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SC Artists Celebrated in Nature Nurture Exhibition

In the upcoming gallery exhibition in TRAX Visual Art Center and Jones-Carter Gallery, Lori Kornegay has curated work from 7 South Carolina artists. The galleries hold over 60 different pieces of work that explore our complicated, interdependent relationship with the natural world. The show will be open on November 8th from 6-8PM and be on display Tuesday-Saturday from 11AM-5PM until January 11th, 2020. Admission is free. The show will be split across both galleries. Click HERE to read more about the exhibits and read about each artist below!

A detail of Burnette’s piece “All Screwed Up” which will be part of the Nature Nurture exhibition in Jones-Carter Gallery and TRAX Visual Art Center.

Clay Burnette: For over four decades, Clay Burnette has explored the aesthetic possibilities of coiled basketry. After gathering local longleaf pine needles, Burnette uses them in their natural form or dyes and paints them before weaving them into a coil that is stitched together with waxed linen thread, copper or brass wire or telephone wire. The finished product is then infused with a preservative coating of beeswax and paraffin and signed with the artist’s initials.

Michael Cassidy: Michael Cassidy was born and raised in Michigan. A rural upbringing created a deep-seated connection with nature but an interest in art led him to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He found his place in the Studio Art Department and graduated with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking in 2000. In 2001 Cassidy left Michigan to study painting at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, SC. Homesick, Cassidy was drawn to the rural areas of the South. Though the flora and fauna was vastly different from that of Michigan, he found the rural culture to be familiar. Cassidy received his MFA in 2004. Currently, he is the Exhibition and Collections Manager at the I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium at South Carolina State University. Residing in West Columbia, SC, Cassidy continues to draw inspiration from the landscape and cultures of the rural South.

Craig Crawford: Craig Crawford (born 1964) attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of South Carolina. After graduation, he moved to Washington, DC, where he apprenticed with conservator Charles Olin, former head of Painting Conservation at the Smithsonian Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. Crawford became an associate conservator, specializing in American landscape and French Barbizon works. Crawford later returned to South Carolina and opened his own conservation practice, an ongoing concern. Moody and evocative, Crawford’s psychologically charged paintings explore his deep-rooted emotional response to his surroundings in the South Carolina midlands.

Adrian Rhodes: Adrian Rhodes grew up in Hartsville, South Carolina. She attended Winthrop University from 2001-2005, earning a BFA in General Studio with emphasis in Drawing and Painting. While studying at Winthrop she participated in a semester exchange with the South Carelia Polytechnic in Imatra, Finland. After several years as a practicing artist she returned to Winthrop, receiving her MFA in Painting and Printmaking in 2011. From the artist, “Using prints as modular components allows the work to inherit visual information across pieces. Pulling on the iconography of symbols and objects I attempt to frame a question-  ‘How can we hold extremes of bitter and sweet – forces which stand in such opposition they should not be able to coexist, and yet they do- so how do we find the balance of them?’ 

Jeff Rich: Jeff Rich’s work focuses on water issues ranging from recreation and sustainability to exploitation and abuse. He explores these subjects by using long-term photographic documentations of very specific regions of the United States. Jeff received his MFA in photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. Jeff’s project “Watershed: A Survey of The French Broad River” was awarded the 2010 Critical Mass Book Award, and was published as a monograph in 2012. His work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, and is held in several public and private collections. In 2017 “Watershed: The Tennessee River” was published with Fall Line Press. Jeff also curates the weekly series Eyes on the South for Oxford American Magazine.

Joe Walters: Inspired by the natural world that surrounded him while growing up in eastern Kentucky, Walters creates installations of visual complexity and beauty, which metaphorically address issues involving human relationships with nature. Walters regards the individual plant and animal forms as abstract shapes, which activate space. When viewed from various vantage points, the “interwoven” sculptures create a tapestry-like effect reinforcing Walters’s theme of the interdependence of all living things.

Fletcher Williams III: Fletcher Williams III is a Charleston based interdisciplinary artist whose theoretical and conceptual art making practice is rooted in southern vernacular. Williams studied drawing, painting, print making, graphic design, and sculpture at The Cooper Union, where he received a BFA in 2010. While the core of Williams’ practice focused on multimedia object making and installations, a significant portion of his practice was dedicated to studying ritual theory through the lenses of anthropology and sociology. These concepts play an important role in his later works. Williams lives and works in North Charleston, SC where he continues to explore historical and contemporary narratives of culture and utility that are unique to the lowcountry.