Mark Pointer - undefined magazine Book 2

{substance}

undefined : Book Two : April-May-June 2008

features:

20 25 31 39 42 64 71

Tom Poland on James Dickey Delirium Tribal and Alternacirque Joe Byrne Jemes Davis Re-incarnation of 701 Whaley Heidi Darr-Hope “Southbound” 2000, 50 x 38, Joe Byrne

Thomas Crouch

profiles:

essays: 14 : Frank Martin : Whose Art is it Anyway?

58 : Mary Gilkerson : Identity Crisis - Columbia’s Art Scene

13 : Nick and Sara Wilson 19 : Heather LaHaise 51 : Lynne Burgess 55 : Jay Hubbell

dialogue: 52 : Featured Gallery : HoFP 82 : Columbia Also Rises 76 : Calendar

*

9 : Indie Grits 56 : Show - Through Our Eyes 62: Wear Your Art 75 : consumptional art

Subscribe now at: www.beundefined.com These pages are the labor of many talented hands, from writing, design and editing, to sales and marketing. We encourage you to contact us with any feedback or story ideas at our website. Please support the artists, your community leaders and advertisers. For advertising information please contact Lesley Hoskins at 803.337.6712 or lesley@beundefined.com undefined magazine is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner, in whole or in part, without the publisher's written permission.

Write us at: undefined Magazine 709 Woodrow Street : 322 : Columbia, SC 29205 803.233.3796 ©2008 All Rights Reserved undefined : book two

4

an undefined Kasi Koshollek

Chuck Walsh

Lesley Hoskins

Natasha Chilingerian

Mary Gilkerson

Jenny Reese

Melissa Spivey

{photographer}

{novelist/ writer}

{sales/ marketing}

{writer}

{artist/writer}

{writer}

{designer}

Hair: Bombshell Beauty Studio and Kelly Odom Makeup: TAGA - Freya Katzman and Daniel Price.

assembly Emily Garrett

Mark Pointer

Shayna Katzman

Brad Allen

Tom Poland

David Wright

Tony Lee

{writer}

{designer/ publisher}

{writer}

{photographer}

{novelist/ writer}

{editor}

{musician/ writer} photography: Brad Allen

CAN110_U_girl

2/28/08

11:41 AM

Page 1

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Now pre-leasing CanalSide Lofts apartment homes.

803.461.0465 • CanalsideColumbia.com We reserve the right to alter the specifications depicted or described in whole or in part without notice or obligation.

This is not an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction in which the legal requirements for such an offering have not been met.

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event

Indie Grits Film Festival

B

“To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore”, which recently premiered in New York at MOMA. Thursday’s screenings include “Unfettering the Falcons”, a humorous short which asserts that the struggles of the Atlanta Falcons may rest in a gender identity crisis, and “Neutral”, the impressive feature film debut of Black Mountain, NC’s Joe Chang.

This year’s festival will also feature a spectacular event on the grounds of the old fire station in Columbia’s Vista (at the corner of Park and Senate Streets) on the evening of Friday, April 11.

For the first time branching into independent music as well as film, the Friday evening event is headlined by Brent Green, an experimental animator and musician who will provide live narration and scoring to his films with his accompanying band composed of Fugazi percussionist Jerry Busher and the Bitter Tears. In addition to Green’s performance, local bands The Heist and the Accomplice, and The Choir Quit, will share the stage as well as special video art by Columbia’s Simon Tarr and Greenville artist Axel Forrester.

Saturday, April 12, will feature a full day of programming, beginning with a showcase of student films at the Nickelodeon at 1pm. At 7pm, the festival’s awards ceremony will be held at the State Museum, where special guest Aaron Katz will present his critically acclaimed film Quiet City. Katz, a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts is a rising figure in the recently dubbed “Mumblecore” film genre.

The festival wraps up Sunday, April 13 with re-screenings of all award-winners at the Nickelodeon Theatre.

Visit indiegrits.com for more information, screening schedules and to purchase tickets to any event.

illing itself as “slightly south of cinema,” Columbia’s Indie Grits Film Festival (April 9-13, 2008) is quickly making a name for itself in the independent film world. Organized by the Nickelodeon Theatre, this year’s festival will include 23 films vying for over $7,000 in cash and prizes plus several special guests including Aaron Katz, a critically acclaimed “Mumblecore” director, and Brent Green, an experimental animator and musician who will perform with a live band on the night of Friday, April 11.

Sponsored by Scarf and Screen Columbia, The Free Times, the Columbia Development Corporation, ETV’s Southern Lens, and WXRY, the festival is quickly becoming a signature cultural event for the city, drawing in music and film lovers from across the region.

Founded last year by Amy Shumaker and Betsy Newman of ETV, John Whitehead of CMFA and Larry Hembree and Andy Smith of the Nickelodeon Theatre, Indie Grits strives to present the best in truly independent film from across the Southeast while also showing off all that Columbia has to offer. Last year’s inaugural festival drew over 1,500 attendees and over 30 different filmmakers from 13 different states over five days.

“We wanted to do something really cool for our city,” says Andy Smith, Director of Indie Grits. “Film festivals are popping in city after city so we knew we’d have to do something to set ourselves apart. Rather than go for big stars and filmmakers looking to springboard to Hollywood, we created a festival that celebrates all that truly independent film has to offer. We look for stuff that’s a little odd, a little gritty.”

The festival kicks off on Wednesday, April 9th at the Nickelodeon Theatre with several films including Greenville, SC filmmaker Jeff Sumerel’s newest feature text: Teri Buonasera

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statuscritikal@yahoo.com

profile

Sara Thomas and Nick Wilson

T

hank God there are still artists who are so unwilling to sell-out that they’ll trade their work for a month of free tacos. And thank God they’re actually in Columbia, hiding out above Sid and Nancy in Five Points. Sara Thomas and Nick Wilson, of the Half and Half screen printing shop, showed me their true colors. Both graphic design graduates of USC, the two started their own business and recently moved from North Main St. to a hip new loft on Saluda Ave. “The first two weeks we were there [N. Main St.] the window got shot out,” Thomas said. “We had to get out of there.” After the move and priceless help from Two Men and a Truck, the Half and Half is enjoying success near one of their most prized clients, El Burrito, where they claim to eat lunch every day.

The duo met in college and clicked. Thomas, of Charleston, and Wilson, of Easley, stood out in the crowd. “We were the first year to go through a serious portfolio review,” Wilson said.

“We made it through with flying colors.” Still in college, Thomas and Wilson set their sights on more practical work.

“We didn’t like the idea that these are not real-world projects in school,” Wilson said. “Before we were out of school we were treated as professionals.” After winning both the student and professional Best in Show awards in the same year at the AIGA SC InShow Awards, and a lot of word of mouth advertising, the Half and Half’s business was booming. “It validated us,” Thomas said.

Wilson had a smaller business when Thomas joined him, so the recent graduates changed the name to the Half and Half.

“We were hanging out and decided to do this,” Wilson said. “We always split concepting…it’s like two for the price of one.” Like most collaborators, Thomas and Wilson have their own visions.

“We have different tastes and styles that work well off each other,” Wilson said.

The Half and Half designers are genuinely self-made. “All of our capital came from doing work out of school,” Wilson said.

“We’re really proud about not having to take out any loans.” By getting great deals on used equipment from eBay and message boards, the two were able to get business rolling quickly. “We ran into a lot of really good deals,” Thomas said. “We don’t even have a credit card.”

Both fresh out of school, the two view their youth as a selling point, rather than a disadvantage in the market. “Because we’re young, people want to work with us,” Wilson said. “Because we wear blue jeans to work.” The Half and Half’s clients generally

text: Jenny Reese photography: Brad Allen

want something young and hip, which is why they turn to screen printing in the first place. “We ARE young and hip,” Wilson said. With a creative philosophy based on “not doing lame stuff,” the design shop’s portfolio is anything but, including work for the Nickelodeon Theatre and Indie Grits. With practical projects, the pair is able to sustain a business while maintaining creative freedom and expression. “That’s antilame,” Thomas said. “We get to make whatever we want.” In Columbia’s established design market, the Half and Half has seen great success as a newcomer. “We don’t have to prove ourselves,” Wilson said. “We’re beating them at their own game.”

The shop teams up with ad agencies like Riggs, scoops up work from all over Five Points (including Sid and Nancy, Revente and Adriana’s) and gets great PR, on the house. “We’ve had such success with word of mouth,” Thomas said. “We’re slammed right now. Look at our poor [to-do] board.” While their achievements among peers in the design world are impressive, Thomas noted that award shows are not conducive to drumming-up business. Luckily, Columbia’s elite are on their side. “We have a lot of really good friends that were clients in college that are still with us,” Wilson said. “They’re like socialites of Columbia that spread the word about us.”

Because the shop is known for inventive, cutting-edge design work, Thomas and Wilson have resolved to stay true to their ideals. “There’s something inherent about it [screen printing] that’s a billion times better,” Wilson said. “We push the silkscreen aspect because it’s handmade.” After taking on a couple of what they call “lame” projects, like business-cards and wedding-invitations, the pair adopted a new method to choose business ventures: “Go with your gut,” they agreed. “Our first job is to fulfill the need of the designer…for better or worse,” Thomas said, but added, “You always think ‘I don’t want to do this project’ but you do it and it always ends badly.” In keeping with their ideals, the Half and Half is an eco-friendly company as well. “Everything we do is biodegradable,” Wilson said.

“We’re environmentally friendly.”

Be it noble, naïve, or some combination of the two – the Half and Half commands respect for its candid approach to business and unwavering principles. The passion behind the work is palpable: a quality that all-too-often tends to disappear over the years – when tacos won’t pay the bills, and the cynicism of age sets in. But in the case of the Half and Half, I wouldn’t bet against passion.

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}

art is it {Whoseanyway?

Evolutionary Psychology, Integral Theory and Columbia’s Aesthetic Development

by Frank Martin Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art

An Undefined Essay

I

ture, that an example (or two..or more!) may be helpful in clarifying the basic premise of this article, however, let’s not forget that question of integral theory (blame intellectual theorist, Ken Wilbur), one of the more recent responses to the deconstruction of culture, a legacy of Post-Modernist methodologies for interpreting cultural phenomena, integral theory proposes to holistically reintegrate the fragmented assessments of reality resulting from the aftermath of Post-Modern approaches to understanding our environment. In this vein of seeking an explanation for who does what in our local art community…and the accompanying “why?,” our, discussion will consider my personal understanding of how Columbia’s visual arts collective integrates its varied constituencies and consider a rationale for the diversity of vision and purpose we have devised as a group, in order to create a thriving arts collaborative.

With this underlying idea of a thriving arts community as a foundation for our premise, let’s begin our inquiry with the communal outer reaches or its “edges” by discussing two of its most recent additions, both of whom are on the forefront of the communal conversation, but in quite different ways. Starting on this “outer edge” and working inward, again as a metaphor, I am undertaking this task with full knowledge that as a writer with quite limited information and exposure, I will probably get a good deal of this wrong, but this is not an historical or scholarly assessment, although that could prove to be of interest at some later juncture; No,...this is an openly subjective, profoundly biased, opinionated, insular discussion, and, consequently,

n our previous foray into the “undefined” discussion of A/art, we (yes, the Royal “we,” or, in other words..”me”..um..er..”I”) questioned the concept of whether we are discussing and perusing “Art,” or is it “art”?

Or, framed differently, how do we determine if a work is intended as “fine,” or so-called “high” Art,“low” art, craft, or kitsch? Moreover, regarding the question of A/art, whose responsibility is it to pay for it, show it to us, tell us about it, preserve it, advocate it, and interpret it? Finally, what does any of this have to do with evolutionary psychology and integral theory? In fact, what are evolutionary psychology and integral theory?

Okay, so the title is a pretext that will permit us to indulge in a brief discussion centered on the local distribution of responsibilities in Columbia’s arts community predicated on a loose association with developments in evolutionary psychology (see Charles Darwin, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby), an approach to understanding human behavior which bases its hypotheses on the underlying concept that our cognitive abilities and social interactions are the result of adaptive behaviors necessitated by changing circumstances and the human impetus to survive over the past several million years or so. In other words, the diverse entities and agencies in our community have evolved in order to adapt to perceived needs within the community and to conform to the individual visions of the various community leaders who have assumed responsibility for addressing specific aspects of the A/art equation in our local environment.

It would be entirely reasonable to assume, at this juncundefined : book two

14

text: Frank Martin

I will inevitably overlook, ignore, fail to mention and omit someone or something of paramount importance, because that is the nature of my own form of hapless ignorance, …so when you, dear reader have discovered this shameful and tawdry deletion, simply write to me in care of Undefined and I will confess my dreadful mistakes and attempt to correct my pitiable error(ssss!!).

Consequently, I am relying on you as a receptive and supportive audience to alleviate my simple-mindedness and backwardness. Having confessed the infinite boundaries of my personal inadequacy, let us move forward into some substantive form of inaccuracy, since I have apologized profusely in advance! …. I am so very sorry that I have left out…_______..(please fill in the blank in your discretion!)!

That said I am beginning with …If Art… the idea of curator and collector Wim Roefs, a relative newcomer to Columbia’s art community, indeed a refugee from journalism, Roefs and his enterprise …If Art are now a pervasive influence, particularly in the local advocacy of avant-garde works of exceptional quality. No, no, I did not say that this is the only place where avant-garde “Art” can be seen, but it is a very likely place where it may be consumed and collected! Wim’s whimsical sense of quality combined with his keen curatorial eye, which moves in many directions simultaneously, is a winning mix…and you can just go to the upper level of If Art and read all about the ideas motivating many of the outrageous things that you will be able to walk downstairs and purchase. This place is art as intelligent fun at its very best!

On a different part of the “outer edge” of new-ish people, we also find an entity intimately connected to myself via its proprietress, one Shirley FieldsMartin, the maven of the McCrory Galleri, where instead of a strictly commercial preoccupation, an experiment is in progress to determine if Columbia’s community is interested in visual literacy, dialogue, and aesthetic development as a process as opposed to a destination. I know this intimately, being married to the gallery director (uh-oh,…did someone just say the words “vested interest?” I am shocked!!..well okay..I do write for them too so..gee.. uh..guilty..duh..) Subject to the sharply honed programming directives of “Ms. Shirley,” various colloquia, artists’ gallery talks, and activities for the public with an intention toward discussion and critique, form an intriguing complement to what is shown in the space, so that talking about the art becomes, in some very real sense, equal to looking at what may be on display at this site and, thus it could conceivably serve as a kind of preparatory activity for art observation and inquiry at other sites, creating a “safe space” concept for finding out about what is unfamiliar (with an appropriately altruistic sacrifice of profitability; seeking to benefit the communal conversation as a whole.. and...er....I will let you know, as time passes, how this experiment proceeds in the midst of an economic recession!)

But how did these newcomers come to fill their respective niches?

Simple…they are taking up the proverbial gauntlets of the trailblazers who preceded them and who opened the downtown, Vista areas, and central Columbia neighborhoods to A/art, that’s how. ...and who are these trail blazers? Ahhh..I am happy you asked this question…read on…

A few of the pioneer galleries (I am sorry to admit that I am not familiar with all of them, so all of you pioneers who may be out there, please inform my ignorance if or when you read this and determine that there are vital, missing elements in this first attempt!) include Wendy Wells and her vision for City Art, which combines exhibition space, art sales and quality art supplies in a single space ( and of course this was the featured gallery in the inau-

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gural issue of Undefined by the way! So find that first issue and read all about the City Art vision).

Carol Saunders Gallery, fundamental to Columbia’s collecting community, and another early pioneering effort created by a team of visionaries, and of course Betsy Havens whose Havens Gallery is now under new management, but which was one of the first art spaces I visited in Columbia when I had initially returned to South Carolina in the early 1990s (they helped me present an exhibition of works by noted upstate artist, Alta Alberga, a wonderful painter, and Betsy was all helpful support and thoughtful kindness, certainly, I will never forget how sweet she was to a prodigal son returning South from that center of yankee-ness, New York!).

The core group of ground breakers forms a cultural nucleus which formulated the initial Columbia A/art market and community providing a growing foundation for later groups such as the innovative artists’ cooperative of Gallery 80808 and Cameo Gallery, now across the river, in West Columbia, and of course House of Frames on Devine (the featured gallery in the pages of the current edition of Undefined Magazine). These are simply a few examples extrapolated from a larger contextual community matrix and certainly everyone has not been mentioned, but that does leave possibilities for further discussion at a later date, yes?…so there is hope, even in omission!

In our established community metaphor, and at the center of the evolving, dynamic interactive vortex of Columbia’s artistic life, we may expect to find a collection of organizations, a core of standard bearers; that is to say, the museums of our city. Each of these offers a different role in cultural interpretation, preservation and the community’s intellectual sustainability.

The Columbia Museum, which presents important international, national, as well as regional and local traveling exhibitions of diverse artworks, and houses an exquisite collection of fine and decorative arts is a central treasure of both canonical and innovative works. The art component of the South Carolina State Museum tends too offer highlighted exhibitions of artists from within the state, specifically serving as the venue for the state’s Triennial Exhibition and frequently working in tandem with the South Carolina Arts Commission (which will also be noted again elsewhere in this cursory overview).

In addition to these central figures, the McKissick Museum on the campus of the University of South Carolina is a haven not only for studying the methods and standards of museology and challenges in cultural interpretation, but is also a guardian of the state’s fragile and highly significant folk culture (an important component of our A/art paradigm). The interpretation and preservation of decorative and applied arts from indigenous state and regional culturundefined : book two

al praxis, which in the past were often marginalized, is a role enthusiastically appropriated by the McKissick and its support of this visual legacy with both enormous competence and compassion is an important part of the museum’s mission. Of course, I don’t intend to ignore or omit the Historic Columbia Foundation, which places such admirable effort into preserving the architectural legacy of the city, and although this is certainly a part of the visual arts heritage for the community ... we will save a more extended discussion for another article and another time.

Our final consideration in this discussion of the evolutionary composition of the arts “community,” after having noted the free-wheeling, highly adaptive, cutting edge individual galleries, who by necessity are on the forefront of risk, and the perhaps necessarily somewhat more stolid standard bearers, who are supported by institutional structures and often conservative, even politicized governing boards, we at last may consider the sadly underappreciated and insufficiently thanked arts administrators of the various agencies organized to support Columbia’s (and in many instances, our entire state’s!) diverse arts communities.

These include the already mentioned South Carolina Arts Commission, a granting agency funded in part by the state legislature and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and other funding agencies, which was established to offer artists stipends for residencies and creative endeavors, structure information on opportunities in the arts, organize exhibitions and fund arts programming and publications around the state and even, in some instances, in the entire Southeastern region.

A partner with the Arts Commission is the South Carolina Arts Alliance, an arts advocacy organization which works even at the legislative level, a most difficult and Byzantine undertaking to be sure, to lobby for arts education and arts programming in our state in the greater interest of future generations of South Carolinians (and Columbians), and then there is the sometimes overlapping support of the South Carolina Humanities Council, which on occasion provides support for arts-related programming but specifically for its humanist aspects as opposed to its creative or visual significance.

These state-wide agencies then have sister local organizations such as the Richland/Lexington Cultural Council, providing enriching program for the Richland/lLexington communities; the relatively new on the scene Renaissance Foundation, intended to structure programming specifically for “underserved” local communities, the Congaree Vista Guild, which breaths life-blood into the Vista community and revitalized regions of the city near the river, and also the Trenholm Arts Alliance…and of course these are among other groups.

In this brief effort I have merely had the space to men-

16

tion of are the diverse components conscious of their mutual, interrelated commonalities and values? Has Columbia’s arts consciously community recognized its collaborative possibilities? Well, now, whether it does, or if it does not, at least Undefined has, by means of this article, made an attempt to place collaborative, collective recognition within the realm of group discussion in a variation upon the type of global model which must become a part of humanity’s successful future endeavors. We hope that with the help of our readers, we may be able to continue to address these issues of communal identity and interaction in the A/arts.

Perhaps the Undefined model will initiate a conversation to encourage our arts communities to increase shared awareness and understanding of themselves. Audience building is certainly a shared communal need, for in order to sustain a dynamic and unique collective of artists and entrepreneurs engaged in meaningful intellectual inquiry we must have resources and offer an appropriate cultural context to our potential audiences. So, whose art is it? It is clearly our art collectively speaking, and here in the present and future pages of Undefined, we may explore its possibilities together as an integral community reveling in the consequence and culmination of the 10,000 years of evolutionary processes that have made our arrival at this juncture a joyous possibility.

tion, in this most essential of discussions, a small smattering of Columbia’s cultural wealth, here in the context of examples of how we have come to evolve into who and what we are at present. A great deal is omitted but the open spaces may be completed in future discussions. These diverse entities and their unmentioned compatriots round out our conversation on community, each benefiting a different aspect in the cultural mosaic that we devise as a collective. It is this collective artistic and intellectual health that our group conversation could seek to enhance and sustain, however, before such a measure can be accomplished the importance of each of the component areas has first, to be realized and then collectively acknowledged by the group as a whole.

We are an incarnation of the initially mentioned concept of evolutionary psychology demonstrated in action, and if we return to our premise concerning integral theory, this concept of a holistic functionality, gaining strength from a shared complementary creativity, as opposed to the intrusion of a narrowly conceived and divisive competitiveness, is a possibility for deciding upon a manner through which our shared conversation could continue to great mutual advantage.

The interrelationship of the parts is more than capable of creating a vital and exciting whole when we raise the ques-

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profile

Heather LaHaise

H

eather LaHaise was truly born to love dogs which would become the focus of all her artwork. The contemporary artist grew up in a dog-loving home, but was it wasn’t until the third grade that she truly became infatuated with everything canine, devoting herself to Charlie Brown’s exceptional dog Snoopy.

“I was obsessed with Snoopy! I had a Snoopy purse, Snoopy lamp, all of the Snoopy dolls, and I would draw pictures of Snoopy everywhere and on everything!” LaHaise chirped, reminiscing about her childhood, and exhibited a framed letter, hand-signed by Charles Schultz himself, circa 1976.

The cartoonist responsible for giving the world “Peanuts” responded to a letter that LaHaise’s father sent to him expressing his young daughter’s profound love for Snoopy and his comics.

Raised in Columbia, but born in New York, LaHaise considers herself a local. She graduated from USC with a degree in Fine Art before briefly returning to Manhattan and attending Pratt for illustration and design classes, and then began forging a career in fashion and graphic design, as this was the direction she was steered by her professors. LaHaise diligently followed this direction for years, until she found Summer, over ninety-one years ago. (Dog years, that is…).

Summer cheerfully sits between us and sways her tail back and forth, lovingly gazing up at LaHaise with big glassy eyes while brushing her whiskers fondly in her lap. Summer is a wonderfully tempered lab and retriever mix, with a golden coat and an intense stare.

Since LaHaise rescued her as a puppy, Summer has acted as the artist’s inspiration, muse, and loyal companion. She was the first dog LaHaise ever painted, establishing the start of her everlasting artistic journey focused on painting dogs.

LaHaise gushed that she has found the most enjoyment and satisfaction of her career since she began the dog paintings. This also led to her resolution to make dogs her exclusive subject matter. “I am lucky to have found something that I love to do, and to have found something that I find so rewarding,” LaHaise affirmed.

The greatest compliment she received was when an interior

text: Shayna Katzman photography: Brad Allen

designer visited “Gallery 414” on behalf of Julia Szabo, an author she greatly admires. The three LaHaise paintings the designer purchased appeared in Szabo’s latest book, “Animal House Style: Designing a Home to Share with Your Pets.”

I feel great praise when I see my work acknowledged in that way, and it’s always such a compliment when people express approval for work that I have done from personal inspirations, not only for paintings that are commissions,” she commented.

LaHaise finds profound inspiration from stray and abandoned dogs and turns to petfinder.com and other pet adoption websites to find them. Reading the dogs’ individual stories and noticing the intensity of their stares, she finds herself painting them “to give them a voice” and to provide these sad animals with the recognition she feels they deserve.

Many of her most powerful paintings evoke deep emotions and extreme passion and are assisted by a concentrated palette of bright and intense colors, fast swirling brush-strokes, and the employing of thick impasto paint, often raised and literally dripping off the canvases.

“I prefer painting dogs to painting people… I guess that they are easier to deal with,” LaHaise commented, providing explanation for her refusal to ever paint dogs with their owners. Aside from removing herself from the vanity more often associated with people than with animals, LaHaise admits that for her it is far easier to find a connection with dogs as subjects when painting. “Dogs are just so honest, so unexpecting, and have great qualities that I find easy to understand and relate to,” LaHaise observed. She finds affinity with mutts like Summer in particular, always enjoying supporting the ‘underdog’.

“I just hope to validate dogs, and dogs-as-subject-matter. They are often so overlooked and not treated seriously, and I don’t hope this for my paintings or for the dogs themselves,” she explained. Aside from the artist’s ambition to provide dogs with a voice and the right to be noticed, LaHaise hopes for her work to be perceived as free, modern, and above all to speak for itself.

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literature

James Dickey—Regrets Aplenty Sometimes Your Writing Comes Back To Haunt You

B

efore I read Deliverance or saw the movie, I heard James Dickey read from his novel at USC’s Longstreet Theater. Jerry Savory of Columbia College was giving me a lift to the bus station, now an art deco bank.

“Dickey is reading from Deliverance at the Longstreet Theater right now,” he said. “Want to go?” It was 1974, two years after the movie came out. I had time to kill, and it beat waiting in the Blanding Street bus station for an allnight local to Charleston, West Virginia.

We went.

We walked into the darkened theater —standing room only—where the north Georgian’s voice floated over the vast hall. Dickey was deep into the story, at the point where the Atlantans discover Drew’s body downstream. To escape their awful dilemma, Bobby and Ed sink Drew with stones, knowing the rising impoundment will forever drown the truth. The absorbed audience sat quiet as stone.

We were moving toward the white, light water and were very close to it when I saw Drew’s body backed up between the rocks and looking straight at us ... I looked at Drew’s hand floating palm-up with the guitar calluses puckered white and his college class ring on it, and I wondered if his wife might not like to have the ring. But no; I couldn’t even do that; it would mean having to explain. I touched the callus on the middle finger of his left hand, and my eyes blinded with tears. I lay with him in my arms for a moment weeping river-water, going with him. I could have cried as long as the river ran, but there was no time. ‘You were the best of us, Drew,’ I said loud enough for Bobby to hear; I wanted him to hear.

‘The only decent one; the only sane one.’

Throughout the theater, women dabbed tissues to their eyes.

Deliverance established Dickey’s reputation as a popular novelist—not a poet—in the minds of many. To me, a naïve twenty-five year old, he was a writer, pure and simple. And that was enough. Being a Georgian also and harboring writing dreams myself, I knew I had to meet him someday. undefined : book two

Seeing Dickey at the Longstreet Theater was a turning point in my life, only I didn’t know it at the time. Nor could I know he would write the foreword for my first book fifteen years later. Then again, I didn’t know I would walk out on what some considered a writer’s dream job one days, a reckless act that would, in fact, lead me to Dickey.

The Beginning In October 1973, I was near the end of my master’s studies at the University of Georgia, when my department chairman, Dr. Juanita Skelton, a bulky, brusque woman called me into her office. “I’m going to give you 10 hours’ credit for teaching six months at a woman’s college in Columbia, South Carolina.”

I began teaching at Columbia College in January 1974. I wasn’t much older than my students and the six months turned into four eventful years. Teaching at a woman’s college carries beautiful benefits but you shouldn’t make a career of it. I had a serious itch to write for a living, and it was time to leave. In 1978, I applied to what is now the Department of Natural Resources for a position as a scriptwriter for natural history films. To get the job, I had to survive an interview with a tough Georgian, John Culler.

Culler, bearded, tall and lanky, with a gunslinger’s bearing, resembled Josey Wales. He had made a cheap flyer into South Carolina Wildlife, the country’s best conservation magazine in its day. He and Billy DuRant, the man I would work with, interviewed me over lunch at a West Columbia diner with a beautiful name—The Sunset Grill.

I worked at South Carolina Wildlife nine years. I learned a lot about writing and even more about people. And when I had learned all I could, I left.

One steamy afternoon, thunderclouds gathering, a book contract in hand, I tallied my freelance earnings on a yellow legal pad. On August 19, 1987, I left to conquer freelance writing, a world of odd assignments and books where James Dickey and I would at last meet.

Dickey cut a wide swath and his shadow loomed over Columbia. Over the years, I had seen him in restaurants,

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text: Tom Poland photography: Robert Clark

on TV, and read about him in Bill Starr’s book section of Settling deeper into his chair, Dickey took up the South The State. He casually dismissed his drinking escapades, and its writers. “Down here, we’ve had more of a concertthe stuff of legend. “People say that the good feeling that ed front of writers. In the old days, storytelling was the alcohol gives you is false—but all you have to do is live a only entertainment people had. All Southerners are very human life to know that, in many instances, a false good garrulous. They’re very social people, and that’s partly feeling is better than none at all.” I agreed with him 100 because they lived in isolation on their own farm. When percent. they saw another farmer and his family or got together at In 1989, Robert Clark, Steve Bennett, and I co-authored a church meeting, they always had plenty to say. It was South Carolina, The Natural Heritage, for the USC Press. inevitable that stories would develop.”

Bennett, from Thunderbolt, Georgia, knew Dickey’s wife, But now, in 1995, that oral tradition seemed to be dying Deborah, who was also from Thunderbolt, and through in the South and so did Dickey. Thin as a reed, he looked this connection and $800 of USC Press money, Dickey nothing like Sheriff Bullard. Dickey had said the South was agreed to write our foreword. From 1989 on, we built a in danger of becoming one giant Rexall, and surely the last friendship.

I interviewed him for Reckon, a Southern culture magazine, in 1995.

Sitting in his wingback, frail but fortified by stacks of books, he told me how language caught his ear.

“What my father liked most about the law was the forensic rhetoric, the courtroom rhetoric,” said Dickey. “He had a set of books, Classics of the Bar, which gave transcripts of all the important trials from Jesus up to “Fatty” Arbuckle in 1929.”

A lawyer, Eugene Dickey read speeches from Clarence Darrow and Robert Ingersoll to a Dickey in his study at his Columbia home on Lake Katherine. young Dickey and across the many decades Dickey recalled Ingersoll’s opengasp was coming. The generic culture of superstores, ing statement in defense of some Southerners accused of malls, and cable television was devouring the South murder.

Dickey had known.

“The Southern boys were out on the coast in the gold “Every time a new factory locates down here, everybody mining fields, Sutter’s Mill,” said Dickey. “Ingersoll’s openwhoops it up—so many more new jobs and this, that, and ing statement went something like this. ‘I’m very happy to the other, but look what it’s doing to the culture. The juke talk to the gold miners. I’m very happy, today, to be your box music comes in and the traditional, Southern, guest in this courtroom, guest of you hardy souls who earn Appalachian ballads go out.” your precarious living by wresting the precious metal from Dickey, of the Georgia mountains, grew up hearing the the clutches of the miserly rock.’ twangs of bluegrass music and he didn’t like contemporary “My father said, ‘Now Jimmy isn’t it wonderful that a country music nor other improvisations. He was a purist. man can express himself that way.’ I replied, ‘It sure is, He never even used a word processor, just cheap Japanese daddy. That’s great; read it again.’ And that’s how I got into typewriters. “I’m a traditionalist. I think it’s too much writing, but all ways to get into writing are strange, all machinery between you and what you’re writing, with ways.” those electronic devices.”

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been to himself, his family, and everyone associated with him. In July, he told a writer for Reckon magazine that, while alcohol had enhanced his confidence for years: ‘I am forever off drinking. God could not get me to drink, Him and Jesus combined. That’s over. Dickey decried his lack of judgment in the past and advised his interviewer: ‘you ought to quit, too. Don’t let it do to you what it did to me.”

The cold blade of truth stabbed me. I had given Hart ammunition. Worse, I was a hypocrite. I recalled an icy December night in 1989. Robert Clark and I went to Dickey’s home with twenty-seven copies of South Carolina, The Natural Heritage for Dickey to sign, Christmas gifts.

Intending to drink with the poet, Robert and I brought expensive bourbon as a gift: Jack Daniels Single Barrel Whiskey I believe. I remember the bottle was pretty.

We arrived on time. 7:30 p.m.

Dickey met us at the door in his pajamas. He had no need to drink further. He took the bottle and placed it high on a shelf. Then after signing the books with his ornate signature, he asked us to join him in his study. There, to my amazement, he asked if we were from the South.

“You know I’m from Georgia, like you,” I said, “and Robert is from Charlotte.”

“Good,” he said, grabbing his guitar. “Then you know the old Southern gospels. Let’s sing.”

And with that, he launched into “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”

I was standing by my window, On a cold and cloudy day, When I saw the hearse come rollin’ For to take my mother away.

Robert and I stood there mute. Dickey stopped strumming.

“You boys said you were from the South, c’mon, let’s go,” and with that he took up the song, singing with all his might.

Will the circle be unbroken? By and by Lord, by and by Robert and I involuntarily took a step backwards and looked at each other for help. Dickey stopped again, stood, and stared with anger.

“I can’t sing a lick,” I said in apology.

“Me neither,” said Robert.

Dickey moved toward the hall. “Boys, I’m a busy man. I’m

No matter, though. Creation depends on inspiration, and a typewriter works as well as Microsoft Word when the alchemy of creation swirls about the mind.

“I’d be sitting in a room by myself and I would get what I knew immediately was a good idea. I guess that’s what used to be called inspiration. Something would just flash into my mind that I knew would work. Those were the happiest times.”

Somewhere between Sorento and Amalfi, Italy, after a meal of pasta and wine, Dickey was about to nap when the plot and action for Deliverance took root. The seed, however, had been planted years earlier in Georgia on the Coosawattee River where Dickey’s canoeing companion and Deliverance model to be, Lewis King, was fishing. From nowhere, two men confronted a lost King mistaking him and his topographical maps as a Revenue Service officer. Dickey’s mind took it from there.

The man never doubted his subject matter. “Love, sex, death, decline, and several other themes are truly the things worth writing about,” he said. “Birth, growth, death, procreation, anxiety, and fear—those are constant to everyone.”

A Regrettable Act Decline is inevitable, but we can hasten it. And exploit it. I wrote 231 words in Reckon about Dickey’s drinking. I wrote that his drinking “led to overindulgence and damage” because I knew people expected that kind of disparagement. It seemed “artsy.” I’ve regretted it ever since.

Reckon’s managing editor sent Dickey the magazine a day before I received mine. He called and told me I had hurt him and his family. His words stung me. I gave him a wide berth for a while. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. The months rolled by and I struggled: what to do, what to say.

A year passed.

One Monday morning, while shaving, the news reported Dickey had died the night before. I felt an immense loss.

And guilt. In time, I put it all behind me but then Henry Hart came out with his vitriolic 811-page biography: James Dickey, The World As A Lie. There, on page 733, my damning words rose like demons: “Dickey acknowledged how destructive alcohol had undefined : book two

22

expecting a call from my agent any minute� and he showed us the door.

In the space of 15 seconds Robert and I were out in the cold, a precarious stack of books in our arms, wondering, exactly, what had hit us. Wondering what happened to our night of drinking with the poet and novelist. We’re sure of what happened to the Jack Daniels.

The End That cold December night was soon forgotten. We stayed in touch, and I proposed a feature to Reckon and Dickey agreed to an interview. Toward the end of our 1995 interview, Dickey discussed his failing health. “I met the Dark Man. I’m very much aware of mortality. I’d like to think I have some more years, maybe 10, 12, or 15 at the most, but that’s in the lap of the Gods.�

The Gods were tightfisted. He had but nineteen months.

Dickey died January 19, 1997. Three days earlier he had taught his last class.

He left a novel unfinished and he left critics. Some colleagues felt he was a horse’s ass. He, on the other hand, detested pedants and often hyphenated the “F-ing Bomb� to “professor.� He left eloquent defenders, too.

Jeffrey Meyers wrote in The New Criterion: “James Dickey, handsome, blond and blue-eyed, formidably energetic, large, and larger than life, scaled the heights. College athlete, air force navigator, advertising executive, guitarist, archer, hunter, teacher, performer and poet laureate, winner of a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Book Award, he covered the Apollo launching for Life and read his poetry at President Carter’s inauguration.�

Dickey was an icon to me. I didn’t care what his critics thought but I sure cared what he thought. He encouraged me to write fiction, and I could relate to him. I never forgot, for instance, his stand on writing commercials and poetry. “I’d sell my soul to the devil by day and earn it back at night.�

To this day, when asked by the curious how the freelancing life goes, I respond, “Every night is a Saturday and every morning is a Monday.� Were he here, Dickey would nod and say “Amen.�

Six months after Dickey died, one afternoon in 1997 during a summer thunderstorm, a student and I drove to his home so she could say she had seen Dickey’s house. There was no home, just rubble left by bulldozers. We trekked through the rain and returned with three bricks. She kept one. The other two sit in my office, monuments you could say. That was eleven years ago. A new home sits at 4620 Lelia’s Court today, overlooking Lake Katherine.

No marker, nothing, tells the passersby that the poet and author of Deliverance created literature and art here. What a shame.

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feature

Delirium Tribal and Alternacirque

A

Amy Hession in New Orleans, Brown, already a classically trained dancer and musician, could add tribal belly dancing to the list. When Hurricane Katrina hit, Brown fled Louisiana and returned to Columbia, where her friends were currently belly dancing as well, but in the more familiar cabaret style. “I’d been dancing about a year when the hurricane hit,” Brown said.

Brown, who claims she was an “odd duck” at Irmo high School, didn’t have plans to return to Columbia. “I swore I wasn’t going to come back to this town,” Brown said. “The universe had other plans. As I started working here, I realized how much potential was here. There’s a lot of arts here, and there’s a huge amount of dancing in this town considering what a small town it is.” Within two months, Brown began teaching tribal classes and had attracted a following; within five months she was performing at Art Bar with dancers shipped in from New Orleans.

“I was lucky to find Art Bar,” Brown said. She slowly built a core group of dancers, which would soon form Delirium Tribal.

Ashley Bennett, the red-headed beauty, was teaching yoga in Waycross, Ga. when she discovered belly dancing. After buying what she thought was a yoga DVD, Bennett was surprised to learn that she had invested in what would change her life.

What was actually a belly dance DVD captured Bennett’s affections; she soon commissioned a dancing skirt from seamstress

mericans have been reinventing the wheel for centuries, forever assimilating foreign cultures into new traditions to call our own. Our Western ways have created a country of fusion; nearly every art form we cherish, from food to art to entertainment is, in fact, a mélange of inspiration from around the world. As the art of belly dancing rises in America, and especially on the East Coast, a new language emerges with it. Spoken by few and difficult to learn or even understand, this language is bursting with visual dialects and remains a mystery to the untrained eye. A true native speaker, Natalie Brown is fluent in the body language of belly dance. The artistic director of Alternacirque and director of Delirium Tribal, Brown’s fervor for artistic expression manifests itself in her body’s fluid curves.

She slinked to the floor, the metallic beads of her costume jingling the whole way. The other Alternacirque performers mingled in full costume around us. Brown, an Irmo High School graduate, made a home in New Orleans where she attended Tulane University. In a twist of fate, Brown threw out her back in her last year of school, and went in search of a fresh take on rehabilitation. She wandered into a tribal belly dance class at n.o. madic Tribal Belly Dance Company and found her destiny.

“I was completely hooked,” Brown said.

After studying under the direction of Lisa Lala, Ali Arnold and

text: Jenny Reese

photography: Kasi Koshollek

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Brown, who was working in costuming at the time. “My story American Tribal Style (ATS) is the root of current belly dancintertwines with Natalie’s interestingly,” Bennett said. Before ing in America. According to Brown’s Delirium Tribal Web site: long, Bennett was taking private lessons with Brown. “She was “American Tribal Style is a modern world fusion created in San the only classically trained tribal dancer around,” Bennett said.

Francisco in the 1970s and 80s by Carolena Nericcio, and her Soon after, Bennett’s marriage fell apart. She e-mailed her newtroupe, Fat Chance Belly Dance. ATS, as it’s often called, is a found mentor and Brown took in her desperate student. “I combination of Egyptian, Turkish, Classical Indian dances, slept at the top of her stairs on yoga mats for about ten months,” Flamenco and North African dance styles, among other things.

Bennett said. “Now we’ve It’s meant to be performed moved to a two bedroom as a tribe or group, as house.” As their friendship opposed to soloists, and it grew, so did Bennett’s interhas an improvisational est in and talent for tribal basis. Dancers take turn dance. “I started training leading and following, with her [Brown] pretty speaking a fluent, fluid, hardcore,” Bennett said. shared vocabulary of body Now a vital part of Delirium language with each other.

Tribal and Alternacirque, The costuming is also mix the part-time nude model of influences, mainly a conand Brown’s roommate had verted Indian choli, panfound her place in taloons, a long and full skirt Columbia. “She came here and Indian, Pakistani and to start her life over,” Brown Afghani accessories and said. “It’s been really interjewelry.” Brown is a direct esting to watch her grown descendant of Nericcio’s since she’s been here.” training, thanks to her stint In the same language as in New Orleans at n.o.

Brown and Bennett, Dana madic. “As far as technique Salley was practicing belly goes, when I found those dance, but in a different guys I was pretty close to the dialect. “I came up as a source,” Brown said. cabaret student,” Salley When Nericcio placed Back: Left to Right: Steve Oswanski, Natalie Brown, said. Salley began belly strict guidelines on what Ashley Benett, Maria Bargas, Nate Addy. dancing in Orangeburg as a styles could be categorized Front: Susan Osbaldiston, Dana Salley.

Not PIctured: Jessie Padgett girl under the direction of as ATS, many troupes were her mother. “She had the excommunicated from her kindness in her soul to teach our girl scout group,” Salley said. ‘church’ of dance. “She borrowed from ethnic dances…and Salley began formal lessons and later toured with local turned it into this improv vocabulary,” Brown said. These Columbia musicians, Turku, along with fellow Delirium Tribal troupes still use ATS as a root language in their techniques, but member Jessie Padgett. Eventually, Salley joined Delirium the change in style has led to intricate fusions and vernaculars Tribal and added yet another flavor to Brown’s melting pot. among different groups. “We started close to the original lan“We have so many influences,” Salley said. guage,” Brown said. “We didn’t feel like handing our creative Maria Bargas and Jessie Padgett of Delirium Tribal brought freedom over to some woman.” Though Brown remains their own influences to the table as well. “I took cabaret for respectful of Nericcio and her ATS, she wanted to expand. about ten years before I started taking with Natalie,” Padgett “She’s [Nericcio] one of the most of the most imposing and said. “I’ve been with Natalie for about two years now.” Bargas, intimidating women I’ve ever met,” Brown said. “She’s a really from Torrejon, Spain, is one of the newer members of Delirium neat character.” Now Delirium Tribal pulls from ATS, hip hop Tribal. “I do all kinds of dancing…Latin, Flamenco,” Bargas and improv techniques. “We all speak the same language,” said. “I’m into learning all kinds of dancing.” Padgett and Brown said. “We can jam to any music at any time.” And the Bargas were in classes together and soon found Brown in the music Delirium Tribal dances to runs the gamut from Middle Columbia area. “When I got here most of my girls had been Eastern to techno. “If its got a rhythm, we do it,” Bennett said. cabaret with a little east coast tribal thrown in for good measIt can be hard to decipher what is choreographed and what’s ure,” Brown said. improvised, since the troupe depends on the music to deterundefined : book two

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mine its next move. “Over time you develop your own moves,” Bennett said. “We can predict what the next person will do.”

After Delirium Tribal began to see some success in Columbia and Brown’s father passed away in February of this year, Brown quit her day job. “I reached a breaking point,” Brown said. “I wasn’t going to give up my dancing.” Luckily, her love for belly dancing came with a nationwide support system. The belly dance community is a close-knit unit that functions under a strong moral code, progressive beliefs and mutual encouragement.

When the inevitable question of body image presented itself, the women of Delirium Tribal spoke the same language. “The thing about belly dance is you can be any age or body type,” Brown said. “The most beautiful dancers are big women,” Bennett added. For her students, Brown posts on her Web site: “Belly dance is a lovely art form that embraces and looks fabulous on all body shapes, sizes, creeds and ages. Belly dance breaks down body image barriers, gives you great core strength and posture.”

In addition to supporting all body types, the belly dance communities across the country support one another online; many troupes create their own music and much of it can be found on iTunes. Brown said she has spent thousands on downloading songs created by others in her field, and refuses to “steal” the music through free online file-sharing programs. “In the 80s and 90s we didn’t have the flow of information we have now,” Brown said. Now, the belly dance community has the ability to collaborate and learn from each other online. “With tribe.net it’s like being able to reach out and e-mail your rock-star idols,” Brown said.

“We get to see everybody’s videos and everything. Back in the day a lot of people had heard about tribal and were getting Nerricio’s DVDs. They liked what they saw, but had no idea how to go about the ATS techniques.” Via the Internet, troupes are able to support each other in a way never before possible. “The belly dance community is very much about supporting each other,” Brown said.

“There’s a lot of ethics.”

Meanwhile, Columbia is beginning to support the art form as well. “We’re starting to turn heads,” Brown said.

Thanks to venues like Art Bar

and the Columbia Music Festival Association (CMFA), who grants the troupe free rehearsal space, alternative entertainment is growing in the underground of the Capital City. “Were all kinda bustling around and trying to get space for rehearsal,” Brown said. “I walked in there [CMFA] by accident and I ran into Mimi Whorl. She said it was free and I burst into tears. I don’t know if we would exist without the CMFA.” Of course, no art comes without criticism. “Older women look at you like you’re a prostitute,” Brown said. “I think the biggest problem when you’re a belly dancer is that people have preconceived notions of what that is, and more often than not they’re erroneous.” Though the origins of belly dance, which was developed under strong feminist ideals, are still being researched, Brown said most people think of an “oversexed glam women shaking her boobs and hips in your face.” “They have this notion that it came out of sultan and harem type of things,” Brown said. “It is very sensual, there’s a sensual aspect to it, but it’s not sexual at all. When I’m dancing, I’m not dancing for my boyfriend, I’m dancing for me.” Brown added that people are usually surprised with what they see at a Delirium Tribal or Alternacirque performance. “The most impact we have is on other women,” Brown said. They’re very touched by what you do, especially when they see we have older women on the stage and different body types. It’s a really really powerful and feminine mess we’re putting out there that I’m very proud of.”

Brown and Delirium Tribal believe their art form to be empowering, created by women for women, and demand its audience give the proper respect at performances. According to the Brown’s Web site: “Generally, we don’t find it very becoming if someone yells ‘Shake it, baby.’ We work hard at our art form and hope it will be accepted as such. Also, though it is a tradition in Cabaret styles to accept money in the belt or (sometimes) in the bra strap, Tribal dancers tend to frown on that. Please show your appreciation by tipping in our basket. If you touch our dancers, you’re likely to get punched in the nose.”

Though Tribal dance can be very sensual and often erotic, it is not meant to arouse the masses. “If you love yourself, everybody can appreciate

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that,” Bennett said.

Currently, Brown is working to correct what she said is quickly becoming a concern for the Columbia audience.

“One of the biggest criticisms is that we’re performing in front of cars in a parking lot,” Brown said.

So, she’s been working on backdrops for upcoming performances.

“Next month we’re wanting to build platforms so we can start going up and make it 3D,” Brown said. “The backdrops are actually turning out to be interesting…we can do all sorts of things with them. Our sets are changing the way we put on shows.” Along with Brown’s backdrops, Delirium Tribal’s costumes are all homemade as well. “We’re very ‘jack of all trades’,” Brown said. “We’re a little crunchy hippie anyway.”

With Delirium Tribal in full swing, Brown saw the opportunity to expand. Steve Oswanski, of Fire and Motion, a fire performance group that uses tribal and aboriginal techniques, met Brown at his first show ever at Riverbanks Zoo. Brown felt a spark, and with the addition of Fire and Motion to the troupe, Alternacirque was born. “We’re kind of playing with everything,” Brown said. To complete the equation, Delirium Tribal did some unorthodox recruiting. As soon as they saw Susan Osbaldiston’s incredible self-taught Hula Hooping skills on her MySpace page, they knew she would complete the circle.

Osbaldiston became interested in Hula Hooping when she saw the happiness it brought to other performers. “I taught myself,” Osbaldiston said. “When someone’s doing it they look like they’re at peace.”

Oswanski, of Fire and Motion, joined forces with Brown’s group in August of 2007. A second fire performer, Nate Addy, merged with Alternacirque in March. After only a few performances together, the cluster is tight, claiming to mix business with pleasure often at personal parties and outside of the show. Oswanski and Addy are close friends and said they spend as much time at each others’ houses as their own. Both fire performers keep day jobs in the education field as “alternative teachers.” “It’s more of a paid hobby,” Addy said. “We definitely need day jobs.” Oswanski is the Coordinator of Outreach at the Riverbanks Zoo and Addy is a science educator at undefined : book two

Columbia’s Mad Science. “We do fun science,” Addy said.

“Think Bill Nye the Science Guy…It’s kind of my job.”

Oswanski has performed for his students, but Addy is a bit more reserved. “I like to juggle, but I don’t light anything on fire during class unless its called for during the experiment,” Addy said.

“For the longest time I couldn’t be on stage, but I’m loosening up.”

Oswanski started playing with fire thanks to an old girlfriend.

“I started in California and was living with a gal who picked it

up in Hawaii,” he said. “We were doing laundry and she pulled tube socks out of her laundry baskets and started doing all these crazy patterns.” Oswanski then researched fire performance techniques online and with the help of his former girlfriend discovered a great talent. “I used to practice by using makeshift stuff, like tennis balls on strings,” Oswanski said.

Oswanski and Addy attribute much of their success to their knowledge of science. The performers use three different fuel types to create different effects, and can even change the color of the fire. “We know which chemicals burn which colors,” Oswanski said. “We use white gas, lamp oil and we have a handful of concoctions we mix. Boric acid and lamp oil make green fire.” By combining science and art, Fire and Motion puts on a mesmerizing show. “I don’t want to give away too many secrets,” Addy said.

The techniques Fire and Motion use originated in New Zealand and were used by the Maori tribes there. The Westernized versions of the Maori’s art form, which utilized sand bags tied on strings, include chains and fire. The Kevlar wicking on the poi and other types of expensive tools used in fire performance allows the fuels to burn at extremely high temperatures. “I burnt all of my eyelashes once,” Oswanski said. “We have first and second degree burns off and on.”

28

Fortunately, the guys have the benefit of their $5 million insurance policy.

The performers pull inspiration from various sources in what Brown called an “organic process.” “Sometimes it’s a concept we want do or a new prop we want to work with, and most often it’s the music that drives it,” Brown said. “You get inspired by different things, that’s the thing about being an artist, you’re never sure where your inspiration is going to come from.”

In a private performance, the fire roared above a silent night as the men in black spun in sync like a flaming machine. Their circling left rings in the dark pavement and this impromptu show promptly got the attention of a nearby police officer.

The blue lights flashed as the performers quickly extinguished their flames. “It’s happened before,” Bennett said. Next, the women exhibited their blazing talents.

Brown balanced a flaming sword on nothing more than her petite hip, then her head, and both women performed with fire fans that appeared as nothing more than fiery extensions of their bodies. Because Alternacirque’s fire performances are strictly choreographed, the music plays a big role in each demonstration.

“When you get into dancing with fire, you can do the technical hits,” Oswanski said.

He and Addy are able to synchronize their movements with the music this way.

“Just be hot,” Oswanski said, and then alas, “I’m out of fuel.” At the March Art Bar performance, the crowd went wild over Alternacirque’s fire show. “I can’t even drink hot coffee,” Art Bar audience member Michael Norton said as the performers extinguished flames in their mouths. “I had heard there was belly dancing and fire shows at Art Bar, but I always found out about it after the fact…and low and behold, there it was in the paper in front of God and everyone.” The Art Bar parking lot was swamped with spectators and words of amazement flew back and forth.

“They definitely know what they’re doing,” someone whispered. “I was not expecting to see this,” Damien Eikerenkoetter of Philadelphia said.

“It’s erotic, it’s sensual…it’s beautiful. We need more stuff like this in Columbia.”

The members of Alternacirque have most certainly been brought together by the entertainment gods, as Columbia is crying out for inspiration.

“I wandered in here [Columbia] and it was all waiting for me,” Brown said. “We’re still so new that were still trying to figure out how we all work together…its still experimental.” As Columbia’s underground art scene experiences a cultural uprising, the invoked muses of our city graciously present themselves and the ball’s in everyone’s court to get inspired. “That’s the thing about performance art, it’s doing things other people have only dreamt of,” Bennett said.

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feature

Joe Byrne

T

sal, cubist canvases depicting abstracted boat-engines and richly textured oil paintings of marshlands. And he is also responsible for creating recognizable storefront signs, commercial logos, advertisements, “The Body Firm” video backdrops, stage sets, photography, kitchen interior design, mosaic tiling... Byrne, Byrne, Byrne!

There is seemingly no limit to what this Columbia artist can do, or what he has already done. Nevertheless, Joe Byrne has seemingly remained under the radar, and he is somewhat largely unrecognized for his great skills in employing a vast variety of artistic styles and media – despite the apparent and exceptional qualities presented by many aspects of his encyclopedic body of work.

Meeting Joe Byrne and visiting his West Columbia studio can best be described as the artistic equivalent of watching a Barnum & Bailey Three Ring Circus. The Joe Byrne experience is only problematic in the sense that there is just so much going on at one time that it is extremely difficult to choose a single aspect to focus your attention upon. This observation can potentially leave the unsuspecting visitor with a memory full of overwhelming and indescribable sensations, and a head that has been set in spins.

At the circus, audience members may be faced with the need to choose between watching an agile trapeze artist take death defying leaps, or experiencing an exotic tiger leaping through a ring of fire, simultaneously with

here is a fortunate collector of modernist and contemporary art that has been privileged to purchase some monumental works of art. On the walls of his private collection, he boasts abstract paintings by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Joe Byrne.

You may or may not have heard of the artist Joe Byrne, but you have probably heard of the other two artists I mentioned. Following this line of reasoning – if Joe Byrne’s art can happily hang beside paintings created by two of America’s arguably greatest painters that stemmed from the Modernist Art Movement, then Byrne’s work must be pretty great as well…right?

For those that are unfamiliar with Joe Byrne, I will attempt to make some introductions: –A local master of portraying deeply detailed, panoramic landscapes of South Carolina’s Low Country. That is Joe Byrne.

–The creator of nearly countless and detailed wildlife etchings and illustrations for anything from gilded books to consumer publications. That is Joe Byrne.

–The genius behind possibly the most evocative modern-realist industrial scenes that have been created since Charles Sheeler’s 1927 commissions for The Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant. Again, that is Joe Byrne.

In addition, Byrne has mastered delicate watercolor images depicting subjects taken from nature and styled in the manner of Georgia O’Keefe. Also, dramatic, colostext: Shayna Katzman

photography: Kasi Koshollek

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a juggling acrobat balancing on a pivoting ball as he Byrne has been continually inspired to create art by breathes fire from his mouth while still balanced on the the world that surrounds him and diligently uses his art head of another man that may be swallowing a sword… to describe what he sees. Byrne is an Artist with a capiIf you can by chance imagine just how difficult it may be tal ‘A’ and a Painter with a capital ‘P’ and proves these to decide where to look in such a situation, then you may titles with the very classical and disciplined manner in somewhat understand how difficult it is for me to find which he works and the impressive catalogue that he has words adequate to describe Joe Byrne and his art. so far produced.

Byrne possesses a deeply fascinating life history, a Byrne’s West Columbia residence is emblematic of his vaguely inexplainable residence, a widely varied and classical working methods and all of the technical contrasting résumé of employment, many passions, a knowledge and understanding he possesses for creating highly intriguing personaliart. At once I am taken ty, and so many fascinating aback by his amazingly varstories it is almost impossiied, impressive, and subble to decide what aspect of stantial collection of origiJoe Byrne that I should connal artworks and photogracentrate on first. phy on display at his studio To start with, please try and home. to imagine an artist that Still I am further amazed paints with the skill and when I discover that 99% of dedication of an old master, his display consists of his and speaks with a blended own works of art. At first it Brooklyn and Southern seems impossible that one accent. This artist should artist could generate so have his long grey hair many opposing styles of art. pulled back into a pony-tail Byrne’s art appears as not and should be wearing the work of a single artist, jeans streaked by a variety but that of several working of brightly-colored paints. across different mediums He should ride a motorcyand several different pericle and have a tendency to ods of time. display a wonderfully Byrne, in fact, practically eccentric (yet highly prolives in a house made of ductive) case of ADD, and paintings.

This is not possibly OCD. He must be unusual for an artist, espeat the same time very cially one that resides and earnest, honest, realistic, works in his studio. What is unusual is the wide-ranging kind of shy, selectively variety of genres, subject quiet or pensive, and matter, and media that always very sincere. If you Byrne has visibly mastered can imagine that artist, to make-up this overthen you may be able to Studies, sketches and photos fill the walls of Byrne’s studio. whelming display of his achieve a sense of Joe talent.

Byrne, and his character.

What is so impressive about his schizophrenic style for Byrne as a personality alone is fascinating in several creation is that he has been able to produce so many respects; however it seems most important to underquality pieces across so many differing artistic methods stand the sensibility behind Byrne’s art before it can be and means. remotely possible to achieve true understanding of the When I ask Byrne how it has been possible to learn so man himself. Byrne’s personality and personal history many different schools of art and why he has chosen to have continually been so interconnected and co-dependpursue so many contrasting and opposing artistic styles ent on the art that he produces that it therefore seems and techniques, but never settled on just one, I was told: impossible to separate the man from the work.

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Bollard and Hauser, 2000, 48 x 36 (unfinished)

ities. Rembrandt (or the school of Rembrandt), although recognized as one of the greatest painters in Europe, produced thousands of paintings – but really only a few stand out for their greatness in comparison to the sheer volume of work produced.

What is striking about Byrne’s art is this: Despite the great abundance of his completed works, great value can be recognized within each individual piece regardless of it being so acutely different from the next.

The excellence of Byrne’s work across his many styles of creativity may be explained by his assumed artistic attitude and dedicated work-ethic that is enlisted for his every individual undertaking – from landscape painting to remodeling his own kitchen.

Byrne’s principles for working can be summarized by a self-imposed standard that he upholds: Before moving on to the next phase of his artistic journey, he must first feel safe that he has gained sufficient knowledge regarding everything that surrounds any given technique or subject he has planned to tackle.

Byrne has a somewhat obsessive thirst for knowledge

“I have been around for 62 years and I jump around a lot!”

In usual circumstances I may be willing to accept this reasoning, but what is puzzling and amazing about Byrne’s stylistic “jumping” is the extent to which he involves himself in each practice, technique, and subject matter. He does not just flit from one painting to another to act on boredom, lack of interest or skill. “I fall in and out of love with my paintings, and then I go back to them”, he explained - although I can’t help to think that there is so much more to praise about the way in which he works.

There are many artists that are known for producing great masses of work, and then there are artists that are known for the quality of their work. However quantity of artwork is often produced at the expense of quality and there are few artists that are known for both throughout their career. Vermeer, for example, produced only 35 paintings that can be attributed to him throughout the duration of his career, but each piece recognized has been acclaimed for its outstanding qual-

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experience the entire scene that he is going to depict.

Whether this means walking the extent of a scene that he has set to capture, experiencing a full forest trail, scaling a mountain, following a stream, stumbling down a cliff, flying in a plane overhead, studying geology, and more: he carries out every thinkable and unthinkable means of research to achieve a highly informed understanding of the landscape at hand.

Byrne has a tendency to go to seemingly unbelievable and extreme measures to research and self-teach in order to prepare for pieces. He claims to do so to achieve a holistic understanding of his subjects before he feels comfortable that he can honestly replicate the world he sees in his work.

Visually describing all of his objectives with such acute realism and accuracy is a tireless act of excessive and obsessive dedication to always rendering Truth. To illustrate Byrne’s self-imposed regulations, the artist has recently been growing what he describes as ‘rust farms’ to allow him to accurately replicate the absolute look, feel, and texture of rust when including any metal or rusted subjects in his abstract industrial pieces.

Byrne excitedly revealed to me some ordinary wooden planks to which he had applied a sticky, gluey substance to the surfaces. These planks then get pressed against rusted surfaces of the variety of old metal objects that he keeps laying and strewn around his back yard.

The entire process is for the purpose of creating ‘rust samples’ to be examined and studied in his studio so he can achieve an understanding of every aspect pertaining to the look of rust. This includes how rust forms, different variations in appearances and texture, differentia-

Joe in his studio.

and an inherent need to discover truth that must be satisfied before undertaking any new subject or media.

Before he will even attempt to recreate a particular internal vision, he must first forensically investigate every aspect of what it is that he sees and how he intends to communicate it. Byrne’s meticulous methodology also includes endless notetaking and list-making throughout working on his art and when in the planning stage of his pieces. Byrne even admitted, “The next 10 years of my painting is already planned-out.” The artist’s extensive plan includes subjects he intends to paint and even includes the order in which he plans to paint them.

Byrne aims to depict each and every minute detail of his vision with expert knowledge and absolute truth. For example when he is painting a panoramic landscape he must first, through reality,

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Oyster Boat Mooring, 2006, 30 x 15

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tion between the formation of rust on different metals, trial compositions. This particular family of Byrne’s ‘exploding rust’ which only appears through the surfaces paintings currently includes storied ships, old and dilapof painted metal objects, rust that peels off attempts of idated train-car doors, and other industrial, metal painting in layers, rust that reveals itself though paint objects that have fallen victim to nature’s elements. from underneath but never actually breaks through…

“Locally, people like the landscapes. They seem to sell During the course of our meeting I begin to feel that I and they pay the bills…but this is my passion!” –Byrne am becoming well versed in the anatomy of rust as well. I find myself audibly contemplating in front of Columbia’s rust expert whether rust simply ‘explodes’ through the paint – because the metal intends to seize back its rightful, original appearance, aggressively casting off the color that it has unwillingly been forced to take?

Perhaps the rust is exercising its supremacy and authority over covering layers of paint?

Byrne appeared A Lifeboat and Davit, 2000, 50 x 32 enamored by my deep (and vaguely embarrassing) insight into the practice of rust-psycholoexclaimed as we stand in front of “Bollard”, his unfingy and pointed out a particular area of one of his indusished abstract, modernistic, industrial oil-painting replitrial paintings where there is an example of ‘bubbling cated from a photograph that he took while docked at a rust’. Here, a portion of a boat’s metal surface takes on a harbor in Red Hook, New York. bulbous texture where the boat captain had kept paintBoats and water are ever-present themes in Byrne’s ing over and over the peeling paint pushed out by the art, partially inspired by his former boat-delivering force of underlying rust, but the rust just kept on burstcareer that allowed him to travel coast-to-coast in the ing through. Despite my initial reservations, I have conUnited States. “Bollard” is a bright-yellow painted, lightcluded that the nature of rust is indeed surprisingly fasbulb shaped, seemingly anonymous bulge of metal, boltcinating, and I can empathize with Byrne’s fascination ed down to one of New York Harbor’s docks. with it. I may eventually take the time to look into the Byrne points to the parts of the painting which show vengeful tendencies inherent in rust and it’s uprising how rust is able to peel off paint from the imposing against the oppression of unnatural and stifling layers of metal bollard, and where the yellow paint has flaked off paint. in layers from the original subject. The bulbous object is Byrne’s enthusiasm for rust and metal objects does not overshadowed by a large boat that exists outside the picend here by any means. After briefly sharing with me ture-plane, but its size and existence is only abstractly some of his Southern Landscape paintings, he proimplied. The boat has been tied and bound to the bolclaimed that he would now show me what he is “paslard by hosiers that Byrne manipulates to create another sionate about” and leads me to another room filled with central object. giant canvases depicting powerful and imposing indusIn this room, I am particularly drawn to one of Byrne’s

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industrial paintings that bares an uncanny resemblance to my favorite Charles Sheeler painting created in 1929: “Upper Deck”.

Sheeler (a noted Precisionist painter whose work was known to be supported by his skills as a photographer) meticulously depicted American rural and urban landscapes.

He characterized his style by painting things that were hard, exact, flat, big, industrial, and full of exchanges with photography: exempting expressive strokes of paint, nature, and figures in his artworks as he believed that “process and product have replaced nature altogether”.

Joe Byrne’s “A Lifeboat and Davet”, also reminiscent of Sheeler’s works, is a huge, bluely-tinted painting that depicts

Byrne creates his own rust samples to study

a portion of the estimated 540 foot S.S. Majestic ship’s cleats that Byrne was a passenger on whilst following the east coast. Byrne formed the entire painting from layerupon-layer of painted glazes that create such detail and realistic modeling that it looks as if he had instead squeezed oil straight from the paint tube onto the canvas.

Next, we go back to his landscape paintings (did I mention that Byrne “jumps around a lot”?) and I realize that these should really not be overlooked. The landscape paintings are brilliantly realistic and descriptive.

Each painting depicts convincing scenes of the natural world: rich, dewy forestry so lush that I can virtually smell cedar; glistening, translucent bodies of water; winding streams that seem to audibly ripple, creating sounds of water droplets in my head.

When asked, Byrne reported that he does in-fact truly enjoy painting landscapes. He explained: “Otherwise I would have never painted them. Something has to hook me. I only can paint things that are interesting to me.”

However, the artist has found recently that he mainly paints his more traditional scenes of nature out of necessity and “getting the bills paid”. Byrne, now semiretired, aims to solely focus on his passion – the antithesis of his more-commonly-known charming and picturesque Southern scenes of nature – towards modern industrial landscapes. I cannot help but believe that what he says is the truth.

The significant value Byrne places on truthfulness can be applied and reflected through other areas in his life.

He claimed that while in court it had once been remarked that he was the only witness to always give

The uniform: painted jeans and red Converse.

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attempt to relate his art to some sort of personal or internal vision. He doesn’t justify his artworks’ value by announcing his artistic gifts or his inherent artistic genius. Byrne’s ever-present modest and humble outlook is refreshing and invites respect, and is also as realistic as the works that he produces.

A great many artists, particularly those working in abstract or modernist styles, have a tendency to use their art to self-promote and make artworks all about themselves rather than the mediums. I enjoy how, by contrast, Byrne remains focused on his art and his studying of subjects and techniques. He animatedly talks in detail about his paintings rather than himself. Perhaps this is the reason for my initial assumption that he and his art are so intrinsically connected. For this reason, I am hopeful that when people are given real opportunity to see the extent of Byrne’s many different artworks and styles of working that they will recognize, like I did on the day of my visit to his West Columbia studio, all that Byrne has to offer as an artist and all the value that can be found in so many of his styles of painting – irrespective of whether they have heard of Byrne before.

I sincerely believe that, one day, art collectors will boast about their “Byrne’s” just as they do their “Rothko’s” or their “Pollock’s”.

exactly the same deposition each time called to speak. “I always say the same thing,” he smiled. “What you say will always be the same if you don’t lie and if you only tell the truth.” And it is his consistent truthfulness, played out in his art, which is the one theme that I can follow and can use to connect all of the distinct elements that make up his body of work.

Truth is the one constant ingredient that brings his many contrasting pieces altogether. Truth and realism shine through Byrne’s art and also contribute to the sense of his overall classical discipline.

What I enjoy most about Byrne’s work is the way in which he treats the act of creating art. He treats artistic conception as a learned skill and believes that he is only able to create quality work as a result of his achievements in cultivating a particular craft. I like that Byrne sees all artists as craftsmen, and that he sees creating art is a result of carrying out styles, subjects, and techniques that - like sciences - can be learned and developed to achieve mastery; and that anyone has the ability to do so.

Byrne explains that all of his accomplishments have resulted from extensive study and gaining understanding for a particular artistic craft.

Byrne, unlike artists such as Jackson Pollock, does not ground the value of his art in any discourse, nor does he

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artist

Jemes Davis

I

f the lights are on in the workshop behind Jemes Davis’ house, chances are he is performing a resurrection of sorts. Not in the celestial manner, but a resurrection nonetheless. Davis is an arborist. He’s paid not only to prune trees, but also to remove them.

Though one might think extracting a tree brings an end to its life, with Davis this is not the case. For him, the removal provides the opportunity for rebirth.

Six years as an arborist has provided him the opportunity to hone his artistic talents with wood.

For Davis, it begins with sculpting living, growing trees. “Trees are beautiful and fascinating,” he says.

“If you follow the rules of pruning, it’s a real art form.

If done correctly, pruning is like organic sculpture.”

Though pruning allows Davis to enhance a tree’s beauty, he doesn’t do it as often as he’d like. “I enjoy trimming, but since my specialty is removal, that’s usually what I’m sent to do.” He understands it’s a necessary process: removing what might be considered a nuisance. But

text: Chuck Walsh

photography: Kasi Koshollek

what some might see as an annoyance, Davis sees as a treasure. When he removes a tree, he uses the opportunity to explore its history and the story it tells. “You see how it’s grown, and how it’s overcome things in its life.

All of that is recorded in its grain.”

Once a tree is cut, Davis’ creative juices begin to boil. Seeing wood the way a painter might see a canvas and oils, he looks within its fabric to envision the creation. “I’ll look at a shape in a piece of wood and I see something within it.” And the rebirth begins.

Davis’ artistic endeavors didn’t begin with woodwork. Prior to this, he worked as a chef for nearly eight years. Though rewarding to a degree, he realized he wanted to take his talents to the outdoors – preferably to a situation that would take him to new and different locations. Davis’ initiation with wood began in Tampa when a friend came to remove one of his trees. “I watched and said, ‘let me give it a

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marionette whose body is contorted within a large table; ligustrum branches serve as the table legs. Davis displays and sells his work at the House of Frames where he has exhibited for five years - with about ten pieces on view at any given time.

Davis uses virtually any kind of wood for his creations; hardwoods, cedar, yellow and white pine. He has worked with camphor, which likely served the dual purpose of producing a new creation and cleared his sinuses in the process. Sticks and limbs are sometimes ingredients in his designs. As far as trees, pine is his favorite.

“The yellow pine should be the official tree of the state,” Davis says. “I come from Oklahoma where it’s hard to find a tree over forty feet, and I think it’s sad that so many of these tall, beautiful trees exist and people don’t appreciate them.”

Davis’ dedication spent pursuing his passion of woodwork is done without the thought of making money.

“Art is a compulsory thing for me. It’s a form of expression. It’s something I have to do. I don’t feel as if I have to make it a career. I used to feel that way, but I’ve realized it doesn’t. I just have to make the time to do it. For my sanity, and my happiness.”

Though the use of a chainsaw is necessary to get down to the grain, Davis prefers the quiet solitude that sculpting brings to the process. “I like to get the gas-powered tools out of the way as soon as possible,” he states. “Once it gets down to the chisel, which is a contemplative tool, it is a quiet and pleasant work.” It’s at this point where not only creativity emerges, but the therapeutic aspect comes into play – in the quiet, where Davis removes not only the excess wood of his creation but also the worries of the day.

As expansive as his creations are, Davis desires to spend more time carving faces. “It’s so tricky, and difficult to get the details,” he says. “It’s such a delicate relationship. The face is a landscape, filled with hard and soft things, all put together just the right way. Sculpture is an assemblage of that landscape.”

Davis typically spends twenty hours a week working in his shop, located in his back yard. He’d stay there longer if time would allow. “Doing this brings a satisfaction that nothing else provides,” he says.

Though he loves to express himself through his woodwork, it goes hand-in-hand with being an arborist. “It’s a good physical activity, and an honest job.” He hopes to continue climbing trees, but if he physically gets to the point where he can’t do it, it won’t stop him from finding ways to work with wood. “Even if I have to whittle, I will.” His desire to resurrect wouldn’t let him think any other way.

Davis creates the detailed faces by hand.

try.’” There his informal training began.

He has always looked for a vehicle to express his creativity. Though he loves to paint, woodwork has provided both a satisfying therapy and a medium to express himself in ways few people are able. Becoming an arborist further opened that potential. “I grew up with a painting and drafting background,” he says. “I had not done much wood-carving because it requires so much more in the way of tools and the space to do it.”

His range of creations covers a broad spectrum. He makes furniture. He turns and carves bowls. He constructs ecclesiastical figures such as Jesus and Mary. He has crafted countless masks (mostly theatrical) and many of these hang from the walls of his home. He is currently working on a piece that contains a life-size

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Davis has created his own tools for his unique work

One of Davisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; many masks

Bench crafted from a single piece of wood.

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project

Photo courtesy of South Caroliniana Library

The Re-incarnation of 701 Whaley Street

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special historic building.

Cradled by Whaley Street as it curves between Assembly and Huger, ‘701’ looms patiently awaiting its imminent awakening. Copious contractors toil away inside and out, all working towards goals of completing the numerous projects underway within its century-old walls. ‘701’ so far has proved it’s worth and has worked hard to earn its space. Against many faces of destruction, it has prevailed and held fast to the land on which it stands, but has sadly forgone any promised chance of a fresh lease on life. By contrast, today, ‘701’s reincarnation is impending and rapidly approaching.

Despite the fast moving pace of redevelopment and Columbia’s flourishing market that largely demands brandnew constructions or ultra-modern real estate, the Olympia area has in many ways managed to cling on to its village-like atmosphere. At first, Columbia’s Olympia section can be misconceived as a bleak industrial wasteland æ a landscape of repositories and warehouses æ however, Olympia has in-fact retained its own special character

otorious 701 Whaley Street æ the colossal corner structure whose roof once caved in æ gladly still stands at the core of Columbia’s former mill villages, now Olympia, where it overlooks the illustrious, recently modernized and residentially occupied Granby Mill. ‘701’ will soon re-open after major renovations as one of Columbia’s latest designer properties with great promise to provide a unique space for creative innovation and cultural inspiration to benefit Columbia’s modern, urban scene.

The haze of swirling clouds, formed by unsettled dust and sand, create a veil leaving ‘701’ overlooked by many passers by; however this is not an ordinary construction site. Here, shimmering in the sunlight, fragments of the building’s deep and varied past are blown about by the wind and sent spinning through the enormous, evocative, echoing structure which, once noticed, generates an immediately impressive impact. Despite being vaguely obscured by an assembly of construction equipment, beyond all manner of industrial machinery, hides a very

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text: Shayna Katzman

photography: Kasi Koshollek

despite being seemingly swallowed-up by urban sprawl. was considered the “labor problem.”

The leafy streets of Olympia’s proud and thriving resiAt the time, decision-makers were hoping to settle misdential neighborhoods are steeped in history and charactreated industrial factory workers, (as well as ease their terized by a wide variety of architecturally wonderful housconsciences), by offering increased wages and shorter es boasting high-style elegance and classical facades that work-weeks to modern industrial workers. By default, this are set against streets lined by oak trees and lit up by decresulted in the fabrication of community centers within orative lanterns. industrial communities to satisfy new demands from the 701 Whaley Street, developed in 1903, was originally hard-laboring public to enjoy increased time for leisure. built as a mill-store to serve Columbia’s large textile mills.

‘701’ would have been a unique space for Columbia’s texIndustrial decline, in parallel tile mill workers and families with new technology and envito gather and socialize while ronmental concerns, led to the freely enjoying the facility’s demise of Columbia’s thriving modern pool, gym, auditoritextile communities, and ‘701’, um, movie theater, and various like the once thriving mills, additional amenities offered to became redundant and stood them there. Even today, while empty for years, leaving the still under construction, I Olympia area appearing grim observed that the building carand challenging, just five ries an uplifting and cheerful blocks away from Columbia’s atmosphere about it. Perhaps successful downtown area. this is due to 701 keeping alive Looking at ‘701’ today, it is its positive histories as a place hard to believe that such a used for recreation and repose grand, imposing structure, over many periods of time. with it’s appearance more My enthusiastic and likened to an Italianate palazzo extremely informative host, than an industrial building, Richard Burts, recognized was initially built for menial 701’s exceptional positive qualpurposes. On first impression, ities, prompting his interest in the sheer size of the structure purchasing the building. His and the extent of it’s interior 2006 purchase, with partners hollows is truly staggering as Robert Lewis (another local well as hugely exhilarating. developer) and Bob Its high ceilings and rowsMcConnell (of California), and-rows of ceremonious rescued the dilapidated landcolumns that contribute to the mark from being condemned Extensive repair and restoration work includes saving intense presence of the buildand knocked down by the city the unique “inverted” trusses. ing emphasize the ground æ a fate that had threatened floor’s grandeur. The sizeable structure is unquestionably the building several times before. freighted in purpose and power and carries with it a spare, “I am just happy it is still standing,” Burts said quite matbare, appeal intensified by original unfinished wooden ter-of-factly during the course of my personal ‘nickel tour’ floors and authentic turn-of-the-century mint-green paint around the gargantuan multi-faceted project that stretches which remains peeling off the walls contributing to a over 35,000 square-feet æ the largest restoration project tough, utilitarian edge. In contrast to its appearance, the that he has ever undertaken. building’s atmosphere fills you with warm feelings of endWhen Burts and his associates first bought the building, less possibility. It is strikingly unusual to find a building so its entire roof had been collapsed for quite some time. spacious and so grand yet still achieves a lasting lightness Thousands of feet of roof, ceiling, and second-floor deck in impression that can be overwhelming but still inviting. had plummeted all the way down into the building’s foun‘701’ was transformed into the mill workers’ communidation, falling as far as the basement. This disaster consety center over a decade after it was initially built, during a quently filled the entire East section of the building with time period marked by national attempts to address what hazardous debris. “The building just kept caving into

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itself,” Burts explained, pointing to a vast section on the first floor where a mountain of bricks, metal, rubble, and chunks of decaying roof would have been resting if I had been standing in that same place a year earlier.

Burts described the remarkable disparity between the look of the space now and its appearance at the time of his initial acquisition, narrating that 701’s interior had resembled a bombsite: remaining walls and ceiling barely held together by threads, and shards of rotten wood everywhere. Looking at the notably clear space as it now appears make his descriptions quite hard to imagine. At the ground floor, supporting columns stretch upwards of 30 feet to the ceiling, which is adorned by a patchwork of authentic early 20th century timber planks. As I stretch my gaze upwards, I imagine that it would be possible to insert an entire block of an average residential street into the space occupied by just the ground floor.

We carefully descend a 30 foot ladder into the deep depths of the building towards a dark and cavernous basement. Visible tide-lines stain the terracotta-colored masonry walls confirming just how profoundly flooded the basement had become during the years that ‘701’ sat without a roof. Burts here described some chilling scenes that had taken place during the earliest stages of renovation inside the monstrous basement in which I stood.

Apparently, inside the dark and echoing boiler-room, a pair of legs had been found poking out of the mouth of a furnace. The legs fortunately later transpired to belong to a synthetic anthropomorphic shop mannequin.

The original team at one point entertained the possibility of a subterranean alligator inhabiting the basement’s stagnant floodwater, and I envision the menace swimming around in a murky pool that would have easily risen far above my head. Fortunately, the alligator never materialized, and we are safe with the old boiler system now replaced. The floor is dry as bone.

Climbing back to ground level and moving past the building’s hollowed-out storefront entrance, we experience blusters of howling wind aggressively pushing from end to end of the building and echoing throughout the structure. The angry wind will however soon be shut out with the imminent installation of a chain of period windows that will fill all the enormous gaps that currently stretch across the entire entrance.

The façade window installation illustrates some key elements of the developers’ proposal to retain much of the building’s essential character, and to protect, as well as recover, as much of 701’s past appearance as possible. For decades the original façade had been enveloped by solid concrete that had been at some point poured into the front porticos and concealing some of the building’s finest archi-

JACK GERSTNER A man just as storied and complex as the old building itself. Gerstner purchased the Whaley Street building in 1996; the same time that he founded the “Gallery 701” organization. He sold the building in 2002 to Richard Burts who was a high school classmate and Robert Lewis. “Gallery 701” he explained “is not a place, or a building for that matter, not even one located at 701 Whaley Street, it is a spirit and a vision, and also of course an organization which I continue to operate.”

Jack Gerstner, above all things, is a contemporary artist by his own admitting who creates instillations: artworks that must be experienced in time and space and interact with their viewer for the time they exist.

Born in Cheraw, Gerstner moved to Columbia with his family and went on to attend USC to study Medicine, which was his parent’s dream for him. Gerstner, however, graduated with a degree in Fine Art. Honoring his love for learning and reading, he returned to USC for Graduate School furthering his studies in fine art and art theory with a focus on sculpture and art installation. “I decided that I would study art instead of Medicine as I was interested in learning everything…anthropology, architecture, namely Italian Renaissance Architecture, Eastern Mysticism, continued on page 49

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tectural luxuries and original high-style elaborations. The project team has fortunately been able to uncover the grand storefront and is currently in the process of restoring it back to original appearance by installing authentic structural window framing, recovering delicate classical moldings, and removing the ugly solid concrete fill. Once fully installed the façade’s classical detailing is destined to emphasize the building’s beautiful symmetry, order, and strong horizontal lines.

Next, we climb the grand antiquated staircase situated in the front east side of the building towards the second floor. The timber staircase still stands strong, however it was actually erected as part of the building’s 1920s additions. Here, an imposing rustic-looking iron sprinkler duct from the building’s earliest stages traces the staircase and resembles a looming piece of Minimalist sculpture.

Burts explains that although no longer functional, he plans to prevent these unusual pipelines from being uprooted.

The sprinkler systems must be completely replaced to ensure modern standards of safety; however, to my delight, unusual features such as these intriguing rusted pipes will be left to remain and will be treated as accents for the building, enhancing historical authenticity.

The grand staircase leads to another extraordinary expanse of space flooded by light pouring in from the giant windows that line both sides of the second floor. The second-floor space had at various times been an auditorium, a movie theater, and even an indoor basketball court. Rows of robust trusses streak the ceiling and were initially installed to replace the supporting columns to convert the space into a gym.

I discover two huge, airy rooms at the front section of the second floor. These lie behind the building’s upper façade of 10 foot windows that stretch across the front of the building, and caught my attention from the street. The impressive casement windows have already been restored and provide charming sight lines overlooking the whole village. I gaze out of one colossal window and observe a picturesque scene including a church steeple framed by leafy trees, and a full view of the old mill that in its day would have been the largest in the nation. It is quite striking how enchanting, peaceful, and calm the landscape appears considering ‘701’ is so close to the busy downtown. The panoramic window-views surprisingly reveal charming countryside backdrops æ not at all the look or feel of a modern city center setting.

At the far end of the second floor, Burts offers to show me what they describe as “the window to the past”.

Climbing up another torturous ladder, Burts unlatches a large metal square hinged to the wall. The rusted flap creaks open to reveal the old community center’s brick-

RICHARD BURTS Did Richard Burts ever imagine that he would own 701 Whaley Street? “Not in a million years!” The Columbia native smiles widely, while casually leaning with his back pressed against a steep brick wall that encases his mammoth renovation project currently underway. Burts shields his eyes from the glare of the sun and laughs whole-heartedly as he makes jokes about the aggressive dust clouds that blows cement into his face.

Fortunately Burts is just as open, honest and personable in the flesh as he comes across on his web page ‘701 Whaley blogspot’ where he posts ‘Notes from Richard,’ which candidly and interactively journals the activity of this restoration. But Burts’ involvement doesn’t end there, he has various community involvement including membership to The Five Points Association, The Columbia Design League and is a major player in Columbia’s restaurant industry.

Burts graduated from The University of South Carolina with a degree in Economics, a seemingly unlikely field of study for a property developer to pursue, though for Burts, renovation has always been a sort of ‘hobby’ tracing back to his time as a student. “I was kind of forced into Economics” Burts explained. After enrolling as a ‘Four-year Undeclared Major’ he was continued on page 49

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house gym and sizeable pool that has managed to preserve its original tiling from the time of original installation.

Burts sounded very eager to begin restoring this unexpected and fascinating addition to the building project.

The third and last floor of the vast structure boasts the

newly completed roof deck and has been divided up into several studio and living spaces, each offering equally extraordinary views. Burts envisions the third-floor spaces as a future hotbed for creative innovation and an inspirational environment for young artistic talent to grow, drawing inspiration from the historic setting.

Now filled with feelings of excitement and awe for the historic structure, I felt that I now possessed deep understanding for the emotional attachment that Burts described that he feels towards the building. As an outsider, I was immediately impressed by ‘701’ as a structure and observed considerable value in its size and design, but it was only after experiencing the inner-realms of this aged community center that I was able to truly appreciate the significance of the building and empathize with the many members of the community that have so powerfully believed in the significance of the building. I could now genuinely understand 701’s avid and faithful following, comprised of individuals that have been unwaveringly determined to prevent its demise.

Calvin Coolidge said: “The man who builds a factory, builds a temple. The man who works there, worships there.” Throughout my ‘701’ visit, these old words echoed

in my head, and I believe that the ex-president’s statement would also strike a similar cord with others.

Olympia developers, owners, renovators, proud residents, and numerous members of the wider community have held fast to ideals of preserving the historic site, as they are able to recognize the influence possessed by Columbia’s historic buildings and the power they maintain which can bind our community together in similar ways to public places of worship. In addition, it is very interesting that the old mill village area was named ‘Olympia’, referencing the home of the mythological gods of the Ancient Greeks who were said to reside on ‘Mount Olympus’ indicating that at the time of Olympia’s naming progress ideals regarding the sanctity of industrial areas were already being played out.

Richard Burts is amongst several local developers that have made it their business to restore Columbia’s oldest buildings in favor of building new. Burts himself admitted that from a financial standpoint knocking the whole thing down and starting again could seem tempting. Although choosing to restore 701 Whaley Street has cost substantially more time, effort, and funds than pursuing the alternative route æ he still holds with all certainty that the ending results will be priceless. Mike Williams similarly recognizes that you cannot put a price tag on history and feels lucky to be leading up the construction team. Williams animatedly explained that he sees the project as an opportunity that does not come around very often, and despite the added time and care that typically comes with the restoration process, it will more than pay off in the end.

In the past few decades, symbols of early American industry such as historic factories and mills have again become seemingly viable national icons. In its heyday, 701 Whaley Street would have been looked on as a symbol of Columbia’s extensive and highly organized urban, industrial, working class, and would have evoked a great sense of pride and unity across local society.

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701 Whaley Street restoration in

Revival of designs from ancient Europe carried a civilizing mission. Numerous people in positions of power shared a widespread belief that public works of architecture could beautify America and civilize its people. ‘The City Beautiful’ period in American architecture (as this period is commonly referred to) represents an age when buildings were relied on as moral and social forces that could elevate and educate the general public and could inspire Americans to behave as rationally and uniformly as the orders of the classical aesthetic they upheld. This can also explain why functional, everyday buildings such as a common mill-store could be built in such a distinguished and elaborate fashion. There was also an element of anxiety in this era concerning the ways modern machines and technology would affect traditional habits of working and living; therefore industrial buildings were often built in classical styles to ease unfamiliarity and uncertainty regarding modern business practices.

Public buildings designed and built in neoclassical style in the early twentieth century, such as ‘701’, would have paid tribute to Columbia’s modern progress and industrial supremacy. By appropriating old-world neoclassical styles, early 20th century builders,

throw-out-the-old and constantly demands and desires everything “new”. It is refreshing that many Columbians have started to once again look towards the past to inspire building projects, neighborhood revitalizations, city-scapeing, and development.

Columbia’s oldest structures are being appreciated for both their functional and aesthetic worth and are once again being recognized for their value in forming shared identity, character, and culture.

The new renovation of ‘701’ is destined to emerge as a finished product that is far more than just a piece of real estate. This project will potentially create a new creative campus in Columbia, and further transform the previously underdeveloped historic mill villages into valuable, dynamic additions to the city. Re-establishing such historic landmarks helps reinforce notions of heritage while at the same time conforming to a communal desire to reposition Columbia as a modern and creative southern

architects, and investors would reinforce ideals of local self-confidence, social, political, and economic transformations, and popular feelings of national leadership and patriotism.

Classically inspired Burts saved the old fire sprinkler buildings stood as images of power and confidence æ drawing from styles belonging to the world’s greatest ancient civilizations (particularly Greece and Rome); societies that in turn shared the same beliefs in their time in history. For these reasons, classically designed buildings were highly popular during the time ‘701’ was conceived and reflected a common architectural trend for neo-classical structures that had spread across the nation.

However, today’s consumerist culture has a tendency to

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system to help retain the sense of history in the building.

state capitol. This project also has potential to contribute substantial economic benefits to Columbia as a whole and to the surrounding Olympia area in particular.

The ‘701’ project, and other local historic restoration projects, can stand to prove that it is in fact possible to satisfy modern demands concerning design, safety, and innovation, while still preserving the essential character of historical structures. These ambitious and costly undertakings manage to disprove some common stereotypical

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beliefs regarding growing, planning, and building Columbia as a modern and cosmopolitan city.

‘701’ proves that for a building or architect to be considered “contemporary” it is not always necessary to create everything anew. Nor is it imperative to always create and dictate every shape and detail of a building’s design in order to achieve “modern”, “innovative”, and “cuttingedge” results. It has instead become clearer that in order to create properties that will be valued and considered both modern and architectural, the vital ingredients are more to do with approach or concept.

For restoration projects, a large portion of the architectural process, design, and the avantgarde can be determined by strategic decision making such as choosing what parts of a

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View through the original showers.

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building should be kept, what should be left alone, what is added, and what is taken out. These decisions themselves take certain special skills and vision to achieve impressive results. Despite all this, sometimes the secret to creating properties that are considered progressive and cutting-edge can often be very dependent on the people the building aims to attract, and‘701’ aspires to house the highend of Columbia’s intelligent and creative talent.

Richard Burts envisions his building as one that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also culturally and historically valuable.

He remains driven in the project by the notion that in the end he and his team will have provided a premier environment æ one which will continue to inspire innovation, cultural activity, and creative thought in Columbia.

Jack Gerstner (continued) design, contemporary art and instillations, and art allows you learn about anything in the world;” and with the same breath, “ art has the power to change the world!”

The most fundamental driving force behind his life so far is his passion and profound affection for found objects, which are natural or manmade objects found or bought by artists because of some intrinsic interest that the artist sees in them. Found objects can even be treated as works of art themselves and called ready-mades: works not artistically created, but treated as art because the function or meaning of the given object has been changed or put it in a new situation (like a gallery) by an artist to invite people to look at the familiar thing in a new way.

Gerstner animatedly describes how he always picks-up and collects any objects that catch his eye, and is particularly drawn to textures, and surfaces and especially loves items that are dilapidated, worn out, rusted, discarded and unwanted- those are the kind of objects that

especially grab his attention. The artist admits that 701 Whaley Street building was like discovering his ultimate ‘found object’ that he found sitting vacant, dilapidated, and unnoticed and just like all the other unwanted stuff that he has collected over the years something attracted him to it. “ It sat with a for sale sign outside it for over six years and I assumed this meant it was clearly unwanted!”

This likening of a colossal building to junk he picks out of dumpsters may sound ludicrous and unimaginable to some, but due to Surrealist ancestry many contemporary artists would share his outlook.

Jack Gerstner continues to operate ‘Gallery 701’ as well as produce art and find objects. He is a person with an enlightened and optimistic vision for the world and not merely for the building in Olympia or for Columbia, but with a vision for the greater good that he asserts art can influence. “The vision was the same then as it is now- to bring happiness to people’s lives with art” and “‘Gallery 701’ will be wherever people want us.”

Richard Burts (continued) ment to the building” that he now shares himself. He said he has always sincerely admired and believed in “Jack’s vision” and that his vision remains with him.

When he decided to purchase 701, it was only after he was sure Gerstnerwas ready, and seeked-out his permission when the building’s destruction seemed inevitable.

Burts was unwilling to take credit for having any kind of special vision for 701 or anything of that nature, he is instead very humble as well as professional. The developer expressed gratitude that he had the opportunity to distinguish the value of 701 first-hand from his great experiences there as a spectator and is sure to emphasize the importance of his two 701 partners: Robert Lewis, another local developer and Bob McConnell in California.

He articulates his clearly professional attitude and the ways that he sees renovation projects as a way to respond to the needs of contemporary life, although still very serious about preservation, Burts is not about an idealized revival of the past.

“All three partners are working very hard to make this project special for the Olympia neighborhood and for the City of Columbia. We are very fortunate to be working on a one of a kind building with a very storied past.”

forced to chose a field of study in this third year. During college while earning his degree, he also enjoyed buying down-trodden apartments, remodeling every aspect of the properties, and selling them. “I guess I am good at a lot of things, but a master of none” he disclosed shyly and grimacing. “I credit my father with teaching me everything I know about construction, he is 83 years old and he can still fix anything!”

Although an Economics student, perhaps the activities he chose to pursue during his spare time were in-fact exactly the kind of experience Burts needed to lead him towards his position and current career. During these years Burts learned how to be extremely handy and selfsufficient with his on-the-side apartment renovations, reflective now in his hands-on involvement with the renovation.

Ironically, Burts was also a patron of concerts, art shows and other performances that were held there during his college years. “I always thought it was a great old building, with great character.” Burts recalled, of his early experiences of the then pink 701 building, “Getting to be part of this project was really just out of luck.”

In speaking with Burts, he displayed great empathy towards Jack Gernster, the former executive director of then ‘Gallery 701’ and expressed profound understanding for Gernster’s “deep emotional attach-

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profile

Lynne Burgess

I

first met Lynne Burgess at a Halloween costume party more than twelve years ago. I was dressed as a Tetley teabag. She and her husband had come as Parisian bohemians. She had her long hair in a swinging ponytail and a small black beret on her head. I liked her costume a lot better than my teabag.

I really got to know her a few months later when she moved her studio into the same building as mine down in Five Points, on the corner of Blossom and Harden. She bopped up the stairs with a new shorter hairdo. She peeled out what I came to expect as her usual greeting, “Heeyy,” as she came bouncing down the hall. “I cut all my hair off ‘cause I’m getting ready to start chemo for breast cancer.”

I’ve never known anyone else to be so direct and matter of fact about something that was so earth-shakingly frightening.

That was Lynne. Gutsy and ready to face whatever the challenge was head on. If there is one thing I learned from Lynne, it’s just that. Face directly into whatever the challenge is and make sure that you make lemonade out of all the lemons.

In the following years she translated her experiences with that whole process into a body of work that she called “The Truth Table”. Deceptively small in scale and simple in composition, these oil pastels all share a stark horizon line.

This line divides the space into an area above that can be read as the sky, and below by the land/sea. The viewer is faced with a limitless space. In a few of the pieces, Lynne scratched or marked an “x” across the composition.

On a formal level it pulled the viewer back to the surface of the picture plane, but for Lynne it was also a reminder text: Mary Gilkerson

of the scars that she carried, of life’s limitations that in the end make you stronger. She used to say that being diagnosed with cancer was the best thing that ever happened to her, that it brought life sharply into focus.

Lynne lost the second round of her battle with breast cancer a few weeks ago. She passed away quietly early in the morning of February 20th with her husband Blake at her side.

Her passing highlights the effect that one person can have on a larger community. There had been other artists in our building for years, but it wasn’t until Lynne moved in that we got organized into a cohesive group, more of an artists’ co-op. She was a born connector and networker.

Within a very short time span we were organized into large-scale annual open studios at Christmas and at least quarterly smaller versions that pulled a whole range of people into our work spaces to see both how and what we did.

But as an artist, one of the most important things that Lynne did was to show me how important professional networks are. On a regular basis she would host get-togethers in her studio for artists, ranging from college professors with national reputations to art students whose work she had just discovered. She shared her own knowledge of marketing and framing with anybody who asked.

After the cancer came back the second time Lynne stuck a sticker on her studio door that says it all in a way that is so simple that most people still miss it. But its simple message is in many ways Lynne’s best legacy. In three words, "Don’t postpone joy."

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gallery

HoFP: Delightfully Devine

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ouse of Frames and Paintings opened in what had been Shandon’s 1st grocery store in 1967 and has been growing and going strong ever since. Forty years of continuous service in the same location have made the shop a fixture in the lives of their clients many are third or even fourth generation!

Alma Altfather founded the business and Pappy Altfather joined her after he decided to sell Alt-Lee Photography. Alice Perritt, the current owner, started work there in 1980. Pappy took one look at her and told his wife “She won’t last thirty days.” She proved him wrong by becoming the manager and then owner in 1988.

Devine Street has improved with age and so has the Gallery.

The sleepy little shop grew to bursting. In 1989 an 800 sq ft woodshop was added on and the interior was reconfigured. The staff grew. The name was abbreviated to initials: HoFP Gallery.

Termites and time led to a construction phase that ended in 2003. The 2000 sq ft upstairs addition complete with terrace was View to the upstairs designed for art shows but has also become a popular place to rent for parties and events. Even with all its history though, not a week goes by but that someone who’s lived nearby for years ‘discovers’ this new place and is amazed to know they’ve missed out.

“We used to be a destination stop for our clients, but now that Devine Street is such a fashionable shopping area, we have lots of walk-in trafficî, says Perritt. ìThat’s made a huge impact on the way we present art. We look for artwork that is attractive and sophisticated and appeals to a variety of tastes.” The mix includes local as well as national and international artists, traditional to edgy styles and a variety of media. The staff has been ambitious enough to schedule as many as ten shows in a

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year but that’s proven to be too much. “We needed to find a balance between personal service and public events and have opted to host fewer shows.” This season’s shows will be Columbia artist Mike Krajewski’s stream of consciousness compositions and Athens, GA artist Keith Abney’s polished cityscapes and graceful florals.

“We are committed to supporting the arts in general,” Perritt says.

“We’ve gotten involved in events around town; supported Artists Against Aids and lots of other charity auctions, sponsored Cultural Council and Columbia Museum of Art shows, and even individual artist’s shows held elsewhere.” She has also purchased art at nearly every venue in town for her own collection. “ìI’d like to see Columbia’s art galleries and studios build a spirit of co-opetition - cooperative competition.

That way we all win; the galleries, the artists and the community.”

The gallery is the more public face of the business, but as the original name suggests, it’s not just an art store. “We sell art, of course, but for someone to truly gallery at HoFP enjoy a piece of art it must be properly presented. We do everything having to do with art; first-rate framing, specialty art lighting, easels and so on for display, hanging solutions and storage products. No matter where you acquire your art, we love to take it and make it better”, says Perritt. What keeps clients coming back is stellar design, attention to detail, personal service and quality; good things to be good at if you’re going to be around for decades.

For more information on the House of Frames & Paintings, Inc., call 803-799-7405, e-mail info@hofpgallery.com, or visit hofpgallery.com

text: Alice Perritt

profile

Jay Hubbell

S

tep out the back door of Jay Hubbell’s modest, onestory house into his yard – all of a sudden you’re in Wonderland, expecting Alice to appear at any moment. To the right sits a colossal brick and stone structure, shaped like a coin standing on edge. Judging by size, it could be pocket change for King Kong.

Glance to the left, and you’ll find a giant triangle made of stone and steel planks, and a stack of old, industrial chimney-flues that appear to float in air. Finally, set your eyes on a short brick wall displaying eight faces side-byside, each representing a phase in the cycle of life.

According to Jay, this cycle consists of: the fetus, the cherubic infant, the mischievous toddler, the teenager, the comfort of middle age, the fear of death, the vision of the Devil, and finally, death.

The yard is nothing short of eccentric, and a perfect backdrop for a kooky party, but Jay says he’s ready to build more.

“It’ll be like Dr. Seuss back here if I have my way,” Jay says.

Jay, a masonry artist, makes his living assembling intricate, outdoor stone and brick structures – staircases, terraces and walls – for homes and some state-owned buildings. He loves it, but he says his life would be even more complete if he could make more of his crazy, Dr. Seuss reminiscent pieces and display them for all of Columbia to enjoy.

The artist already has several triangular, pyramid-esque public artworks displayed throughout the city – one at 2400 Millwood Avenue, one at 2437 Stark Street, and another at the corner of Oak and Gervais Streets – but he’s unable to line numerous projects up because all the expenses are on him. Still, Jay longs to build more (he’s currently pondering over some circles, spires, and a 15foot stack of numbers and letters), because he says they create a sense of unity.

text: Natasha Chilingerian photography: Brad Allen

“It’s a social equalizer,” he says of public art. “When I’m in a not-so-nice neighborhood working on art, people in Land Rovers, and people who are barely walking, will come by to look at it. People can go to a place in their minds where they realize that not everything has to have a function or a purpose. I build it to be an icon, or a landmark.”

The Columbia native attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York City, which he entered on account of his playwriting talents. A rebellious punk-rock band member, Jay returned to Columbia after one semester and began working at a landscaping company. There, he began laying stone, and now he has about 15 years of masonry experience under his belt.

“I go out to a rock yard and I’m like a kid in a candy store,” Jay says. “I’m happy with masonry. I feel like you could spend your whole life doing it and still be figuring out how to do it. There are so many different shapes of rocks and different applications.”

Jay says his biggest accomplishment thus far was his completion of the Gibbes house – a giant ranch home belonging to the owner of Gibbes Ford in Bamberg. The project took three years to complete, and snapshots of Jay’s work reveal exterior walls, stairways, terraces, and a stone fireplace in the Gibbes’ screen room – all blanketed by a cobblestone pattern of chiseled grey rocks.

In Jay’s ideal future, he’ll continue his full-time masonry work and gain more opportunities to make public art. He recently applied for several grants through the Creative Capital Foundation, which would allow him to live his artistic dream. Public art, he says, is a creative outlet that fascinates the masses.

“I like building the secret garden or the fabulous backyard that only your friends will see, but I’d really like to do the stuff that’s out there for people of every level of income to see,” he says. “I’d like to be that guy.”

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Through Our Eyes Art On Lincoln | 1215 Lincoln Street | April 1 - April 30 Artists: Teresa Lee Kay of Dorset, England; Leisa Watts of Sarasota, Florida and Charles Myer, David and Taryn West, Howard Hunt, Trahern Cook and Bob Manown of Columbia, South Carolina.

Original photographs by award winning artist Howard Hunt will be hung with corresponding artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works surrounding their subject. Each wall will show the diversity of artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique views of the same image interpretted with this individual techniques and styles to communicate their personal interpretation of that particular photograph. The goal is to grant insight to how each artist sees, approaches, interprets, works, and communicates differently. undefined : book two

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Identity Crisis: Columbia’s Art Scene

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The visual arts in South Carolina as a whole have come a long way in the last ten years. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still very much a regional system but artists are not nearly as isolated as they once were and there is a growing market for their work. Some artists are actually able to make a decent living off of sales of their work, and more become able to do just that each year.

There are five equally important components in the healthy circulation of art in a community/system: the artist, the art institution/museum, the commercial gallery, the critical voice and the collector. What makes each individual system even stronger is when there is an exchange of any of

olumbia is a city sitting on the edge of becoming a vital cultural community with as much to offer as any neighboring metropolitan area, particularly in the area of the visual arts. The main thing that holds the Columbia art scene back is, for lack of a better term, an identity crisis. You could almost say that we’ve got low self-esteem. We have become so used to thinking of Charleston and Charlotte as the bigger art towns that we don’t recognize either the quality or level of what is on offer here. We’re always comparing ourselves to other cities, particularly those other “C”s - Charleston and Charlotte. And we’re sure that we’re just not as good. undefined : book two

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text : Mary Gilkerson photography: Kasi Koshollek

essay

That sounds like a lot, but the same study showed that total expenditures for Charlotte were $157,959,774, with revenues for state and local governments at $14,060,000. But keep in mind, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only the nonprofit sector.

One of the strongest indicators of a healthy visual arts community is the number of commercial galleries. While Charlotte does have the stronger commercial gallery scene, the number of commercial galleries showing rotating exhibitions of original contemporary art in Columbia is growing. Some of the most well known galleries are City Art, IF Art, Carol Saunders, Pinckney Simons and Cameo, but there are close to twenty that can claim some

those components with another system.

By comparison with Charlotte and Charleston, the visual art market in Columbia is still in its infancy, with plenty of room to grow. Based on their per capita income, the markets in the other two cities can bear more volume and higher prices than Columbia can yet sustain.

A look at a recent national study completed by the Americans for the Arts shows the economic gap in the nonprofit culture industry between Charlotte and Columbia. The total expenditures of the nonprofit culture industry in Greater Columbia in fiscal year 2005 were $56,255,506. The revenue generated to local and state governments was $6,490,000.

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degree of legitimacy as professional contemporary art galleries. And not all of the work on exhibit is just from Columbia. Both City Art and IF Art regularly show work by artists from other areas of the state and region.

In numbers it appears as if Charleston has more galleries, but in reality most of them exhibit “Southern Low Country Scenes” catering to the tourist trade, or are vanity galleries showing just the work of one artist. Until a few years ago, contemporary art galleries had a very difficult time surviving in the Charleston market. That is changing, but at a rate that is certainly no faster than in Columbia.

What hasn’t changed a lot is the relative self-containment of each of the hubs in the region: Greenville/Spartanburg, Charlotte/Rock Hill, Columbia and Charleston. Artists (and commercial galleries for that matter) tend to operate in only one of the areas, without being aware of what is going on in the others.

There is plenty of contemporary art by Columbia area artists that is on the same level as what is coming out of either Charlotte or Charleston. One of the major differences in the areas lies not in what is coming out of them but what is being brought in.

The Spoleto Festival gives Charleston the cloak of international sophistication. While that may be true in the performing arts, it certainly is not in the visual arts. With several notable exceptions, the festival has ignored the visual arts on a regular basis.

The Columbia Museum of Art has done a much better job than Charleston’s Gibbes Museum at bringing in national (but not so much international) contemporary art. And in the shear number of nonprofit spaces – the State Museum, Columbia Museum of Art, McKissick Museum, USC’s McMaster Gallery, Columbia College’s Goodall Gallery, Benedict’s Ponder Gallery, and Gallery 80808 at Vista Studios - Columbia wins hands down.

Charlotte, unlike Charleston and Columbia, is able to bring in more national and international contemporary art on a regular basis. That has been driven for the most part by corporate support for the nonprofit institutions like the Mint Museum and the McColl Center. The investment and buying power of those corporations’ executives has also undefined : book two

enabled commercial galleries like Jerald Melberg to be able to do the same.

But when it comes to being able to provide an economic environment that supports its own artists, Charlotte has many of the same problems as Columbia and Charleston, as well as some that are uniquely its own. Its own artists are just as regionalized as those in Charleston and Columbia, with a small handful regularly exhibiting outside of that metro area. In addition, Charlotte lacks an internal professional network and support system for its artists, something that is present to a much greater degree in Columbia.

A couple of years ago I was making what is a regular threat for myself and other Columbia artists, to pack it all up and move to what we tend to perceive as the greener grass and more lucrative markets of either Charleston or Charlotte. After all, nobody really puts Columbia at the top of the list of art destinations in the Carolinas.

But maybe they should. The friend that I was whining at is a savvy member of the regional art community, familiar with the scenes in Charlotte, Greenville, Charleston and Columbia. She jumped on what I said, particularly pointing out the tight supportive artists’ community that exists in Columbia.

To drive her point home, she invited me to go with her to an opening in Charlotte the next week.

It was a reception for several artists who had received commissions for public art installations in the Charlotte metro area, the type of reception that would that would have drawn most every active practicing artist in Columbia. That’s definitely not what happened in Charlotte. The only Charlotte artists that showed up were those who were being honored. There was no community of other artists and virtually no networking going on. While Charlotte may have a healthy market for contemporary art, there is definitely not the sort of professional networking and exchange that goes on here in Columbia on a regular basis.

Some of the things that have created that strong sense of community are the concentration of artists in several studio co-ops, four colleges and universities with active visual arts programs, and the presence of the South Carolina Arts Commission and 60

One program that aims to address this problem is Columbia’s Open Studio project. It began last year as a component of the Columbia Festival of the Arts and will continue this year. More than 70 artists have registered to participate in this year’s event, which will take place on Saturday, May 3rd and Sunday, May 4th.

Increased awareness of the broad range of visual art being created here is a win-win for the entire system. Art lovers will have an opportunity to peek into the studios of artists in the city of Columbia and Lexington and Richland counties, getting a feel for both their artistic process and product. Viewers can also get a sample of area art at galleries and artists’ studios in the Vista are during the annual gallery walk, Artista Vista, coming up on April 24th-26th.

All of this spells more choices for viewers and the buying public. So maybe Columbia really should move up the list of art destinations in the Carolinas.

the Cultural Council in the same city. There is a flow of information across multiple networks of artists that simply does not happen in many other places.

The perception of Charleston as the “art town” isn’t one held only by artists. Those very same vanity galleries have made buyers very familiar with a handful of names. This is an area that Columbia artists and galleries need to address, making buyers and collectors aware of the range of choices there are here.

The Arts Commission has more than 600 names on its mailing list for visual artists in the Columbia metropolitan area. That is an enormous range of art for collectors to choose from. Even if you subtract half as potentially being amateurs, that leaves 300 people who consider themselves professional artists. There are definitely not 300 people being represented by the area galleries so that means that there are many artists out there who are underexposed, who are relative unknowns.

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trends

Wear your art

“Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms..”

–Francis Bacon, Sr.

T

he runways of New York’s fashion week for spring ‘08 radiated with bright, bold colors and prints especially on dresses ranging from the classic mini to the trendy long dress. Popular fabrics included eyelet in unusually bright colors juxtaposed with the return of the Ombre look featuring more natural, subdued colors. Although the skinny jean is still stylish, the wide leg and highwaisted jean in lighter washes returned as a true staple for spring wardrobes paired with trench coats and cropped jackets as great accessory pieces to freshen up your wardrobe.

Yellow is the color for this upcoming season. It is prevalent in the apparel, accessory and shoe undefined : book two

divisions. A “pop” of this versatile color compliments navy, black, chocolate brown, grey, khakis and white.

Additional key colors this season are splashes of cobalt blue, red, hot pink, orange and kelly green.

Prints, fabrics and textures are highlighted with these key colors as they display the graphic florals and geometric patterns. The fun floral prints on dresses and blouses, however, are already evident in retail stores ranging from billowing to structured designs complete with flirty flashes of ruffles on the fronts and hems. These fun and feminine details make dressing fun!

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text: Emily Garrett

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ope is believing in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life and implies a certain amount of despair, wanting, wishing, suffering, or perseverance æ but above all it is trusting that a better or positive outcome is possible, even through times when there is some evidence to the contrary. This is a definition of the word ‘Hope’ and the very fact that this word can be found within Heidi DarrHope’s title is overwhelmingly significant. Heidi DarrHope is full of passion, experience, and hope. She has

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embodied a love for art, the key that for her has unlocked a world much wider than the one into which she was born.

At a glance, the artist’s name alone provides incredible insight into her body of work, influences, inspirations, personal life, and methods for teachings, and like many other aspects of Darr-Hope’s life, her last-name actually found her by chance æ 30 years ago when she married her husband.

I met this Columbia native at Gallery 80808 in The

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artist

Heidi Darr-Hope Vista. This is the location of her studio and a wide variety of her art is visible and on display. At Gallery 80808, Darr-Hope also offers “Art and Soul” classes to groups of people interested in “unearthing the symbols embedded in nighttime dreams” and “finding insight into their lives from the language of art”, and has been able to help many individuals overcome difficult situations.

Darr-Hope attended USC and received first a BFA, then a MFA, however she says that it was not until after her graduation, when she traveled to Europe and

text: Emily Boyle photography: Kasi Koshollek

explored the Continent, backpacking across it, that she was first truly inspired to become an artist. Darr-Hope describes this trip as a hugely important experience, and her love and urge to travel remains one of the most important factors for inspiring her art and for shaping her perpetual journey of self-discovery. She takes hundreds of photographs and fills journals to chronicle every place she visits, later using these to retrospectively inspire works such as her “Pathway Icons” series.

Darr-Hope also identifies her Dreamwork as the raw

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that it is actually this dream that was responsible for setting all of the wheels in motion.

Darr-Hope vividly describes the dream at first presenting itself as a pleasant scene set inside the basement of an apartment where she lay in her bed. She dreamt a gentle soothing breeze wafted through the room and delicately stirred the curtains belonging to the many open windows that surrounded her. Suddenly a gigantic snake wrapped itself around her body, and she would debate in her mind whether to throw the snake off, risking death, or whether to lie still.

At this point she would awaken.

Tormented by these images, Darr-Hope felt her unconscious was calling her to action, and she began reading and studying dream interpretation using a Jungian Framework, seeking personal insight, perspective, and meaning. Her studies helped her to find symbols in her dreams and ways she could use her dreams to understand her life. Her pursuits also steered her to rediscover ancient traditions and civilizations, forgotten emotions, suppressed memories æ all leading to a personal, deeper understanding of herself and her spiritual beliefs.

Darr-Hope’s “Necessary Losses” series was the immediate result of her “looking at the world with new eyes.” In creating this set of works, she reported exploring ancient matriarchal societies that revered God as a powerful woman and worshipped Mother Nature. With these works she investigated the struggle between the male and female spirit, ancient rituals, the art-of-lettinggo, and the search for “the goddess within us all”. At the studio, I became fascinated by Pathway Icon Series" Darr-hope explores spirituality, symbols and ways “Triumphant”, a 3-D mixed-media piece, and myths and dreams can represent portals into a deeper way of knowing. find myself staring at a doll-sized goddess incarnate that is encased in a shadow-box frame. At material that fuels the art that she now produces. the figure’s feet, angry shards of mirrored glass project Dreamwork has also acted as a kind of reawakening for from the bottom of the frame. I notice a gold hand proher art and provided her with great insight. It is also trudes from her belly that has broken through the godthrough her meticulous study of dream interpretation, desses skin. Despite this, the goddess stretches her arms fuelled by intellectual questioning, that she discovered upwards to the heavens like a triumphant athlete. that she could readily teach others with art, share the Behind her, images of a contemporary nude pattern the language of dreams, and apply art to heal. background like wallpaper. The work is blanketed with Sitting inside her colorful studio, surrounded by a rich the artist’s rapid handwriting æ a journal of the thoughts tapestry of her mixed-media artworks that line the walls and emotions she experienced while working on the and enshrine us, the artist shares a very personal experipiece. These notes to herself remain highly visible but ence with me to illustrate her passion for dreamworking. barely legible.

She recounts the recurring nightmare that haunted her The artist described her belief that people should be nearly 20 years prior to our conversation and I find out free to experience all of their emotions, even the nega-

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tive ones, and should not apologize for doing so. This is a belief she teaches and shares to help others deal with their individual life-obstacles ranging from self-awareness, bereavement and grief, to illness and death. This piece visually narrates how you can prevent your spirit from being fractured by not holding pain, trials, and sorrow inside yourself. This is why the goddess appears victorious and illustrates how triumph can be reached by accepting loss. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I begin a piece I never know how it is going to turn out,â&#x20AC;? Darr-Hope explained, and describes how her artworks find their own appearance over time and are created though an artistic process that is intuitive, not deliberate.

In fact, the shrines that she creates will arguably never reach completion and remain perpetually unfinished. The artist continually adds to these works, transforming them until they leave her studio and find another home.

Darr-Hopeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of the mystical is most emphatically expressed through these mixed-media shrines and can be seen scattered about her studio. These modern-day shrines she explained are â&#x20AC;&#x153;made to be usedâ&#x20AC;?, and two such shrines are used at The South Carolina Cancer Center where she also teaches, and have been heavily inspired by her travels to India and Mexico and her interest in Eastern cultures.

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An example of ever changing shrines that Darr-Hope continually adds to and alters each time she exhibits them.

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The artist explains how she finds it inspiring to visit societies that do not take for granted the separation that people in Western cultures experience between the profane and sacred.

She is inspired by the idea that there are still places in the world where mystic beliefs remain automatic and are as natural to communities as breathing.

Darr-Hope intertwines symbolism belonging to various religions, belief systems, customs, and societies æ blending them with everyday objects that she is drawn to collect from the streets, and everywhere she walks, in order to create artworks. These works further illustrate the artist’s conviction that spirituality is like a thread that can be traced and weaves in and out of every aspect of our lives. For her, the divine is interwoven with the everyday.

Darr-Hope also expressed her persuasion that objects have the power to maintain life force and energy, and that the objects we are drawn to can also be interpreted like our dreams.

Meeting Heidi Darr-Hope for the first time is like looking through a portal into another way of knowing, and as she professed, like understanding the language of imagery and dreams, this can be a scary place to go and not everyone likes going there.

Darr-Hope follows along her perpetual journey of self-discovery, asking questions and following the threads through her life where one thing leads to another. Along her visual journey, Darr-Hope willingly offers help to others and provides “a nudge to explore” or a “push to grow”. She gladly shares ways that others may find to understand their own lives by sharing methods she has found greatly helpful in understanding her own.

“I think that it was Socrates who said an unexamined life is one not worth living,” Darr-Hope remarked as our conversation was drawing to a close. This profound statement revealed still much more of her personality and the artist as a person, teacher, and intellectual. However, at the same time it managed to leave me more curious, and lingering with further questions… But I assume, just like the shrines inside her 80808 Studio, some things just never seem finished.

Heidi works in many mediums, incorporating the world as she experiences it.

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artist

Thomas Crouch

T

homas Crouch is the proverbial onion.

Overwhelming to say the least, his persona is tough to crack. So tough, the potent fumes of his philosophies and his paint almost brought tears to my eyes. At first: Outwardly simple, goes with everything, from the ground – and grounded. Hindsight: Like the flavor base of a 45-ingredient mole sauce – layer upon layer of pure bedlam. Was there a method to the madness, or was madness the method? Never has a writer wanted for a tape recorder like I did at this meeting.

Artist, cook, guitarist, singer, source of social commentary, exteacher, T-shirt designer, photographer, and philosopher – I wondered when Crouch last slept.

Day job: Hunter-Gatherer. Cook.

I sampled the fresh-brewed fare at Crouch’s restaurant, what he and owner Kevin Varner declared the only real brew-pub in town. The menu and the atmosphere are simple, rustic, and masculine.

Academia is in the air. Wooden furniture; authentic African masks, spears, and shields; strange carvings; and Crouch’s paintings – all make for an eclectic and altogether primitive milieu. The largest painting hangs like a guardian over the restaurant and evokes the ancient cave paintings at Lascaux: its animal form looming with ancient power. “All my paintings have some realism in them,” Crouch said.

Unlike his three-year painting education at the Lorenzo text: Jenny Reese photography: Kasi Koshollek

de Medici School of Art in Italy, Crouch’s culinary training is informal; everything he knows was learned from working in restaurants. “It’s the best culinary training you can get,” he said, and got up to put on a Fantomas CD. “Wanna hear some really scary shit?”

Between the restaurant’s stainedglass windows, arched doorways, the fact that it was the Christian Sabbath, and Crouch’s menacing, overly-stratified music, I got the feeling I was in for the interview of a lifetime… I was right. The layers continued to peel. “Do a double exposure of my face,” Crouch told photographer Kasi Koshollek, as if he knew I was seeing what I can only describe as his multiple personalities and wanted to document it in an image. “You know when the American-Indians had their pictures taken they believe it took their souls?” he asked. “Is that how you’re feeling?” I asked in turn. “Not necessarily.”

Night life: Studio. Painter. The garage-studio looks like a place Emily Dickinson might have heldup in for awhile. What more could an artist need? Somewhere in the midst of mismatched carpet squares, a keyboard, tattered furniture, a gold spraypainted wheelchair, Crouch’s cigarette smoke, and what looks like a garage-sized portfolio –appears a makeshift easel and the beginnings of Octopus Landscape. Crouch, always on the move, performed to loud music. A mix-tape this time. Back and forth; he walked to-and-from the door

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Crouch does not sign or name his paintings. This piece is on display in Raliegh, NC.

In alignment with the “Triple Triad”, Crouch shared his feelings on religion, which were altogether negative.

Crouch claimed that religion can be limiting. “It’s a good thing for people because it’s a good form of meditation, but it has created so many problems in the world,” he said.

“The structure of society is wrong. It doesn’t work.”

I’m trying to get the viewer to understand a different form of reality through imagery and perspective,” Crouch said. “I’m creating a visual perspective. I’m manipulating the eye…that’s what good paintings do.” His canon of artistic beliefs transcends his work with imagery that essentially represents a Futurists’ belief: Man has conquered nature through technology and innovation. “Why are we going to space when we can explore our own earth?” Crouch asked while working on Octopus Landscape. “I’m trying to develop an image of an octopus devouring a landscape. It signifies that as human beings we are limited. I like to use symbols which are easily recognized by the populous, and that’s why in the same respect as Michelangelo, it would be obvious. It’s realism, and abstract.”

Crouch is certainly no stranger to innovation. His technique is unique to say the least. First, Crouch deliberately sliced masking tape and attached it to the canvas. “Oh

of the cinder block garage to get some perspective on his work. “Perfect,” he said. Each stroke of the brush was both impulsive and deliberate. His cat, Spectre, pounced around the artist’s ragged chattels. The lights were bright and illuminated the easel; the rest of the studio remained in darkness. When evening arrived it was darker.

With Octopus Landscape in full force, Crouch spoke of his influences. He cited the Futurists first, who aimed to give multiple perspectives and points-of-view in their works in the early 20th Century. Crouch, who himself is multi-faceted, adapts not only the Futurists’ ideas about artistic and technical perspectives, but their political and philosophical ideas as well. According to the “Triple Triad” (the diagram Crouch conceived and keeps in his studio): institutions inherently interfuse with basic human needs (i.e. the basic need of food intertwines with the capitalism of dining). “My ideas are dissipating a class system with art,” he said.

Crouch’s “Triple Triad”: Capitalism—Food—Dining Gender—Shelter—House Building Religion—Love—Marriage

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Crouch in his studio tape, it’s a good thing,” he said. He then carefully mixed and chose each stroke’s pigment, swiped it across the top of the tape and sprayed each line of color with water. Crouch further cited Francis Bacon as an influence, most notable in the ominous experience of his works and the paint that seeps down from each stroke, forming dripping trails of disturbing serendipity. Crouch, in a more conservative light, mentioned the methods of Caravaggio’s works, which were meant to be read from left to right, like a book. Crouch, in Octopus Landscape, attempted to reverse this reading pattern for yet another perspective. “I like to use artificial looks and designs, but it’s painting,” he said. “It’s parody…satire.”

The layers of Crouch’s persona and his paintings overlap to form Gestalt masterpieces, each work full of physical and psychological stratification. His head, constantly overflowing with thought, is topped with disheveled hair and his mouth can barely keep up. “There’s an underground current coming through Columbia,” Crouch said. “There’s great artists and fresh new shit that’s around Columbia.”

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{consumptional*} art

Do Ferreiro Albarino | 2006 Spain, Rias Baixas | do ferreiro is a tiny winery founded in 1973 by Gerardo Mendez who has practiced organic wine techniques since the early 1990’s. the vineyard gorgeously overlooks 5 hectares of vineyards in the Rias Baixas region (the true home to the albarino varietal) that are planted to almost 95% albarino from vines that average 50 years in age! The 2006 version is packed with amazing notes of juicy white fruits, citrus, lime and persistent stony, minerally notes. this is a perfect “spring-time” white wine! Normal retail $26 Soter Pinot Noir | 2006 Oregon, North Valley | from famed winemaker Tony Soter (formerly of Etude) comes this versatile, readyto-drink Pinot Noir from the northern part of the Willamette Valley. the wine features notes of orange blossoms, cranberries, blackberries, sweet cream and cocoa, and has a silky, supple mouthfeel. It’s long and lush, and drinks like a much pricier offering than one would think. The name “Soter” has always meant quality wine and this amazing pinot noir is yet another example! Normal retail $34 Flinders Run Shiraz | 2005 Western Australia, South Flinders Range | this full-flavored, robust aussie shiraz is one of the most complex you will find in the over-flooded market of aussie shiraz. it offers the general rich complexities of spicy berry fruits, licorice, vanilla and chocolate covered cherry, but it does so in a more balanced, well-rounded style. This is one of the few aussie shiraz available from the tiny Southern Flinders Range appellation and it’s scoring high-marks with many of the countries noted Wine Magazines like Wine Spectator and the Wine Enthusiast! Drink it if you can! Normal retail is $32. *No one even commented on this last time.... send us some feedback and maybe we’ll send you a bottle. text: Solstice Kitchen and Wine Bar

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April 2008

Wines of Tuscany The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Discover the wines and sample the proper foods

Tuesday, April 1 - Sunday, June 8 Excavating Egypt | Columbia Museum of Art 803.799.2810 | This major exhibition offers a fascinating view into the lives of both royal and average Egyptians with ancient objects and artwork from the earliest periods of Egyptian history to the late Roman period. | www.columbiamuseum.org

Tuesday, April 1 - Sunday, October 19 Hollywood Comes to South Carolina S.C. State Museum | 803.898.4921

Monday, April 7 Sleeping Beauty Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 This gorgeous production written by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky with Petipa choreography opulently recounts the age-old story of the sleeping princess.

Performed by the Russian National Ballet Theater and Orchestra. Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40; students $20. Dinner is $35 extra. www.newberryoperahouse.com

Carolina Jazz Society Concert Capital Area Senior Center | 803.432.1504 Featuring early jazz, the jazz that developed in the South, and especially in New Orleans, shortly after the turn of the century and then spread throughout the world. Admission is $7. Show is at 2:30 p.m.

Sunday, April 6 Classic Cinema Sunday: “The Glenn Miller Story” McCrory Galleri | 803.400.1205 Shows starts at 5 p.m. | www.mccrorygalleri.com

The Met Comes to Columbia | Puccini’s “La Boheme” | Sandhill Cinema 16 | 803.736.1811 Live feeds from New York’s Metropolitan Opera House right here in Columbia. Tickets are $22 for adults and $20 for seniors.

Saturday, April 5 Master Series 7 | Koger Center | 803.254.7445 | The SCP’s music director search season concludes with finalist Miriam Burns taking her turn on the podium. Show is at 7 p.m. Tickets are $13-$40. www.scphilharmonic.com

Upton Trio Performance Baron DeKalb Elementary | 803.425.4343 Come hear Dusan Vukajlovic (cello), Mary Lee Taylor (violin), and Billy Shepherd (piano) perform their original music. Show starts at 9 a.m.

Free admission. | www.uptontrio.org

Tuesday, April 8 The Four Freshmen Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Known for their close-harmony vocals that set the stage for bands like the Beach Boys, The Four Freshmen, now in their 58th year of performance, continue to bring their unique brand of vocal harmony to audiences worldwide. Show is at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $30. | www.newberryoperahouse.com

Tuesday, April 1 - Saturday, May 3 “Spring for Art!” | McKissick Museum | 803.777.7251 An invitational exhibit and sale of works by artists on themes reflecting the South Carolina Midlands.

It is sponsored by the McKissick Museum Advisory Council. Free admission. | www.cas.sc.edu/MCKS/

Tuesday, April 1 - Saturday, April 26 Grandeur Saved: Photographs of the Aiken Rhett House | McKissick Museum | 803.777.7251 “Grandeur Saved” features 16 large-scale, color photographs of Charleston’s historic Aiken-Rhett House, built in 1818 by renowned contemporary photographer Michael Eastman. Free admission. ww.cas.sc.edu/MCKS/

Tuesday, April 1 - Saturday, April 19 “Rabbit Hole” | Trustus | 803.254.9732 Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Becca & Howie Corbett have everything a family could want, until a life-shattering accident turns their world upside down and leaves the couple drifting perilously apart. | www.trustus.org

Tuesday, April 1 - Saturday, April 12 “Aladdin” | Marionette Theater | 803.252.7366 Shows are at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. every Saturday, and at 10 a.m. every third Monday. Tickets are $4, children two and under admitted free. www.strungout.org

on

what’s going

Elmore. Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25.00 www.newberryoperahouse.com

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2323 Devine Street • 803.254.8327 www.finleaf.com

Friday, April 4 Carolina Jubilee Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Doug and Bunny present an acoustic music show with special guests Dick Goodwin and Randy

Friday, April 4 - Saturday, April 5 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu amalric), the world-renowned editor of French Elle magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable “locked in” syndrome at the age of 43. Shows nightly at 6 & 8:30. www.nickelodeon.org

Thursday, April 3 - Tuesday, April 15 Pat Parise Art Exhibit Gallery 80808 | 803.252.6134 Come visit the artwork of Pat Parise. www.gallery80808vistastudios.com

Tuesday, April 1 & Thursday, April 3 Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women | Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Profiles six Jewish women who turned the old “Death is easy, comedy is hard” joke completely on its head. Laugh with Judy Gold, Jackie Hoffman, Cory Kahaney and Jessica Kirson. Show is at 8 p.m. www.nickelodeon.org

Tuesday, April 1 & Wednesday, April 2 Steel Toes | Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 This intense crime drama stars Oscar nominee David Strathairn as liberal Jewish attorney Danny Dunckelman, who is appointed by the court to defend Mike Downey, a neo-Nazi skinhead on trial for the murder of an East Indian man. Confronting religious and racial intolerance, Mike and Danny struggle to form an alliance despite their divergent beliefs and sensibilities in this provocative exploration of hatred and forgiveness. www.nickelodeon.org

Tuesday April 1 - Sunday, January 25 TET: Military Victory, Political Defeat S.C. State Museum | 803.898.4921 | This exhibit, marking the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, will explore the turbulent events surrounding the biggest single battle of the Vietnam War, both overseas and on the home front. | www.museum.sc.us

Photographs, posters, movie clips, filmmaking equipment, costumes, props and other artifacts in this exhibit help trace the history of films made in South Carolina including: Days of Thunder, The Abyss, Forrest Gump, The Big Chill, The Nutty Professor II, The Patriot, The Legend of Bagger Vance and many others. | www.musuem.state.sc.us

Thursday, April 10 Dance to the Opera Columbia’s Ballroom Company | 803.787.0287 Enjoy a lovely program of favorite arias, duets and dance music from the world of opera, while sipping wine in this spacious and attractive new facility.

Be transported to the elegant world of the masked ball, the thrill of the paso doble and the fire of the torrid tango. Then take to the floor for a dance lesson. | www.palmettoopera.org

2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Showing at 6 p.m. are the films: Immokalee USA, Unfettering the Falcons, Dam Bikes and Elaine Drive. At 8 p.m. see Neutral and Dornstar TV. www.nickelodeon.org

Saturday, April 10 Casting Crowns Colonial Center | 803.576.9200 Casting Crowns is a 2007 Grammy award and Dove Award winning Christian band that employs soft rock music style. Tickets are $52, $42 and $27.

Show is at 7 p.m. | www.thecolonialcenter.com

Upton Trio Performance Lugoff-Elgin High School | 803.425.4343 Come hear Dusan Vukajlovic (cello), Mary Lee Taylor (violin), and Billy Shepherd (piano) perform their original music. Show starts at 9:45 a.m. Free admission. | www.uptontrio.org

Wednesday, April 9 2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Showing at 6 p.m. are the films: Team Picture, Carnival Picaresque, Louis & Anne, Dick-George, Tenn-Tom, and Chicago, 1981. Opening night reception at Immaculate Consumption begins at 7:30 p.m. and at 8:30 view “To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore at the Nickelodeon Theater. | www.nickelodeon.org

Wednesday, April 9 - Sunday, April 13 2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 See the best in independent film from the Southeast and meet the filmmakers as the Indie Grits Film Festival returns for its second year. In addition to nightly screenings at the Nickelodeon, this year’s festival will feature a special, outdoor Friday night screening with live music and a special awards ceremony at the State Museum on Saturday evening. | www.nickelodeon.org

from the original Piedmont region of Italy. Enjoy a night of wine tasting and great food - tapas style. www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

_____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ Make it yours.

2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 At Noon see the Student Film Showcase: First Period, The Dog House, Robot High School, The Piggly Wiggly Horror and Creating Discourse. At 2 p.m. see X-Gen, Doll Parts, and L’Hippopotame Vert FTW!. At 4 p.m. see Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, and Redemption Stone: The Life and Times of

Film: The Mummy Who Would Be King Columbia Museum of Art | 803.799.2810 Admission is free. | www.columbiamuseum.org

Saturday, April 12 Annual Historic Elmwood Park Tour of Homes & Gardens | Elmwood Park Neighborhood Whether you enjoy history, architecture, decorating, or gardening – the Historic Elmwood Park Tour of Homes and Gardens has something for everyone to see. Visit from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. www.historicelmwoodpark.org

Film: Egypt’s Golden Empire: Part 3 Columbia Museum of Art | 803.799.2810 Admission is free. | www.columbiamuseum.org

Carolina Cuisine - A Night In Tuscany The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Enjoy a fabulous five-course dinner paired with appropriate wines, all prepared and demonstarted by our talented chefs. Features food from all over the Tuscany region of Italy. Costs $50 per person.

Reservations are required. One seating at 6 p.m. www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Bill Gaither Homecoming Colonial Center | 803.576.9200 The Gaither homecoming Tour will make its third stop at the Colonial Center with their 2008 “Give It Away Tour.” Tickets are $38.50 -$21.50 www.thecolonialcenter.com

Friday, April 11 2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 From 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Old Fire Station (Corner of Senate and Park Streets) see Live Film/Video/Music Performances by: Brent Green’s A Million Moths Flurrying Around the Front Porch, Simon Tarr’s Tia Mak, The Choir Quit, The Heist and the Accomplice, Charlie McAllister and video installation by Axel Forrester. | www.nickelodeon.org

Friday, April 11 - Sunday, April 27 “Little Women, the Musical” Village Square Theater | 803.359.1436 Based on the Louisa May Alcott’s family experience and novel, Little Women. www.villagesquaretheater.com

Tuesday, April 22

Upton Trio Performance Still Hopes Episcopal Home | 803.425.4343 Come hear Dusan Vukajlovic (cello), Mary Lee Taylor (violin), and Billy Shepherd (piano) perform their original music. Show starts at 7:30 p.m. Free admission. | www.uptontrio.org

Chef d’Jour Class - Baking 101 The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Enjoy a morning of culinary instruction at the Chef D’Jour Classes! Can’t bake? Give us four hours and you’ll be baking with the best of them. www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Saturday, April 19 Southern Fried Chicks Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Urban, suburban and just plain white trash, these hilarious ladies cover the sidesplitting gamut!

Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. www.newberryoperahouse.com

Saturday, April 19 - Saturday, August 9 The Brementown Musicians Marionette Theater | 803.252.7366 Shows are at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. every Saturday, and at 10 a.m. every third Monday. Tickets are $4, with children two and under free. www.strungout.org

Friday, April 18 - Wednesday, April 23 Youth Without Youth Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Francis Ford Coppola directs this film about 70-yearold linguistics professor Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) who is struck by lightning, which miraculously restores him to the flower of youth. www.nickelodeon.org

Second Poetry and Prose Finleaf Gallery | 803.254.8327 Readings by novelist David Bajo; poet Nicola Waldron from England; and Caroline Lord, editor of short story. Begins at 6:30 p.m. | www.finleaf.com

Columbia Design League: Runaway Runway: A Recycled Fashion Show Columbia Museum of Art | 803.343.2214 Join the Columbia Design League for a competitive fashion show featuring clothing created by Columbia residents using items rescued from the garbage bin. | www.columbiamuseum.org

Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 An evening with JFK, a retrospective on his life and thoughts. Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15.| www.newberryoperahouse.com

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Thursday, April 17 Bill Oberst is “JFK”

Thursday, April 17 - Tuesday, May 6 ARTISTA VISTA | Gallery 80808 | 803.252.6134 Annual open house featuring artwork by Vista Studio artists. | www.gallery80808vistastudios.com

Wednesday, April 16 Beer and Cheese Pairing Class The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Beer and Cheese Pairing: Enjoy beer paired with a range of artisan American and European cheeses. www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Tuesday, April 15 - Thursday, April 17 Taxi To The Dark Side Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 A Perpetually shocking documentary about the Bush administration’s use of torture when dealing with political prisoners, with a particular focus on those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rated R for disturbing images and content involving graphic nudity. Show is at 6 and 8 p.m. nightly; 3 p.m. matinee on Wednesday).| www.nickelodeon.org

Monday, April 14 Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 A riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hiphop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world or rap music. Show is at 7 p.m. | www.nickelodeon.org

Sunday, April 13 2nd Annual Indie Grits Film Festival Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 View Re-screenings of all award-winning films. At 1 p.m. the Young Grit Runner-up, Short Grit Runnerup, and Big Grit Runner-up. At 3 p.m. the Young Grit Winner, Experimental Winner, and Big Grit Winner. At 5 p.m. the Short Grit Winner and the Top Grit Winner. | www.nickelodeon.org

“Dance to the Opera” Columbia’s Ballroom Company | 803.787.0287 An excursion into the aristocratic world of the masked ball, the fun of peasant dance and pure escapism of operatic ballet, with our thrilling program of arias, duets, dance music from the world of opera. | www.palmettoopera.org

Tom Lewis. At 7 p.m. the 2008 Indie Grits Awards Ceremony in the State Museum Auditorium with a screening of Quiet City with filmmaker Aaron Katz. www.nickelodeon.org

Friday, April 25 Progressive Show 3, 2, 1 House of Frames | 803.799.7405 Featured artists are Nick Oleszczuk and Jeme Davis. www.hofpgallery.com

Save the Date

Friday, April 25 - Monday, April 28 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 In a country where abortion is outlawed, a young college student, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), finds herself in big trouble. Unsure what to do, she turns to her roommate, Otilia, for help. On the day on which the film takes place, the pair connects with a black market doctor to take care of her pregnancy -but, of course, it isn’t that simple. www.nickelodeon.org

24 Hour Crisis Line: 803.765.9428

If interested in sponsoring this event, contact Sabrina at 803.926.0505

Columbia Conference Center

Reception is May 13, 2008 from 5 - 8 p.m.

15th annual silent auction and reception Benefiting Sistercare of the Midlands

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How Do You Know When Your Child Has Made Progress? | Sandhills School | 803.695.1400 Come hear Dr. Sally King’s lecture “How Do You Know When Your Child Has Made Progress.”

Program begins at 6:30 p.m. Free admission. www.sandhillsschool.org

The Golden Dragon Acrobats Newberry Opera House | 803.276.6264 A show mixing award winning acrobatics, traditional dance, spectacular costumes, and ancient and contemporary theatrical techniques to present a show of breathtaking skill and spellbinding beauty. Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30; students $15. www.newberryoperahouse.com

Thursday, April 24 Willow Garden and Other Short Stories Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Part of the Southern Circuit of Independent Filmmakers . In 1740’s Northern Ireland, a young man becomes ensnared in a deadly love triangle and must decide whether to follow his heart or his father’s twisted advice. One screening at 7 pm. www.nickelodeon.org

Wednesday, April 23 The Count Basie Orchestra Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 19 performers, 17 sidemen, one vocalist and one bandleader equal the world’s premier jazz band.

Come and experience our musical heritage - the real Basie! Show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30; Dinner is $35 extra. Www.newberryoperahouse.com

The Swinging Medallions Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 A Double Shot of My Baby’s Love and a triple shot of fun, with Greenwood and the Nation’s finest.

Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. www.newberryoperahouse.com

Progressive Show 3, 2, 1 House of Frames | 803.799.7405

Friday, May 2 Corley Mill Artists’ Group Office of Nelson Mullins, Riley & Scarborough, LLP, The Meridian Building, 17th floor | 803.254.0118 Come join the Corley Mill Artists’ Group for an elegant showing of 20 of their artist’s eclectic paintings. The Melting Pot will be serving desserts on roof top during the evening which begins at 5:30 p.m. So for a sweet and pleasurable evening call for your tickets and additional information!

Friday, May 2 - Monday, May 5 Paranoid Park | Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 Tells the troubled story of Alex (Gabe Nevins), a Portland high school student who loves to skateboard. But after accidentally causing the death of a security guard, Alex must come to terms with the guilty feelings that are threatening to overwhelm him. | www.nickelodeon.org

Thursday May 1 - Saturday May 31 The Art of James Denmark McCrory Galleri | 803.400.1205 Come discover the paintings of James Denmark in the exhibit “Downbeat in South Carolina: Legends of Jazz.” | www.mccrorygalleri.com

May 2008

Wednesday, April 30 Carmen, with the St. Petersburg Ballet Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 A story of passion, jealousy, seduction, sensuality, a myth, and a woman who fought ‘til the end for her freedom. Show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40; students $20. | www.newberryoperahouse.com

Tuesday, April 29 - Thursday, May 1 The Band’s Visit |Nickelodeon Theater | 803.254.3433 A subtle, heartfelt and humane work that goes a long way toward dissolving the incredibly complex cultural divide that continues to plague the Middle East. | www.nickelodeon.org

The Met Comes to Columbia | Donizetti’s La Fille Du Regiment | Sandhill Cinema 16 | 803.736.1811 Live feeds from New York’s Metropolitan Opera House right here in Columbia. Tickets are $22 for adults and $20 for seniors.

Saturday, April 26 Marty Stuart | Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Come see Grand Ole Opry superstar Marty Stuart perform songs which won him a pair of gold albums and Grammy awards. Show is at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $37.50 | www.newberryoperahouse.com

Saturday, May 24 - Tuesday, September 30 ”Bubbleloosa” | EdVenture | 803.779.3100 | Bubbles are on the loose again this summer in EdVenture’s outdoor exhibit, Bubbleloosa! Children can become bubbleologists for an afternoon and explore the shapes, sizes and colors of bubbles. With our extreme bubble blower that cranks out 25,000 bubbles per minute, bubbles are sure to be floating all over this summer. | www.edventure.org

Friday, May 23 Dancing Under the Stars Fundraising Gala Columbia City Ballet | 803.799.7605 Second annual fundraising gala, held at the new Columbia Center Hilton. The gala will feature dance exhibitions, live music, silent auction, and other surprises. | www.columbiacityballet.com

Thursday, May 22 Garden Fountain Workshop Fineleaf Gallery | 803.254.8327 Learn how to make garden foutains and garden art for your yard. | www.finleaf.com

Thursday, May 22- Tuesday, May 27 An Art Exhibtion of Mark Hatley Gallery 80808 | 803.252.6134 www.gallery80808vistastudios.com

Saturday, May 17 Rick Alviti: A Tribute to Elvis Newberry Opera House | 803.276.6264 Elvis returns! He is back in the building. Show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30; $35 the day of. | www.newberryoperahouse.com

Thursday, May 15- Tuesday, May 20 The Photography of Mark M. Windham Gallery 80808 | 803.252.6134 www.gallery80808vistastudios.com

Saturday, May 10 Demo’s On Devine Fineleaf Gallery | 803.254.8327 Music and Family Fun to include scarf tying demonstrations, yarn dying, and paper making, by Finleaf, In the Loop, Jot and Frenchie. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. | www.finleaf.com

Saturday, May 10 - Saturday, July 19 Barbecue Joints & The Good Folks Who Own Them McKissick Museum | 803.777.7251 An exhibit of black and white photographs by writer and photographer David Gelin. Illustrates Gelin’s travels throughout the South as he documents barbecue restaurants and the owners who continue this culinary tradition. Free admission. www.cas.sc.edu/MCKS/

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Thursday, May 8 - Tuesday, May 13 Atmospheric Noise, Part II Gallery 80808 | 803.252.6134 | Vista Studio artist Don Zurlo presents Atmospheric Noise, Part II. Reception is Friday, May 9 from 7-9 p.m. Exhibit open by appointment. For an appointment call 803.960.2087 | www.gallery80808vistastudios.com

Progressive Show 3, 2, 1 House of Frames | 803.799.7405 Featured artist is Mike Krajewsky. www.hofpgallery.com

Wednesday, June 25 Third Annual Dock Walk at Finleaf Finleaf Gallery | 803.254.8327 Artists and nautical themes to sell. Artists to receive 100% of the proceeds from the sale of their art. | www.finleaf.com

Saturday, June 21 Mrs. South Carolina Pageant Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 The winner will be crowned on stage! www.newberryoperahouse.com

Saturday, June 20- Saturday, July 26 Reefer Madness, The Musical Trustus | 803.254.9732 Featuring acoustic music, this raucous musical comedy takes a tongue-incheek look at the hysteria caused when clean-cut kids fall prey to marijuana. | www.trustus.org

Tuesday, May 6 Beers of Belgium | McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Belgian Beer and Cuisine: Belgian beer is very unique, as is the cuisine – an interesting cross between French and German. $50 per person.

Begins at 6:30 p.m. | www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Friday, May 9 Upton Trio Performance Camden Military Academy | 803.425.4343 Come hear Dusan Vukajlovic (cello), Mary Lee Taylor (violin), and Billy Shepherd (piano) perform their original music. Show starts at 10 or 10:30 a.m.

(TBA). Free admission. | www.uptontrio.org

Chef d’ Jour Class - Grill It! The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Enjoy a morning of culinary instruction at the Chef d’ Jour classes! Develop techniques of grilling and cooking outdoors. $50 per person. Class is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. | www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Sunday, May 4 Newberry Chamber Players with Caroline Stoessinger | Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Caroline returns on stage with guests! Show is at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15.| ww.newberryoperahouse.com

Saturday, June 7 - Tuesday, September 2 “AirPlay” | EdVenture | 803.779.3100 Air may be invisible, but it is all around us, all the time. “AirPlay” provides visitors with the tools to explore the nature of air, and how it moves and influences our environment. Air blowers propel bright yellow foam balls through air mazes; a tube tunnel demonstrates how air moves through tubing, angles, and tees; model sailboats move along a tabletop, driven by the force of a bank of fans; and an air-cannon shoots a puff of air all the way across a room. | www.edventure.org

June 2008

Saturday, May 30 - Tuesday, June 10 Heart and Veins of the South Gallery 80808 | 803.238.2351 Come view the paintings of Nikolay Oskolkov.

Opening reception is May 30 from 4 - 9 p.m. www.gallery80808vistastudious.com

Saturday, June 7 A Carolina Jubilee by Doug and Bunny Williams Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Featuring an acoustic music show with special guests “Back At the Ranch.” There’s a whole lot of Texas left and these folks bring it right back home.

Show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. www.newberryoperahouse.com

Rosewood Crawfish Festival Rosewood Drive | 803.309.3202 The Rosewood Crawfish Festival is a Louisiana-style family celebration with activities, arts and crafts vendors, Blues, Jazz, and Zydeco music, adult beverages, and – of course – crawfish! www.rosewoodcrawfishfestival.com

Cowboy Movies with Saddle Pals Newberry Opera House | 803.276.5179 Fun for the family. Starts at 10 a.m. Tickets are $5; kids are free. | www.newberryoperahouse.com

Saturday, May 3 Chef d’Jour Class - Advanced Desserts The McCutchen House | 803.777.8225 Enjoy a morning of culinary instruction at the Chef d’ Jour classes! This class is not for the novice!

Learn how to make restaurant quality desserts.

Classes are $50 per person. Class is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. | www.mccutchenhouse.sc.edu

Featured artists are Justice Littlejohn and Mike Krajewsky. | www.hofpgallery.com

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opinion

Columbia Also Rises “There is much beauty here because there is much beauty everywhere.”

–Rainer Maria Rilke

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different perspective is all you need to make something familiar seem new and exciting. Take the Columbia skyline for instance…driving east into town on Highway 12 (it eventually becomes Hampton Street) is easily one of my favorite views of Columbia. The skyline appears in perfect proportion to our burgeoning city. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this vista represented in any of the ads for tourism or city pride; somebody needs to make that happen. Anyway, I “discovered” this perspective some years ago and share it with friends who are visiting me for the first time. With this initial impression and other handpicked experiences, I have been quite successful in creating a beautiful picture of Columbia. All of my guests leave town feeling like they’ve been treated to one of the best-kept secrets in the country. And they’re right!

This same method of looking at something from a new perspective is just as easily applied to any aspect of our city’s identity. Let’s look at my favorite aspect: its live entertainment.

If you are looking for a new experience, you have several options available to you in the downtown area. Live music, karaoke and DJ-spun dance music are all within our city’s boundary. You could even take part in all three of these options in one evening. Given the ease with which you could experience these entertainment choices, what we have available to us on a daily basis is essentially a festival. While you might have to pay for entrance to each venue, you could walk around the Vista or Five Points and be treated to a vast array of talent.

As is typical with the festival-like array of entertainment choices, disappointment is unavoidable. But you’ve got to take the good with the bad; they inherently define each other. That we have the opportunity to be disappointed by undefined : book two

a performance means something different in the present version of Columbia than it would have meant fifteen years ago. Today, it means that we’ve come to expect better; the talent pool is deeper than it’s ever been and we’re treated to outstanding entertainment. Fifteen years ago, it would have meant that our worst fears were realized; quality performances, though not rare, were more the exception than the norm. We are sitting on a mother lode of gifted musicians and performers.

While I make it my duty to introduce first-time visitors to particular vistas and experiences, I bet very few residents have ever seen the Columbia skyline from the angle I mentioned earlier. Maybe you have even been on Highway 12 and not noticed this picturesque view.

Whatever the case, let’s make it a point to look at our city with new eyes, imagining it the way we want it to be. That Columbia is experiencing a cultural and industrial growth spurt only makes our ability to create its image that much more important. We don’t have to look outside of our state’s borders for cities that already have identities in place, but that’s where we have an advantage; we are creating Columbia’s image the way we want it to be, not the way others might see it. It’s an exciting time to be living here.

Another method I like to employ in creating a lasting memory for my guests is “pulling an all-nighter,” followed by our watching the sunrise. There are a few strategic locations where Columbia’s sunrise seems as breathtaking as the Serengeti’s, a comparison not nearly as farfetched during our hot and notoriously humid summers. I prefer the top level of parking garages for this experience. Can you think of anything more boring than a parking garage?

Well, change your perspective. I’ll see you out there.

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text: Tony Lee