Jasper is Back On Main Street for First Thursday Fun! Join us from 6 - 8:30 pm in our old stomping ground at Tapp's! This month we're full or pride for our LGBTQ+ Artist Spotlight featuringJackie Bobo & Barry J. White, Josef Berliner, Tayler Simon, and Alejandro García-Lemos. We've also got live music in the works, so stay tuned for that announcement!
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.
Jackie Bobo
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.
Josef Berliner
Josef Berliner's artistic identity emerged early. As a child he gravitated toward sketchpads and drawing pencils, and a supportive family nurtured that spark until his work was selected for the Scholastic Art Awards' national touring exhibition at sixteen, earning his first public showing at the Columbia Museum of Art. He studied at the University of South Carolina among instructors and classmates who remain close friends today, but an unexpected detour into DJing took hold, and he spent years as one of the Southeast's premier nightclub DJs, playing top venues and racking up awards. That chapter also brought him his husband Josh, his biggest supporter and most honest critic. As commission work picked up alongside the DJ career, Josh's encouragement helped Josef make the leap into art full time, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
Since then, Josef has exhibited widely in solo and group shows and founded Eye-Conic Art Studio. His work has appeared in community theatre lobbies, touring exhibitions, and private collections across regional, national, and international audiences, and he's contributed to organizations like Bullets and Bandaids, the Betsy Blackmon Dance Company, the Atlantic Institute, the Jasper Project, the Greater Irmo Art Guild, South Carolina Artists, and Artists for Africa, where he was a featured artist at the 2024 and 2026 Postcard Art galas. Working primarily in oil on canvas with portraiture at his core, Josef pairs technical precision with a deeper aim: revealing who his subjects truly are beneath the surface.
Alejandro García-Lemos
Bio: Alejandro García-Lemos is a visual artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana and Columbia, SC. He holds a MA in Latin American Studies from Florida International University in Miami, and a BA in Graphic Design from the School of Arts at the National University in Bogotá, Colombia. His work focuses on social issues, mostly on aspects of immigration, sexuality, biculturalism, religion and community. His works has been shown mostly in the South East. Alejandro is a member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), as well as the founder of Palmetto & LUNA a non-profit organization promoting Latino Arts and Cultures in South Carolina since 2007. From 2022 to 2024 he was part of the artist collective “CAVILANTES” in Colombia, showing in Panama, México and Colombia. In July 2025 Alejandro was selected for a residency of Buihno, ArtLab in Messejana, Alentejo Portugal.
Artist Statement: I create art based on the curatorial statement or the intent of the show, which means that I use different materials and technics to convey the meaning of the exhibition. For the LGBTQ+ Pride Jasper show I decided to use some recent homo-erotic collages that I have been developing which depict images of the male nude body, highlighting the issue that men's bodies have been historically minimized, excluded or avoided in most art forms. It still persist an aspect of censorship if the male body is openly presented.
Tayler Simon
Tayler Simon (she, her) is a writer, artist, social worker, and seeker of collective liberation. She owns Liberation is Lit, a bookstore and press that sparks collective action for liberation among readers by promoting stories from intersectional experiences. Her main artistic mediums are digital collage and poetry. She has self-published four books, including her latest, Black Madonna. Through her art, she has made a commitment to radical vulnerability, curiosity, connection, and liberation.
Barry J. White
Barry J. White is a Blythewood, SC-based self-taught multi-disciplinary artist whose works center the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of Black men. Guided by intuition, personal experience, and emotion, Barry’s paintings explore themes of identity and self-acceptance through expressive realism and atmospheric color.
Barry’s work has been featured in exhibitions For the People, Crowned by the Roots, Degenerate II, and Gemini Arts, Stormwater, Roc Bottom, and Drummond studios, where it’s been recognized for its depth, honesty, and visual storytelling.