Emrys

Artists from the Upstate: John Acorn, Carl Blair, Emery Bopp, Sharon Campbell, Bette Lee Coburn, Tom Dimond, Jeanet Dreskin, Tom Flowers, Katie Walker, Philip Whitley, Enid Williams, Winston Wingo, and Paul Yanko. Altogether, forty-four artists from across the state are represented in the exhibit. There will be a reception on April 26th, 6-8 p.m.
 
The new art exhibit opening soon at the South Carolina State Museum will examine a topic not always quickly associated with the traditions of the Palmetto State – abstract art.
 
Abstract Art in South Carolina: 1949-2012 opened Feb. 24 in the Lipscomb Art Gallery with the first inclusive look at the evolution and influences of abstract painting and sculpture in South Carolina.
 
The exhibit will include work by pioneering artists such as William Halsey, Corrie McCallum, J. Bardin, Carl Blair and Merton Simpson, and contemporary artists currently working in communities across South Carolina today, such as James Busby, Shaun Cassidy, Enid Williams, Paul Yanko, Katie Walker and Tom Stanley, among many others.
 
In all, work by more than 40 artists will be included in the exhibition, which focuses on one of the most important aspects of South Carolina’s visual culture.
 
“South Carolina has a rich history in visual art, and abstract painting and sculpture have played a huge role in this history beginning in the mid-20th century,” said Curator of Art Paul Matheny.
 
“Following World War II, the appreciation of art and culture began to expand across the state. Local artists began exploring new ideas and pursued artistic opportunities in and out of the state, and South Carolina college and university art departments began – and continue – to bring in artists from across the United States, to teach and exhibit their work.”
 
This practice brought in new ideas about how to approach the making of art. In other instances, South Carolina natives, influenced by other artists and exploring their own ideas, pursued artistic opportunities outside of the state. Their influences, such as the Southern landscape from mountains to marshes and architecture, plus a variety of cultural experiences, remained influential in their work.
 
“Many influences worked together to bring South Carolina art to the point it is today,” Matheny said. “This exhibition reflects the journeys made by these individuals, the art they created, and their influences along the way.
 
“The exhibit includes many large scale works of art on canvas, as well as mixed media work that pushed the boundaries, and our perceptions, of how abstract art is perceived,” said the curator. “Museum guests will be surprised and inspired by the work of these important artists.”
 
The art includes paint media from acrylic and oil on canvas, wood panel and paper to three-dimensional works made of cast aluminum, other metal and stone, said Matheny.
 
The project is funded in part by the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment of the Arts and the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of S.C.
 
Abstract Art in South Carolina: 1949-2012 can be seen through Aug. 26.
For more information on the exhibit, contact Paul Matheny at (803) 898-4921 or visit southcarolinastatemuseum.org.

…her work along with Chris Powici, lecturer in creative writing at Stirling University who will be holding a creative writing workshop. Jane Verburg, a previously highly commended Baker Prize English prose writer, will be reading and Pete Urpeth from Hi-Arts will be holding a writers surgery during the day. The winner of the Gaelic poetry, Niall Gordon, will also read. The event will be held at The Skeabost Hotel, Skeabost Bridge, by Portree, Isle of Skye. This is a great opportunity to both travel and to support Heather. You have 17 days to pack your bags. Congratulations Heather!

…living on a farm near Old Fort, NC, in the
early part of the 20th century. It was among more than 130 entries of
original poetry, prose, and nonfiction submitted by writers across the 
country to the Humanities Council. Mill Creek Suite will appear in the winter-spring 2012 issue of North
 Carolina
 Conversations, the free biannual magazine of the North Carolina Humanities Council.
 Taylor receives a cash prize and support toward a week-long writer’s 
residency at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern
 Pines.
Of Mill Creek Suite, Taylor says, “The lives depicted in the poems are
 like those of the people I came to know during the summers my family spent
 east of Asheville: strong, resilient, self-reliant, loving.” The 
inspiration for the poetry cycle came when a friend of Taylor’s told her a
story of a man’s weekly trips on foot from Old Fort to Ridgecrest to check 
on his widowed mother. She says, “The trip seemed epic to me.” She later 
learned that the story was inaccurate, but by that time, the two central
characters had “taken on lives of their own. I did what Faulkner said
 lucky writers get to do: follow the characters around and take notes.”

Born in Lake City, SC, Taylor is a graduate of Furman University, with an 
M.A. from UNC at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from the University of South 
Carolina. She has taught English in the public schools of North and South
 Carolina and at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, the University of Puerto
 Rico, the University of South Carolina, and Lander University and fort 
almost fourteen years taught the medical humanities to residents and 
faculty at the Greenville (SC) Hospital System, where she was a medical
 editor.

Taylor’s chapbook of poems, Stepping on Air, was published by Emrys Press 
in 2008. Her short stories have been published in The South Carolina Review and Sargasso, a Caribbean journal. Her poems have appeared in Appalachian
 Journal, Kalliope, Scribble, The South Carolina Review, Timber Creek 
Review, Chebacco: The Magazine of the Mount Desert Island Historical 
Society, Tar River Poetry, and New England Watershed and in several
 anthologies, including Pinesong, Mountain Time, A Millennial Sampler
 of South Carolina Poetry, and Contemporary  Appalachia, volume 3 of The 
Southern Poetry Anthology. She was a finalist in the 2006 Rita Dove
 Poetry Competition in Salem College’s Center for Women Writers 
International National Literary Awards and in 2008 was named honorable 
mention in the same competition. She lives in Greenville, SC.

This year’s distinguished Linda Flowers Literary Award selection committee 
included:

David Ford, WFDD producer and host of  Triad Arts Up Close;  Scott Owens, poet and Instructor and Visiting Writer at Catawba Valley Community College;  Steve Sumerford, assistant director at Greensboro Public Library; and independent historian, author, and attorney L. McKay Whatley.

Established in 2001, the Linda Flowers Literary Award celebrates outstanding writing that shows a deep connection to the people of North Carolina and illuminates in a vital way their distinctive stories and voices. The award is named for the author of Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina. With the Linda Flowers Literary Award, the Council honors a humanist, professor, and former Council member who achieved the extraordinary despite extraordinary odds. The award recognizes those who care, as Flowers did, about writing truthfully and well and who believe, as she wrote, that the humanities are “equipment for living.”

Previous winning entries to the Linda Flowers Literary Award

The North Carolina Humanities Council is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Humanities Council serves as an advocate for lifelong learning and thoughtful dialogue about all facets of human life. It facilitates the exploration and celebration of the many voices and stories of North Carolina’s cultures and heritage. In addition to grants and publications, the Council offers the Road Scholarship speakers bureau; the Let’s Talk About It  library discussion series; the traveling exhibition Museum on Main Street, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and rural communities statewide; the Teachers Institute, a professional development program for the state’s public school educators; and Literature and Medicine, a scholar-facilitated book discussion group for hospital staff to reflect on the larger mission of medicine.

Alligator Juniper is published once a year by Prescott College in Arizona and features contemporary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and photography. Burial is the third essay Eli has published from a collection she is writing about her father’s long term illness and its effects on her family. The first, Birthday Girls Don’t Cry, was published in Emrys Journal in 2007. Eli has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a writer, graphic designer and mother.

as well as a marketer for not-for-profits and the arts. She is a juried member of the Southern Arts Federation and is a juried artist member in literary arts as well as visual arts for the Arts Commission. Terri is currently circulating a new volume of poetry entitled Holding the Light. She earned an M.F.A. from Queens University. Read her winning poem here: The Poetry Society of South Carolina »