| 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..." |
July Issue 2003
Cool Stuff at Cameo Fine Art Gallery in Columbia, SC
Cameo Fine Art gallery in Columbia, SC, will present the exhibition Cool Stuff from July 1 through August 30, 2003. This summer exhibition will be a colorful array of original artwork by local, regional and international artists. While Cameo Fine Art continues to promote work of the artists we currently feature, we are pleased to have added a few more names of emerging artists to the roster. This exhibit consists of paintings, sculpture, ceramics and one-of-a-kind jewelry.
Artists included are: Sherie Koenig, Carole Connely, Helen Fried, Amanda Thorne, Leanne Kelley-Badeaux, Gary J. Noland, Jr. and Anne Bivens.
Sherie Koenig is a second generation artist and a South Carolina native, who is a primarily self-taught artist. She has studied with Ilona Royce-Smithkin of New York & Providence Town, Bea Kuhlke of The Gertrude Institute of Art in Augusta, GA, (who has participated in workshops with Maestro Livio Valentini of Orvietto, Italy). Some of Koenig's affiliations include Aiken Artist Guild Board of Directors, Sumter Artist Guild, Gertrude Herbert Institute of Arts, South Carolina Watercolor Society, National Collage Society, First Frontier Collage Society and The National Museum of Woman in the Arts. She has been juried in many regional exhibits and her work is displayed in the private sector as well as several corporate offices. Koenig's work is inspired from distinct styles of French impressionism, abstract and mixed media collage/assemblages. Up Close & Personal, is the latest series she has been working on that focuses on individual flowers: sunflower, hydrangea, and Gerber daisy are each painted with oils on 20" x 20" canvas.
Carole Connely, originally from Illinois, now residing in Stone Mountain, GA, earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Kansas City Art Institute. Her work is represented by galleries in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, Tennessee and Virginia. Connely masterfully demonstrates the qualities her paintings are best known for: their energetic depiction of space, spontaneous color and line that almost have a mystical sense of figures and environment interaction. She produces such thoughtful paintings in which ideas and images coexist as comfortably as the realistic elements. Connelly's figures seem fully integrated into the overall working of her canvas, and both the various abstract painting and simple figures seem to resonate with a single idea. Her work is adorned by over a dozen organizations and private collectors all over the world.
Helen Fried, from Columbia, SC, is a self-taught artist who has worked more than thirty-five years exploring the enigmas, paradoxes and ambiguities of social life of human relationships. She is very sensitive to color, design and composition as she employs acrylics alongside mixed media collages. Fried's personal vision has been shaped by training in mathematics and an abiding interest in literature, politics and theater. She had a one-woman exhibit at Trustus Theater, Columbia, SC in 2000 and has been in an abundance of exhibitions throughout Atlanta, Georgia, New England Center for Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, CT, Buffalo Society of Artists, Buffalo, NY to name a few. Some of her awards include First prize in the 35th Western New York Exhibition and a special invite to The Member's Gallery Annual Invitational Exhibition and Collection in Albright-Kinow Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
Amanda Thorne, from Columbia, SC, has been a free-lance artist for several years upon graduating from Columbia College in Columbia. She has been a participating artist in the South Carolina State Fair for the past few years and has won The Traveling Award and The Merit Award. In 2002, she was one of the selected artists to participate at The Piccolo Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC, where she won 3rd place and was able to showcase her paintings for the Art in the Park exhibit. Also in 2002, Thorne participated in the 27th Annual Atalay Arts and Crafts Festival at Huntington State Park, Pawley's Island, SC, where she won an award for Best of Show in the Fine Arts Division. Thorne's art is so colorful and playful that each painting takes a life of its own. She uses mostly oils on canvas or board, and to expand upon her creativity, she paints whimsical little scenes on furniture than can be used in a functional matter. Thorne on the art she is currently creating says, " I don't feel I am necessarily making a statement or conveying some emotional response to my subject matter. I want who ever is looking at my work to think for themselves and come up with their own interpretation. For my own sanity, (painting all day can get lonely) I often use a sense of humor to convey the absurdity of a social life, i.e., expectations, manners, cliques, obligation and snobbery. Sometimes the subject matter is something fun and enjoyable like dinning with friends or other special occasions. While other times it's an expression of my own social awkwardness that I feel contributes to my paintings where hopefully viewers can relate."
Leanne Kelley-Badeaux, also a graduate from Columbia College who has been working as a free-lance artist over the last few years, has been steadily creating a series of idealistic woman and masks. The idealistic women series was first inspired in college after experimenting with surfaces, textures, mediums and colors to capture a fantasy-like aura for the subjects. The series are all mixed media (pastels, charcoal, ink, watercolor on paper). Her mask series began as a way to be free with ideas and build a focus on blending of colors with pastels on paper. Each mask represents someone known or passed by on the street. "I enjoy drawing a face and then turning it into a nonobjective image to where it is unrecognizable." There wasn't any purpose or driving force for the images but as the experimentation continued, Kelley-Badeaux felt as though the images represented stages and transitions in her life.
Gary J. Noland, Jr., a native of Richmond, KY, has known since the fifth grade that he wanted to pursue a career in the arts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Eastern Kentucky University and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in painting and drawing from the University of Kentucky. Noland enjoys the challenge of creating art that balances in color, composition, and spirituality. He looks to explore the soul through the use of fragments of colors as a metaphor for the remnants of one's memories. He was just recently in a solo exhibition at Indiana University-Purdue in Indianapolis. Noland is teacher for the arts at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy for Excellence in Lexington, KY.
Anne Bivens of Sumter, SC, a jewelry maker, creates one-of-kind jewelry from combinations of hand-blown glass, beads from all over the world such as: antique glass, Austrian crystals taken from vintage necklaces, semi precious stones, freshwater pearls and handmade Bali sterling sliver. She uses colorful pieces from the past and weaves them into designs for the future.
Other artists on display at Cameo Fine Art include Robin MacKay and Peter Alsen who are both raku potters, Jean McWhorter who is most recognized for her creative ceramic pieces and monoprints and Liisa Salosaari Jasinski who uses mixed media on her colorful and bold abstract paintings. We are now pleased to be representing the work of Sharon Collings Licata who works/sculpts in alabaster, soapstone and limestone to create distinctive sculptures with some mounted on to marble.
For more information
check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at
803/799-8869 or email to (artcam@aol.com).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2003 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© 2003 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.