Bo Bartlett and Herb Parker Exhbitions at 701 CCA
June 3, 2014
701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, S.C., presents:
Two Exhibitions and Opening Receptions:
Bo Bartlett June 12 – August 3, 2014 &
Herb Parker: Olympia Dialogue June 12, 2014 – TBA
Opening Reception for both exhibitions:
Thursday, June 12, 7 – 9 pm
Reception Admission: Members, free; non-members, $5 suggested donation
Location: 701 Whaley St., second floor
Columbia, SC 29201
For its summer 2014 exhibitions, 701 Center for Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by nationally renowned American realist painter Bo Bartlett and an outdoor, architectural installation by Charleston artist Herb Parker. Both exhibitions will open with a reception on Thursday, June 12, 7:00 – 9:00 pm. Admission to the reception is free to 701 CCA members; for non-members, the suggested donation is $5.
Parker will be present at the opening. Bo Bartlett’s presence at the opening has not yet been confirmed. Former South Carolina Arts Commission director for visual arts David Houston, now director of the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University in Columbus, Ga., will present a talk about Bartlett’s work during the reception. Houston previously was the curator at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR, and the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans.
Barlett’s exhibition, which includes many very large paintings, will be in the 701 CCA gallery. Parker’s installation is on the west side of the 701 Whaley building, where 701 CCA is located, along Wayne Street. His architectural structure, Olympia Dialogue, is 10 feet tall, 34 feet long and 18 feet wide and made of rebar, oat straw, jute, bamboo, reed and mulch. Parker created the work during his May residency at 701 CCA with several volunteer assistants. Olympia Dialogue is 701 CCA’s first commissioned public art work.
Bo Bartlett
Bo Bartlett (b. 1955) is a premier American realist painter. Born in Columbus, Ga., Bartlett lives and works in Maine and Washington State. At age 19, he studied with Ben Long in Florence, Italy, after which he moved the Philadelphia. There, in the 1970s, he studied at the University of the Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which traditionally has emphasized realist principles. In 1986, Bartlett also received a certificate in film making from New York University and subsequently worked for five years on a film about Andrew Wyeth, who became a lifelong friend.
Among museum collections containing Bartlett’s work are the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art; the Santa Barbara (CA) Museum of Art; The Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME; Crystal Bridges Museum; the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga.; and the Ogden Museum of Art. The Bo Bartlett Center houses many of the artist’s paintings and his archives, which include journals, sketchbooks, photographs, films and correspondence.
“Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision,” Tom Butler wrote in the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland. “His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth.” In Bo Bartlett: Paintings 1981 – 2010, prominent art critic Donald Kuspit wrote: “Bartlett is not simply a realist, but a psychosocial realist. And a postmodernist realist, for his work is buoyed by historical references to Old Master art … Like the Old Masters, Bartlett uses contemporary figures to tell age-old stories.”
Herb Parker
Herb Parker (b. 1953) is a sculptor and possibly South Carolina’s most prominent site-specific landscape artist. The College of Charleston art professor, a native of Elizabeth City, N.C., has created more than two dozen nature-based and environmental installations in 14 states and Canada, Italy, Japan, Sweden and The Netherlands. His installations include Cupola, a permanent 1999 structure at the S.C. State Museum in Columbia. In 1999, Parker was included in 100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the 20th Century in South Carolina Art at the S.C. State Museum. Parker has been represented in two South Carolina Triennials at the State Museum and in exhibitions in more than a dozen states. The former U.S. Marine and Peace Corps volunteer holds a BFA and an MFA from East Carolina University in North Carolina and has studied in Italy through the University of Georgia.
Olympia Dialogue, Parker’s installation at 701 CCA, refers to, first, the dialogue between the structure and the various steeples and towers in the surrounding Olympia neighborhood. Second, it also refers to the structure, with its two seating chambers with skylights, as place for inspiration, spiritual experience and dialogue among people visiting the site and between visitors and the environment. In general, Parker, whocombines architecture, sculpture and landscape, says he hopes “to achieve a synthesis with natural forms in the service of architectonic ideals to create a space existing in the theoretical yet grounded in the visceral: sound, smell and touch.”
Please submit further inquiries to [email protected] or call Sheldon Paschal at 803.319.9949.
About 701 Center for Contemporary Art
701 CCA is a non-profit visual arts center that promotes understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of contemporary art, the creative process and the role of art and artists in the community. The center also encourages interaction between visual and other art forms.
701 CCA is located at 701 Whaley Street, 2nd Floor, Columbia, SC 29201. During exhibitions, hours are Wed, 11–8; Thu-Fri, 11-5; Sat, 9-5; Sun, 1-5. For more information, visit www.701cca.org.
