ushered with the sheriff at his side,

Out of deference for white men in their car he scorns to ride.

We despise a Negro's manhood, says the Southland, and expect,

All supremacy for white men—black men's rights we'll not protect,

This the Negro bears with patience for the nation bows to might,

Wrong has borne aloft its colors disregarding what is right.

This is called a Christian nation, but we fail to understand,

How the teachings of the Bible can with such a system band;

Purest love that knows no evil can alone the story tell,

How to banish such abuses, how to treat a neighbor well.

Raena Shirali will be serving as the adjudicator for the Lizelia Prize.

Raena Shirali is a poet, editor, and educator from Charleston, South Carolina. Her first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and her forthcoming collection, summonings, won the 2021 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University Shirali and is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, where she serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere.

PRINTWORTHY! Michaela Pilar Brown is in the Right Place at the Right Time

Reprinted from Jasper Magazine Fall 2021

by Cindi Boiter

Over the past decade, Jasper Magazine has written about Columbia-based multi-media artist Michaela Pilar Brown many times. This passage of time has witnessed Brown become a leader in our community, not only as a result of her myriad accomplishments but also by the now-international stature she commands across the most-sophisticated fine arts circles.

Brown’s career has been punctuated by a steady continuum of shows, awards, residencies, and related experiences that have helped shape the 50-something artist into the fierce icon she is becoming. Taking home the 2018 Artfields Grand Prize for her mixed-media installation She’s Almost Ready is upmost among her accolades, as is being awarded the inaugural Volcanic Residency at the Whakatano Museum in New Zealand that same year.

Born in Bangor, Maine, and raised in Denver, Brown became an influential member of the Columbia arts scene soon after she moved here in 2013. Having spent many a childhood summer visiting the Fairfield County farm where her father lived, Brown had returned to SC a dozen or so years earlier to help care for her aging family patriarch. His land and its legacies were a part of who Brown was even when the she first left home to study at Howard University in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

“Howard felt like family. My professors let me continue my work even when I couldn’t afford tuition,” Brown says. “I spent a lot of time learning outside of academia.”

Critically influenced by such trailblazing American artists as Frank Smith and Jeff Donaldson, Brown identifies world-renowned sculptor Richard Hunt as impacting her work ethic the most.

Hunt, who may be the most highly accomplished contemporary Black American sculptor and creator of public art in the country, visited Howard to install a piece of his work during Brown’s time as a student. When a piece of his art was damaged, Brown was recruited to help with the repair. A burgeoning artist-protégé relationship led to an invitation to study with Hunt for a summer in Chicago.

“I was green and just so honored,” Brown says. “He worked fervently all the time and I worked all the time,” noting that she initially wanted to make public art herself. In fact, the young artist had interned at the International Sculpture Center, part of the Washington Project for the Arts, as well as the Smithsonian Institution.

The emphasis on family and the support systems it can naturally provide had followed Brown to Howard, where the faculty became supportive elders for the young artist. The intimacy and sacredness of her ancestral home not only informed Brown as an artist but also provided her with a profound understanding of the strengths and challenges of southern Black art writ large, as well as with the workings of the local arts community specifically.

After her father died in 2007, Brown’s mother soon also came to depend on her and her brothers for what ultimately would be end-of-life care. It was a crushing loss that further strengthened Brown’s resolve to take command of her platform like never before. The artist continued to bring the roots and wings she had embraced — on her home turf, in DC, and in Chicago — into an enduring relationship with Columbia-based theatre artist Darion McCloud and his daughter more than ten years ago.

“All these experiences changed the shape of the work I was doing and what I wanted to do,” Brown says. “My work became much more personal and honest. My focus came to include what it means to me to be Black in SC, but it also focuses a great deal on love and how we grieve.”

Among her major accomplishments over the last decade has been taking on the position of executive director of 701 CCA – Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Art. 701 CCA is located on the second floor of the historic 701 Whaley Street complex and featured on page XX of this magazine.

Arguably the perfect person for this position due to her local and international profile, Brown is the first Black woman to have this role, and she handles the responsibility with a resolute intensity. “701 [CCA] has historically been a place of inclusion,” Brown says. “I am engaged in protecting that and expanding it through exhibitions, programming, community dialogue, and programs outside our walls that engage the community directly in neighborhoods and through community partnerships. … We had a challenging moment recently, and I'm proud of who we are on the other side of it. I'm proud of the public statement we made and the manner in which we supported our artist.”

Brown is referencing the night of May 17, 2021. John Sims, an artist-in-residence at the gallery was living in an apartment assigned to him in the building at 701 Whaley Street when he was accosted, handcuffed, and held at gunpoint as a “suspicious person” by the Columbia Police Department. Brown released a statement in response to the attack, saying the incident was not the first time a resident at 701 had encountered the police. “It was the first time, however, such an encounter led to hostile confrontation, detention, cuffing, and a records check. On the contrary, such previous encounters have resulted in courteous apologies from officers. The difference? Race. Mr. Sims is a Black man; the other incidents involved a white man.”

“Like other community-based, nonprofit institutions,” Brown continues in her statement, “CCA has the responsibility to shine light on injustice it encounters and to be part of an active dialogue to make real and discernible change. We cannot ignore the relationship between white supremacy that permeates our culture and the racial profiling we believe infected John Sims’ treatment by CPD officers. … What we can and will do is support the efforts of John Sims as the CCA artist in residence to tell his story, to provide context for that story through his artistic expression, and to seize the opportunity to join with him and the greater Columbia community as we continue the struggle for racial justice.”

It is Brown’s intimate knowledge of the patrons of 701 CCA and the community it supports that informs this position so well. “I am optimistic about the Columbia art scene,” she says. “This is a community that wants change, that's ready to face the challenges of the moment with art leading the discussions. I am hopeful that our politicians recognize the value of art for the betterment of this community, for the comfort it brings, for the space it makes for challenging conversations, and for the expansive learning opportunities it offers young people. I also hope they support it with dollars, and not just the legacy institutions, but in an expansive, inclusive way.”

Rhodes Bailey and the Frosty Four bring you Columbia's newest Christmas song

“Climate Change don’t take my Christmas away”

We were delighted when Columbia attorney, musician, and former SC house of representatives candidate Rhodes Bailey shared one of his new projects with us – a powerful, yet fun new Christmas song – and could hardly wait to share it with you. We asked Bailey a few questions about the project, and he graciously shared how and why “Climate Change is Killing Christmas” came to be: 

Jasper: What was the impetus or inspiration for this song?  

Bailey: My good friend Jake Erwin (whom I gig with from time to time) texted me not long before Thanksgiving and said we should record a Christmas song. I thought to myself "what if someone did a Christmas song about how it's too hot at Christmastime now because of climate change? No snow, no crisp air, etc., and the singer is pining for cold weather."  The more I thought about Christmas imagery, the more I thought about how 80-degree weather spoils the  mood. I sat down and banged this out in about 30 minutes. I sent an acoustic demo to Jake who laughed and said, "Oh man, I just meant we should cover 'Jingle Bell Rock' or something. I didn't know you were going to write a song."   

Jasper:  Are there more like it -- is this part of a collection or a solo piece? 

Bailey:  This is a solo piece for now. There's a pretty small window for holiday songs (between Thanksgiving and Christmas), so I had to record it, shoot the goofy video, and get it out fast. I'm at an age now where I only write lyrics when I have something original to say. I make up instrumental music all the time, but only spend time on lyrics if an idea strikes me as particularly interesting and I want to share it.

Jasper: Who are the Frosty Five? 

Bailey:  Spencer Collins (drums and backup vocals) 2) Jake Erwin (keyboards and jingle bells) 3) Evan Simmons (bass) 4) Zac Thomas (expert producer and sound engineer at the Jam Room in Columbia, SC) and 5) Me (12 string Rickenbacker guitar* and vocals). It should really be "Rhodes Bailey and the Frosty FOUR", but FIVE sounded better. We worked hard with Zac to get a vintage Christmas studio sound, like the ‘60s girl groups from the album "A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector" (which everyone should check out by the way) or the Mariah Carey classic. 

(editor’s note — we hear these words when we read them in the late great Tom Petty’s voice. If you know, you know.)

Jasper:  Was this just for fun or is there a serious motive involved? 

Bailey: This is for fun, but obviously climate change is serious and it's on our minds. I try not to be heavy-handed with lyrics. People respond better to humor than preachiness. An unseasonably warm Christmas is a bummer for everyone - even for folks like us in South Carolina that don't see much snow. It didn't snow a ton when I was a kid, but I remember having a white Christmas when I was in the fourth grade and that was "peak Christmas" for me. No subsequent Christmas could match it. As I grew up, my standards lowered to a "chilly Christmas."  Now we have to settle for "Not-hot Christmas."  We've seen 80-degree Decembers and they are a total buzz kill. The character in this song is lamenting the loss of a wintery holiday season but is still an optimist. He/she is holding out hope that snow and cold weather will return just like Darlene Love does for her baby in "Christmas  (Baby Please Come Home)".  

ESSAY: Thinking and Acting Radically About Climate and the Art World by Will South

“This is a real problem, with real consequences. The art world, as it turns out, is far from green.”

2017 Venice Biennale sculpture - SUPPORT - by Lorenzo Quinn reminds participants of rising sea levels that threaten Venice and all coastal cities around the world. The installation, first unveiled by Quinn at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and commissioned by Halcyon Art International, shows two gigantic hands of a child emerging from the Grand Canal in Venice to protect and support the historical building of the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel. "Venice, the floating city of art and culture that has inspired humanity for centuries, is threatened by climate change and time decay and is in need of the support of our generation and future ones”, said Quinn. “Let's join 'hands' and make a lasting change”. (United Nations Climate Change webpage)

Thinking and Acting Radically about Climate Change and the Art World

The positive effects of art on civilization would be difficult to list. Art and civilization are intimately entwined, each giving birth to the other in a continuous spiral of creative regeneration: that is, Leonardo produced the Renaissance at the moment it was producing him.

People all over this planet better understand now how tradition and innovation coexist, that tradition underscores identity and yet artistic innovations allow for inevitable changes. Art identifies what we value, and gives sound, narrative, movement, color, and shape to these values. As both process and product, we cannot remove art from the complexities of the human experience. It is fundamental to how we understand the world: To see a glorious sunset is one experience; to read exactly the right words to relive that experience is a minor miracle.

Readers of the present magazine will find no fault whatsoever with these two introductory paragraphs. This is a journal devoted to the support of art and artists in our community. Which may make the following statement a bit of a shocker:  The art world is a significant and unapologetic contributor to global warming.

No! you say, how can this be? Artists are the sensitive ones, the ones most open to change and action and to spreading the word (through art) that we all must act to create a sustainable, healthful world.

Relax. Of course, you, the artist/collector/reader of this journal are a proponent of mitigating the horrific symptoms of a heating planet—floods, fires, droughts, and virtually every other form of molecular mayhem.

Still, this holds: The art world is a bad actor when it comes to climate change. And here is why:            The art world is comprised of hundreds of thousands of galleries, museums, studios, art fairs, and private art collections worldwide. All of these entities ship art. Art is heavy, often, and needs to crating and boxing before it travels. To ship one two-hundred-pound crate by air from New York to London puts a thousand pounds of carbon into the air.

That is one shipment, one-way, a thousand pounds of carbon emitted.

One hundred such objects would result in fifty tons of carbon released into the air. The typical American car puts out about 4.5 tons of carbon, in a year. If those one hundred crates of art come back to New York (which they will, if they were on loan), then the emissions add up to a whopping one hundred tons of carbon requiring a mere eleven total hours of flight time to be released.

The art world thrives on shipping. Museums crate exhibitions and ship them not just to one venue, but to three or four before those crates return home. Now the math gets fuzzy, because there are so many museums, galleries, collectors, and art fairs shipping stuff and no one keeps track of it all vis-a-vis the climate. Someone should be, or a group of someones, as in a consortium of registrars.

There are 55,000 museums in the world. Not all are shipping monsters, but all of the big ones are—the Louvre, the Met, the Tate, etc. Let’s say, for sake of argument, that a mere .5 percent of all museums are “big.” That would be 225 museums. Further, let’s assume that each of the big museums hosts half a dozen traveling shows per year. That’s 1,350 shows, each with round trip shipping, let’s say, based on the New York to London numbers above—one hundred tons. That adds up to 135,000 tons of carbon in a single year. And let me assure you this: The actual art world number would be much higher—our example doesn’t include galleries, or projects from the other over 50,000 museums that are shipping more than a few things here and there all the time.

This is a real problem, with real consequences. The art world, as it turns out, is far from green. Like every other business, they are interested in green, a bit more it seems than the natural kind. Museums (and galleries, and art fairs) need cold, hard cash (or, warm, either way) to survive. The effects of non-visitation are instant and lethal. In 2020, worldwide museum attendance dropped a breathtaking 77%, from 230 million in 2019 to 54 million in 2020. Museums reduced hours, cancelled traveling shows, and laid off staff. Yes, many museums closed. Not any of our lovely little museums here in Columbia, but the pandemic isn’t over yet.

To get back to the vital, bustling businesses they were two years ago, museums will work to ramp up their schedules. Museums need money. It’s the fuel that drives their engines. But driving is the problem that is making the art world a carbon criminal. Getting all that art, all the time, from one place to another.

Is there a solution?

As with most enormous crises: Maybe.

For starters, museums can organize smaller, more lightweight exhibitions, which consume less energy to ship. Not all exhibitions need to be the theatrical behemoths they have become and to which museumgoers have become habituated. Most museum goers, however well intentioned, suffer fatigue after looking at 60 or 70 works and reading the labels and sharing comments with friends. Trying to experience 150 works of art is a job, not a treat. Museums, in their efforts to out-museum each other, have made shows ever bigger and ever more ponderous and, in many cases, a whole lot less fun. Get smaller. That’s the first and most obvious thing to do.

Build crates out of lighter material. Make use of crush-proof masterpacks when possible, as opposed to wood and steel. If an object requires tons of packaging, how about don’t send it anywhere. A tough choice, sure. But we’re in a crisis, and crises require sacrifices. Serious sacrifices.

Host fewer traveling shows. Yes, that will hurt any museum’s bottom line. On the other hand, it might inspire in-house innovation. What kinds of projects are possible with the permanent collection that are not boring collection surveys?

Some museums sponsor “close looking,” where a painting is set up to be looked at for over half an hour, up to an hour. Imagine what you could see, if you stared at an object that long, looking for every subtlety and nuance you could find. An hour won’t reveal them all. Close looking is just one idea. Be creative—that’s what the art world is good for.

Get people in the community to physically recreate their favorite paintings during a festival dedicated to just that—the tableau vivant, the living painting. Tableau vivants are fun to do, awards may be given out, and of course no art event is complete without booze, and that can be purchased locally.

And now, for the really radical idea: The big museums have way more art than they will ever be able to show. In America, the Met, MoMA the Art Institute of Chicago, all have collections numbering in the hundreds of thousands to the millions. If the largest collections gave away (not loaned, gave) a few thousand pictures each (which they wouldn’t even miss) they could greatly enrich the many small-to-midsized museums in the U.S. Point being, if the museums in South Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico, Utah, North Dakota, etc. etc. all had better art, they might increase visitation while reducing the number of traveling shows they, too, feel compelled to do.

That would be real change. The ridiculously enormous art collections are already teetering on unsustainability and would do themselves a spectacular favor by spreading their riches around.

Wait—what? This sounds like socialism. Well, yes, I suspect this idea does have a whiff of fairness, practicality, and sustainability about it. Mostly, though, it is a radical idea, submitted here in the spirit of let’s all be thinking radically.

Would such a proposal really “work”? Truthfully, I don’t know. But for an idea to be explored, it has to first be on the table. Sure, such an idea would be problematic. But the problems would be nothing compared to the devastating problem we are now facing.

At a distant point, and let’s hope there is one, future art lovers will be able to look back and say that early 21st-century art activists got radical in response to climate change, and the result was not just smart strategies to help cool the planet, but its radicality led to spreading art and its magic more equally throughout the world.

Not a bad legacy, however socialistic.

— Will South

Will South is an independent artist, curator and writer based in Columbia.

New Art by Bonnie Goldberg - An Online Jasper Exclusive

Jasper is delighted when we see treasured artists in the Greater Columbia Arts Community take their talent in different directions, so we were thrilled when figurative artist Bonnie Goldberg agreed to share some of her work with us.

Jasper asked visual artist Bonnie Goldberg to take an assessment of her life as an artist as we all find our ways through what is, hopefully, some of the final months of Covid concerns. This is what Bonnie had to say:

In the beginning of the pandemic, I did stay home and paint a lot. I created a space upstairs in my house and spent a lot of time working on drawings and paintings. Because I had already decided to work in a more abstract manner and use my own paintings and photographs as reference material, I had no need of a model, so it was not a problem not being able to hire someone to model for me. I find that working this way allows me freedom to create new iterations of former work and also work pure abstraction focusing on color and line and shape. Because I had no social life, I was able to throw all of my attention into my work and focus on innovative ideas and new directions. I love the new work that I am doing...I often paint without using a brush...applying the paint with various tools and edges, making marks, and finding new ways to draw and create line without a brush or pencil. There is a lot of layering and "lost and found" color and edges and I find it both challenging and exciting.  

I am back to painting in my studio in the Arcade on Main...I have a small space upstairs and it allows me to paint and allow limited access to the studio from people who visit the building. I am still careful, but fully vaccinated and able to focus on my art in a very intense and personal way. Creating art is always an inner experience for the artist and for me, with music playing and light from the beautiful skylights in the hallway, I am doing my best work ever. I have taken more chances, done more experimenting, and painted more abstractly. And I love it. I do still incorporate the figure into a lot of my work, but sometimes it is only a line or a gesture or a suggestion of a figure, leaving the interpretation to the viewer.  

I am still represented by galleries and interior designers, but I retain the right to sell my own work and I show a lot of my work on social media...Facebook and Instagram reach thousands of people and allow me to show images of my work to many people who in turn often reach out and purchase work. This is a boon to artists to be able to show and sell work in this manner. Instagram has allowed me to not only show and sell work but connect and share ideas with artists around the world. The art world has changed, and I sell more work and see more art from other artists than ever before. 

I love the small studio space that allows me to see everything that I need and work on. You can see from the images that I am creating and layering and abstracting in many sizes and shapes and this is inspiring me to do more in this direction. Art and artists are always evolving, and I look forward to seeing where I can take my work next....just open that door, walk through it, and see what happens....

On Jasper's Radar -- IN THE BUBBLE WITH JAIME HARRISON - A Short Documentary by Emily Harrold

Emily Harrold

Back in the spring, Wade sellers and I had the opportunity to catch a screening of a film by SC filmmaker Emily Harrold about a battle in the war that American culture doesn’t seem to want to ever end. It was called Meltdown in Dixie. “In the wake of the 2015 Charleston Massacre, a battle erupts in Orangeburg, South Carolina between the Sons of Confederate Veterans and an ice cream shop owner forced to fly the Confederate flag in his parking lot. MELTDOWN IN DIXIE explores the broader role of Confederate symbolism in 21st century America and the lingering racial oppression which these symbols help maintain.” (American Documentary) We were impressed by the film and the filmmaker and, once again, proud of another SC artist using their talent and passion to better represent the South as something other than the geographic pit of ignorant rednecks that most of mass media depicts us as.

Now, Harrold is at work completing another documentary that will tell the story of Jaime Harrison and his 2020 senate campaign against Lindsey Graham, called In the Bubble with Jaime. Here’s a snip of info from Harrold’s Kickstarter page:

In the 2020 election cycle in South Carolina, African American Jaime Harrison takes on Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham to run for US Senate. But what happens when the COVID pandemic sets in? In a state with one of the largest African American populations in the United States, Harrison must face not only a global pandemic but a legacy of racial injustice that makes winning an uphill battle.

When he announced his run for Senate back in 2019, nobody thought Jaime Harrison stood a chance. A Black Democrat running for Senate against Trump favorite Lindsey Graham in a state like South Carolina? But by October 2020, Jaime was on track to prove everyone wrong. He raised more money for his race than any US Senate candidate ever before. And he did it while running an almost completely virtual campaign. 

IN THE BUBBLE WITH JAIME pulls back the curtains on Harrison’s historic campaign. See Jaime and his team as they struggle to balance meeting voters face-to-face with the challenges of staying safe during the height of COVID. Get a glimpse of Jaime not only as a Senate candidate, but as a father of two young boys who must keep up with school remotely. Follow political director Bre Maxwell as she travels across South Carolina, building excitement for one of the biggest campaigns the South has seen in decades.  And step out of the bubble with reporter Joe Bustos as he tries to get a read on voters in the weeks and days before the election.”

Harrold’s Team

Have a look at what Harrold is up to and consider getting behind this project. If Meltdown in Dixie is any indication of her work, In the Bubble with Jaime will be something all South Carolinians — especially film and history aficianodos —will be proud of.

Cindi Boiter

Jasper is Thankful for YOU - a message from Cindi

From the bottom of our hearts, we are …

At this time of year those of us at the Jasper Project like to say thank you to the universe for the treasures that have come our way, just like everyone else.

In addition to all of you who support our mission by donating, volunteering, spreading the word, participating in our projects, and reading what we write, I am also thankful for our hardworking board of directors. The Jasper Project board of directors give of their time, energy, and their own wealth and blessings to keep Jasper afloat and actively serving the needs of our arts community at the grass roots level that we believe is so important.

Here are some of the things this board has done for Jasper this year: They have sold tickets, hung posters, hauled and delivered magazines, put up stages and run sound and light for performances. They have baked and prepared food, picked and arranged flowers, balanced our books, filed our taxes, managed projects, written articles, consulted with artists and donors. They have donated their own funds, and so much more.

They also shared with us the people, places, and things in the greater Columbia arts community that they are thankful for themselves.

Read on to see what they had to say..

—Cb

Jasper Project board vice president & director of Harbison Theatre, Kristin Cobb says, “I am thankful for Larry Hembree because he is always willing to lend a hand to all of us in the arts world.”

L-R Joe Hudson, William Cobb, Kristin

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According to USC professor Drue Barker, “I am thankful to live in a city with a thriving contemporary dance community with leaders like Erin Bailey, Martha Brim, Bonnie Boiter-Jolley, Stephanie Wilkins, and Wideman-Davis!” 

Christina Xan, who writes articles and manages the Tiny Gallery project, in addition to always being at the ready to help out wherever she can, agrees, saying, “I’m thankful for Stephanie Wilkins because she has used her compassion and skill to carve new, unique spaces for dancers and dance in Columbia.” 

Stephanie Wilkins and Bonnie Boiter-Jolley, co-founders of the Columbia Summer Rep Dance Co.

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Our intern Stephanie Allen, who is also an excellent writer and devoted to the cause, says, “I’m thankful for the CMA because they continually make themselves accessible to students like me and create open, welcome spaces for the community.”

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Web Maven and graphics guru Bekah Rice, says, “I'm thankful for the MANY outdoor markets in Columbia because they make buying local goods, especially art, more accessible and provide artists and artisans in our community more opportunities to make a living.”

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Jasper Project board president Wade Sellers says, “I’m thankful for an independent film community that continues to create and grow while supporting their fellow creators. The past ten years have seen imaginative new voices emerge in our city. More importantly we have seen those filmmakers get to know each other, share ideas, and share their skills. Our city and the surrounding areas are the rare place where roadblocks that usually hinder access for independent filmmakers don’t exist. I look forward to the new stories these filmmakers will tell in the coming years.”

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Bert Easter, who manages the Jasper Gallery in the Meridian Building in downtown Columbia, says, “I am thankful for ceramics artist Virginia Scotchie of USC who has partnered with me to show student work alongside her art at the Jasper Gallery at the Meridian on Main and the display windows along Washington and Sumter Street.

I am also thankful for the neighborhoods who have had art-in-the-yard events. These meet-the-artist events have been fun,” Easter continues. “I am thankful for the city’s poet laureate, Ed Madden. He’s so cute... oh and he does poetry and art stuff too.”

Columbia City Poet Laureate (and Cutie) ED Madden

artist - Virginia Scotchie

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Paul Leo says, “I am thankful that we have a lively Opera scene here in Colombia, between the productions of The Palmetto Opera Company and The Southeast Division Metropolitan Opera Competition which is starting back up in January 2022 at Columbia College. Columbia's art scene is rich in the preservation of the classical art forms as well as encouraging new and innovative art forms. That is what makes it a truly great city!”

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Board member and manager of the Lizelia project Len Lawson says, “I'm thankful for Columbia Museum of Art, Writer-in-Residence Ray McManus, and Drew Barron for the excellent work on the Hindsight 20/20 Series and Binder Podcast of which I'm grateful to have been a part.”

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Thanks to all of our diligent board members including Grayson Goodman, Al Black, Barry Wheeler, Diane Hare, Christopher Cockrell, Laura Garner Hine, and Preach Jacobs.

If YOU feel like you might have a gift to offer the Jasper Project by way of contributing to our publications, helping out at events, or even applying to be a member of the board of directors, please let us know! We’re always looking for sisters and brothers in the arts who want to join us in our labor of love.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at the Jasper Project!

Columbia Conservatory of Jazz Alum Ashley Green Wins Princess Grace Award & Signs with Alvin Ailey Dance

My soul feels like it leaves my body sometimes and yet I have chills from my head to my toe. — Ashley Green

Columbia is home to a plethora of artists who put their all into their work. One of these passionate communities, rife with those reaching for the stars, is the dance community. Ashley Green, 23, grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, before moving to dance in Seattle and New York.  

Some of Green’s first serious studies were with Columbia’s Dale Lam, who fondly recalls their moments together: “Les and I would drive her halfway home to meet her mom, who would pick her up and take her on home.”

Jasper had the chance to talk with Green about her recent accomplishments, such as winning a Princess Grace Award and joining dance company Alvin Ailey.

JASPER: Was dancing an early love for you, or something you fell in love with over time? 

GREEN: When I was younger and first starting dance, I actually didn’t like it that much. But then around nine, it became everything. I would never want to leave the studio. I would stay until 10 o'clock at night. Sometimes I wouldn't even be dancing but would love just being there late.

JASPER: And you danced in Charleston and Columbia, right? Did you go to school for it as well? 

GREEN: Around 13 I started coming to the Columbia City Jazz Conservatory to dance with Dale Lam. My initial objective after graduating high school was to move to New York or LA, but I spent half a summer in LA and realized I didn’t want to be there. I knew I had to go to school, then, and I chose Point Park University in Pittsburgh, where I studied dance.

JASPER: Was there a turning point with dance where you knew, “I want this to be my life." 

GREEN: Realistically, the time I fully knew would've been college. One day I realized, this is actual work, actual, actual work. This is trauma coming to the surface. This is work with no pay, with mental health issues here to stay. And I just didn’t know. But then one day I went into the studio by myself, and I was just dancing, and I was like, ‘wow, I want to do this forever.’

JASPER: How would you verbalize the feelings that accompany you when you dance? 

ASHLEY: When it feels really good, it feels very orgasmic. My soul feels like it leaves my body sometimes and yet I have chills from my head to my toes. And I think that's what keeps me…it feels like a drug, like I'm fiending for it at all times. Even when I hate it, I'll come home after work and I'm like, "I need that feeling." So, I'll just go dance in my living room.

JASPER: And you chased that feeling to Whim W’Him in Seattle, right? What went into the decision to go and then leave there? 

GREEN: My whole gist of everything is that I want to inspire younger generations. And with Whim W'Him, I could have done that, but it's different because everyone in the company was white-facing or of Asian descent...which was beautiful and great, but I don't think that for who I wanted to reach, I could ever reach them there. Seattle is very white as well, and while I love Seattle, and I love that company, I wanted to broaden my brand—dare I say—and broaden who I reach.

JASPER: How did you choose Alvin Ailey as your place to go? 

GREEN: They called me one day because they were looking for new people. Somebody, maybe a friend, suggested me to the director, and then from there, I got into the company. I didn't audition or anything—I think they couldn't have an audition because of New York's COVID protocol. But I wasn't seeking it. It kind of fell in my lap.

JASPER: And it was around this same time, this year, that you won the Princess Grace Award, right? Can you tell me about it? 

GREEN: My director in Seattle told me they were going to nominate me in February, and I was like, okay, I'm 23, I don't know how that's going to work out because I'm so young. It's very competitive and prestigious. But Princess Grace has always been a goal of mine—I just thought it wouldn't happen until I was like 27, 28. I honestly forgot I applied, and the lady called me a good ten times before I finally answered, and when she told me I won, I couldn’t believe it. Twenty-three has been a year of successes for me, and I just feel so lucky.

JASPER: So, what does a day in the life of Ashley Green the award-winning dancer look like? 

GREEN: Well, usually, I wake up at like 8:00/8:30. My fittings are usually at 9:00, and then from the fitting I go to ballet class. From class, I go to rehearsal until 7:00, and then I come home and try to stir up some courage to dance in my living room because that saves me. You know, let me settle down from this long day and be with myself.

JASPER: Do you have a favorite style or styles you return to, especially when you dance for yourself? 

GREEN: I think contemporary is my favorite, but maybe because it's the best I can do. What I have the most fun doing is hip hop. I just don’t do it very often. I really like them all, but hip hop is my favorite one and contemporary is the one I'm good at.

JASPER: Do you have ideas for your career post-twenty-three? 

GREEN: If God is willing, I really would love to move to Europe. I want to dabble in literally everything that I can before it's too late, but I'm just kind of on the ride. Honestly, the goals that I’m accomplishing here right now are my goals that I had for myself at like thirty. Something that I really want to do is own my own dance company. Eventually. And if I didn't, I think I would love to start a community facility for young girls, a mentorship program so that they could feel like they're supported with professional dancers behind their back.

JASPER: In your career so far, have you had any moments that stand out? 

GREEN: I have one. It was my second semester of college, and I was doing a Garfield Lemonius piece, and I connected to it on such a deep level. I was in this moment of time where I felt like I was really stepping into my own artistically and with my body, and I remember being on stage and–literally–I could see clouds, and it felt like angels were singing to me while I was doing this dance…even talking about it, I get chills because I felt the winds on me. And that's the most memorable moment I have as a dancer. And my parents had surprised me and were in the audience, and I didn’t know it!

JASPER: It sounds like your parents have been extremely supportive. 

GREEN: They sacrificed so much for me. Truly and honestly, I would not be here without them and their sacrifice, always being such a crucial support system that I have needed throughout my life and moving through the process of adulthood and finding myself.

JASPER: On the note of finding yourself, earlier you discussed dancing amongst white-facing and Asian dancers; would you mind speaking about your journey as a Black dancer? 

GREEN: I think it's hard sometimes for me to speak on the topic because I was lucky enough to be a very talented Black dancer, so I got treated differently. Granted, yes, there are microaggressions at all times because I am a Black woman in a white space. But it's like...this is why I'm in these spaces. If there's a white space, I'm going to enter it. It might put me in danger mentally, but it's showing we need representation in each spot. Because how can you evolve with no culture? And I think this is also why I need to step out eventually to another space, like interjecting space for Black dancers in European spaces so that kids here or there who are Black feel like they can enter these spaces confidently.

You can follow along Ashley’s journey as she creates these spaces on her Instagram @awagreen98.

By Christina Xan

PRINT WORTHY! Coming back Around with Kasie Whitener

Kasie Whitener puts an unapologetic spin on nostalgia.

Whitener writes for Gen X, the forgotten generation: a generation of latch key kids who grew up in the ‘90s and now, according to Whitener, find themselves sandwiched and silenced between Millennials and Baby Boomers.

Her latest novel, Before Pittsburgh, was written during quarantine, but climaxes at the crisis of another generation: 9/11. Though Whitener originally tried to build the book around 9/11, “it didn’t work,” Whitener says.

For Gen X, 9/11 came at a pivotal time in their 20s, potentially changing the trajectory of their lives. After one event, their world was suddenly vastly different than the day before. Taking years to just survive after that kind of crisis, Whitener says that looking back today makes Gen X wonder if this is the same future that they had hoped for on September 10. As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 nears, Before Pittsburgh revisits how 9/11 was the turning point for everything for Whitener’s generation.

However, a large part of Whitener’s dedication to writing about Gen X is the recognition that most experiences aren’t unique to her generation. Whitener notes that the pandemic may be having a similar effect on the current generation of 20-year-olds that 9/11 had on hers.

Writing Before Pittsburgh during quarantine combined intentional nostalgia with current emotions of disconnection and uncertainty. “There’s a lot of emotion in there that might not feel like 2000, 2001— it might feel a whole lot like 2020,” Whitener says.

This notion of coming back around, perhaps lived in real time in the creation of Before Pittsburgh, is crucial to Whitener’s work as a writer. Whitener has used memory as a literary device consistently throughout her writing, now using more natural and meandering transitions than the snap flashbacks that her earlier work featured.

Whitener believes that the way the story is told is just as important as important as what is happening in the plot. “Those memories, when they come at you, they come at you for a specific reason …I wanna dive in. I wanna be back in that moment,” Whitener says.

Before Pittsburgh follows Whitener’s debut novel, After December, filling a three-year gap that was skipped over in the first novel. After December was decades in the making, as Whitener had been working with these characters since she was 13 years old. The novel was written, rewritten, put on hold, and edited again. “Those characters have always been there,” Whitener says.

After the time-intensive creation of After December, however, Whitener wrote Before Pittsburgh in just 18 months. Brian, the protagonist of Before Pittsburgh, navigates feelings of alienation from his friends, things that felt very relevant to Whitener’s experiences during quarantine. Using those feelings as guidance, the story came together very quickly for her.

While After December covered a period of just five days, Before Pittsburgh had to explain the years preceding the conclusion of After December. Instead of using chapters as markers, After December was divided by each day. With far more time to cover in Before Pittsburgh, Whitener used locations to section out the novel. This geographically based mode of storytelling allows the reader to see Brian’s compartmentalization of identities and ultimate growth into a more authentic version of himself.

Though Whitener has finally completed her work with the characters she’s been writing about since adolescence, she doesn’t imagine she’ll ever stop writing. After earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, Whitener got her PhD in Organization and Management from Capella University. As her more full-time gig, Whitener teaches at the Darla Moore School of Business.

Whitener holds many different identities: Entrepreneur, educator, author, and radio show host, to name a few. On the side, she even visits book clubs that read her work. To Whitener, they’re all connected. “It all comes out of the writing,” Whitener says. “Everything I do is somehow related to writing. Always has been.”

Her radio show on 100.7 The Point serves as a weekly writing workshop and focuses on promoting South Carolina Writers. Her work as an entrepreneur goes hand in hand with her work as an author. Whitener notes that, while her writing career may look different from others, it’s common for authors to have multiple sources of revenue.

Whitener founded Clemson Road Creative in 2012, a business that functions as a for profit consultancy. Jodie Cain Smith, managing partner, firmly believes in Whitener’s role as an educator and a businessperson in addition to her work as a writer. “So much of being an author is being an entrepreneur,” Smith says.  

Ambition is a key word for Whitener. She wants more— not more money, fame, or, really, anything specific. “24 usable hours in the day, right? I just want all of them to be filled up with something meaningful.” Whitener says.

In addition to working with Whitener at Clemson Road Creative, Smith edited both After December and Before Pittsburgh, though she would never call herself Whitener’s editor. The two have been working together for years now; Whitener edits some of Smith’s work and the two share generational experiences.

“There are these generational truths in her writing that I struggle to find other places, so I really enjoy re-living my youth in her writing,” Smith says. She notes the detail with which Whitener remembers and writes the past, from fashion to music to even the cocktails characters drink. Though Smith was initially apprehensive about Whitener using 9/11 as a plot device in Before Pittsburgh, she changed her mind completely after reading the scene. Smith says Whitener captured the fear and grief of 9/11 and put it in real time. She had to read that section of the book several times, enjoying it as a reader, before she could edit it.

The story made Smith wonder what other stories should be created that address the shared terror of 9/11— something that, to her, Whitener proved could actually be done. Whitener carved out a space for generational representation, weaving in Gen X identity in a way that doesn’t feel exclusive.  “There’s a quality of almost numbness in lot of Gen Xers and we took independence and we stretched it to detachment almost,” Smith says. Before Pittsburg, in Smith’s opinion, explains that phenomena while maintaining a wide appeal.

However, this brand of “Unapologetically X,” as Whitener describes herself, didn’t always come naturally. Whitener noticed other creators from her generation being hesitant to identify as Gen X. Because so much of her work revolved around writing, even before the publication of her first novel, Whitener found that targeting people her age helped her establish an audience. By the time she turned 40, she felt no need to put on any kind of show or premise that wasn’t truly her— including any false professional identity.

While Whitener doesn’t expect that this authentic professional identity will ever be limited to just being an author, there’s certainly more coming. “One of my writing partners says that I’m like a popcorn maker,” Whitener says. “[I’ve] got all these kernels in the oil— at some point one’s gonna pop. And then they’re all gonna pop.”

Who knows what might pop next?

By Stephanie Allen

Lori Starnes Isom Explores Emotion Through Faces and Figures in New Tiny Gallery Show Sentimental Mood

Jazz Stylist

As we bundle up and get prepared to gather around tables and share thanks with ourselves and the ones we care for, consider expressing that love with an irreplaceable drawing or painting from Lori Starnes Isom, Jasper’s featured November Tiny Gallery artist, whose show Sentimental Mood is up now. 

Lori Starnes Isom is a New Yorker at her origins, born in Brooklyn and growing up in Queens, where she went to an arts high school and college. Her first interest in art came far before school, however, around age six.

 “I remember drawing lots of go-go dancers wearing white boots - probably inspired by the show ‘Laugh-In,’ which most likely inspired my desire to be a dancer as well!” Isom recalls. 

Though her schooling in art absolutely aided in Isom’s understanding of the genre, she roots most of her ability to “voraciously” consuming and studying other artists’ work as well as art content in print. This seed continued to grow not just as a student but a teacher, with Isom having taught children's art classes at the private level.

 As an artist, Isom is proficient in a plethora of mediums, though her favorite is charcoal due to her longstanding history with it and its “depth and richness.” When it comes to painting, specifically, she prefers watercolor due to its translucent texture and visuality. 

Visionary

“At first my work looked really stiff because I was trying to control the paint. But after a while, I learned that watercolor works best if you let it do its thing,” Isom explains, “I eventually switched over to acrylics because framing charcoals and watercolors got way too expensive!”  

Acrylic also provides a “versatility and ease of use” that allows Isom to repaint and alter art while already in-progress, which works in tandem with her personal style that she refers to as “loose [and] painterly.” In contrast to this is the detail she puts into faces, with figures and portraits often being the subject of her work. 

Isom credits artists such as Mary Cassatt, Johannes Vermeer, and John Singer Sargent as being inspiring forces for her. This compounds with her personal motivations in storytelling.  

“My driving force is always to tell a story or pursue an idea. I work from old photos a lot because I'm familiar with the people in them, and I deeply enjoy the challenge of bringing life to them,” Isom intimates, “I also really enjoy working in monotone and large, solid swathes of color because it causes the viewer to focus more on the story.”   

Isom’s process is one of balancing the freedom of ideas and maintaining simplicity, which allows for a striking expression of emotion and affect, finishing a piece when there is “nothing more that needs to be said.” 

For this Tiny Gallery show, Isom offers an intimate exploration of humanity, focusing on what she loves most: people. Sentimental Mood is a collection of 8 new and old pieces in multiple mediums.  

In one, a watercolored woman stands tall, gazing above her at something just off canvas. In another, a couple with soft, blurred faces yet stark emotion stand pressed against another, with an emerald green dress its center. Another zooms in close to a singing woman, mouth open in the ecstasy of song, fingers softly tendrilled around her microphone. 

“As far as a favorite,” Isom shares, “I think that would be "Close to My Heart", because it's a simple pencil drawing of my mom and her mother, Daisy, whom I never got to meet.”  

Close to my Heart

Within or outside the show, Isom has and continues to make a mark on our community with her expressive, pointed, and unique work. “I am acutely aware that it's a gift to be able to express myself in a creative way and know that I am in full control of how far I allow that creativity to grow,” she effuses. 

Isom’s show will be up until November 30th at Jasper’s online gallery, which is accessible 24/7: https://the-jasper-project.square.site/tiny-gallery.    

Concurrent to and after the show, Isom’s work can be viewed at the new Gallery 537 in Camden, South Carolina. You can also follow along her journey on Instagram and Facebook @loristarnesisom. 

—    Christina Xan

Join Jasper Galleries Featured Artist Pam Bowers at Motor Supply During Vista Lights

Join Jasper Galleries Featured Artist

Pam Bowers

for an intimate Meet the Artist event

Thursday Night from 6 - 9

at Motor Supply Bistro

920 Gervais Street