Review / Informed Opinions

 

December Issue 1998

Vista Lights, Columbia, SC, November 19, 1998

A Review

 

by Mary Bentz Gilkerson

 

Twice a year the Columbia Vista area throws open the doors, and keeps the lights on late for an open house/gallery crawl. Both events are elaborate affairs that include lots of advance public relations, coordination of street closings and special attraction like musicians and dancing in the streets.

Despite all this glitz, the event has really lost its focus.

 

The Vista area was developed by the city as an arts and antiques area, a cultural center for Columbia. While the Vista Lights and Artista Vista draw large crowds to the area, are they really looking at the art? Are they buying the antiques? I don't think so.

 

The atmosphere is a lot more like one giant happy hour in a college bar than a gallery crawl or art opening.

Maybe it's time to rethink the purpose here. If the two events are simply open houses to draw in the general public and show them what is in the Vista area, fine. But if it's to grow the market and cultivate new collectors there may be a better way. One that is cheaper to put on, too.

 

The market and audience could be nurtured more by having monthly gallery crawls like Charlotte and Charleston do. Maybe they could even be coordinated with the growing number of Five Points/Devine Street galleries and artists' studios.

 

These do not have to be elaborate events. Simply coordinating regular exhibition openings or open houses would go a long way towards creating a real art scene. We really don't need the report from the mayor's task force to tell us that we need to cooperate more.

 

While a few shows went up especially for Vista Lights, most were group exhibitions of works by the galleries' stable artists.

 

Of these some of the most interesting work was at the Carol Saunders Gallery. Judy Hubbard and Mana Hewitt had recent work up that goes in new directions for both of them. Hubbard's box constructions have been literally off the wall for several years now, but these recent pieces have added real movement to the equation. Pendulums swing from miniature towers amplifying the importance of time as a concept in her work. The rich layering of images, color and surface of the pieces make them reminiscent of medieval reliquaries.

 

Mana Hewitt's latest paintings have moved away from the box constructions that she has been doing. These pieces, with their small scale and heavy use of gold leaf, have a very strong iconic feel. Fragments of the human form appear in many of them, rendered in a very careful, controlled way - as if the act of rendering was a mantra, a way of committing these fragments of experience to memory. One of the best is the small painting of a foot, one of the most expressive parts of the human form, surrounded by a field of gold. As an icon to the fragility of life and the power of recollection, it works very well. In a few of the works, the desire to render overwhelms the sensuality of the form.

 

City Art hosted the USC art department's annual Christmas art exhibition and sale in the main floor gallery. This was an eclectic mix of work by students, faculty and alumni that included some very interesting work and some that was less memorable. One of the most exciting components of the Vista events used to be the installation art. City Art should be applauded for encouraging that to again be a part of Vista Lights. Janet Orselli created an installation in the City Art elevator, poised on the main floor. On Thursday night she included a short performance in conjunction with it. The elevator was filled with objects that were some form of container or skin, a mixture of things that either were emptied vessels or vessels that had their skins wrapped or contained. The relationship of these containers and other objects to the elevator is a bit unclear. Some edited down or more focused information would aid communication.

 

Other exhibits included the work of three photographers - Mary Ellen Rice, Steve Hogue and Edward Stapel - at Gallery 701 and gallery artists at I. Pickney Simmons.

 

Group shows by gallery artists are not a bad thing. If gallery crawls occurred monthly, it would not be the least bit problematic.

 

But they don't. So the "business as usual" approach is disappointing, an opportunity missed.

 

Mary Bentz Gilkerson is an artist and writer who teaches in the Art Department at Columbia College.

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