Wednesday, October 31, 2012





Season’s Harvest: Recent Works by Vista Studio Artists

Vista Studio’s 13 resident artists invite the public to view “Season’s Harvest: Recent Works by Vista Studios Artists”, which will be on display November 8- 27, 2012. There will be an opening on the 15th, from 5-9pm, during the Vista Lights Celebration. Come see our new exhibition at Vista Studios/Gallery 80808 located at 808 Lady Street in the Vista. The artists will have their studios open for you to get a look at their newest work and processes.
                           
Non-objective painter, Ethel Brody, continues experimenting with structure and color. Taking visual clues from her daily life, she creates colorful, highly organized compositions with strong graphic qualities.

Stephen Chesley will have a current piece reflecting his well-known poetic realism documenting the diminishing asset of solitude and historic romanticism in the south.

 Pat Gilmartin will be showing her newest ceramic sculptures. They include a pair of works comprising multiple faces mounted on a background; each face is unique and individually formed. Lit from above, they create dramatic shadows that become as much a part of the art as the faces themselves. The pieces are entitled "Echoing Shadows." Gilmartin has also continued to explore her series of blocky, abstracted figures and will have several new ones to show during Vista Lights.

Fiber artist, Susan Lenz, will collaborate with Jeff Donovan on a piece that will be presented with several title options with the final naming to be determined by popular vote at the end of the evening, November 15th. They will then christen the artwork, complete with at least one bottle of champagne. Susan will also be displaying some of her new experimental fiber & epoxy pieces reflecting the surface of wet sand.

Sharon Collings Licata, sculptor, will exhibit works using Orange Utah Alabaster. One of her pieces is titled “Two Faced II”.  Again the orange faces speak… It's up to viewer to decide what each side has to say.

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. 

Kirkland Smith has collaborated with the CotA Arts Fellowship and Church of the Apostles members to create a pastoral Assemblage triptych, 15 feet wide and 5 feet high at the center point. Using everyday post-consumer objects collected by church members and the community at large, the scenes depict the life of Christ in a stylized way, representative of stained glass.

Laura Spong moves into the celebration of Fall for the Vista Lights show in Gallery 80808. She says she always seems to use browns, reds and yellow in the Fall. This is noticeable in, for instance, The Day Pauses Between What Is And What Was."

Artists Heidi-Darr Hope, Robert Kennedy, Michel McNinch, and David Yaghjian will also present new work and open their studios at Vista Studios. The exhibition will be from November 8-27th. Gallery hours are weekdays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and weekends 1-4 p.m.  Please call the Gallery 80808 at 803-252-6134 to confirm hours. The website is: www.VistaStudios80808.com.







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.”