Celebrating LAURA SPONG's 85th Birthday L A U R A S P O N G 2 0 0 6 - 2 0 1 1 Age As An Administrative Device February 11 - 22, 2011 an if ART Gallery exhibition @ Gallery 80808/Vista Studios 808 Lady St., Columbia, SC Reception: Friday, February 11, 5 - 9 pm. For a PREVIEW & CATALOGUE ESSAYS  |
LAURA SPONG 2006 - 2011 @ Gallery 80808/Vista Studios In the five years since her 80th-birthday exhibition in 2006, the career of Columbia, S.C., artist Laura Spong has taken off with multiple solo exhibitions throughout the state, brisk sales, and the acquisition of her work by the South Carolina State Art Collection, the South Carolina State Museum and the Greenville County Museum of Art. A dozen of Spong's works are featured permanently on the Lifetime TV show Drop Dead Diva and one painting, Viva La Vista, was recently displayed on a big screen at New York's Time Square. With Spong 85th birthday coming up in February, if ART Gallery is organizing Laura Spong 2006 - 2011: Age As An Administrative Device. The exhibition will take place at Columbia's Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, February 11 - 22, 2011. The artist's reception is Friday, February 11, 5 - 9 p.m. if ART Gallery will present a 32-page catalogue with essays by Columbia College art professor, artist and art critic Mary Bentz Gilkerson and if ART owner Wim Roefs. The exhibition will feature paintings by Spong, an abstract expressionist, from the past five years, with an emphasis on works created in 2010 and 2011. Among the paintings on display will beWhy?, an enormous triptych measuring 60 x 144 inches. Spong completed the painting in 2011. The painting will make its Columbia debut. "I know I have enjoyed it," Spong says of the past five years. "That has to do with success. I feel like I got affirmation and have a sense that I got more recognition. A while back a lady was in my studio, and she liked my work. 'Sometimes you see something that makes your heart skip,' she said. I still can't believe people actually mean that. But the response in recent years has made me feel more people appreciate what I am doing, which gave me more confidence. Before, I thought at times that I was just painting for myself, that I was wasting time, but when I noticed that people appreciated it, it was just more fun doing it." |
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