CANDACE THIBEAULT Opens New Show at Jasper Gallery at MOTOR SUPPLY
The Jasper Galleries at Motor Supply Company’s newest show, featuring South Carolina native Candace Cotterman Thibeault, opens this week.
Candace grew up in Gilbert, South Carolina. Her interest in art began at an early age and progressed through high school and into college. Candace graduated from Capital University (Columbus, OH) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, and degrees in Public Relations and Art Therapy. Upon graduating college in 2003, she relocated to Boston, MA, to begin her professional career. She found herself working as a paralegal and a part time gallery assistant.
In 2004, Candace purchased an art gallery and custom frame shop, while continuing her painting career. Candace found herself working on projects with pharmaceutical companies, architectural firms, local universities, and restaurants, where she was responsible for matching interior design with fine art pieces. In 2009, Candace began working on a series of contemporary mixed media paintings that would gain visual recognition. Her work began to show in art galleries and at Universities throughout New England and was featured in several online and hard copy publications. In 2015, Candace relocated to South Carolina with her husband and daughter and has been focusing more attention on her fine art. She spends most of her time teaching and painting from her home studio in Gilbert, SC.
In addition to her fine art endeavors, Candace has spent time working as an artist-in-residence, aiding in creating art curriculum for adolescents in alternative schools. She has worked on independent projects such as the Ohio Bicentennial, jewelry lines featured in Charlotte Magazines 'best gifts' holiday spread and has served as juror for several university art shows in New England.
Candace's work has been featured in Art New England Magazine, Art Scope Magazine (Boston, Ma), and Charlotte Magazine (Charlotte, NC). Her work has been featured at Imago Gallery (Warren, RI), Bristol Art Museum, Bridgewater State University (Bridgewater, MA), Bromfield Gallery (Boston), 701 Whaley (Columbia, SC), Duxbury Art Association, Motor Supply (Columbia, SC), Koger Center for the Arts (Columbia, SC), Anastasia & Friends (Columbia, SC) and Moxie Frame (Hartsville, SC).
The opening reception for Candace’s show will be held at Motor Supply Co. this Friday, March 11th at 6:30pm at the back table of the restaurant.
Jasper Galleries Welcomes Nikolai Oskolkov to Motor Supply Company
Nikolai Oskolkov (NikO) is a painter and musician based in Columbia, SC. He graduated from University of South Carolina in 2006 and has been active in the local art scene for the past 15 years.
A seasoned traveler, NikO chooses subjects that are reflections of personal experiences ranging from Southern landscape and dreamy scenes of Venice to portrait figures and surrealism.
Rich, natural colors in oil invite the viewer to familiar and distant places.
Lately NikO has been exploring the concept of commission artwork and is most eager to engage in a wide range of projects
The show will run until mid-October.
Jasper Project Galleries at Motor Supply Welcomes Trahern Cook aka Easel Cathedral
The artist Trahern Cook - photo by Perry McLeod
Trahern Cook was born in 1970 in Columbia, SC and has been drawing and painting and telling stories his entire life. In 1987 he attended The SC Governors School for the Arts as a visual artist and in 1992 he graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design with a focus on Illustration. He married his wife Lori in 1994 and they moved to Murfreesboro, TN where their two children were born n the late 1990s. Cook worked as a Full time Freelance illustrator from 1993 to the early 2000s and ,in 2006, the family moved back to Columbia, SC. There, Cook took the easel outside and has been painting all over the southeast and abroad ever since.
His work shows in private galleries, homes and work spaces throughout the country.
Cook has coined himself a “Jam Painter” given that so much of his subject matter is musicians of every genre playing everywhere from small taverns to large outdoor festivals. In those moments he explores brush strokes and colors matching the rhythm of the sounds being played.
As a “Live Painter” of events and weddings, Cook creates visual stories of his surroundings in his own unique painterly style, marrying a free folk recklessness with a trained and practiced deliberateness. This performance shares the space with everyone in attendance, enhancing the moment and using the the created vibe to inform the painting itself.
And then there’s the painter and his easel, going anywhere light falls on the buildings, homes, trails and roads of towns, cities and landscapes.
Cook welcomes anyone around to come hang out by the easel.
“It just paints better,” he says.
Jasper Galleries presents a New Exhibit by Lauren Casassa (nee Chapman) at Motor Supply Co. Bistro
Jasper is privileged to support and promote SC Midlands-area visual artists by adopting gallery spaces around town and installing exhibitions curated by some of the members of the Jasper Project board of directors. Our newest exhibit features the work of Lauren Casassa (nee Chapman) at Motor Supply Co. Bistro, 920 Gervais Street in Columbia, SC’s historic Vista and was curated and installed under the guidance of Laura Garner Hine.
“The Swan Princess and Other Magical Beings” features Casassa’s images of an enchanted forest, most of which were created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the artist, “This exhibition is a combination of thickly textured oil paintings and saturated watercolor pieces. The work is influenced by early Italian frescos, European royal portraits, and more contemporary artists such as Allison Schulnik, Staver Klitgaard, and Jaime Misenheimer. Each piece is detailed with floral arrangements and patterns, some scattered throughout landscapes, others displayed on fabrics of the figures. Throughout this exhibition the figures take on the challenges of growing up and finding independence through the life they choose for themselves, the severity of discovering the depth of confidence within themselves, and the attraction they possess. However, whether through choice or circumstance this newly found independence, confidence, and attraction may manifest itself as a power or a curse.”
When asked if her Swan Princess was a nod to the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan (in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, rapes Leda), Casassa responded, “Yes, but oddly enough I am just connecting those dots now. I saw the swan as a dark creature of comfort in isolation, an attachment of sadness and was thinking more of the ‘swan princess.’ But the symbolism works perfectly with Leda and the swan.”
Casassa continues, “Almost all of this work was made during the pandemic. I spent a large chunk of time working on my mural and then a piece that was too large for this specific show. The little works I have done were mainly happier pieces full of nostalgia and landscapes of places I wanted to go. The watercolors have been more of me experimenting/ trying out new medium as I’ve tired a bit of oil especially during this time in isolation. The swan princess was the last piece I did on oil. It was a quick piece I only worked on for two days and I didn’t really fully understand the meaning until after it was finished.”
In her artist’s statement Casassa writes, “I create immersive environments via vibrant saturated romantic paintings telling short stories, in the forms of fables, folklore, and fairy tales challenging our current cultural climate through the eyes of feminine figures and personified creatures. The narrative of the work promotes lesson from my personal experiences and questions dangerous themes within American society.”
Visit Motor Supply at 920 Gervais Street for a fine meal and artisanal cocktail and to check out this beautiful new collection of work.
CB
Jasper Project Galleries Adds New Location at Motor Supply Company - Curated by Laura Garner Hine
The Jasper Project is pleased to add Motor Supply Company Bistro in Columbia’s historic Vista to our growing list of Jasper Project Galleries, including Harbison Theatre Gallery and the Meridien Building Sreetside Galleries (curated by Bert Easter) at Washington and Sumter Streets in downtown Columbia.
Jasper Project board member and Jasper Magazine visual arts editor Laura Garner Hine will be curating the series for the Jasper Project and is opening the series with a selection of her own work beginning this week.
Below, please find an excerpt from a story featuring Hine written in 2019 for Jasper Magazine by Christina Xan.
Laura Garner Hine
Though many people struggle to decide on a career path, Hine knew she was going to be an artist for as long as she can remember. “It's my strongest sense,” Hine says, “There was never a question, my whole life.”
Hine started seriously studying art as soon as she became cognizant of her choice to commit to it. Upon graduating high school, when she got a scholarship for USC, she knew immediately she was going major in art studio. “I didn't know what I was going to focus on yet,” she recalls, “but eventually it became oil painting. You can make it so many different things.”
Hine is indebted in large part to her mentor, Pam Bowers. She remembers her and Bowers harvesting dirt from which they would make their own paints: “I felt like I was doing alchemy,” she said. This is when she ended up minoring in art history.
After Hine graduated, she studied abroad in the Netherlands. While there, she heard of a conservation course happening in Maastricht, and she decided to go – a decision that would change her life. Hine reflects on her first experience with conservation: “It was the marriage, to me, of all the things that I'd loved: art history, that alchemy, and the science behind art.”
Although this trip was the first time Hine had experienced conservation hands on, she believes she was always meant to conserve art. She remarks that, “I think I'm in the business of seeing. Everybody has the capacity to look, but there's merit and thought behind really seeing. It's kind of a fantastical thing.”
Hine believes her relationship to seeing beyond the surface of an image or object is really what led her to first her path as an artist and then her job as a restorator, a process she is incredibly lucky to be a part of: “It's quite meditative,” she ponders, “I think it transcends you into this moment of this dissolving of perception, and you become one with it.”
The process of conserving and restoring art is a multistep process, and it’s not formulaic. However, there is a system to work through. First, Hine has to do research, find out what the materials are and what they're sensitive to. After preliminary research, Hine begins testing to deduce what would be safest to use on the art piece. Grime or dirt can be removed with something as simple as distilled water to something as damaging as toluenes, but Hine avoids using anything toxic unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Sometimes, though, the painting is further compromised. If there is a tear or severe damage, Hine must remedy that first. These losses need to be fixed by covering cracks and shaping areas that have lost texture. Last, it’s time to color correct, which is where “the fun starts” for Hine and where her jobs as artist and restorator most closely overlap. When just a little color is missing, she looks at the surrounding area and mimics, but if something major like a face is missing, then she has to do more detailed research to create an impression as close to the original as possible. From start to finish, on average, it takes Hine around 8 hours to restore a painting.
Hine worked at the CMA as an Assistant Preparator for two years, but now she works full time for Carolina Conservation. For her, restoring art is just as intimate as creating it: “I want to hear the paintings talk to me. I want to know what they've seen. I'm a firm believer that energy never dies. People always come back through the ethers.” This conversing is one aspect that strongly connects Hine’s restoration and personal creation.
Hine laughs when trying to pin point herself as an artist, claiming people will go into a show of hers and think the art is from multiple different artists. One continual tether Hine has with her art, however, is her sensitivity and how once something has touched her, she has no choice but to create in inspiration of it. “My inspiration can be pretty; it can be grotesque,” she muses, “Any moment that arrests you, whether it's disgust or awe, I like those moments.”
While she might feel all over the place as an artist, she feels a strong importance in her work: “I think that what really inspires me is how people are inspired by me. I feel that anybody I meet likes to listen to my story, and I like to listen to their story.”
-Christina Xan
