Saul Alexander Gallery in the Charleston County Public Library

FEBRUARY 2016–JANUARY 2017

Exhibition Schedule

The Saul Alexander Foundation Gallery of the Charleston County Public Library provides space for juried art exhibitions, solo or group, at the Main Library, 68 Calhoun Street, Charleston, SC 29401. Preference is given to work reflecting experiences and viewpoints of South Carolina residents. Submissions to exhibit will only be accepted during September 2016. The works of each selected artist or group will be exhibited for one month, beginning in February 2017. Applications, which must be included with an artist’s submission, are available online at our website, www.ccpl.org, or by calling 843-805-6840.

Portrait of Saul Alexander, a Jewish immigrant and successful

businessman who left his fortune for the religious, educational,

and cultural needs of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Gallery Procedures The Charleston County Public Library offers an opportunity to South Carolina artists and craftsmen who have been selected by a jury of local art professionals to present their work to the public. With the exhibition space serving as an avenue for the respectful exchange of artistic and conceptual ideas within a diverse constituency, these exhibitions should reflect the varied experiences and viewpoints of the people of South Carolina. The Charleston County Public Library Gallery Committee selects artists and craftsmen for inclusion in the exhibition schedule on the basis of the quality of their work and suitability for the space.

Submission Guidelines

Artists must submit a current resume and eight to twelve examples of their work in the form of photographs, CDs, or other electronic media appropriate for display to the Charleston County Public Library Gallery Committee. We recommend visiting the space prior to submission to determine the suitability of the space for your work. Examples submitted must be representative of the work intended for display and appropriately labeled with the artist’s name and the work’s title, medium, and size. Artists must be at least eighteen years old to be considered by the Gallery Committee. The work should not have been previously exhibited at the library. Preference will be given to newly created works. After the Charleston County Public Library Gallery Committee has met to select those artists who will display their work in the following year, those selected will be notified and assigned their exhibition month. The director of the library has final approval for all exhibitions.

Schedule of Exhibitions

- 2016 -

- 2017-

February Andrew King Defiance in Reality

March Chad Myers Williams Tragedy and Triumph

April Ryan Siegmann Over Ice

May Joanna Biondolillo A Visit to Cuba

June That Godzilla Guy Strange Beasts

July Deane Valentine Bowers Creative Reuse Charleston

August Katherine M. Houghton We See, Therefore, We Love

September Helen K. Beacham Charleston: My Adopted Home

October Lillian Trettin The Dark Edge: An Exhibit of Art Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

November Stuart L. Tessler Those Around Us

December Ryoko Chiba-Miller Dance of Circles

January Kelly Bozarth Dog (and a Pony) Show

- February -

Andrew King

Defiance in Reality

Andrew King was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and raised in five states along the East Coast. In May 2015, King graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in studio art from the College of Charleston, where he focused on photography. King explores the surreal and abstract with his photography, ultimately challenging the medium’s history of representational imagery. Drawing influence from photographers Man Ray and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, as well as painters Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francis Bacon, King obscures the line between reality and the surreal, between truth and fiction.

Defiance in Reality features images from King’s series Editorials and Abstract Portraits. These photographic prints explore King’s fascination with the individual’s identity in the surreal landscape of contemporary culture.

- March -

Chad Myers Williams

Tragedy and Triumph

On the April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist insurgency, took power in Cambodia. Over the next four years, it instituted one of the most brutal and oppressive communist regimes in history. Families were split apart, dissidents hunted down, and the entire country put to work. With little food or healthcare, combined with a perpetual witch hunt for perceived traitors, an estimated two million people were killed under the Khmer Rouge’s watch, almost a quarter of the population.

Barely forty years later, the wounds still cut deep throughout Cambodian society. Through portraits and interviews of survivors throughout Cambodia, Tragedy and Triumph attempts to lend credence to their stories and suggests that there is more to Cambodia’s recent history than just tragedy.

Sedtha Long, a survivor who has been able to use his horrific experience for good, originally inspired this project. In the years since the Khmer Rouge fell from power, Sedtha has dedicated himself to rebuilding what it destroyed. He today heads his own NGO, the Build Your Future Today Center (BFT), which focuses on childhood education and community development. It is his persevering and compassionate spirit that drove this project from the beginning. Any money made through the project goes back to funding the schools, roads, and wells that he is building in Cambodia.

- APRIL -

Ryan Siegmann

Over Ice

I am drawn to “third spaces”: gathering places that anchor community life. I make acrylic and digital paintings and sculptures immersed in third spaces, where I spend much of my time. I create both on site and from memory. Third spaces are rich in potential mundane interactions, which seep into my work.

To me, both the library and Starbucks function as third spaces. Starbucks Corporation actively pursues this role globally through branding, interior design, and customer service. In contrast, the library seems to emerge organically as a social oasis for those who need it, nurtured by caring staff and regulars.

Third spaces are essential for innovation, support, and civic engagement. Engineers in Shenzhen, China, share designs while hanging out in bars, leading to inventions. For many American women, hair salons have become third spaces safe enough to disclose domestic abuse and seek solutions. The artist Ai Weiwei uses restaurants to stage peaceful protests and connect with his cohort. The writer Rebecca Solnit notes the importance of coming together to create change: “You need to be together in body, for only then are you truly the public with the full power that a public can possess.” Empathy, generosity, and strength are powers I hope we access when congregating. Third spaces are potent places for me to create and vital to our breathing democracy.

- MAY -

Joanna Biondolillo

A Visit to Cuba

Take a walk through the streets of Cuba—the Cuba that the Castro brothers do not want you to see. Cuba is both a country of architectural and natural beauty and a country in ruins. It is a country of the weary and a country of warm, engaging people. It is a place where tastes and music heighten the senses, while crumbling buildings and thin faces inspire great sadness. This photo documentary shares the story of the Cuban people through the intimate portraits taken by travel photographer Joanna Biondolillo just before the United States established normalized relations with Cuba. It shares the truth about life in Cuba today.

Biondolillo resides on Johns Island and has been a travel and landscape photographer for more than twenty years. She is currently the president of the Folly Beach Arts and Crafts Guild. More of her work can be seen at imagemerchants.com.

- JUNE -

That Godzilla Guy

Strange Beasts

Godzillafications are more than just monster toys digitally slapped onto pre-existing art. The genre involves transforming art in ways that have never been done or seen before. Digital photography and Photoshop are tools just like acrylic paint, carving knives, and sculpting clay. In my art, I take sixty-plus

years of kaijū (怪獣) (a Japanese word, meaning “strange beast”) history and bring to it the thunderous footsteps of ecological and nuclear horror, or fill the air with the roar of parody and satire. The art of Godzillafication is to get the monsters to go against their nature and blend with their medium, instead of standing out.

The folly of man is to see this art as lowbrow or unsophisticated. If one gets past such preconceived notions, Godzillafications will speak to the viewer in a resounding voice. They may never hang in the great galleries of the world, but they do inspire present and future artists to speak with their own voice and teach them not to be afraid to take chances, to leave their artistic footprint.

If it were not for Godzillafications, I would never have met my wife, and we would never have had a son. That alone is the impact of my art.

- JULY -

Deane Valentine Bowers

Creative Reuse Charleston

As a self-taught environmental folk artist, my creative process is guided by two principles: First, I produce art that makes people happy. Second, I strive to be an environmentally conscientious artist whose work has a positive impact on the environment and celebrates recycling as an art form. While my eclectic collection includes pieces in mixed-media collage, clay, and paint, it is found object sculptures that bring me the greatest joy. I have sold, displayed, and donated selected pieces to various retail locations, hospitals, and nonprofit organizations throughout the South over the past twenty years.

My passion for collecting and using found objects was born from the idea of culling the streets and beaches to find broken, fragmented, and discarded pieces and transforming them into something cheerful and uplifting. There is an abundance of free, readily available items thrown away, left behind, and discarded on a daily basis. Every nail, screw, bottle cap, and piece of wood, wire, or metal has its own story. Each of my pieces proudly incorporates items that otherwise might end up in a landfill but are given an alternative value and fresh purpose. By creating texturally rich and layered sculptures, I invite the viewer to experience recycling as a creative and visionary endeavor meant to spark joy.

-AUGUST-

Katherine M. Houghton

We See, Therefore, We Love

For many personal and professional reasons, I have come to appreciate that—as a woman, daughter and sister, photographer, and researcher—I am called to visually depict and seek understanding of the lived experiences of the women and children whom I encounter during my travels around the world. Oftentimes, I sense that they are giving me the photograph rather than me taking the shot. During this exchange, I acquire an awareness of background and foreground experiences, and comprehend the significance of the images that illustrate a story. As I become less of a stranger in a foreign land, it is as if the camera becomes part of my conversations, views, and photographs, providing me with the ability to connect and communicate with others and myself in ways I had not imagined. Through this journey, I am seeking to acknowledge historical, societal, economic, cultural, and political conditions that may explain my experiences and images.

The purpose of my photography is not to impose my worldview, but rather to expose others to multiple views and layers of the lives of women and children around the world. Therefore, there is no one correct way to view these images. Instead, the images create connections—both realistic and symbolic—between the viewer and the photograph, a dynamic exchange of visions, thoughts, and worldviews.

-SEPTEMBER-

Helen K. Beacham

Charleston: My Adopted Home

I grew up in Canada, without formal art in my very young life (though we had a few religious prints on the walls and some very pretty velvet embroidered pillows on the couch). But around age eleven, my dad took me and my siblings to meet one of his friends, who turned out to be a sixty-year-old block printer. When I walked into his “studio,” I was blown away by the art in front of me.

Sketching became my fast friend, until, at age twenty-eight, I took a watercolor class. I fell madly in love with the medium, and it is still my medium of choice.

I moved to Charleston ten years ago and similarly fell head over heels in love with this city. My show, Charleston: My Adopted Home, is a collection of paintings depicting snippets of Lowcountry life. For more information, visit www.HelenKBeacham.com.

-OCTOBER-

Lillian Trettin

The Dark Edge: An Exhibit of Art Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Some categorize Edgar Allan Poe as a horror writer, but I think of him as a distinctly, if gloomily, Southern writer. Thus, an exhibit inspired by Poe’s short stories, particularly those with Southern settings, is a timely fit for this gallery as Halloween approaches. Since I have been experimenting with black Tyvek as a medium for my art, I was inspired to name this exhibition The Dark Edge.

These paper cuts were inspired by stories like “The Gold Bug” and “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” set in places like Sullivan’s Island and the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. These stories refer to biographical aspects of Poe’s troubled young adulthood and incorporate elements of the uncanny (rather than the horrific), while reflecting topics the mature Poe found interesting, such as spiritualism, medical science, cryptography, and urban crime.

All of the images are hand drawn and cut from sheets of Tyvek, a synthetic product that is excellent for making intricate cuts. I cut each of the images by hand from a single sheet and used no glue or tape. I sometimes added acrylic inks and metallic spray paint, but I prefer to work in black, the traditional color of the silhouettes popularly produced during Poe’s lifetime. Along with two-dimensional works, the exhibition includes masks and a surprise or two to fit the seasonal mood.

-NOVEMBER-

Stuart L. Tessler

Those Around Us

The creation of figurative sculpture compels a level of observation that would otherwise be superficial. Whether realistic or fanciful, molding clay or carving wood brings “those around us” into a brighter light and thus gives us a heightened understanding and appreciation of the conditions in which we live. South Carolina, and of course Charleston, has a diverse population. The variability in people’s physical characteristics is readily apparent. More subtle and often hidden variances present themselves in many ways, however. The differences may result from experience or genetics, and they may be temporary or permanent, inconsequential or significant. How we perceive these differences too frequently causes us to turn away or fail to accept the reality of circumstances foreign to our own lives.

I try to bring into focus the faces, experiences, joy, and pain of the people I meet or merely observe. My interpretation may enhance their appearance, exaggerate a feature, or occasionally, even attempt to present a real likeness. I have also used sculpture as a vehicle to express my displeasure over the action or inaction of our leaders, and to view the pain associated with mental health issues from depression to dementia. Several of these pieces feature couples, reflecting the comfort of meaningful relationships, and some are simply fanciful caricatures, emphasizing form over message.

-DECEMBER-

Ryoko Chiba-Miller

Dance of Circles

Since her childhood, Ryoko has returned again and again to her first love: mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit word that refers to the “circles of life.” Mandalas symbolize unity and harmony in life, and they are employed to enhance meditation. Visually appealing geometric shapes and colors calm the circuitry of the left brain, while activating the creative side of the right brain. The presence of a mandala in a room immediately promotes a flow of positive and peaceful energy.

Each mandala is created on a special black paper produced in Italy. Black contains all colors and represents the universe. In the darkness of the black paper is hiding the nature of light. Through prayer and meditation, Ryoko sees geometric patterns of light come though the paper in combinations of dots, lines, and color. Each mandala is unique, and each has its own essence of light and love.

Charleston is known as the Holy City. It is also a city of light where people gather and celebrate peace and love for one another. Ryoko taps into this light and weaves it into her mandalas.

-JANUARY 2017-

Kelly Bozarth Dog (and a Pony) Show

Dog (and a Pony) Show is a series of works on canvas and panel by Southern native Kelly Bozarth. Bozarth received her Bachelor of Arts in art from Georgia State University and her Master of Arts in art history from the University of Memphis. She moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in March 2014, and is a graphic designer with The History Workshop.

Bozarth began painting “dogs wearing clothes” shortly after adopting her Catahoula-German Shepherd mix from the Atlanta Humane Society in 2012. She explained, “My own dog, Jack, has such a range of personalities. . . . I just imagined that if he could, he’d wear sports coats with elbow patches during the week, and Bermuda shirts and board shorts on the weekend.” Her paintings are sought after by pet lovers, who commission Bozarth to create works featuring dogs and cats costumed in outfits that reflect their owners’ interests and heritage.

Dog (and a Pony) Show is a playful look at the personalities of man’s best friend that will appeal to audiences of all ages. More than just creating silly or absurdist portraits, the artist seeks to incorporate layers of detail into her works. Each painting tells a different story, whether it is of a pair of German Shorthaired Pointer sisters or a seafaring Boston Terrier with a bad attitude.

Charleston County Public Library Service Hours

Main: 68 Calhoun St. 29401 · (843) 805-6930 Mon.–Thurs. 9–8; Fri.–Sat. 9–6; Sun. 2–5

Cooper River: 3503 Rivers Ave. 29405 · (843) 744-2489

Mon.–Thu. 10-8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

John L. Dart: 1067 King St. 29403 · (843) 722-7550 Mon.–Sat. 10–6

Dorchester Road: 6325 Dorchester Rd. 29418 · (843) 552-6466

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

Edisto: 1589 Hwy. 174 29438 · (843) 869-2355

Mon. 10–6; Tues. 2–6; Thurs. 2–8; Fri. 2–6; Sat. 10–2

Folly Beach: 55 Center St. 29439 · (843) 588-2001

Mon./Fri. 10–6; Wed. 12–8; 2nd Sat. of month 10–2

James Island: 1248 Camp Rd. 29412 · (843) 795-6679

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

John’s Island: 3531 Maybank Hwy. 29455 · (843) 559-1945

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

McClellanville: 222 Baker St. 29458 · (843) 887-3699 Mon. 2–6; Tues./Thurs.–Fri. 9:30–1 & 2–6; Sat. 9:30–2

Mt. Pleasant: 1133 Mathis Ferry Rd. 29464 · (843) 849-6161

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

Otranto Road: 2261 Otranto Rd. 29406 · (843) 572-4094

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.-Sat. 10–6

Poe/Sullivan’s Island: 1921 I’on Ave. 29482 · (843) 883-3914

Mon./Fri. 10–6; Tues./Sat. 10–2; Thurs. 2–8

Hurd/St. Andrew’s: 1735 N Woodmere Dr. 29407 · (843) 766-2546

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri.–Sat. 10–6

St. Paul’s: 5151 Town Council Dr. 29449 · (843) 889-3300

Mon./Tues./Fri. 10–6; Thurs. 12–8; Sat. 10–2

Village: 430 Whilden St. 29464 · (843) 884-9741

Mon./Tues./Fri. 10–6; Thurs. 12–8; Sat 10–2

West Ashley: 45 Windermere Blvd. 29407 · (843) 766-6635

Mon.–Thurs. 10–8; Fri./Sat. 10–6