Linda Fantuzzo Exhibition Opens at Charleston Renaissance Gallery May 7

A stunning selection of new works by Charleston artist Linda Fantuzzo will be on view at the Charleston Renaissance Gallery from May 7 – June 19, 2010. The Color of Surface features thirty recent paintings, each characterized by Fantuzzo’s eloquent handling of atmosphere and luminosity. These latest pieces are further distinguished by the artist’s remarkable facility with medium, leading to striking surface contrasts between heavy impasto and sheer color and glaze. An opening celebration for the exhibition will be held in conjunction with the French Quarter Art Walk on Friday, May 7.

House in Gold by Linda Fantuzzo

Comprised primarily of landscapes, the paintings featured in The Color of Surface have an ethereal quality and appear to “exist in an ambiguous space—one that is both a deep, representational space filled with elements that sometimes take on metaphorical significance, and more abstract arrangements of geometric and organic shapes.” One reviewer described Fantuzzo’s interpretations of ordinary scenes or objects as anything but ordinary. “Unexpected juxtapositions give many of her paintings a quietly surreal quality. She emphasizes texture, tone, atmosphere, and, above all, an inner light created by very careful purposeful handling of cool and warm colors, applied with thick and thin paints and glazes. The result is haunting.”

The Color of Surface is Fantuzzo’s second solo show at the Charleston Renaissance Gallery, a significant milestone given the gallery’s focus on historic fine art rather than living artists. “Linda’s art, in both its power and its poignancy, transcends the usual lines of demarcation we find between classic and contemporary works,” says gallery founder and principal Robert M. Hicklin, Jr. “Her paintings have a timeless depth and distinction that enhance not only their immediate aesthetic appeal, but their long-term collectability as well.”

Born and raised in upstate New York, Fantuzzo sketched and painted from youth. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1968 to 1973. In addition to her formal academic training, Fantuzzo traveled and studied independently in Italy, Spain, and Morocco, before settling in Charleston in the mid-1970s. Fantuzzo has worked prolifically over the past decades, and her paintings are represented in important private and public collections in the United States and abroad. Among notable exhibitions, she has been featured in solo shows at the Gibbes Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum of Art, and Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Museum. Her group exhibitions include 100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the Twentieth Century in South Carolina Art at the South Carolina State Museum (1999) and Framing A Vision: Linda Fantuzzo & Manning Williams at the Gibbes Museum (2004).

For more information, call Jane Harper Hicklin, Gallery Manager at the Charleston Renaissance Gallery at 843-723-0025. The Charleston Renaissance Gallery is the nation’s premier dealer in fine art relating to the American South.

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New Work by Craig Crawford at Carolina Galleries May 7

Carolina Galleries, located at 106 A Church Street, is pleased to present new work by Craig Crawford in May. The artist reception will take place on May 7 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Moss Over the Lagoon by Craig Crawford

Craig Crawford first became interested in painting through his  grandfather, himself a painter and an architect. He attended the  South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts at Furman University  and graduated from the University of South Carolina. He then trained  in the field of Painting Conservation with Charles Olin, former head  of Painting Conservation at the Smithsonian Museum and the National  Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. During his eight year  apprenticeship, Crawford spent endless hours studying paintings,  particularly American Landscape Paintings and the French Barbizon  School, and learning how they were made. He generally works from oil  sketches done on location as well as digital images. Crawford paints  in a straightforward traditional manner, and his paintings are  infused with the light and shadows of the South. His paintings are  often mistaken for 19th Century works, a strong tribute to his study and mastery of the craft.

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Martin Gallery Presents “Nectar of Life: Wanda Steppe Solo Show” May 7

Martin Gallery is excited to announce the opening for Nectar of Life: Wanda Steppe Solo Show.  Join the gallery on Friday, May 7 from 5:00pm – 8:00pm during the French Quarter Art Walk for an opening reception. The show will run through the end of the month.

After spending many years teaching herself to paint traditionally, Steppe found herself in the position of not being able to paint at all. Chemotherapy affected her sense of smell so that painting made her ill. She spent many months thinking about working without being able to work.  The final works in the series are contemplations on the fragility and uncertainty of the physical world and the nature of spirituality.  Steppe currently resides in Rock Hill, SC.

“The passage of time has been a recurring theme in my work.   I am constantly reminded of the uncertainty and fragility of life and of our ability as humans to adapt to the most unlikely situations.  My work employs symbols that are open to interpretation including birds in precarious positions, overripe fruit, and birds’ nests exposed and vulnerable.  In this series birds represent innate knowledge, the things we know instinctively but dismiss.   Their fragility is an illusion, of course.  They are in fact just the opposite,” says Wanda Steppe.

“In Wanda Steppe’s newest collection the viewer will find she has placed a bird within the composition of each painting.  While her work has always asked the viewer to contemplate the relationships between her objects, in NECTAR OF LIFE, the viewer and the bird become one in the same as they observe and question the unusual juxtaposition of flowers, fruit and fabric before them,” says Kit Coleman, Gallery Director.

The gallery is located at 18 Broad Street in downtown Charleston, SC.

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“Sans Lens” Photographs by Kevin Bruce Parent Opens at Corrigan Gallery May 7

Photographer Kevin Bruce Parent will present in his first solo show new pinhole camera photographs in a show entitled “Sans Lens” at  Corrigan Gallery from May 3 through May 30.  An opening reception will be held on May 7 from 5 to 8 PM as part of the French Quarter Gallery Association May artwalk.  The gallery is located at 62 Queen Street in downtown Charleston.

Kevin Bruce Parent is a self-taught photographer who has been shooting since 1990. Moving to Charleston in 1997 from New Hampshire, he elected to present in his work what strikes him as southern.  Utilizing pinhole cameras, zone plates and the lith printing process, Parent creates painterly images. The South he sees is moved to another level through the pinhole and the darkroom experience. He says,  “I find it odd and a bit perplexing that anyone would entrust creative decision making to machines instead of using their deeply felt and often ignored intuition. I want to avoid mechanized recordings that verge on the cliché.  It is my wish for the viewers of my work to slow down and contemplate not only what they are looking at, but to slow down in the haste of their daily lives. The world is moving much too fast and we need to gain a little perspective on just how fast things pass us by.”  This last realization came to him after a life altering experience.  The images in this show were made with great purpose and great patience. “As Sally Mann says of making this type of art, this is not drive by shooting.  This is deliberate, methodical stuff.”

“Sans Lens” will contain images of the local landscape as well as surfers on the beach.  Most of the images have a nice quiet feel to them, perhaps a touch of loneliness or longing. A few will be hand-colored, some straight silver gelatin and others lith prints.  Parent’s work tends to be soft, intriguing – subtle presentations of the world around us.  The use of a camera without a lens, the opening through which light travels to the film or paper being only a pinhole, lends a different look to the work – both a look of something from the past and that of a carefully crafted work of art. Often making his own pinhole cameras, the almost exclusive use of these over twenty years has allowed Parent to not only hone the practice of shooting but to learn to use to artistic advantage the vagaries of pinhole camera images married to the fluctuations in the prints created by the lith chemical process of printing.  With small editions, archivally framed, Parent presents very special insights into this sense we call “southern.”

Parent received an honorable mention in the 2005 Piccolo Spoleto Juried Art Exhibition and showed in the Black and honorable White, Graphic Work in the South, 1904-2004 at Carolina Galleries in March 2004 as well as a group photography show here in 2006 entitled Light Writing and a two man show “Southern Remains” in 2008.

Corrigan Gallery, now in its fifth year, is a culmination of 22 years of experience in the Charleston art market.  The gallery represents more than a dozen artists in an intimate space and presents 6 to 10 shows per year with the gallery being refreshed every month.  Parent has been with the gallery since its inception.  Other gallery artists are Manning Williams, Duke Hagerty, Mary Walker, Kristi Ryba, Sue Simons Wallace, Gordon Nicholson, John Moore, Lese Corrigan, Paul Mardikian and John Hull.  Visiting artists are included in the yearly roster with most of the artist being either Charleston natives or individuals living in Charleston.  A gallery of contemporary works exploring the depth and intellect behind the drive to create, Corrigan Gallery provides a breathing space around the historic city’s traditional bent.  Open six days a week and other times by appointment, the gallery can be viewed 24 hours a day at http://www.corrigangallery.com, contacted by phone 843 722 9868 or email art@lesecorrigan.com.

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“Southern Soul” by Shannon Smith Opens at Smith Killian Fine Art May 7

Smith Killian Fine Art is featuring an exhibition on May 7^th entitled “Southern Soul,” featuring works by Shannon Smith, marking her tenth solo show with the gallery. A reception will be held at the gallery, located in the historic French Quarter at 9 Queen Street, from 5-8 p.m. and the show will run through May 21^st.

Culling Tomatoes

“Southern Soul,” includes recent works in oil that combine Smith’s expressive colors and her ability to capture the contrasting light with scenes from the Lowcountry. A true stolen moment is captured in “Lowcountry Fishing,” as the subject casts her rod into the tide, surrounded by the dense lowlands, and a soft light illuminating the water.  Smith states, “This body of works challenged me to try and capture the soul of our beloved  Lowcountry.  Through landscape, figurative and still life, I have tried to trace our heritage of living and thriving off of the fruits of our precious land and sea basin.  From farming cotton, culling tomatoes and collards, fishing and harvesting oysters from the saltwater creeks to witnessing the grand old souls of our palmettos and mossy oak trees, we can begin to appreciate the unique qualities that are vital to our southern culture, the very spiritual makeup of our Southern Souls.”

The exhibit will coincide with the French Quarter Gallery Association Art Walk, a will be open to the public May 7^th to May 21^st. Digital images of the paintings are available upon request. Contact Leigh Limehouse at (843) 853-0708 or info@smithkillian.com.

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New Works at Helena Fox Fine Art on May 7

Join Helena Fox Fine Art in May to view new works by gallery artists: William R. Davis, Donald Demers, Mary Erickson, West Fraser and Joseph McGurl. The opening reception will take place on May 7 from 5-8pm. The show will be on display till May 28, 2010.

Helena Fox Fine Art specializes in fine contemporary representational art. Established in 2004, the gallery features a compilation of work by national and international artists. Representing Sarah Amos, Kenn Backhaus, Christina Bates, John Budicin, William R. Davis, Terry DeLapp, Donald Demers, Mary Erickson, West Fraser, Joseph McCurl, William McCullough,  Billyo O’Donnell, Joseph Paquet, and Kent Ullberg.

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Enjoy “Urban Romance” at Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art May 7

Visit Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art to view the latest works by award-winning artist Jeff Jamison.  His upcoming May 2010 show Urban Romance is one Charleston has been waiting for, with dreamy paintings that evoke emotion and simply enchant viewers.  The light and movement in his paintings, paired with intriguing streetscapes and restaurant interiors seem to draw observers directly to the plaza or table in the work.  Figures in his pieces are incredibly appealing and capture the viewer in the sense that they manage to do a thing difficult for many – remain simultaneously mysterious yet familiar.   Jamison takes a rare intellectual approach to his art while his style is built on superb drawing skills.  Jeff is passionate about his work and likes to call his process of painting “controlled chaos,” all while executing traditional methods used by the Old Masters.

Dinner Downtown by Jeff Jamison

A Tennessee native, Jeff’s fascination “with the look of things” began at an early age.  His serious art studies began at Middle Tennessee State University in 1977, then after moving to Miami for inspiration, finished in 1984 at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Jamison truly believes that the observer can feel the energy put into a painting, and this remains apparent by his devoted following.

Jeff Jamison has been feverishly painting since the beginning of the year in order to present a brilliant show and will join us in Charleston for the opening reception and Art Walk on May 7.  Please contact the gallery at 843-722-3660 for further information on Jeff Jamison, and the upcoming exhibit Urban Romance.

Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art, 58 Broad Street.   Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm.  www.ellarichardson.com

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Julyan Davis’s Painting Acquired by the Greenville County Museum of Art

Interior Abandoned Mansion II

Julyan Davis’s painting titled Interior, Abandoned Mansion II has been recently acquired by the Greenville County Museum of Art for their permanent collection. Carolina Galleries is pleased to have assisted in this transaction. Julyan Davis is being recognized as a Southern contemporary master artist with paintings now in the Gibbes Museum, Morris Museum in Augusta, and now Greenville. Carolina Galleries has 19 gorgeous paintings by Julyan in stock at the moment, including several of Charleston, particularly some of upper King Street before it was “revitalized”. Please take a look http://www.carolinagalleries.com/artist.shtml?id=116&category=20

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“The Birds” Opens at Wells Gallery in Charleston, SC on May 7

"The Beautiful Nevermore” by Russell Gordon

The Wells Gallery will be hosting an opening reception for “The Birds” show from 5-8 p.m. on Friday May 7^th. The Wells Gallery will be displaying new works highlighting the various bird species of the Carolinas. Featured artists for this show include: George Pate, Karen Larson Turner, Glenn Harrington, Russell Gordon, Kevin LePrince and Rick Reinert. The works will be on exhibit starting May 3^rd through the 31^st of May.

Owner Hume Killian drew inspiration for this show from the various bird species of the Carolinas.  “Birds define Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry as much as its architecture, history and barrier islands. Like many of us they come and go with the seasons”, explains owner Killian. “This show will allow our local and national artists to interpret this natural wonder using their distinct artistic voice.”

The Wells Gallery is located at 125 Meeting Street next to the Gibbes Museum of Art in historic downtown Charleston, SC.

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Interview with artist Jeff Jamison of Ella W. Richardson Fine Art

Dinner Downtown by Jeff Jamsion, 20" x 24" oil on canvas

Waiting on a Friend by Jeff Jamison, 30" x 24" oil on canvas

Lawyers, Lovers and Clergymen, 24" x 30" oil on canvas

Interview with artist Jeff Jamison of Ella W. Richardson Fine Art.

“Urban Romance” by Jeff Jamison opens at Ella W. Richardson Fine Art on Friday, May 07, 2010 with an artist reception from 5-8pm. The show will be on display till Monday, May 31, 2010.

You started as an illustrator. How does this career choice influence your technique today?

I was fortunate enough to be hired as an Editorial Illustrator by the Sun Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida right out of art school.  Working in a newspaper environment, where deadlines are always important, I was forced to take a pretty professional approach to production early on.  As a commercial or editorial illustrator your job is to catch a person’s attention within three seconds and get them to read an article or look at a product, and drawing well is king.    To some degree I think this applies to fine art as well.

Did your passion for painting started in childhood? If so, did you have any support/encouragement?

As a child I was a big dreamer (still am) and was sports crazy so when I wasn’t playing sports I would sit and dream about playing and draw sports images.  So I drew a lot as a child but never really thought about becoming an artist professionally.  My plan was to play in the NFL and paint a little bit on the side.  Somewhere along the way I became a better painter than a football player.  I come from a talented family that includes musicians and writers and my grandmother was a painter.  Her great grandmother was the sister of Asher B. Durand, the famed American artist from the Hudson River School so my interest in art was certainly accepted and encouraged by my family.

Do you paint on location (plein air) or in a studio? Do you prefer one over the other?

I am mainly a studio painter.  Again, this is a reflection of my illustrator days.  I am most comfortable in my studio.  I keep threatening to do more plein air painting but it’s just not happening.  I love the outdoors.  Every time I head out for a plein air session I find myself down at the river or lake fishing and my paints never make it out of the van.

What is your favorite subject matter?

Human figures in interesting light. For me it’s all about the light.  The lighting sets the mood and the figures do the dancing and tell the story.

You describe your work as “controlled chaos.” Please tell me more about your creative process.

When the illustration market dried up, due in part to the technology revolution, I made a decision to pursue a fine art career rather than create on the computer.  I began really studying the works of the masters and educating myself in the elements of art – line, form, color, value, etc.  I was painting in a very traditional way with very traditional subject matter trying to attain some level of competency, often times painting from life.  A couple of years ago I began to grow tired of this approach, very technical and methodical.  I took a long hard look at what I was doing and took off the training wheels.  I decided to put more of myself in the paintings.  What I mean by that is, now when I begin a painting I don’t need to know everything.  I let the painting come to me, relying on instinct and knowledge to make decisions on the fly.  Get out of the way and let God walk through the room, so to speak.  It always feels a little like jumping off a cliff and I can’t tell you much I love it!

Can you tell me why your art collectors love your paintings?

I believe that energies put into a painting can be felt by a viewer.  I try to fill my paintings with love, positive energy and light.  Imagery that speaks to the human experience.  We all need love and friends and light.  This is what I hope they are responding to.

Tell me more about your passion for working with tools and materials used by Velazquez, Sargent and Sorolla.

I am a huge admirer of Sargent, Sorolla and Velazquez.  I love the idea of working with the exact materials that these great painters used.  It’s just oil paint, brushes, canvas and a little linseed oil.  These great artists, as well as other great artists, have taken these simple materials and created phenomenal artworks.  I feel that this small fact forces me, as an artist, to take full responsibility for what I create.  In my studio the only thing standing between these materials and a great painting is me.

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