| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
June Issue 2004
Burroughs-Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC, Features Works by Linda Fantuzzo and Scotty Peek
The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin
Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC, is presenting two new exhibits
featuring the works of South Carolina artists Linda Fantuzzo and
Scotty Peek. The exhibitions, Linda Fantuzzo: Painted Landscapes
and Still Lifes and Scott Peek: general/specific, a site-specific
installation will be on view through July 11, 2004.
Linda Fantuzzo
A painter at the center of the Charleston,
SC's, art scene, Linda Fantuzzo has been perfecting her professional
calling for over thirty-five years. Knowing at an early age that
she wanted to be a painter, this Endicott, NY, native began art
courses in high school. Fantuzzo continued her education at the
prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts choosing to study
the classical techniques of painting and graphics, at a time when
most other artists abandoned such traditional methods. She enjoyed
one year of independent study traveling in Europe and North Africa.
Returning to the Academy in 1972, she graduated the following
year.
Fantuzzo's mentor at the Academy, Manning Williams, encouraged
her to consider moving to Charleston, as it had "a little
society of painters and craftspeople, as well as wonderful weather."
Her move to South Carolina proved very successful, providing innumerable
subjects and scenes for the artist. For over ten years she worked
non-objectively in various media but eventually returned to painting
landscapes and still lifes in oil. "Painting has become a
way to observe and celebrate life," she explains. "I
find interest in painting a landscape as much as I do a still
life. What remains constant in all that I do is the attempt to
render light and atmosphere. Dusty air drifts about the inanimate
objects I choose to paint, just as the weather articulates through
the landscape. The atmospheric conditions in each of these subjects
is often the vehicle which conveys my response to this particular
moment in time." It's the rare "moments in time"
that one wants to last forever, for which Fantuzzo is renowned.
Her fascination with natural light and her ability to capture
it so ephemerally are what raise her works far above the norm.
Thirty-one paintings are featured in Painted Landscapes and
Still Lifes. Fantuzzo has shown her work in numerous one-person
and group exhibitions. Her painting is represented in many private
and public collections, including that of the Gibbes Museum of
Art in Charleston, the South Carolina Arts Commission, Columbia
Colleges and The Dermatological Academy of Evanston, IL.
Fantuzzo and her husband live in Mt. Pleasant, SC, and she works
full time in her downtown Charleston studio. She has served on
the panel for the SCAC Acquisitions Committee, been a juror for
the City Art Gallery in Charleston, has served on the steering
committee for the Trident Regional Arts & Culture Plan and
is a member of Print Studio South.
Scotty Peek
Columbia, SC, artist Scotty Peek brings something
totally new to the Art Museum with his site-specific installation
general/specific. Thirty-seven works comprise the exhibit,
with twenty of those, which are housed in the first two galleries,
sub-titled, A Garden of Myrtles for Myrtle.
On the staff of the McKissick Museum and an Adjunct Drawing Instructor
at the University of South Carolina, Peek holds a BFA in Studio
Art with a drawing concentration, and an MFA with a drawing major
and 3-D design minor. He sees great viewer-reaching potential
in the making of site-sensitive installations, noting, "I
enjoy strategically using a site's characteristics and history
to engage a particular or expanded audience."
For each of his site-sensitive installations,
Peek visits the locale and exhibit space, does general and specific
research and then creates works especially for the venue. Naturally
his research in Myrtle Beach revealed the source of its name as
the common wax myrtle shrub, which prolifically abounds along
the Grand Strand. Further research regarding the original beach
cottage that houses the Art Museum indicated it was built in 1924,
an era when Myrtle was a common female name. After much contemplation,
Peek decided to focus his exhibition on the idea of naming and
the connections that names are born of and also create.
A Garden of Myrtles for Myrtle consists of twenty pastel
drawings on paper; each 24" square, featuring women named
Myrtle. In addition to meeting Myrtles, viewers will encounter
seventeen charcoal drawings on canvas from Peek's series "her/my
family." Part of an ever-growing collection, "her/my
family" depicts images of his wife Sally's family, found
among her photo albums.
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery
listings, call the Museum at 843/238-2510 or (www.myrtlebeachartmuseum.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.