Charleston Supported Art, LLC, is preparing to reveal the second round of artwork for its inaugural year. Offering seasonal shares of art for purchase based on the community supported agriculture model, the group has established an easy, affordable, and fun way for art lovers to begin or add to their personal art collections. Individual shares are priced at just $450, and consist of six original pieces of artwork produced by a curated group of local, established and emerging artists working in a variety of media. Charleston Supported Art (CSA) shares are limited and delivered through exclusive pick-up events for each season. The first season of work was released at a spring pick-up event at GrowFood Carolina in May. The next pick-up event, dedicated to the fall season, takes place on Thursday, August 28, from 5:30-7:30pm at Mixson Bath and Racquet Club in Park Circle, North Charleston. Shares may be purchased on site or ahead of the event at charlestonsupportedart.com.
CSA’s fall season features works by Mariah Channing, Olivia Cramer, Miyako Fujiwara, Fred Jamar, Jennifer Henriques Phillips, and Kristi Ryba. The six artists will be present at the August 28 pick-up event to mingle with patrons and discuss the 32 pieces of original artwork they each created specifically for and exclusive to Charleston Supported Art. The pick-up event, open to current and prospective shareholders, will be the first time these works will be revealed. The pieces, which include photography, jewelry, pottery, oil paintings, and monotypes will not be available for purchase anywhere else.
For more information about Charleston Supported Art or to purchase a share online, visit www.charlestonsupportedart.com. Shares for both the spring and fall seasons will be available to purchase and carry home at the fall pick-up event. Shares for the winter season may also be purchased, with delivery slated for early December. Questions or requests to be added to the CSA mailing list should be directed to info@charlestonsupportedart.com.
About CSA’s Fall Artists
Mariah Channing is a Charleston-born photographer who is currently focusing on alternative processing, such as Vandyke Brown. The process in itself is what makes her work unique and interesting. Channing photographs figurative portraits of mysterious, serene women and creates surreal-like settings. Her imagery is printed inside a Victorian inspired cameo frame that is intended to contain the classic beauty of mystery and imagination. Channing graduated from the College of Charleston in the spring of 2014 with a BA in Studio Art, concentrating in photography and minoring in arts management. She can be found in her studio at Redux, playing with her three cats, or in a coffee shop looking out a window, daydreaming with her cup in hand.
Olivia Cramer is a jeweler and metalsmith from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, currently living and working in Charleston. She attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, California, where she majored in Jewelry Design and won the award for Jewelry Designer of the Year in 2011. When she wants to feel inspired she simply takes a walk outside; picking and sketching various sticks, seeds, and leaves is usually what drives the process. Hand-crafting wearable sculptures by creating casts, making molds, setting stones, and polishing metal is something that also allows each of Cramer’s pieces to be one of a kind works meant to capture all of the amazing details found in nature.
Born in Japan, Miyako Fujiwara was interested in ceramics throughout her youth but did not start her relationship with clay until studying tea ceremony after graduating from college, where she studied Mathematics in Tokyo. After college, while she was working as a computer programmer, she trained in the practice of Japanese traditional arts and crafts, such as tea ceremony, Ikebana flower arrangement, Japanese embroidery, rope weaving, and sewing kimonos. Later she moved to the US and became involved in the ceramics program at Harvard University while working as an Assistant Curator at the Museum of Natural History and Anthropology. Benefiting from that extensive program, she gained experience in all varieties of firing: soda, wood, raku, and saggar. Fujiwara moved to Charleston at the end of 2010 and became a member at Cone 10 Studios. She became an instructor there in 2012. The same year, she also became a member of Charleston Crafts Cooperative by juried evaluation of her work. She continues to interact with potters, ceramics studios, and galleries during her frequent trips back to Japan. In her creative process as a ceramicist, Fujiwara aspires to an essential aspect of tea ceremony, which is to make all guests feel relaxed, content and happy.
Fred Jamar has been painting for 50 years. His favorite medium by far is oil. He likes to experiment with new textures and techniques, sometimes putting brushes aside in favor of a knife or trowel. He typically composes as he applies the paint, with perhaps just one or two lines penciled on the canvas to guide him. Jamar is enormously prolific, with over 100 works completed in the past year alone. He has had several solo exhibitions at local galleries. You can find his work locally at Robert Lange Studios. His recent work has been dominated by Charleston cityscapes – not seen, however, with the traditional eye. The sky is generally very dark, inky “Prussian” blue, and starless. The trees are assembled color masses, balloon-like in appearance, and the buildings are intensely vivid in form and color, an impression heightened by the overhanging darkness. The paintings are bright – but also lonely. The mood is stock-still. Most have no human or animal figures. It is as if Edward Hopper painted an abandoned carnival at 3:00 AM. They are brilliant.
Jennifer Henriques Phillips was born in Jamaica into a Sephardi family. Her grandfather was an artist and architect of note on the island and she developed an early interest in art. She was educated in Jamaica, Switzerland, and Paris where she studied at the School of Oriental Language at the Sorbonne. After living and working in London and Jamaica, she settled in Charleston. Throughout her travels, she retained her interest in art, taking classes and workshops but circumstances prevented her from entering into the formal study of art. In Charleston, she took her degree in Fine Arts at the College of Charleston, graduating summa cum laude, winning the Carolina De Fabritis Scholarship Award twice, the Fine Arts Award, and a Liquitex Materials Award. In 2009, she received a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission and was also invited to a residency at Wildacres, NC, where she continued to develop the conceptual underpinnings of her work. She was awarded a grant by the Puffin Foundation in 2010. Phillips has exhibited in group shows locally and regionally. Her first solo show, Building Babylon (is woman’s work) opened in 2010. Phillips serves as docent for the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art’s education program “Looking to See.” She is married and lives and works on Johns Island.
Kristi Ryba is an artist living and working in Charleston, South Carolina. Exhibiting since 1990, Ryba’s early work has toured the Southeast in both painting and printmaking exhibitions. A graduate of the College of Charleston and Vermont College, Ryba also studied at Vermont Studio School and Studio Camnitzer in Valdotavvo, Lucca, Italy. In 2012, Ryba was selected as the SC Arts Commission Alternate Visual Arts Fellow and in 2009 she was an artist in residence at The McColl Center in Charlotte, NC. Her videos debuted at Silo in New York City in 2004 and 2006, and Contemporary Charleston in 2004. Her video animations have been included in film festivals across the country. Ryba has exhibited at 701 Contemporary Center for Art and Columbia College in Columbia, SC; Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth, OH; Waterworks Visual Arts Center in NC; The City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston, SC; Sumter Gallery of Art, in Sumer, SC; and Dialect Design in Charlotte, NC.
About Charleston Supported Art, LLC
Charleston Supported Art is a platform to connect emerging and established artists and collectors. Launched in November 2013, the program is part of a nationwide movement that has developed in over 40 communities across the country and is the first of its kind in Charleston, SC. Co-founders include Kristy Bishop, Camela Guevara, Stacy Huggins, Karen Ann Myers, Erin Glaze Nathanson, AnneTrabue Nelson and Ann Simmons. Supporters include 1600 Meeting Street, Artist & Craftsman Supply, Básico, Enough Pie, Frothy Beard Brewing Company, GrowFood Carolina, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Mixson Bath & Racquet Club, Redux Contemporary Art Center, The Cut Company, and Three Little Birds Café.
