“Southern Sisters” Opens at the Charleston Renaissance Gallery on November 5

Truth be told, Charleston is as lovely in autumn as it is in spring, and the twelfth edition of the CFADA Charleston Fine Art Annual makes a marvelous excuse for a visit. The Charleston Fine Art Annual weekend offers an array of cultural activities that celebrate the city’s vibrant visual arts community, including exhibitions, artist demonstrations, and social gatherings. The event has been hailed by Charleston Magazine, American Art Collector, American Style, and Art & Antiques as the most important fine arts festival in South Carolina.

Join the Charleston Renaissance Gallery on Friday evening, November 5 to celebrate the opening of our latest show, “Southern Sisters,” from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The historic district will be buzzing with activity that night as a mix of local and visiting art enthusiasts stroll between the eleven CFADA member galleries. On Saturday morning, the fine art weekend participants are invited to gather at Washington Park from 9:00 a.m. through noon. The most popular event of the weekend, “Painting in the Park” offers partakers the opportunity to meet and observe popular artists at work en plein air. Held at the Renaissance Charleston Hotel on Saturday evening, the Charleston Art Auction gets underway with a preview/reception beginning at 6:00 p.m., followed by an art auction showcasing historically significant paintings and drawings, as well as contemporary works by recognized American artists.

For the women artists featured in the gallery’s upcoming exhibition, the ideal room of one’s own held an easel or sketchbook—as well as the promise of time and space to create freely. With careers spanning the last 150 years, these women balanced home and hearth with palette and brush, and, in many cases, helped pioneer professional paths for the fairer sex. In the hallowed halls of academic proving grounds and at leading galleries of the day, this select sorority—including Emma Lambert Cooper, Clara Davidson, Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Lena Gurr, Marie Atkinson Hull, Anna V. H. Huntington, Nell Choate Jones, Augusta Denk Oelschig, Hattie Saussy, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Mary Russell Smith, Alice Barber Stephens, Anna Heyward Taylor, Martha Walter and Ludmilla Pilat Welch—lived out Georgia O’Keeffe’s belief that “to create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage.”

The Charleston Renaissance Gallery is the founding member of the Charleston Fine Art Dealers’ Association, a cooperative launched in 1999 for the purpose of advancing Charleston as a premier fine art destination. Since its founding, CFADA has donated over $245,000 to high school art programs in Charleston County Schools. For more information on the 2010 Charleston Fine Art Annual, please visit the CFADA website.

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Stephen Scott Young at Charleston Renaissance Gallery

The Veterans by Stephen Scott Young

As the son of a wounded Vietnam veteran, Stephen Scott Young is keenly attuned to the dignity of military service and regularly explores patriotic themes in his work. The Veterans, executed en plein air in 1993, is a stirring example of this artistic passion and personal priority. And while the watercolor celebrates the larger motif of American fidelity, its central focus is the two honored patriots who lived the ideal.

In the early 1990s, an exhibition of Young’s art traveled to Greenville, South Carolina, and the artist was subsequently commissioned by the Greenville County Museum of Art to produce a series of works titled Portrait of Greenville. The Veterans is one of the first studies Young did in preparation for a large watercolor of the same title. The scene depicts two veterans sitting outside a white clapboard VFW hall in a local neighborhood on Memorial Day. The artist worked while the men reminisced about their World War II experiences. The moving characterization of the two figures and play of light on the drapery of the flag and the architecture highlight Young’s artistic mastery and unparalleled technical proficiency. Executed in a liberated style with a wet-on-wet technique that Young often employs for on-site preparatory studies, the work exudes a sense of spontaneity and immediacy that is not evident in his more controlled large pieces, which are painstakingly created by the building up of layers of pigment.

Thomas Jefferson believed that “the cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.” As does Young. As do we.

The Charleston Renaissance Gallery is located at 103 Church Street in downtown Charleston, SC.

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Charleston Renaissance Gallery and High Cotton: Partners for the 2010 Palette & Palate Stroll

Founded by Robert Hicklin, Jr. in 1972, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery is the only gallery in the nation specializing in fine art of the American South. The gallery has maintained a distinctive reputation for its offerings of 19th and 20th century masterworks, including works on oil, paper, sculptures, the art of the Charleston Renaissance Movement and select works from the estate of Elizabeth O’Neil Verner, one of the most influential artists of her time.                                                               

 For more than 30 years, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery has handled works by the most prestigious Southern artists, as well as American artists who have explored Southern subject matter. The gallery counts private collectors from across the country and around the world, as well as premier national institutions among its clients. In addition to regular exhibitions and educational symposiums, it the gallery has published several scholarly catalogues and three major art volumes. The gallery is also home to a library of more than 4000 books and archives on Southern art history.                                    

A strong supporter of the Charleston Fine Art Dealers’ Association since its foundation, Maverick Southern Kitchens’ High Cotton will partner, for the fifth time, with the distinctly renowned gallery for the 2010 Palette and Palate Stroll. The restaurant’s heart pine floors, wide-bladed ceiling fans and walls of hand-made brick have been the signatures of Charleston high-life since antebellum times and makes one nostalgic for older days. The menu is hearty and southern, featuring regional favorites, steaks, game and fresh seafood – all prepared with the famous Maverick artistry. Recently returned to the Lowcountry and new to High Cotton is Chef de Cuisine Ramon Taimanglo.

Born in Germany to a military family, Taimanglo found himself drawn to the kitchen early on. His teen years were spent happily working in restaurants; but in college, he studied business. “Once I had that degree and began working in business, I realized my passion was back in the kitchen,” he says. So he traded his business suit for chef’s whites, and headed for Johnson and Wales Culinary Arts Institute in Charleston, a city that cultivated his gift.

As a culinary student, he worked as a line cook at Slightly North of Broad. Mentored – as so many have been – by Frank Lee, Taimanglo earned his degree and moved out of the city. Though his career path took him to restaurants around the country, Taimanglo longed to return to the Lowcountry and rejoin the Maverick family. He now serves as Chef de Cuisine at High Cotton, a position that affords him the opportunity to work with the ingredients he enjoys most: local produce, fish and meats.   

Though his palate has been honed and expanded by world travels, Taimanglo still understands the comfort and happiness baked into a warm PB&J like his father used to make for him. This understanding of cooking with love makes him an excellent addition to the Charleston community of fine cuisine, and an exciting component in this years Palette and Palate Stroll.

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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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The Charleston Renaissance Gallery and High Cotton Partner up for the Palette and Palate Stroll, July 17

Founded by Robert Hicklin, Jr. in 1972, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery is the only one in the nation specializing in fine art of the American South. The gallery has maintained a distinctive reputation for its offerings of 19th and 20th century masterworks, including works on oil, paper, sculptures, the art of the Charleston Renaissance Movement and select works from the estate of Elizabeth O’Neil Verner, one of the most influential artists of the time.                                                                                                                                      

For more than 30 years, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery has handled works by the most prestigious Southern artists, as well as those American artists who explored Southern subject matter. The gallery counts private collectors from across the country and around the world, as well as premier national institutions among its clients. In addition to regular exhibitions and educational symposiums, it has published several scholarly catalogues and three major art volumes. The gallery is also home to a library of more than 4000 books and archives on Southern art history.             

A strong supporter of the Charleston Fine Art Dealers’ Association since its foundation, Maverick Southern Kitchens’ High Cotton will partner for the fourth year with the gallery for the Palette and Palate Stroll evening. The restaurant’s heart pine floors, wide-bladed ceiling fans and walls of hand-made brick have been the signatures of Lowcountry high-life since antebellum times. The menu is hearty and southern, featuring regional favorites, steaks, game and fresh seafood – all prepared with the famous Maverick artistry.

Raised in a large Italian family whose passion for cooking was always a focus and source of pride, High Cotton’s Executive Chef, Anthony Gray’s choice of a career in the culinary industry was a natural one. While training in Charleston at Johnson & Wales University, he began working in local Charleston restaurants and was hired as a line cook at Slightly North of Broad in 1998.  Chef Gray steadily proved himself and was promoted to several positions within the Maverick Southern Kitchens family, and upon the opening of High Cotton in November of 1999, Chef Gray was promoted to sous chef, a position he held until November of 2006 when he became High Cotton’s Executive Chef.          

Gray’s passion for meats can be noted with his hand-made sausages and charcuteries, and his excellence in creating sauces and marinades that enhance the flavors of the meats he works with.  Chef Gray is a proud supporter of local farmers and vendors.

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The Charleston Renaissance Gallery Launching New Website in January 2009

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Spot: Southern Works on Paper

The Charleston Renaissance Gallery is pleased to present Spot: Southern Works on Paper, an exhibition of sixty-four works on paper related to the American South. This exceptional selection ranges from Joshua Shaw’s pioneering 1820 view of Virginia’s  famed Natural Bridge to Charles Shannon’s expressive Syncopation Number  1 (circa 1939) to William Dunlap’s contemporary landscape, Water Side—Iris Watch (2004).  Following an opening reception on Friday, November 7, Spot: Southern Works on Paper will be on view at the gallery through January 5, 2009.

In both style and subject matter, the showcased works reveal evolving approaches and varied subjects, including topographical and romantic landscapes, figure studies, and genre and city scenes. The exhibition examines classical, realist, impressionist, modernist and post-modernist styles over the course of two centuries, as well as the distinctive mediums of pencil, watercolor, pastels, and gouache on paper.

Accompanying Spot: Southern Works on Paper is a comprehensive catalogue with an introductory essay by Dr. Philip L. Brewer. A noted expert on drawings and co-author of Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings, Dr. Brewer offers keen insight into the works themselves and to their context in American history. “Through the drawings and watercolors of this collection, artists tell of the last two hundred years of Southern history in distinctly personal ways. Encounters with Native Americans and with the natural world, slavery, King Cotton, a war in which over six hundred thousand Americans died, the poverty of Reconstruction, the awakening of Henry Grady’s New South, agrarianism, civil rights, regionalism, and the late arrival of modernism: all are touched on.”

Copies of the catalogue are available for purchase. Please visit us at www.charlestonrenaissancegallery.com

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