Tag: Clemson Visual Arts

CLEMSON – The Clemson Community Supported Art (CSArt) program is launching its eighth season. CSArt is a popular initiative that connects the public with Clemson art students while engaging in a unique art-shopping experience. The program is a new spin on the grassroots “Community Supported Agriculture” farm share concept, which provides fresh produce for investors who buy a “share” of a local farmer’s crop each season.

Clemson’s CSArt program aims to create the same market for fresh, handcrafted artwork. With the purchase of one share, the “shareholder” will receive five different limited edition artworks made by a selection of Clemson student artists, in a specially packaged crate. This season includes one ceramic bowl, two ceramic wall hangings – one sculptural form and one tile- as well as two photographs. Each season’s share is juried by a respected professional in the arts, with this Spring 2020 share selected by Elizabeth Goddard, Executive Director of the Spartanburg Art Museum. Ms. Goddard holds an MFA in Art Education with a concentration in contemporary museum practices. She has over 20 years of experience working in the arts education sector of multiple nonprofit organizations, including serving as Director of Education and later as Curator for the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

CSArt plans to sell a total of 15 shares this year, costing $200 per share. The CSArt program was begun through a Creative Inquiry team led by Clemson University’s Valerie Zimany, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Art, who researched with her students the strategies and successes of CSArt programs in galleries, art studios and art centers around the country.

“This initiative provides students with an entrepreneurial learning opportunity –many of our graduates go on to work for institutions, non-profits, galleries and more, and the real-world marketing and administration skills they acquire through participating in CSArt program gives a tangible experience to enhance their studio-based portfolio upon graduation,” Zimany said. “For those students who create the limited edition works for the share, the commission is a vote of confidence in the developing quality of their artwork, and a challenge to meet our enthusiastic shareholder’s expectations at our seasonal pickup event.”

Proceeds from the shares supports student scholarship, and allows students to present Clemson’s CSArt program at national conferences. On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 between 10 a.m.–5 p.m. shareholders can meet the artists and pick up shares during the Spring Ceramics Studio Sale at the CSArt Pick-up in the Lee Gallery hallway, located on the first floor of Lee Hall, 323 Fernow Street. To learn more about Clemson CSArt or become a shareholder-member, please visit www.clemson-csa.org and follow the directions under the heading “Purchase a Share.” To get to know this season’s selected student artists, visit the website for highlights and features of the team, “behind the scenes,” and sneak peeks of the artists’ “works in progress.”

With only 15 shares available for purchase, the community is encouraged to sign up now as shares will go quickly.

“Warhol: Portraits and the Everyday” will open Jan. 22 and continue through March 6, 2019, at Lee Gallery, the primary exhibition space for Clemson Visual Arts (CVA).

The first gallery exhibition of the spring semester at Clemson University will feature original art from one of the most iconic artists of the 20^th century, Andy Warhol.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Jonathan Flatley – the author of “Like Andy Warhol” – will deliver a special presentation about the artist during a guest appearance on Friday, Jan. 25.

“Warhol: Portraits and the Everyday” showcases the artist’s practice through three distinct but related platforms: Polaroid portraits, black and white photographs, and his large, colorful, screen-printed portraits. By bringing these three creative pursuits together in one gallery, viewers will get a snapshot of Warhol’s fluid approach to art and life.

Warhol’s Polaroid portraits of celebrities, couples and individuals were created as resource material for his larger commissioned screen prints. The collection of Polaroids in the exhibition present individuals in repeated but slightly different positions, as directed by Warhol during their photo sessions. When viewed together, the Polaroids reveal subtle changes of expressions by the sitter. They also provide a thought-provoking counterpoint to our current fascination with selfies and the mediated presentations of identity through social media platforms.

“I was most interested in showing Polaroid portraits for what can be discovered by looking closely at the subtle changes taking place within the sitters’ expressions,” said Lee Gallery Director Denise Woodward-Detrich. “In these works, we see Warhol capturing various states of individual transformation through the simple use of repetition. These sittings allowed Warhol to select specific poses, but seen together they provide a portrait of the individual that is more complex than can be captured in one snapshot.”

Warhol’s black and white photographs function as a documentation of the people, places, objects and activities unfolding around him every day. For the viewer, they provide insight into the life of a famous artist, but for Warhol they were a way to collect and record things he liked and might potentially use later as a resource.

Photographs in the exhibition are on loan from the University of South Carolina-Upstate and East Tennessee State University. Both universities were granted original Warhol photographs for viewing and study as part of the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, organized by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Legacy Program distributed Warhol’s photographic works to colleges and universities across the country to provide greater access to these relatively unknown bodies of work.

Jonathan Flatley’s presentation on his recent book “Like Andy Warhol” will be celebrated with a reception from 5-6 p.m. and with a presentation by Flatley held from 6-7 p.m. in the Lee Hall auditorium (Lee 2-111). Flatley is an associate professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is the author of “Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism” and co-editor of “Pop Out: Queer A follow-up talk will move into the Lee Gallery, where the “Andy Warhol Portraits & The Everyday exhibit is installed.

Flatley’s presentation is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Humanities Hub at Clemson University.

The “Warhol: Portraits and the Everyday” exhibition is open to visitors 9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday through March 6. All events are free and open to the public.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Lee Gallery Director Denise Woodward-Detrich at woodwaw@clemson.edu.

“A Patient Search: Paintings by Tom Dimond” is the newest exhibit in the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts Lobby exhibition space, on view from Jan. 15 through Aug. 2, 2019.

Tom Dimond’s work is highly detailed with hidden meanings, textural interest and layers of abstraction. Through the manipulation of materials, his work conveys familiarity and nostalgia, as well as a state of ambiguity that allows room for viewer interpretation. This collection features large-scale, abstract acrylic paintings, as well as smaller mixed media collages. His thoughtful titles illuminate the inspiration behind each work and pique viewer’s interests.

Dimond’s career has spanned five decades and he has exhibited work all over the country, in both the private and public sector. More than a decade after being named professor emeritus, we are delighted to showcase his work back at Clemson University.

The exhibition will feature paintings from the late 1980s to the present day, and demonstrate the artist’s development in style from flat, hard-edged shapes to more atmospheric spaces and textured surfaces.

Dimond explained the development of his style in this way:

1970s and 1980s

These decades were typified by compositions based on the manipulation of circular forms on a grid, initially black and white and eventually employing primary and secondary colors. As the paintings moved from paper to canvas, the forms took on the contours of the exterior edges, resulting in shaped and hard-edged paintings. These colorful abstract works were composed of a grid of nine interlocking circles unified by connecting lines, and were accompanied by a series of silkscreen prints.

The grid later expanded to include 77 circles employing radial symmetry as a compositional device. More complex variations followed in watercolor and silkscreen, which were related to the Pattern and Decoration movement.

1980s and 1990s

After artist retreats at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and the Vermont Studio Center, Dimond’s exploration of circles on a grid progressed. He revisited the theme of nine circles on a grid, alternating between watercolor and acrylic paintings. Making references to the natural environment and social interactions, the paintings moved from flat, hard-edged shapes to more atmospheric spaces and textured surfaces. Loose, incidental lines beneath the surface interacted with the geometric shapes, produced more complex shapes.

Early 2000s

Dimond returned to the large canvas format with a series of paintings that incorporated the older nine-circle theme and a new form. On a trip to Venice, Italy, he became fascinated by a marble tile pattern designed by the 15^th century Florentine painter Paolo Uccello on the floor of San Marco Basilica in Venice – the stellated dodecahedron. Combining this form with the nine-circle mandala type composition provided further study into the theme of ambiguity of spatial tensions. His titles reference the music he listened to while painting, from a group in Sweden called Hedningarna.

2010s

Dimond’s most recent series moved away from imagery and techniques of the tile works. It combines gestural watercolor painting with monoprints made on Japanese paper collaged to the surface. The first of these works mimicked earthen walls and were named after the sites of prehistoric cave paintings. Later iterations returned to complex layered surfaces with scans, distressed surfaces and collaged comic book imagery. He said these works are at once autobiographical in chronicling his visual influences, but also an amalgam of 50 years of techniques and studio practices.

Dimond served as the Lee Gallery director from 1973 to 1988 and as a professor for the Department of Art from 1979 to 2006. In 2006, he was named professor emeritus. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Mass. and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn.

The exhibition will be on view to the public in the lobby of the Brooks Center for Performing Arts at Clemson University from 1–5 p.m. Monday to Friday, Jan. 15–Aug. 2, 2019. An artist talk and reception will be held from 5:30-7 p.m. on Friday, March 1.

For more information on Brooks Center exhibitions, contact Susan Sorohan at sorohan@clemson.edu.