Friday, September 28, 2012

All the In Between; My Story of Agnes / Laurie B. McIntosh


All the In Between; My Story of Agnes
Laurie B. McIntosh 

An Exhibition of Paintings Telling the Cradle to Grave Story of a Life Well Lived.

Friday, October 19 - Opening Reception
October 19-November 6 - Exhibition
Sunday, October 21 - Exhibition Book Signing and Reading

Vista Studios/Gallery 80808
808 Lady Street
Columbia, SC 29201

In All the In Between: My Story of Agnes, visual artist Laurie Brownell McIntosh uses more than 70 painted panels to tell the cradle-to-grave story of her late mother, Agnes Smith Brownell. A scientist, artist, doctor’s wife, and mother, Agnes approached life with a kind of candor and pragmatism that left little room for sentimentality. From telling her thirsty and whining children to “swallow their spit,” to tending to her dying husband, to orchestrating a life of ritual in her widowhood, Agnes was a force to be reckoned with, eliciting emotions from her youngest daughter that were equal parts fear, reverence, and love.

All the In Between: My Story of Agnes is a eulogy, a memorial, a work of art, and a kind of tribute that validates everything between the first and last breaths of a life well lived. There are no heroes or heroines in the story; no parables; no broken hearts or drama; no secrets to take to the grave. Yet the story is extraordinary in its simplicity. By capturing images of her mother’s life through the intimacy of her own interpretations, McIntosh allows her readers a rare kind of insight to the life of a stranger made close and personal for us through the nuance of her daughter’s familiarity. Yet, she does so without folly. Using paintings that are honest and straight forward, yet beautiful and tender, she tells the tale of her mother’s life with the kind of dignity that would have made Agnes proud.

The book, All the In Between:  My Story of Agnes by Laurie B. McIntosh will be available online October 19, 2012 at Amazon.comBarnesandnoble.com and, (signed) at MuddyFordPress.com.

For more information, please contact 
Laurie McIntosh
803-319-2223





Sunday, September 23, 2012

COLUMBIA / KAISERSLAUTERN



if ART Gallery
PRESENTS
@
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios
808 Lady St., Columbia, SC 29201

COLUMBIA / KAISERSLAUTERN:
The International (Mural) Project

A Group Exhibition & Mural Project Featuring:

Roland Albert, Stephen Chesley, Jeff Donovan, Ralph Gelbert, Mary Gilkerson, Tonya Gregg, Klaus Hartmann, Jorg Heieck, Peter Lenzo, Reiner Mahrlein, Janet Orselli, Anna Redwine, Silvia Rudolf, Laura Spong, H. Brown Thornton, Mike Williams
& David Yaghjian

October 4 – 16, 2012
Artists’ Reception: Friday, October 5, 2012, 5:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Panel Discussion about the Columbia/Kaiserslautern Artists Exchange: Sunday, October 7, 2:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours: Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sun., 1 – 5 p.m.
& by appointment
Contact Wim Roefs at if ART: (803) 238-2351 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For more than a decade, Columbia, S.C., artists and those of the Kunstlerwerkgemeinschaft (KWG) in Columbia’s German sister city of Kaiserslautern have been going back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. Columbians Mike Williams, Stephen Chesley, Jeff Donovan, David Yaghjian, Tonya Gregg, Laura Spong and others went to Kaiserslautern to work and exhibit. KWG members Roland Albert, Ralph Gelbert, Klaus Hartmann, Reiner Mahrlein and Silvia Rudolf came to Columbia, and their work graces the walls and backyards of many a local home. During their Kaiserslautern visit last year, Donovan and Yaghjian even ran into a City of Columbia delegation headed by mayor Steve Benjamin.
The informal artists exchange’s next installment is Columbia/Kaiserslautern: The International (Mural) Project, an if ART Gallery exhibition at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, Columbia, S.C. Seventeen artists – six German, nine from Columbia and two formerly of Columbia – will participate in the event, which will consist, first, of the creation of a collective mural and, second, the exhibition.
Two Kaiserslautern and nine Columbia artists collectively will create a mural at Vista Studios between September 29 – October 5. The mural will be on a patchwork of canvas pieces mounted to a wall as one single work of art. The German mural participants are Hartmann and Rudolf; the Columbia artists will be Chesley, Donovan, Mary Gilkerson, Gregg, Peter Lenzo, Anna Redwine, Spong, Williams and Yaghjian. The mural will be the centerpiece of the Columbia / Kaiserslautern exhibition.
“It’ll be interesting to see how the mural turns out,” said if ART owner Wim Roefs, who is organizing the event. “These are artists with often rather different approaches and styles. On the other hand, they all have great affinity for each other’s work and all are talented and assured in their own abilities, so I suspect they will work to compliment each others’ contributions rather than artistically fight each other. I wouldn’t be surprised we if we were to end up with a work of art in which the various styles are beautifully integrated.”
All mural artists also will be showing individual works in the exhibition, which will run October 5 – 16, 2012, opening with a reception on October 5, 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. Others participating in the exhibition are Kaiserslautern artists Roland Albert, Ralph Gelbert, Reiner Mahrlein and Jorg Heieck; Aiken, S.C., artist H. Brown Thornton; and Columbus, N.C., artist Janet Orselli, who is a Columbia native.
On Sunday, October 7, 2:00 p.m., during a panel discussion, participants in the Columbia-Kaiserslautern exchange will talk about their experiences. “Columbia artists typically come back highly energized from their trips to Kaiserslautern,” said Roefs, who has visited Kaiserslautern several times. “The KWG, which has it’s own collective studio, is a vibrant group or artists that also includes literary and performing artists. It’s a membership-by-invitation-only club and its members are highly respected, serious artists who have organizational talents to boot. It’s an inspiring combination.”
The collective mural will be shipped to Kaiserslautern after the exhibition. In Kaiserslautern, the mural first will be exhibited in its original form. Next, KWG members will add to the mural, exhibit the new version and then ship it back to Columbia. 
“It should be good week,” Roefs said of Hartmann’s and Rudolf’s visit. “Silvia and Klaus will be working here alongside their Columbia peers. Artists will be going in an out of Vista Studios, working on the mural, exchanging ideas, drinking coffee. We’ll have a series of luncheons and dinners, and I am sure everyone will come out of the week energized.”

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Jonathan K. Callicut: FULL CIRCLE




FULL CIRCLE OPENING AT GALLERY 80808

Columbia, SC, September 2012 Two dimensional mixed-media artist Jonathan Callicutt will hold the opening for his solo show Full Circle at Vista Studios Gallery 80808 on the evenings of September 28th and 29th    6-9pm each night.  The exhibition will be open from September 27th until October 2nd, no invitation required, all are welcome.
“My work is driven by a need to bring the iconic imagery of the past into the visual present. Inflected by both the Renaissance and Rauschenberg, pop culture and formal training, I look for a new translation of seemingly disparate styles in a modern dialect.”
Full Circle has been conceived as a tying together of key thematic elements of Callicutt’s life. A native of Columbia and exhibitor in 2011’s Florence Biennale, the artist hopes to join his experience with the birthplace of the Renaissance to this show in the city of his origins as an artist. The past connects to the present connects to the past, Full Circle.
Vista Studios Gallery 80808 is a long standing venue, originally developed by the Columbia Development Corporation and the South Carolina Arts Commission.  The space not only hosts local, regional and national shows but also houses working artist’s studios.  The gallery is located on 808 Lady Street in downtown Columbia, SC.  For more information, visit www.vistastudios80808.com.
Jonathan Callicutt trained at both the SC Governor’s School for the Arts and The University of Georgia’s BFA Printmaking programs.  His complex and densely layered mixed media pieces have been exhibited in Atlanta, Richmond, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Florence, Italy.  He currently lives and works in Decatur, GA. For more information, visit www.jonathancallicutt.com. 
Jonathan Callicutt
404-509-1429