SC - Carolina Arts

Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston,SC, Presents Exhibition Focusedon Women Artist and PhotographyThe Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston,SC, is presenting two new exhibitsincluding: Breaking Down Barriers: 300Years of Women in Art and Camera Works:Masters in Photography, both on viewthrough Jan. 8, 2012.Breaking Down Barriers: 300 Yearsof Women in Art, on view in the MainGallery, will examine the challenges facedby women artists over the past 300 years.Camera Works: Masters in Photography,on view in the Rotunda Galleries, featurestwentieth-century masters of photographyselected from the Gibbes permanent collectionand local private collections.“These exhibitions demonstrate thewide-ranging and versatile aspects of themuseum’s 150-year-old collection,” statedAngela D. Mack, Executive Director.Henriette Charlotte Chastaigner (Mrs. NathanielBroughton), 1711, by Henrietta de Beaulieu DeringJohnston (ca. 1674 – 1729). Pastel on paper, 142/5 x 11 3/5 inches. Gift of Victor A. Morawetz.Image courtesy Gibbes Museum of Art.Drawn from the museum’s permanentcollection, Breaking Down Barriers: 300Years of Women in Art highlights a numberof extraordinary women working ina variety of media and artistic styles. Theexhibition pays tribute to those womenwho defied convention and paved the wayfor women to achieve success as professionalartists.In the 1700s, women faced considerableobstacles to becoming professionalartists, primarily caused by social pressuresand the lack of access to formalartistic training. Henrietta Johnston movedto Charleston (then known as CharlesTown) in 1708 when the Church ofEngland’s Society for the Propagation ofthe Gospel in Foreign Parts appointed herhusband, Gideon Johnston, Commissaryfor South Carolina. The Johnston familyfaced considerable financial hardshipsupon arriving in Charleston, and to helpsupport her family, Henrietta created andsold pastel portraits. Henrietta Johnston isconsidered to be the first female professionalartist in America and the GibbesMuseum of Art houses the largest publiccollection of her work. Five (5) pastel portraitsby Henrietta Johnston are includedin the exhibition.Designs, Wrightsville Beach, 1968, by Minnie Evans(American, 1892-1987) Collage with oil, crayon,and pencil on canvas, 22 ¼ x 26 3/8 inches.Museum purchase with funds provided by theNational Endowment for the Arts Living ArtistFund. Image courtesy Gibbes Museum of Art.Women artists from the CharlestonRenaissance period are also well repre-sented in the exhibition. During this periodof time between the two World Wars,Charleston experienced a resurgence in allaspects of cultural life including literature,music, historic preservation, andthe visual arts. Among the leaders of theCharleston Renaissance were artists AliceRavenel Huger Smith, Elizabeth O’NeillVerner, and Anna Heyward Taylor, all ofwhom created numerous works depictingthe historic architecture and beautifullandscape of Charleston and the surroundingLowcounty region.The exhibition also recognizes theimpressive cadre of female artists workingin the region today from sweetgrassbasket maker Mary Jackson to classicallytrained, realist painter, Jill Hooper,Breaking Down Barriers: 300 Years ofWomen in Art honors the achievements ofpast generations while acknowledging thecreativity of professional female artistsworking in the 21st century.Breaking Down Barriers: 300 Yearsof Women in Art is sponsored by Blue-Cross BlueShield of South Carolina, TheWomen’s Council of the Carolina Art Association,and Where magazine.In the early 20th century, New Yorkbasedartist and gallerist Alfred Stieglitzlaunched a photo journal, Camera Work,to promote the then-novel idea that photographycould be an art form rather thansimply a documentary medium or a lessersubstitute for painting. The exhibitionCamera Works: Masters in Photographyfeatures images captured by Stieglitzand his collaborator Clarence White, aswell as Berenice Abbott, Alfred Eisenstaedt,Margaret Bourke-White, and otherrenowned 20th century American artistswho embraced and explored the creativepossibilities of early photography.Sailing Ship, New Year’s Greetings, 1934, byMargaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971),Gelatin silver print on postcard. Gift of Mr. RobertW. Marks. Image courtesy Gibbes Museumof Art.Through careful composition, post-productionmanipulation, shedding light onnew subjects, revealing the beauty of theeveryday, or capturing striking patternsin unexpected places, the artists in thisearly circle of innovators pioneered stylesand techniques that bravely exposed thepotential of their chosen medium. Thesephotographers figured out how to make acamera work.Writer Robert Marks, a Charlestonnative, collected works of this era anddonated many of these pieces to the Gibbesin the 1970s. Much like Stieglitz’sinitial push to move photography beyondthe traditional, this donation expandedthe Gibbes’ photograph collection beyondhistorical portraits, adding true art shotsand catalyzing the museum’s enthusiasmfor collecting photography. CameraWorks: Masters in Photography showcasesmany of the photographs that Marksand others gave to the museum, as well asphotographs of the period borrowed fromcontinued above on next column to the rightTable of Contentsprivate collectors.Camera Works: Masters in Photographyis sponsored by Charleston Gatewaymagazine.The Gibbes is offering many relatedprograms in conjunction with these twoexhibits. Contact the Museum for furtherinformation.Established as the Carolina Art Associationin 1858, the Gibbes Museum ofArt opened its doors to the public in 1905.Located in Charleston’s historic district,the Gibbes houses a premier collection ofThe College of Charleston will presentthe exhibit, From the Moon: Mapping &Exploration, on view at the new Sciencesand Mathematics Building, 2nd floor, inCharleston, SC, on view from Nov. 14through Mar. 3, 2012. A reception will beheld on Nov. 12, from 7-9pm. The Collegewill also present Moon Fest on Saturday,Nov. 12, from 11am – 2pm. A lecture willbe given by Dr. Carle Pieters, on Saturday,Nov. 12, at 4pm.From the Moon: Mapping & Explorationaddresses our visual perceptions ofthe Moon, from Earth and from space,and demonstrates how advances in opticaltechnologies have increased our understandingover time. This is an exhibitionexploring our relationship to the Moonthrough the lens of the sciences. FromGalileo’s first observations to today’spowerful telescopes, this exhibition willinclude a broad range of man’s attempts atmapping and understanding lunar history.A key component will be NASA’s documentationof the Apollo lunar landingsas well as current research and missions.The centerpiece of the exhibition will be aMoon rock collected during the Apollo 15mission from June to August 1971.Co-curators Roger Manley and MarkSloan have traveled throughout NorthAmerica and Europe gathering materialsfor the exhibition from some of theworld’s oldest and most prestigiousobservatories. Some of these objects,maps and images have never before beenexhibited. The exhibition’s Lunar ScienceConsultant is Dr. Cassandra Runyon,Professor of Planetary Geology at the Collegeof Charleston. The Halsey Institute ofContemporary Art in partnership with theover 10,000 works, principally Americanwith a Charleston or Southern connection,and presents special exhibitions throughoutthe year. In addition, the museumoffers an extensive complement of publicprogramming and educational outreachinitiatives that serve the community bystimulating creative expression and improvingthe region’s superb quality of life.For further information check our SCInstitutional Gallery listings, call the Museumat 843/722-2706 or visit(www.gibbesmuseum.org).College of Charleston OffersExhibition Focused on the MoonCollege of Charleston School of Sciencesand Mathematics and the Special CollectionsDepartment of the Marlene andNathan Addlestone Library will presentthis exhibition with funding from NASAand the National Lunar Science Institute.Moon Fest activities will be led by Dr.Cassandra Runyon; Cyndi Hall, ProgramDirector for the South Carolina SpaceGrant Consortium; and Elizabeth Joyner,Site Director for the South Carolina MaritimeFoundation and Sanders Clyde Elementary/MiddleSchool. Tours of the exhibitionwill be available. The exhibitionwill be housed at the College of Charleston’sNew Science Center Building and atthe Special Collections Department of theMarlene and Nathan Addlestone Library,3rd Floor, 205 Calhoun Street.Professor Carle Pieters has been afaculty member at Brown University since1980, after having worked several yearsat the Johnson Space Center in Houstonand as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sarawak.Her general research efforts includeplanetary exploration and evolution ofplanetary surfaces with an emphasis onremote compositional analyses. Dr. Pietersis the Science Manager of the NASA/Keck Reflectance Experiment Laboratory(RELAB), a NASA-supported spectroscopyfacility at Brown that operates from 0.3to 25 mm. She is Principal Investigator forNASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)experiment that was launched to the Moonin early 2008 and is Co-Investigator onDawn, a mission to explore the asteroidsVesta and Ceres.For further information visit (moon.cofc.edu).City of North Charleston GalleryFeatures Works by Juie Rattley IIIThe City of North Charleston’s CulturalArts Department will present the exhibit,New Faces and Places, featuring works byNorth Carolina artist Juie Rattley III, onview at the North Charleston City Gallery,located in the Charleston Area ConventionCenter in North Charleston, SC, from Nov.1-30, 2011.Work by Juie Rattley IIIIn this exhibition Rattley presents oilpaintings of portraits and landscapes in thetradition of Lucian Freud, Nicolai Fechin,and John Singer Sargent. The exhibition isthe artist’s first in South Carolina and willshowcase up to 20 works, all of which areinspired by his life.“I view my work as a tool to create avisual document to freeze time,” Rattleyexplains. “When I am caught in the momentof painting, I use my hands and my paint asa record of my life.” This concept is particularlyevident in his series of self-portraits.Hatched from the pain of losing his bestfriend, Curtis DeAngelo “DD” Lennon,during an apparent home invasion in 2007,Rattley believes the portraits have becomehis way of coping. “I have always felt thatif I created paintings about my life, I wouldstay true to myself as a painter and wouldalways have something to paint about,” hesays.Rattley was born in Lumberton, NC,and raised in a small community outside ofWhiteville, NC. He received a BFA at theUniversity of North Carolina at Pembrokeand an MFA from the University of NorthCarolina at Greensboro, where he wasawarded the Adelaide Fortune HoldernessFellowship and the Maud Gatewood PaintingScholarship. He has exhibited in venuesthroughout North Carolina and teaches inGuilford County Schools as part of an outreachprogram sponsored by the Green HillCenter for North Carolina Art. He currentlyresides in Kernersville, NC.For further information check our SC InstitutionalGallery listings, call the CulturalArts Department at 843/740-5854 or visit(www.northcharleston.org).The deadline each month to submit articles, photos and ads is the 24th of the monthprior to the next issue. This will be Nov. 24th for the December 2011 issue and Dec. 24 for theJanuary 2012 issue. After that, it’s too late unless your exhibit runs into the next month.Carolina Arts, November 2011 - Page 11