The Department of Fine Arts sponsors the Art Gallery Series in the Hyman Fine Arts Center’s Adele Kassab Art Gallery, hosting varied shows of two and three dimensional works showcasing local and regional artists. The Art Gallery Curator selects exhibitions that support and enhance the academic goals of the visual arts program at Francis Marion University, providing a non-profit institutional setting in the service of both students and the wider community. Information about previous exhibits may be found in Kassab Art Gallery Archive and additional exhibitions are displayed downtown at FMU’s University Place Steven F. Gately Gallery.
Doug McAbee: Even When It’s Dark
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
May 10 – August 11, 2022
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Thursday
“The commute to work. A conversation with my wife. The funny thing my kids did this morning. These are the things that become drawings and sculptures.
“Bold colors, shiny surfaces and whimsical imagery continue to be essential elements in my drawings and sculptures. I am interested in the power of color, beauty and humor in visual communication and how a viewer’s personal experiences will affect how they interpret the images they are presented. My artwork often dips into serious or sinister subject matter, but always does so with a sense of humor, a shiny color and a spoonful of sugar. My approach to concept addresses the idea of complex or multifaceted imagery. Things are rarely only what they first appear. As in life, things may be grave and also hilarious, simple and yet complex, mature but also irresponsible. These images and forms refuse easy labels and beg further thought.”
Doug McAbee is an associate professor of art at Lander University in Greenwood, SC.
Artfields Junior Winners Show
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
August 23 – September 29, 202s
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
The ArtFields Jr. Art Competition is open to South Carolina students in grades 1 through 12. All artwork submitted is considered by our review panel. Select pieces will be displayed during the month of April and final judging takes place during ArtFields. Winners will be notified by phone or email and officially announced during the ArtFields Jr. Awards Ceremony at the Bean Market on the final day of ArtFields.
Voluminous Care by Michaela Pilar-Brown (Installation & Performance)
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
October 6 – November 10, 2022 (Opening delayed due to Hurricane Ian)
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Voluminous Care interrogates the process of caregiving. In this moment of collective grief, what roles are we cast in? Who decides? Who is caring for the caregivers? This exhibition and performance examines the spaces we hold and protect for grieving and caregiving in moments of prescribed isolation. How do we feed the need for touch. Brown looks at the spaces we create and hold sacred and considers the grieving space as a space not exclusively held for the consideration of loss and mourning but for the amplification of care and joy.
Michaela Pilar Brown is an image and object maker. She studied sculpture and art history at Howard University, though she has always been a maker of things. Born in Bangor, Maine and raised in Denver, Colorado, she cut her teeth in the halls of a museum where her mother worked as a security guard, and has been immersed in the culture of objects, their making and interpretation ever since.
“My practice explores the body through the prisms of age, gender, race, sexuality and history. I consider memory, myth, ritual, desire and the spaces the body occupies within these vignettes. The narratives move between past, present and surreal projections of the future, sometimes occupying these spaces simultaneously.
“I explore the ritualized use of common objects, and architectural spaces, often queering their size, orientation or form to blur the line between memory, dream and experience, plotting the relationship between normative considerations of the body and its function in specified spaces. I use racially identified signifiers to twist and turn mythologies about the body and the spaces that it occupies. The work is at once confrontational and seductive. Graphic novels, pugilist sport, colonial portraiture and magic realism factor into the narratives.
“Recent work explores home as a physical structure and repository for memories. I chronicle beginnings, departures and returns to this symbolic yet physical place, believing it to be the genesis where history, memory and myth are joined. The characters and the spaces I build for them to inhabit demonstrate the capacity in our lives for monsters, angels, heroes and giants, illustrating our reactions to occupation and absence, desire, responsibility, and obligation. “
Senior Shows by Graduating FMU Visual Arts Majors
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
November 15 – December 8, 2021
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Senior shows are required of all students majoring in Visual Arts. These shows give students hands-on experience in selection and installation of artworks, publicity of exhibition, and external review by the University community and the general public.
Works by Ceramics and 3-D Design Classes
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
November 15 – December 8, 2021
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Students in ceramics classes learn processes and techniques in both wheel-throwing and hand building in the art and craft of pottery. Throwing leads progressively toward stoneware clay tooling, decorating, glazing and firing. As they advance through the curriculum, students add ceramic fabrications methods of slab-work, modeling from solid masses, and press molding. Multi-part forms and porcelain formula clay bodies are created as artistic discipline develops along with the individual’s philosophy, critical awareness and aesthetics.
Students taking Three-Dimensional Design classes investigate organization techniques, with special emphasis on the plastic controls of form and space. They learn to use a variety of tools and various sculptural media, including wood, plaster and clay.
Wolly V. McNair: oncEmperors: Legends of the Ebony Empire
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
January 17 – February 23, 2023
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
“My name is Wolly McNair. I am a dad, husband, freelance illustrator, designer, and dreamer born in Lumberton, NC, raised in Charlotte, NC. I have always pushed for ownership in the things that I do. As a kid, I had the same dreams most have, become successful and take care of those I love. But the options to do so seemed limited. I was fortunate to be able to draw a little, and even more fortunate to have people around me that encouraged me to keep doing so. No one around me knew how to turn it into something that would pay the bills, but they knew I enjoyed it, and never knocked me for it. As I grew older, I begin to explore what could be done with art. Overtime, and thanks to people seeing something in me, I built relationships, started traveling, getting freelance and commission work, and after realizing I wasn’t going to fit the “norm” at the big companies at the time, (I came to this understanding after trying to get work, get published, etc and being turned down or told they weren’t sure how to market what we were doing), I continued doing what I was already doing…. building a name for myself on my own terms.”
Kimberly Washburn Motte: Tensile Strength
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
February 28 – April 6, 2023
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Kimberly Washburn Motte is a sculpture and fiber artist living and working in Florence, South Carolina. Her love of texture and tactile manipulation draws her to examine forms using textile structures with unconventional materials. Kimberly graduated with a BS in Art Education from Francis Marion University in 2007 with a studio concentration in Ceramics. In 2021, Kimberly was awarded an inaugural Emerging Artists Grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission. She is the 2017 recipient of the Florence Regional Arts Alliance’s Gregory Fry Arts Educator Award and the 2021 South Carolina Art Education Association Museum Educator of the Year.
She currently works as Arts Learning Director at the South Carolina Arts Commission. Her previous roles include Visual Arts Educator for Darlington County Schools and Curator of Education at the Florence County Museum.
Reconfigured: Senior Shows by Graduating FMU Visual Arts Majors
Ada Smolen-Morten and Tavora Brown
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
April 11 – 27, 2023
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Senior shows are required of all students majoring in Visual Arts. These shows give students hands-on experience in selection and installation of artworks, publicity of exhibition, and external review by the University community and the general public.
Works by Ceramics and 3-D Design Classes
Kassab Gallery, Hyman Fine Arts Center
April 11 – 27, 2023
8:30 am – 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday
Students in ceramics classes learn processes and techniques in both wheel-throwing and hand building in the art and craft of pottery. Throwing leads progressively toward stoneware clay tooling, decorating, glazing and firing. As they advance through the curriculum, students add ceramic fabrications methods of slab-work, modeling from solid masses, and press molding. Multi-part forms and porcelain formula clay bodies are created as artistic discipline develops along with the individual’s philosophy, critical awareness and aesthetics.
Students taking Three-Dimensional Design classes investigate organization techniques, with special emphasis on the plastic controls of form and space. They learn to use a variety of tools and various sculptural media, including wood, plaster and clay.
2023 Senior Class Graphic Design Portfolio Presentations
Kassab Recital Hall, Hyman Fine Arts Center
April 15, 2023
10:00 a.m. Saturday
The Department of Fine Arts mandates the public presentation of portfolios as a requirement prior to receiving a degree in Visual Arts / Graphic Design. Much like the gallery show required of painting, photography and ceramics seniors, the portfolio presentation is designed to encourage evaluation and feedback by invited outside adjudicators as well as by the general public.
Admission is free and no reservations are required.
