For Art’s Sake

Two galleries in Beaufort County, South Carolina showcase tremendous talent from the Low Country.

By Stacey Dougherty

Historic Beaufort

Art is an integral element of the Low Country. It characterizes the area just as much as its history, physical beauty and native wildlife.

Beaufort’s downtown area, designated a National Historic Landmark District, is home to a thriving gallery scene. Most are located on Bay Street, the main drag, and one of my favorites is Art & Soul, located just inside the Old Bay Marketplace. The gallery carries an eclectic mix of artwork in varied media that includes paintings, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, glass, fiber, photography and more. And the pleasant surprise is that many pieces are quite affordable.

This coming November, Art & Soul will celebrate its tenth year. Owner Reggie Przybysz, a former resident of Duluth, explains how she wound up a gallery owner. “At one point, I thought I was going to be laid off and my husband Greg bought me this book.” She hands me The Artist’s Way – A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. “It took eight months for me to go through the process the book describes, but it changed my life”, she says now.

Always an art lover, Reggie began collecting when she bought her first piece while still in high school. Over the years she continued adding to her collection and after reading The Artist’s Way she enrolled at the Spruill Center for the Arts in Dunwoody and took a painting class. A few years later she got laid off for the third (and last) time and decided to make the move to Beaufort. She and Greg had property in town and shortly after arriving she set about planning the gallery.

Reggie prefers to concentrate on local artists, although she does represent some from various parts of the Southeast. Staying local enables her to really get to know each artist and thoroughly familiarize herself with their chosen media, the technical aspects of their art, their technique and sometimes their creative process.

For example, Kelly Collins Davidson is a self-taught lampwork bead artist who makes unique and strikingly beautiful jewelry from semi-precious stones and handmade glass beads. Reggie proceeds to demonstrate how Davidson melts glass rods with a blowtorch and wraps the molten glass around a mandrel, explaining that all the while the glass must be kept hot enough to retain its softness through the formation process to ensure its integrity so it doesn’t shatter once cooled.

This attention to detail and Reggie’s regard for the artists and their talent is evident by the way she is able to answer any question a potential collector may have about any piece – her passion is genuine and is part of what makes Art & Soul special.

One of the artists she represents, Bill Mead, a painter who lives nearby, made his way to Reggie in a somewhat unorthodox way. Several years ago he was helping a friend out at his farm stand and things were slow that day. The watermelons weren’t moving. So Bill found a piece of old wood, painted a watermelon on it and wrote “Watermelons $3.00″. He put the sign by the side of the road and in a couple of days a woman stopped by the stand and bought the sign. Soon, more customers were buying Bill’s signs. Eventually, he decided to paint the background of the signs with marsh scenes, not leaving any of the wood bare, and he began to sell them at another stand on St. Helena Island. He developed a following this way, painting on anything he could find – scrap wood, plywood, particleboard – and collectors kept snatching them up. In a couple of years at the urging of some friends, Bill approached Reggie to represent him and she’s done so since 2006.

Some of the other artists shown at Art & Soul include award winning painters Mary Grayson Segars and Mary Pratt, who hails from Atlanta; Charles DeLoach, whose raku pottery is quite popular; abstract painter Mary Jane Martin, who has been inducted into the International Society of Experimental Artists; painter Marlies Williams who uses her kayaking hobby to achieve the perspective in her marsh paintings; fiber artist Barbara James, a Professor Emeritus at Ohio State who moved to Beaufort in the past year and makes uniquely whimsical “chopstick” purses; and Sara Bonk who uses glass beads and wire to create original sculptural jewelry.

All of these artists and many, many more can be seen at Art & Soul and the other galleries all along Bay Street during regular business hours, Monday through Saturday. Also, check out www.guildofbeaufortgalleries.com for special events and art shows throughout the year sponsored by the Guild of Beaufort Galleries.

St. Helena Island

I believe people truly look for things that make them feel good inside.” So says the artist known as Hambone, whose vibrant paintings can be found inside the 2,400 square foot former agriculture co-operative building on St. Helena Island that has been home to The Red Piano Too Gallery for twenty years. Once you step inside you can’t help but feel good, surrounded by colorful folk art by emerging talents like Johnnie Griner, rising stars like Cassandra Gillens and well established masters like contemporary urban artist Purvis Young. Owner Mary Mack definitely has an eye for talent and sometimes finds it difficult not to add to her own collection from the inventory at the gallery.

Originally showcasing African American Folk Art from the Gullah community of St. Helena Island, The Red Piano Too presently carries the works of over 150 artists from all over the South. The Gullah – the name used to describe the slaves who originated from the Gold Coast of West Africa and were taken to America by way of the Caribbean – are a huge presence, not just in the paintings but also in the handcrafted sweetgrass baskets of seventh generation basket weaver Alfreda Robinson Jamison to the brightly colored quilts the Gullah community is famous for.

Art lovers and experts from New York to Hollywood hold Low Country artists in high esteem. Gallery manager, Victoria Smalls, describes the time when model and actress Lauren Hutton came in looking for the house of the late acclaimed area artist, Sam Doyle. As a friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hutton recalled her late friend’s admiration for Doyle who was the first artist from the island who gained fame and international renown. Doyle was the first to chronicle the history of St. Helena in his primitive, yet colorful paintings that he created using ordinary house paint and scraps of wood and metal. His art documented the many milestones of the community throughout the twentieth century.

Attention from Hollywood came when set decorator Jim Ferrell with Carolina Pictures, LLC visited the gallery to locate art to serve as backdrops for the film Nights in Rodanthe. Works by artists Cassandra Gillens, Alan Fireall, Irene Tison and Alyne Harris were chosen for the film. Smalls says, “He came in and looked around and then told me that he needed all these paintings for the movie and he’d send someone to come by and get them all.” He proceeded to have giclée prints made and used those in the Diane Lane and Richard Gere feature film. Some originals wound up being purchased by those involved with the production.

Walking around the gallery is a lesson in African American art history and an authentic introduction into the culture of the Gullah community, whose presence on St. Helena Island has lasted for almost three hundred years. In contrast to the historically harsh beginnings of this Low Country enclave, the tone set by the art found here is one of hope and fulfillment characterized by a life of honest hard work, close family and friends and the social rituals found in a tight knit community, all transpiring in a place of unique and breathtaking natural beauty.

Any trip to these parts requires a stop at The Red Piano Too. It’s practically guaranteed that you’ll leave in a much better mood than when you arrived.