Art in the Heart of Greenville

I've been sitting on a fairly incredible secret the past month or so. Given the fact that the artist co-op that I am a member of is new, we thought filling our guest artist space for the first few months might be a tad difficult. We were thrilled to have a regionally known watercolorist take the space for December and January the first time we offered up for grabs the big wall. I think Sandra Roper was pleased with her sales those first two months.

As expected February had no takers in using the space. Fortunately my fellow partners came up with a grand idea via the gentleman that recruited me to join. Garry Turpin remembered a very interesting project he and his classmates participated in back in college. In fact I knew exactly how cool the finished project would probably turn out having done the same project in a drawing class during my Furman days. Honestly I was really excited about the outcome knowing our black and white version twenty five years ago looked hanging within the hallowed halls of my alma mater.

The premise is very simple. A photo was taken of a Greenville, South Carolina downtown location. That photo was cut into 20 equal-sized pieces and distributed to 20 of our 22 members. Each artist painted, sculpted, welded, or manipulated their one-of-twenty scenes using their own particular style. No one knew what or how everyone else completed their piece. In the end we would hang the completed 20 "projects" just like the original photo.

To add something special to the exercise, we contacted the American Heart Association which got on board with us immediately. February is a big fund-raising month for them. We are auctioning the entire collage to local corporations with all of the proceeds going to the American Heart Association!

I was privileged to help my partner Andrew Wells hang the finished product this past Wednesday. Andrew is a retired architect and obviously has an incredible engineering mind. It was he that came up with the solution to make this collage look professional and eloquent. We already have one bid of $1200. If you are interested in submitting a bid please e-mail me via the link on the left-hand side.

This is a partial arrangement on the floor.

Andrew nails the hangers into place for the third row.

An exhausted artist takes time to observe his partially completed work.

"Art in the Heart of Greenville"