Category: CVA-Greenville

Featuring art by Clemson University’s Master of the Fine Arts students

Starting December 6 and ending January 25 at Clemson’s Center for the Visual Arts – Greenville, artists in the University’s MFA program in collaboration with honors students in an undergraduate English Accelerated Composition course will exhibit works that broadly interpret and examine the multi-faceted concept of “process.” Adam Glick, Associate Director of Galerie Lelong in Manhattan, juried the exhibit. Featured artists include Ayako Abe-Miller, David Armistead, Laken Bridges, Tanna Burchinal, Lindsey Elsey, David Gerhard, Alexandra Giannelle, Ali Hammond, Nina Kawar, Adrienne Lichliter, Joel Murray, Alyssa Reiser Prince, Brent Pafford, Aubree Ross and Hilary Siber. An audio component will accompany many of the works on exhibit which features each artist talking about how their processes and concepts.

The exhibit simultaneously examines the artists’ conception of their own process and the way in which art contributes to a broader sense of how we all go about shaping and responding to the world around us. Works in the exhibit interpret the artistic process in terms of materials and the passage of time as well as in relation to mechanical, biological, and environmental processes.

The Center for Visual Arts at Clemson University worked in collaboration with English honors composition class composed predominantly of engineering majors in the conception and execution of the exhibit. Contributing English honors students include: Matthew R. Adamson, Deepti M. Athavale, Luke V. Bauer, Kayla A. Brunelle, Holly C. Erickson, Brian C. Fitzgerald, Benjamin A. Jones, Dylan A. Pyle, William C. Tharpe, Mary K. Thorne, Peter D. Tomasic, and Kelsey S. Turner. These students collaborated with several Clemson University employees: Denise Woodward-Detrich, Lee Gallery Director; John Morgenstern, Visiting English Assistant Professor; Kathy Edwards, Research & Collection Development Librarian; Jan Lay, CCIT Technical Learning Instructor; Eugene Ellenberg, Center for Visual Arts-Greenville Coordinator; Meredith Mims McTigue, CVA/Art Department Marketing and Public Relations Director; and Nathan Newsome, CVA-Lee Gallery Intern.

Admission is free to the exhibition and reception.  The exhibition can be viewed in the Center for Visual Arts-Greenville located in the Village of West Greenville 1 p.m to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and First Fridays 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. The reception is Friday, December 06, 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.clemsonprocessthis.com or follow on Twitter @cuprocessthis.

About The Center for Visual Arts
The Center for Visual Arts (CVA) in Lee Hall at Clemson University is where students, visitors and scholars explore contemporary perspectives in art and culture through research, outreach programming and studio practice. With a mission to engage and render visible the creative process, the CVA is a dynamic intellectual and physical environment where art is created, exhibited and interpreted. It educates through academic research and practice with art at its core, drawing upon varied disciplines to examine critically cultural issues and artistic concerns.

The Center for Visual Arts-Greenville is a satellite of the Center for Visual Arts at Clemson University, which serves as the umbrella for all visual art activities at the university. Though there is not a physical building for this center, the majority of the activities for the Center of Visual Arts are generated out of Lee Hall on the Clemson University campus.

Press Contact:

Meredith Mims McTigue

Phone: 864-656-3883

Email: mmims@clemson.edu

Center for the Visual Arts – Greenville

Location: 1278 Pendleton St, Greenville, SC 29611

CVA-Greenville Website: www.clemson.edu/cva/cva-greenville

Hours: Thursday–Saturday, 1:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. and First Fridays: 1:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.

Admission: Free

CLEMSON – Clemson University’s Center for Visual Arts has expanded its scope regionally as a result of a $100,000 commitment from the Community Foundation of Greenville.

“We are proud that our partnership with Clemson University supports a growing creative community and will increase the economic development for the surrounding neighborhoods,” said Bob Morris, president of the Community Foundation of Greenville, S.C.

This generous gift gives life to Clemson University’s Center for Visual Arts vision to have presence in Greenville. The grant is partnered with a lease for a facility currently located in the Village of West Greenville along Pendleton Street in downtown Greenville. The new Center for Visual Arts – Greenville satellite facility creates a dynamic, hands-on, “real world” space where students, faculty and alumni are directly involved with art historians, artists, critics and curators in developing, curating, installing, exhibiting, documenting and interpreting the best contemporary art happenings of today.

Clemson always has long enjoyed visual arts presence through its students, faculty and alumni throughout the state of South Carolina, but in the past decade, that presence has grown exponentially in Greenville. First graduate of the Masters of Fine Arts at Clemson University, Jeanet Steckler Dreskin, M ‘73 is an influential local Greenville artist. Her art has been collected by major museums including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and can be seen in the Greenville Museum of Art. Throughout the city, former Clemson art department chair and faculty emeritus, John Acorn’s public art is celebrated in downtown Greenville. His public art sculptures are featured in the City of Greenville’s public art tour.

Clemson University’s focus on the arts began with its founder, Thomas Green Clemson.  A known painter and collector of contemporary artwork of his time, he is noted as saying in a speech in 1859 that “art is the magic bond that unites all nations.” Today, this legacy is continued by Clemson President James F. Barker. In dedicating the CVA – Greenville facility, he addressed Clemson’s importance relationship with the arts, “The arts are a very important part, not only of what we see of our history, but also of our future.”

Not long after President James F. Barker took office, he called Greenville Clemson’s “home city,” which has never been more true than today. More than 13,000 alumni, 2,500 current on-campus students and 500 University employees call Greenville home.

The CVA-Greenville is just one example of the ways in which Clemson University strives to partner with the region, and provides visual arts in the area. The presence of this facility provides continued benefit for the citizens of Greenville, and the environs, and allows students and other community members to enjoy, embrace, and grow in the art generated by the area. The grant from the Community Foundation of Greenville supports programming for the CVA – Greenville for the west Greenville and downtown community.

The Center for Visual Arts
The Center for Visual Arts (CVA) in Lee Hall at Clemson University is where students, visitors and scholars explore contemporary perspectives in art and culture through research, outreach programming and studio practice. With a mission to engage and render visible the creative process, the CVA is a dynamic intellectual and physical environment where art is created, exhibited and interpreted. It educates through academic research and practice with art at its core, drawing upon varied disciplines to examine critically cultural issues and artistic concerns.

The Center for Visual Arts – Greenville is a satellite of the Center for Visual Arts at Clemson University, which serves as the umbrella for all visual art activities at the university. Though there is not a physical building for this center, the majority of the activities for the Center of Visual Arts are generated out of Lee Hall on the Clemson University campus.

For more information regarding the Center for Visual Arts, visit

Contacts

Meredith Mims McTigue – Media Contact, 864-656-3883, mmims@clemson.edu

Greg Shelnutt – Center for Visual Arts Contact, 864-656-3880, gshelnu@clemson.edu

by Jackie Kuntz Published in The Tiger Newspaper

“Move a little bit to the left and turn more towards me…and then hold your hand… yes!”

I walked four paces across the lacquered gallery floor and assumed the new pose as Elizabeth Snipes began her quick gestured mark making, hand dancing zealously across the cream colored paper she sat atop.

I was told to write an article on the new Center for Visual Arts gallery space in Greenville and the alumni show that would premier it. I drove in on Friday to the West Village Art district to take a look at the show just to be invited back the next day; Elizabeth Snipes needed a model for another piece she was adding to her showcase. I could not pass up an opportunity to engage in such dialogue with one of the featured artists and to spend more time with the work I would report on. What I got to witness and take part in on my trip back was wildly edifying.

The title and mantra of Clemson’s Art exhibit “Sourcing New Mentors,” suites the group of artists, all Clemson M.F.A. graduates who were at some point instructors and assistant professors for foundation studio classes.  This show consists of collages and installations by Marty Epp-Carter, paintings and drawing by Michael Marks, video and photography by Zane Logan, and mixed media drawings by Elizabeth Snipes. Theprogram coordinator, Eugene Ellenberg, also a Clemson Graduate, knows the various relationships among the body of work best, finding similarities in the “intersections of individual and societal engagement with natural arenas and or spiritual consequences.”

Given the space for two months, the artists were invited to continually add to and change the exhibit as the weeks persist.  On day one of my visit, I walked in to see the space lit up with lights and umbrellas for a photo shoot- Zane Logan was buzzing around, rearranging a still life and calculating the correct exposure; I had just missed Michael Marks whose over sized easel and paints were pulled out into the middle of the space, patient for his return. During my return the next day, Elizabeth Snipes responded to the space by recording the movement and negative space relationship of a gallery goer as they moved up and down and across the room, even inches away from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, pastels and acrylics scattered about her.  During this session, Marty Epp-Carter toted in a number of copper pipes which, once she set up camp, proceeded to sand and cut for an installation that would reflect the old building’s history and an interview with the original owner, which she listened to ardently with headphones as she labored away.  The artists were obviously excited about the freedom this kind of  transitory show embodied-morphing and developing as they each meditated on the space’s characteristics, history, and creative potential, toying with this muse and running with these inspirations.  Ellenberg described the success this invitation  has to offer, “their creative research overlaps investigations of past and present human and environmental experiences.”

Logan’s photographic work embodies artistic exploration.  From the documentation of the subtle sounds of nature to the captured thicket of forested landscape, the viewer is compelled to watch reverently silent as the creek trickles by, giving way to the artist’s slow crawling ripples as he wades through.  It is a wise saying, “you never step in the same river twice,” and once should visit Logan’s work as such.

For Epp-Carter, no material is left unchallenged: graph paper, textured rubbings, wood cuts prints, ink blots, cut outs, and colored pencil- he collage’s peculiarities own their propensity to intrigue.  The written captions under the works confound, construe, and yet still further expound the conceptual potential of the pieces, which are layered with imagery.

Marks has a true hand of an old master: the flawless blending of paint and rendered cracked surfaces emanate the quality of 14^th century frescos.  What looks like the work of Cimabue or Giotto undeniably stakes its claim on the contemporary front with its evocative and unsettling imagery.  Mark seems to have two lines of work displayed in the gallery. One visually references the biologically absurd- figures or perhaps macro views of body parts, wrapped and writhing, struggle to find anatomical context.  The body of work that seems to circa the pre-renaissance Madonna and Childs or the Victorian portraiture of children are either haunting or sullenly plaintive. Beautifully rendered but without faces, these figures are silences to nothing but muffles yet the cast shadows fall across these voids as if something there was.

Snipes hones in on the figure: it’s movement, its placement within a space, and its contemporary relevance in art despite its roots in art historical traditionalism.  What she calls “personal territories” is dynamic- competing place of vivid colors join or project from the irrepressibly ebullient contours that animate the subject drawn; each movement, gesture, shift and thought are recorded. Every mannerism and personality of line is employed as the final product heralds the artist’s gestural sketched style.

The exhibit’s reception will take place on November 1^st during Greenville’s First Friday art walk, a monthly event for which over 25 galleries and artist studios in downtown Grenville open their doors to the public for a night of music, food, and culture.

#Clemson‘s presence in #Greenville is forever growing and we are certainly making our mark all over the Upstate. Check out the newest addition…The Clemson Center for Visual Arts-Greenville.

CLICK HERE to view photos from the CVA Friends and Family Reception held this past Thursday, September 26, 2013. 

Check out the CVA-Greenville blog (https://blogs.clemson.edu/cvagreenville) to read the most recent updates on this satellite facility as well as see artists at work and engaging with the community within this space.

Published: August 2, 2013

CLEMSON – Clemson University’s Center for Visual Arts will have a presence in the new Village of West Greenville, located along Pendleton Street in downtown Greenville.

The CVA-Greenville will allow for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and alumni to have hands-on experiences in developing, curating, installing and exhibiting art. The center will engage local, regional, national and international artists and will give Upstate residents an opportunity to both see and “do” art.

“Our presence in Greenville was a natural evolution because we’re already there in so many ways,” said the university’s art department chair, Greg Shelnutt. “The first person to graduate with an M.F.A from our department, Jeanet Dreskin, lives in Greenville and is a very active member of the community. We have a number of other alumni with studios in Greenville, and we have alumni on the faculty at several public and private schools in the area. Clemson is already present in that community, so I see this center as a natural outgrowth of that. It’s a homecoming, to a certain degree.”

Shelnutt said the center is a mutually beneficial partnership for Clemson and Greenville.

“This is a chance to become a part of the fabric of the community. Artists want to give back; we want to share what we do. Artists want to expand upon the cultural heritage of a community, using art to tell the stories of life in that community, ” he said. “We get so much out of our interaction with the public, and this will give our students a chance to jumpstart their art careers.”

Greenville Vice Mayor Pro Tem Lillian Flemming said, “By expanding its Greenville presence to include a visual arts center in the Village of West Greenville, Clemson University is not only complimenting the already vibrant West Greenville area as an arts destination, but also creating a unique opportunity to build connections between the school and local businesses, the creative community and the surrounding neighborhoods. We look forward to having Clemson as a community partner and to the positive impact that the visual arts center will have on this area’s continued rebirth.”

The center’s first exhibit, featuring works from Clemson alumni, will open Thursday, Sept. 5. The exhibit, “Sourcing New Mentors: Clemson Art Alumni Educating the Upstate” will feature artists who are working as educators in the Upstate. During the exhibit, some of the participating artists will further develop works on display to showcase the creative process.

Once the heart of the local textile industry, West Greenville has reinvented itself as an art destination. The Village of West Greenville is home to more than 30 artisans – including potters, sculptors, photographers and painters – as well as local businesses and restaurants.

The Center for Visual Arts-Greenville is a satellite of the Center for Visual Arts at Clemson University, which serves as the umbrella for all visual art activities at the university. Though there is not a physical building for this center, the majority of the activities for the Center of Visual Arts are generated out of Lee Hall on the Clemson University campus.

Click here to read more about this effort and to view a video featuring Art Department Chair, Greg Shelnutt.

Contacts

Greg Shelnutt

gshelnu@clemson.edu

864-656-3881

Meredith Mims McTigue

Media Contact

mmims@clemson.edu

864-656-3883