Art at CHS

Charleston native Douglas Balentine has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. His father, the late neuropathologist Dr. J Douglas Balentine, M.D., was an early supporter, frequently taking the young budding artist (from the age of six onward) to his lab and encouraging him to draw skulls, skeletons, and brains from life.

Balentine spent much time growing up with his grandmother, the late Emily Whaley, who wrote “Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden.” She was a ubiquitously creative soul, whether at the easel, in the garden, at her writing desk, or in the kitchen. Drawing and painting materials were always in use at her home. From 1977–78, his family lived in Paris, France, which was a particularly formative experience for Balentine, who was nine at the time. Among innumerable stimuli that daily Parisian life offers, exposure to art in the Louvre Museum proved to be of lasting inspiration.

Balentine continued to draw and paint more and more during his free time throughout elementary and high school, where art became increasingly important to him. This led to his decision to pursue a formal education in the subject. While studying at Parsons Art and Design School in New York and at The International School of Art in Italy, some of his first works were purchased and collected.

In the mid-1990s Balentine moved back to Charleston, where he began to explore the natural and historic beauty of the area through classical principles that had taken root during his studies at Parsons and abroad. He continued to show his work and execute commissioned pieces during this period and reviews of Balentine’s earliest shows noted his “emerging and surprisingly maturing talent,” and “promise of thematic content,” and the “sumptuousness and strength of his draftsmanship.”

Charleston and its environs offer a seemingly eternal source of inspiration and he continues to live and work there with his family. His work has most recently been shown in Paris, New York, Miami, and also featured in Los Angeles.

Balentine’s piece entitled Cargo II, oil on linen painting created in 2013, is on display in Concourse B.

Fred Jamar has brought a new infusion of intellect and energy to Charleston’s art scene.

Born in the village of Stembert in Southern Belgium, he has been a world traveler for most of his adult life. After graduating with honors from the Belgian Maritime College (he was valedictorian) and spending three years at sea, he studied finance. With an MA-equivalent degree, he joined J.P. Morgan & Co., where he helped to found a clearinghouse for Eurobonds in 1967. Staying with Morgan, Jamar worked in the sector focused on global credit risk exposure. He covered the globe. He has lived in Brussels, Paris, London, Frankfurt, and New York.

In the early 1980s, Jamar was based in the United States and chose Kiawah as a favorite family vacation spot. That led to a solid acquaintance with Charleston. When he took early retirement in 1997, he chose to settle here “in this most European of American cities.”

Central among Jamar’s many interests is a lifelong love of painting. When he was a small boy, he had a neighbor who created backdrops for theaters. Stimulated by this and other examples, he developed a great zest for artistic creation. As a child, he would paint on bedsheets, on cardboard, anything flat. In the Merchant Marine, he used discarded tarps and oil paints from the engine room. To this day, he enjoys process more than product. The smell of the oils and turpentine, the texture of the canvas, sensuality of brushes and paint are more important to him than any result

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.

Influences include Vincent Van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Maurice Utrillo, Bernard Buffet (seen in his portraits, especially his clown series), and Suzanne Valadon.

Jamar has had many solo exhibitions at local galleries and has seen his art selected for the Charleston Marathon and the Cooper River Bridge Run Design Competition, which greatly expanded his regional exposure. He is also a juried-in exhibitor at the annual Piccolo Spoleto Art Festival.

His recent work has been dominated by Charleston cityscapes—but not seen 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 mood is stock still. Most have no human or animal figures. It is as if Edward Hopper painted an abandoned carnival at 3 a.m.

For more information, Jamar’s working is found exclusively at Robert Lange Studio in the French Quarter, 2 Queen St., in downtown Charleston, S.C. Robert Lange Studio.

J Henry Fair tells stories about people and things that affect people, principally with photographs that are immediately compelling, but contain many subsequent layers of information to be made available to the inquisitive audience.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in time to witness the race riots there, a sensitivity to injustice has always informed his work. Some of his other projects include the founding of the Wolf Conservation Center, an education and species survival institution, and numerous open space/habitat preservation initiatives. He is based in New York City and Berlin but travels constantly. His new book, “Industrial Scars: The Hidden Costs of Consumption,” a story about how things are made and what are the consequences left behind, is being published by Papadakis of London.

Speaking about his “Industrial Scars” series, Roberta Smith, chief art critic of The New York Times said “the vivid color photographs of J. Henry Fair lead an uneasy double life as potent records of environmental pollution and as ersatz evocations of abstract painting . . . information and form work together to devastating effect.”

Fair’s work has been featured by The TODAY Show, CNN, NPR’s Marketplace, and WDR German TV, as well as most major publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Die Zeit, Le Figaro, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and Scientific American. Additionally, Fair’s work travels around the world as exhibitions at major museums, galleries, and educational institutions.

His current project is a portrait of the coastlines of the U.S. with an eye to climate change and ocean rise preparedness.

J Henry Fair photograph “Arsenic and Water” is on display in Concourse B.

Jack Alterman is a native of Charleston, South Carolina where he opened Alterman Studios in 1980. His interest in photography began in 1968 while serving as a Marine in Okinawa. After his discharge in 1970, he enrolled into Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, where he earned an MFA

His expertise includes environmental photography as well as studio portraiture and travel essays. Alterman’s work has been exhibited at the Piccolo Spoleto Festivals in Charleston and Spoleto, Italy, the Gibbes Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.

His 2005 one-man show, “The Bridge Builders,” showcases the diversity of the workers who constructed the new Cooper River Bridge in Charleston.

In the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Alterman had a one-man show called “Faces of the Lowcountry,” and in 2009 his exhibit “Red Right Returning” explored the juxtaposition of buoys with the landmarks in the Charleston Harbor. His 2011 Piccolo Spoleto exhibit “Allende!” featured a documentary about the city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

“Cornices of Charleston,” was published in 2005. The book captures Charleston’s unique architectural styles providing a new view of old familiar places. His book “My City Charleston” was published in 2016 with a foreword by former Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley and introduction by author Josephine Humphreys.

Alterman’s photograph entitled “The French Quarter” is on display in Concourse B.

Painter Jill Hooper is classically trained in portraiture, still life, and the figure. She studied under Charles Cecil at Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy, and apprenticed under academic masters Ben Long IV and D. Jeffrey Mims. She completed additional studies at the University de Haute Bretagne in Rennes, France.

Hooper’s work has been widely exhibited in France, England, and the United States and can be found in numerous important private collections. She is permanently collected in three museums, including the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, where she is the youngest living artist to ever be collected.

In 2007, her self-portrait “Pugnis et Calcibus” was chosen to be a part of the prestigious British Petroleum Portrait Award Exhibition in London’s National Portrait Gallery. Hooper had a solo exhibition at the Greenville County Museum of Art in 2010 as well as at the Gibbes Museum of Art in 2012.

She divides her time between studios in London and Charleston.

Hooper’s painting entitled “Beaufort Oysters III” is on display in Concourse B.

John Duckworth’s works transcend the line between realism and abstraction. His photographs are infused with an intimate knowledge of nature, a passion for pure color, and a rhythm drawn from life itself. His trademark style involves abstracting the photographic image to lend the work a much-lauded painterly appearance. By providing the viewer with a sense of place, yet obscuring the details, he allows each individual to step into the image and bring forth their own visual history. The ensuing narrative is enriched through the power of memory, infusing a personal creative process with universal appeal.

​Duckworth’s art imparts a calming, meditative, and contemplative quality intended to elicit a deeper consideration of ourselves and our environment. He is most well-known for his quietly abstract landscape photography of the Southeast coast, wherein the images read as luminous, rhythmic color field paintings.

More recently, his work has become immersive multimedia experiences involving video, music, performance, painting, and photography.

His long-standing meditation practice inspired a new body of work culminating in an exhibition entitled “AWAKE,” an immersive multimedia experience guiding each visitor through eight sequential rooms and over 90 original works of art, while wearing wireless headsets playing ambient audio composed for each room. This work is multi-layered and diverse, including photography, painting, screen-printing, airbrush, spray paint, audio, video, design, and performance.

“I wanted the exhibition to be alive—as I sat in meditation two to five hours a day for two months I was changing, transforming myself as part of the process.”

Duckworth lives and works in Johns Island, South Carolina, and New York City.

Duckworth’s piece entitled “Ashley River #84224” is on display in Concourse B.

Karl B. Smith was born in 1950 in Saranac Lake, New York. His early years were spent in Connecticut and New York. He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, where his early interest in art was kindled and he graduated Cum Laude.

In 1972, Smith graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Art History. While at Princeton, he studied painting with Esteban Vicente and was one of the first undergraduates to submit paintings for his thesis. After graduation, Smith traveled extensively in Europe, visiting 38 countries.

Art has always been Smith’s motivating force. He painted for 10 years while living in the New York neighborhood of Tribeca. Smith was also a studio assistant for a Guggenheim Fellow and manager for a gallery for imported art in the Soho District.

In 1983, Smith moved to Cold Spring in Hudson, NY, where he established Turn-of-the Century Art Gallery. While living in Cold Spring, Smith participated in numerous exhibits in the Hudson Valley. He received a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts to produce an exhibit of 50 drawings illustrating historic houses of the Hudson River Valley. The exhibit traveled to six museums and was published as a book in 1989: “Hudson Heritage, an Artist’s Perspective on Architecture.”

Smith moved to Charleston in 1992, where he opened Halcyon Place Gallery on Wentworth Street and a design studio in Folly Beach. An avid supporter of the arts in Charleston, Smith lends his incredible talent to many worthwhile charities. He has worked extensively in the historic district of Charleston and the surrounding areas, creating custom artwork for architects, interior designers, builders, homeowners, restaurants and commercial businesses.

Smith created the Andre Michaux mural that hangs along the front curb of the airport terminal. Guests leaving the terminal see it as they walk toward the parking deck.

The acrylic on canvas mural memorializes the life and work of Michaux, from the rice fields along the Ashley River’s plantations to the Charleston Harbor where, at a busy port, he introduced one of the first camellia plants to the area. Also depicted is a rendering of what the French Botanical Garden might have looked like. It is based on descriptions found in historic documents. In the image, Michaux and his son Francois are surrounded by “potager,” or a kitchen garden.

Michaux is credited with exporting more than 60,000 trees to Versailles to replenish forests destroyed for the shipbuilding business. Born and raised in Versailles, many of the boxed and potted exotic plants Michaux collected from around the world ended up in one garden, the Palace of Versailles.

The Friends of Andre Michaux commissioned Smith to create the mural using private donations to pay for the work. The project was eight years in the making. The mural, which took three months to paint, was a gift presented to the Charleston Regional Aviation Authority in 2016.

A descendant of the Gullah community of coastal South Carolina, Mary Jackson was born in 1945 in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Jackson learned the art of making baskets at the age of four from her mother and grandmother. Following chores, Jackson’s family would gather to make bulrush and sweetgrass baskets, using skills brought to the United States by their West African ancestors.

Sweetgrass, a plant named for the sweet smell of its reeds, is indigenous to the coastal lowlands of South Carolina. Developed originally as domestic and agricultural tools for cotton and rice production, sweetgrass baskets have traditionally taken utilitarian shapes such as storage containers and rice fanners.

Despite the tradition in her family, Jackson did not take up basketmaking as an adult until 1973 when she began producing baskets full-time and teaching her daughter the art form. Today, basketmaking is still a family affair: her husband and son gather the sweetgrass from local marshes while her daughter provides administrative support. For the last seven years, she has been teaching her granddaughter the art of sweetgrass basketmaking.

Jackson’s intricately coiled baskets preserve the centuries-old craft of sweetgrass basketry and continue to push the tradition in new directions. While preserving the culture and history of her ancestors, Jackson infuses the art form with a contemporary aesthetic and expressiveness all her own. With masterful technique, Jackson translates practical designs into finely detailed, sculptural forms. Today, her baskets are owned by such noted individuals as King Charles and the Empress of Japan.

A founding member of the Mount Pleasant Sweetgrass Basket Makers’ Association, Jackson also leads efforts to protect the threatened wetland habitats of sweetgrass and ensure continued local access to these resources. In 2008, she was awarded the Environmental Stewardship Award of Achievement given by the South Carolina Aquarium.

Jackson’s work has been exhibited at numerous institutions throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Museum of African American History in Detroit. Her stalwart devotion to the preservation of her unique cultural heritage has earned her numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Museum for Women in the Arts (1993) and the first National Bronze Award of Arts Achievement and Excellence given by The International Council of Fine Arts Deans (2007). Jackson has also received a United States Artists Donnelley Fellowship and a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. On December 19, 2009, Mary Jackson received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from South Carolina’s College of Charleston.

Mary Whyte is a teacher and author whose figurative watercolor paintings have earned international recognition. A resident of Johns Island, South Carolina, Whyte garners much of her inspiration from the Gullah descendants of coastal Carolina slaves who number among her most prominent subjects. In 2003, Whyte’s paintings of her Gullah friends culminated in a museum exhibition and book called “Alfreda’s World.”

In 2011, Whyte’s groundbreaking exhibition, “Working South,” opened with 50 works at the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina. Four additional museums signed on to exhibit the large-scale, sensitively rendered watercolors depicting blue-collar workers in industries vanishing throughout the south. Whyte’s unrivaled mastery of the watercolor medium, along with this exhibition, was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Her subsequent book, “Working South,” references each painting and sketch with background stories of the Southern people and places beautifully portrayed within the exhibition.

“Down Bohicket Road,” released November 2012, is her comprehensive book of paintings completed over a 20-year period on Johns Island. It is a rich, visual tribute to friendship that crosses cultural and racial borders and reaches straight to the heart.

In 2013, the South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Whyte with the prestigious Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award. Also in 2013, Whyte was one of 10 watercolor artists of the world invited to the China and Foreign Countries International Watercolour Summit at the Nanning Art Gallery in Nanning, China. Simultaneously, The Butler Institute of American Art showcased 20 of Whyte’s major works in a solo exhibition named after her recently released biography titled, “More Than a Likeness: The Enduring Art of Mary Whyte,” written by Martha R. Severens and published by University of South Carolina Press. The same year, Whyte was featured in a solo exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York City. The exhibition was extended due to the overwhelming positive public response.

Her overseas exhibition included The World Watermedia Exposition in Thailand, 2014. Whyte’s solo exhibition of 20 paintings, “A Portrait of Us,” toured the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando Florida, and the ArtCenter Manatee, in Bradenton Florida, November 2015 through February 2016.

Most recently, The Portrait Society of America chose Whyte as the 2016 recipient of the Society’s Gold Medal. Past recipients are some of America’s most renowned artists including Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth, Nelson Shanks, Phillip Pearlstein, and Burton Silverman.

Whyte’s watercolor entitled “Artist” is on display in Concourse B.

Philip Simmons was born June 9, 1912, in Wando on Daniel Island, near Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where he was reared by his grandparents. When he was eight years old, he was sent to Charleston (via the ferry), to live with his mother on Vernon Street and enroll in the first class at Buist School.

At the time, the school on Daniel Island offered limited education because it was an agriculture and fishing community. It was open for only three months and teachers were difficult to keep.

While walking to and from school, young Simmons noticed the ironwork and became intrigued with it. The neighborhood was a Mecca for craftsmen who serviced the waterfront businesses. He began visiting the blacksmith shops, pipefitters, shipwrights, coppers, and other craftsmen in the area. However, the sounds of the blacksmith shops interested him the most.

Simmons ultimately became the most celebrated of Charleston ironworkers in the 20th century. He received his most important education from local blacksmith Peter Simmons (no relation), who ran a busy shop at the foot of Calhoun Street. It was in that environment where Simmons acquired the values and refined the talents that would sustain him throughout his long metalworking career.

Moving into the specialized fields of ornamental iron in 1938, Simmons fashioned more than 500 decorative pieces of ornamental wrought iron: gates, fences, balconies, and window grills. The city of Charleston from end to end is truly decorated by his hand.

In 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him its National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor that the United States can bestow on a traditional artist. This recognition was followed by a similar award from the South Carolina state legislature for lifetime achievement and commissions for public sculptures by the South Carolina State Museum and the city of Charleston. Simmons was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in Myrtle Beach, SC on January 31, 1994. The Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest award, was presented to him on August 11, 1998, by Governor David Beasley. In 2001, Simmons received the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. And on May 12, 2006, he was the recipient of the Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.

In 2004, Simmons was commissioned by the Charleston Regional Aviation Authority to create an ironwork display for the airport. From a pencil sketch, the iron gazebo in the Central Marketplace (post-security) was created. The gazebo serves as a reminder of Charleston’s rich history and Simmons’ place in creating art that has become synonymous with the Holy City.

In 2009, five years after he conceived the airport gazebo, Simmons passed away.

Biography Source: Philip Simmons Foundation  

Pencil sketch used with permission from the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston. 

Headshot: Claire Y. Greene ©1993 with permission from the Philip Simmons Foundation, Inc. 

A professional nature photographer for over 40 years, Thomas Blagden has concentrated his work primarily on Maine, South Carolina, and Costa Rica.

Blagden’s photographs have appeared in most national conservation calendars, as well as in numerous exhibits and magazines, including the covers of “Smithsonian,” “Audubon,” “Outdoor Photographer,” “Nature Conservancy,” and “Sierra.” His photographs and writing are devoted to land protection and conservation issues, including seven books on South Carolina.

Blagden is also a recipient of the National Outdoor Book Award for his 2003 exhibit-format volume on Acadia National Park. He followed this with a new release, “Acadia National Park: A Centennial Celebration” by Rizzoli Publishers, 2016.

Blagden’s photography hangs in the TSA security checkpoint. However, the photographs aren’t your typical prints. They are printed on metal in a process called dye sublimation: an image is applied to specially coated ceramics, metals, and polyester cloth using sublimation ink, heat, and pressure. Each of the nine images hanging in the security checkpoint are actually made up of three metal panels. A shiny topcoat gives the photography an added visual punch and brightens the colors in each image.

In order of appearance as you enter the checkpoint, the artwork on display is:

• White Ibis Roost with Full Moon, Upper Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto (ACE) Basin
• Sheldon Church, Yemassee
• Combahee River Reflections, ACE Basin
• Sunrise in the Cypress, Rimini Swamp
• Angel Oak, Johns Island
• Sea Oats & Storm Clouds, Kiawah Island
• Black River, Andrews Botany Bay Plantation State Wildlife Management Area, Edisto Island
• Sunset, Edisto River, ACE Basin

Blagden has served on the boards of The Nature Conservancy of SC and the Lowcountry Land Trust and leads photography trips rafting down the Grand Canyon. He is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and the North American Nature Photography Association. He lives in Charleston and Lakeville, Connecticut, with his wife, Lynn. They have a daughter, Sarah, who lives in New York City.

West Fraser was born in Savannah, Georgia, and came of age on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1979.

Fraser served for nine years as a Board Commissioner of the South Carolina Art’s Commission. He is an artist member of the Salmagundi Club, a signature member of the prestigious PAPA (Plein Air Painters of America) and a signature member of the California Art Club. Fraser has been honored with eight solo museum exhibitions in the Midwest, the Southeast, and California. One recent exhibition, titled “A Native Son: Paintings of West Fraser,” was at the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah in 2012. In January 2017, Fraser had his ninth museum exhibition and third one-man show at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C

Fraser has been published extensively, including features in “Art and Antiques,” “Plein Air Magazine,” “The Robb Report,” “Southern Accents,” “American Artist,” “Nautical Quarterly,” “Southwest Art,” “Art and Antiques,” “Charleston Magazine,” and “Garden & Gun,” to name a few. In 2000, he represented South Carolina in the bicentennial celebration calendar published by the White House Historic Association.

In 2001, the University of South Carolina Press published the monograph “Charleston in My Time: The Paintings of West Fraser,” which was accompanied by a traveling exhibition to Southeastern museums. His second book, “Painting the Southern Coast: The Art of West Fraser,” was released by the University of South Carolina Press in 2016. This book represents over 40 years of Fraser’s paintings of the Southeastern seaboard starting in Georgetown, SC, and ending in St. Augustine, FL.

Fraser’s paintings are in nine museum collections and the White House Historic Society as well as numerous significant private and corporate collections nationwide.

His painting, entitled “Bluffton Oyster Factory Shuckers,” is on display in Concourse B. Reproductions of this painting are available and support The Joseph Bacon and Carolyn Bexley Fraser Sustainable Seafood Harvest Fund, which supports conservation programs that maintain the Port Royal Basin, the Calibogue Sound Basin, and surrounding areas, as healthy ecosystems and viable estuaries for sustainable harvest today and for the future.