Keith Tolen Opens Jasper's First Tiny Gallery Series this First Thursday at Tapp's

Artist Keith Tolen - photo by Michael Dantzler

The Jasper Project is bringing a brand new project to light during First Thursday this month: The Tiny Gallery Series.

Jasper’s goal with this project is twofold – to support artists in our community and to encourage budding art collectors to start their collections. During upcoming First Thursdays, Jasper will be teaming up with local artists to display their work for sale at affordable prices in their studio at Tapp’s Art Center.

Kicking off the first series is local artist and South Carolina native, Keith Tolen. “I’m honored that I’m kicking this off; it’s hard to believe,” Tolen said with a chuckle as we chatted over coffee, “But I’m nervous too. I want to do this event justice.”

Tolen has been studying and working on his craft for decades now. An art education major in college, he worked in both retail and real estate before landing the job as an art teacher at Camden Middle School – a job he cared for and worked at for 30 years.

Beyond teaching, Tolen has been creating art since a young boy. He and his brothers used to draw together, and Tolen’s first love was film and photography. When he focused on painting in college, he became heavily influenced by the abstract expressionist styles of the 1970s, the art style that still influences him today. In his recent years, Tolen has tried to challenge himself by taking classes in different art styles, such as still life. All of these influences come together for his Tiny Gallery Series where there is one thing in particular to expect: eggs.

Tolen said that the form of the egg is key for painting. It is between shapes, not circle or oval, pointed at the top, and plays with light and shadow in simple yet complex ways. He is using eggs in these paintings as a “balance of the simplicity of the egg and the chaos of abstract expressionism.”  

“I hope these eggs take on a personality and travel from canvas to canvas, taking on the identity of its surroundings while still maintaining its own integrity,” Tolen says, “I love color, and the challenge with these paintings was to have backgrounds rich with color but for the eggs to be the draw, to be very neutral.”

This will be the third time Tolen has shown his egg paintings this year, the first two times both to a positive critical reception. When asked about past accolades in his career, however, Tolen told a powerful story about a young girl in his first 6th grade class who took her passion for origami and taught an entire class of 50 students her art, holding their attention on a Friday far after the bell had rang.

“I could sell a painting for a million dollars,” Tolen said, “But it wouldn’t compare to the moment that girl stood in front of her peers and captivated them with her art.”

From this comes the importance of an event like the Tiny Gallery Series. Like what that girl did for her class, “Art inspires us; it educates us.” Tolen said.

When asked about his goal for his paintings in particular Tolen said, “There’s two things I want people to say. Either ‘I can do that’ or ‘I appreciate that.’ I want people to see my paintings and be inspired to go use their creativity and make something of their own, and if not to at least look at them and know they mean something special.”

This event is, again, not just a chance to see art from local artists but to help the community of Columbia start their own art collections. “It’s important to have art in the home beyond just for exposure,” Tolen says, “Having original art on your walls builds bonds, connections, and it demystifies the idea that only certain people can experience art. Art is for everyone.”

Future artists participating in the Tiny Gallery Series include Olga Yukhno, Bonnie Goldberg, Dave Robbins, and more.

To see Tolen’s work, stop by Tapp’s Art Center in Studio #7 starting at 6:00 p.m. this Thursday, October 4th, and be sure take a piece of his passion home for yourself.

—Christina Xan

Follow The Jasper Project on Facebook and on Instagram @the_jasper_project

for more updates on local artists and events!

In Guns We Trust by Ed Madden with Bert Easter

"Bert built a crucifix in the backyard." - Ed Madden

After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February, National Rifle Association spokesman Wayne LaPierre said at a conservative political meeting that the right to bear arms “is not bestowed by man but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.” My husband Bert and I were struck by the religious language LaPierre used, the idea that God grants us, as Americans, the right to carry a gun. For the next few days, we kept talking about this language, this almost-religious devotion to the gun as an American icon, what it represents, what it can do.

I was reminded of an essay historian Garry Wills wrote after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012, “Our Moloch,” in which he compares the American worship of the gun to the stories of Moloch, the Old Testament god of the Canaanites that required the sacrifice of children.  “The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate,” he says. “It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?”

As we kept talking, we began to imagine a religion of the gun, a chapel to the gun, the gun as a god that requires the sacrifice of children. We imagined a child crucified on a cross of guns, a church banner with LaPierre’s quote. I suggested one of those hokey traditional pictures of the guardian angel hovering over two children, but with belligerent NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch’s head pasted on it, maybe a gun in her hand.

A few years ago, as part of a collaborative show centered on the image of Saint Sebastian, Bert and I designed an interactive chapel to Sebastian. The show was organized by Alejandro Garcia Lémos and Leslie Pierce at Friday Cottage in downtown Columbia, and featured a range of artists—visual art, sculpture, stained glass, performance, film, poetry—all exploring the iconography of the saint and the historical status of the saint as a gay icon. In our little chapel, there was an altar with votive candles and a statue of the saint, surrounded by any little plastic figure I could find with a bow and arrow (cowboys and Indians, Vikings, even a Smurf). There were church pews, banners, and a shrine where you could write down your prayers, shames, or desires on strips of red paper and pin them to the body of the saint. By the end of the evening, it was covered with red ribbons of prayer.

So we imagined a chapel to the gun. A window diorama. We would call it In Guns We Trust, our national motto inscribed on all currency, evoking thus national patriotic and religious (and perhaps commercial) resonances. We asked Tapp’s Arts Center—perhaps a little in jest, since we are not trained visual artists—if we could do a window installation. They said yes. So we began work in earnest, hoping to get it installed in advance of the March for Our Lives.

Bert built a crucifix in the backyard. We bought toy rifles and machine guns. I bought Dana Loesch’s 2014 book, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.  I looked up LaPierre’s infamous press conference on December 21, 2012 after the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, where he said, “The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” 

I began to read more and more about how American attitudes toward guns suggested something sacred. “How can we determine if we are in bondage to an idol?” asked theologian John Thatamani in “The Price of Freedom? Child Sacrifice and the American Gun Cult.”  “Intensity of reaction is a sure-fire marker that we traffic with the sacred,” he said.  “We know that the gun has become a sacred object because it commands unquestioning reverence. Interrogating its sacral status triggers anger and even death threats.”

After the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Garry Wills wrote, in “A Nation Captive to the Gun”:  “God gave us guns to show us who we are. Giving up the gun would be a surrender to evil, taking us abruptly into eschatological time.” Eschatological, meaning end times, death and judgment, the end of the world.

“So this time,” Wills continued, “let us skip all the sighing and promising and moments of silence. Why keep up the pretense that we are going to take any real and practical steps toward sanity? Everyone knows we are not going to do a single damn thing. We can’t. We are captives of The Gun.”

“The Gun is patriotic,” he wrote, “The Gun is America. The Gun is God.”

I found that the psalm Dana Loesch cites in her acknowledgments, Psalm 144:1, was inscribed on AR-15 rifles by a gunmaker in Florida in 2015.  “Blessed be the Lord my Rock who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”  The gunmaker said he hoped a Muslim terrorist would be struck by a bolt of lightning if he picked up the gun.

I was struck by the fact that the toy guns we bought for the installation all had the gun safety integrated into the mode switch, so that you can toggle between safe, semi, and automatic. On the cheaper guns on which the accessories were molded, the switch is permanently set on semi. We’re set on semi-safe.

In Guns We Trust, our window installation at Tapp’s on Main Street is meant to draw attention to the almost religious devotion to guns in America, which prevents us from talking about reasonable control legislation. It is a chapel to the gun with banners (including the February quote from Wayne LaPierre and another intoning, in good Republican fashion, "Now is not the time"), a communion tray with cups filled not with wine but with spent AR-15 bullets. On the left side of the window, a poem called “Semi.” (We’re set on semi-safe.)  On the right side, passages from some of the things I’d been reading. There is a trinity of toy machine guns in the air, their laser targets trained on the sidewalk. There is an image of Dana Loesch as the traditional guardian angel, and a child crucified on a cross made of guns.

We hope the window raises awareness, or at least questions, about our American devotion to guns. We hope it helps to start conversations. We clearly need to start talking. Maybe now is the time.

Ed Madden is the poetry editor for Jasper Magazine and the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC. 

Focus on JAY Finalists - Nicole Kallenberg Heere in Visual Arts

Nicole Kallenberg Heere - photo by Forrest Clonts

We're chatting with the 2017 JAY Awards Finalists as we enter the last few days of voting and preparing for the JAY Awards (& Retro Christmas party!) coming up on December 5th.

Jasper: How have you seen your arts community grow over the past few years and to what do you attribute that growth?

Nicole: Because of the support Tapp’s has provided me, my arts community has grown exponentially over the past year. It’s my home base, along with 30 other wonderful artists and a knowledgeable staff. Being new to the Columbia area, the city didn’t feel like a home until I had my creative community intact. Not only has Tapp’s provided me a community, it has also provided a unique opportunity when it comes to exposure, allowing my fan base to grow beyond the people involved directly in the art scene. The many events that the Tapp’s building hosts along with its prime location on Main Street has helped elevate my art career to the next level. The venue also led to the introduction of my art to the Jasper staff, resulting in my cover and interview in Jasper magazine, which in turn helped secure my affiliation with Mitchell Hill Gallery in Charleston.

Jasper: Why is art so important right now?

Nicole: In our modern era, in my opinion, it is the responsibility of the artist to question those in power and also the things we consider “normal.” I personally have chosen to explore gender, hypermasculinity and misogyny in my artwork without attacking the other side. I have found that if I leave out anger and add in humor, people are less intimidated and more inclined to open up dialogue, sharing their thoughts not only with me, but with others viewing the art. And I think with our polarized population, healthy dialogue is important and artist are the few people with the ability to open up that dialogue, partly because of our talent and partly because we haven’t been completely vilified… yet.

Jasper: What role does art play in your life?

Nicole: What role does art not play in my life would be the easier question to answer. I cannot turn off my creativity. From my clothing, to my makeup to the vibe of my home the creativity is a constant. This year I became a mother. At 3 months old, my baby girl has already been to 5 art shows, met the gallery girls in Charleston and was a center piece in Columbia City Ballet’s production of Dracula. Come to my home and you will find it to be musically centered. My baby loves the piano, I can literally feel her body relax when she hears it, Chopin and the Brooklyn Duo are her favorites. We also listen and dance to a lot of Motown. I’m not sure if she will be an artist, but I want her to understand and appreciate the arts. And much like dictators and the church use art as propaganda, I too use it in my home. My baby girl is surrounded by images of female empowerment… wonder woman doing yoga and Marie Antoinette wearing boxing gloves just to name a few examples.

Jasper: What role does community play in the execution of your art?

Nicole: Community is everything in my art. Unlike many artists, I do not paint solely for myself, I also paint for all of you. Public opinion can be the most rewarding and at times the most painful part of being an artist. I think a lot of people don’t understand how incredibly difficult it can be to put your creations - your time and heart - out into the world for everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, to judge. And maybe this is why I feel that my art belongs to the community and not just to me. Maybe its detachment, maybe it makes me feel like the art is more impactful if it has wings… if it can belong to you too.

Jasper: Is there anyone you’d like to thank for their support of your arts career?

Nicole: Behind every great woman is a great man… that’s how the saying goes, right? While my art is gender bending and glorifies female empowerment, the truth is that I don’t think I would a) have the understanding to pull off my ideas or b) the self-esteem to do so, if I didn’t have a life filled with supportive men. My mother was supportive of my love of arts and connected me with some great female artists at a young age, but unfortunately my mother had a short life. My father has supported my love of art since the day I was able to hold a crayon and my husband has been another rock since shortly after we met. Not to mention the hell I put my brother through growing up painting and altering so many of his beloved toys. With my father in my corner, I received my BFA, and after meeting my husband I had the support system I needed to pursue this as a full time career. I think that’s why my art has a light hearted element to it, I love men and I love being a woman, I’m just tired of being a second class citizen in this male dominated culture.

VOTE at http://jasperproject.org/jays

BUY Tickets at https://2017jays.bpt.me/

GIVE as part of #GIVINGTUESDAY at https://www.facebook.com/JasperProjectColumbia/

THANKS!