Hi/Lo | Katelyn Chapman and Andrew Blanchard
Public Works Art Center’s West & East Gallery | Opening Reception: July 16 from 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Katelyn Chapman received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Georgia in 2018 and a BFA with an emphasis in Drawing from Clemson University in 2014. Her work is inspired by her deeply rooted familial and rural ties to the South and has been in both national and local group exhibitions and published internationally. “My work explores episodes of working-class life in America’s rural South through the lens of my own family and friends in the Midlands of South Carolina. I index my upbringing in this place by referencing backroad dispositions in conjunction with symbols of faith and Christian iconography. By painting these accounts, I celebrate, honor, and show reverence towards the customs and traditions of the rural working-class South.”
Andrew Blanchard grew up wild in the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi. The Ole Miss Art Department found him naked, removed a thorn from his paw and awarded him an MFA. To date he has avoided jail and is currently a Full Professor of Studio Art at Converse University in Spartanburg, SC, as well as a life-long resident of the MS Gulf Coast. “For more than a decade, my work has volleyed between personal-reflection and the presence of objective visual reportage. Double entendre is ever more present in which pseudo-religious, socio-political, and quasi-racial curiosities are embellished by a hybrid of print and photographic processes and techniques. Mother Nature coupled with humanity’s imbalance often share space within my works, indicating that notions of community activism and brotherly love are often plagued when partisanship overshadows civility. My works also touch upon prickly issues such as boundaries and division, as well as the balance that can be found by summoning yesteryear wistfulness, negative or positive.”