Jasper is back on Main Street for a holiday First Thursday! Join us from 6 - 8:30 pm at Tapp’s for Deck the Walls, a show of small works by 9 of the artists we’ve featured this year:
Jackie Bobo, Jarid Lyfe Brown, Janet Kozachek, F. Michael LaRosa, Emily Moffitt, Jessica Ream, Lucas Sams, Megan Tapley, and Lindsay Radford Wiggins
Everything is 12x12 or smaller and under $250, perfect for gifts and stocking stuffers. Best part? You can take your art home right away, no waiting until the show comes down!
Come shop, have a drink, and hang out with us in the alley. The artists and Jasper Board members will be on site to chat about their work. We will also have live music, check back soon for that announcement.
Artist Bios
Jackie Bobo is the vibrant force behind Bobo to the Max, an art practice and brand that creates emotionally immersive art and experiences inviting people to feel deeply, express fully, and
belong as their most vivid selves.
Informed by nearly a decade as a Speech-Language Pathologist—and more than three decades of living at the intersection of queerness, Blackness, and neurodivergence—Jackie approaches painting as its own language, one capable of holding nuance from the playful to the profound.
Through her signature Happy Spooky aesthetic—bright, bold colors paired with ghosts, spiders, and other whimsically macabre motifs—her work explores what it means to unmask, authentically connect, and belong. Each piece acts as a symbol of self-acceptance, affirming that belonging doesn’t mean blending in—it means revealing who you already are.
Bobo to the Max is built on invitation, not instruction—an open door to feel.
Jarid Lyfe Brown was born in Atlanta, raised in Columbia, and lives in Gilbert. He has worked construction by day for more than 30 years. He attended SCAD but is largely self-taught. His paintings lean surreal, often turning animals into human-like characters and layering handwritten notes and annotations across the same canvas as the image.
Since 2012, Brown has sold hundreds of portraits, abstracts, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and commissions to private collectors, galleries, and interior designers. Anastasia Chernoff represented him from 2012 to 2014. He has shown widely in solo and group exhibitions across South Carolina and beyond, including at Soul Haus and Havens Gallery. He also paints murals, builds his own canvases, and has brought his work into local classrooms to make art with students.
His newest work grew out of a small sketchbook he started carrying during a few busy, chaotic years, a way to keep making art anywhere and hold on to something that matters to him.
Janet Kozachek is an internationally trained and exhibited artist with a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Certificate of graduate study from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Columbia Museum of Art, The Morris Museum, The South Carolina State Museum, and in several private collections. Ms. Kozachek is the recipient of numerous art awards, including National Endowment for the Arts State subgrant awards, a Puffin Foundation Award, an ArtFields award, and a Humanities Council Award. She is the author and illustrator of The Book of Marvelous Cats, My Women My Monsters, A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time, A Book of Bothersome Cats, and has published in The Colorado Review, Ekphrasis, Porlock, Local Life, The Heron Anthology, Kakalak, Wag the Dog Anthology, Sunflowers Rising Anthology, and The Harpy Hybrid Review.
F. Michael LaRosa is a Midlands native, sculptor, artistic explorer, poet, musician, skinny old man, and perpetual seeker who is still in love with the far flung cultural diversity and personal freedom that truly made America great. He aspires to the motto “Create freely, without judgment or inhibition.”
Emily Moffitt is an illustrator based in Columbia, SC. She currently works as the Gallery Curator for the Koger Center for the Arts, Secretary on the Jasper Board of Directors, and as the Visual Arts Editor for Jasper Magazine. She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina's School of Visual Art and Design and has exhibited in places like the Edward R. Driggers Center for the Arts in Greer, SC, Stormwater Studios for The Jasper Project's inaugural "Degenerate Art Project," and the Richland Library. Having worked in the Columbia arts scene since she graduated college, Emily finds joy and fulfillment in helping put together exhibits for her artist peers, which continues to motivate her to fall back in love with making her own artwork on a consistent basis.
Jessica Ream was born in Columbus, Ohio early in the year 1990, but was raised in Carolina suburbia. She attended Savannah College of Art and Design where she graduated with honors and a BFA in Painting. A jack-of-all trades artist, she incorporates her knowledge of painting, photography, print, sewing and sculpture into her mixed media, abstract pieces.
In recent years, she has rediscovered her love of hand binding books. While mainly self taught, she was first introduced to the world of book arts in a workshop she attended while studying abroad. Her hand bound journals are made from a mix of traditional materials and rebound, vintage books.
After spending the time in the High Rockies of Colorado, she and her husband have returned to their southeastern, coastal origins, where they reside with their son and newborn daughter.
Artist Statement:
I seek emotional catharsis.
My work is a visual expulsion of my intimate ruminations. Each piece is a visual confession, infused with an unbridled honesty I find paradoxically terrifying and liberating.
I am a painter, a photographer, a printmaker and a seamstress. I am a sculptor and a habitual collector of discarded objects. I am process driven; the physicality of the material capturing my natural curiosity. This child like act of discovery and alteration allows me to speak about what I cannot say audibly and drives me to create.
Lucas Sams is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and experimental musician with works exhibited locally and regionally in major art festivals, galleries, and alternative spaces; he has been featured in Jasper Art Magazine, the SC State Newspaper, Garnet and Black Magazine, and the Timber Journal of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Born and raised in Greenwood, Sams spent most of his life in the South Carolina until his freshman year in college, where he studied painting in Tokyo, Japan and became heavily influenced by contemporary Japanese Pop Art. A graduate of the SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and the University of South Carolina, his post-graduate work continues explorations of postmodern abstraction and figuration with far-ranging influences, encompassing everything from religious art, alchemy, and the unconscious- to science fiction and anime. He is currently pursuing a graduate degree as an MLIS candidate at the University of South Carolina.
Megan Tapley (She/They) is an emerging artist from Irmo, SC. Tapley attended Clemson University and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in ceramics in 2024. After moving back to Columbia in 2025, Tapley found a studio home at Gemini Arts in Rosewood. Through finding a community at Gemini Arts, Tapley has been able to contribute to the Columbia arts community beyond just creating art. She has been featured in exhibitions such as Degenerate Project II, Echoes of Georgia O'Keeffe, and The Banquet. She also had a profile in Jasper Magazine Fall 2025 and participates in various local and regional artisan markets.
Lindsay Radford Wiggins is a multi-media artist and photographer currently concentrating in watercolor and fine art oil paintings. She was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama and now resides in Columbia, SC where she completed her BA in Studio Art from Columbia College in 2011. Lindsay currently works from her home studio in Columbia, SC. Many of her works can be seen in personal, business and gallery collections in the South Carolina area.