Ment Nelson brings pride of place to ‘Souf Cak’
It’s a great day in South Carolina Souf Cak.
One can easily envision that phrase appearing among Ment Nelson’s tweets at some point, if it’s not in the 3,100+ already tweeted. His mission statement on the social media platform is “I make it cool to be from South Carolina,” so we posit that our lede is not a stretch.
But don’t take The Hub’s word for it; the Post & Courier undoubtedly has more cachet and on Monday made the case for Nelson’s innate coolness with a wonderful story you should read if you haven’t already:
As an emerging artist who has gone from bagging groceries to collaborating on a New York gallery show in the span of two years, Nelson doesn’t draw a line between his portraits, his hip-hop songwriting, his computerized artwork and his ebullient social-media presence.
He’ll use any format that gets the job done, up to and including posing for a selfie with a roost full of chickens.
Hat tip to P&C writer Paul Bowers.
Artists from South Carolina are certainly germane to a Hub story, but Ment is also working on a new initiative we’re going to begin talking about soon called “Create: Rural S.C.” The S.C. Arts Commission will lead research on South Carolina’s creative cluster, with a deeper examination of the creative economy in the state’s rural Promise Zone (Barnwell, Bamberg, Allendale, Hampton, Jasper, Colleton Counties), a priority community of the USDA-RD (the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Development).
A cohort of “Next Generation” creative professionals in the Promise Zone will assist in all aspects of the development and roll-out of the plan. This program is an outgrowth of the SCAC’s “The Art of Community: Rural S.C.” initiative, which is active in each of the Promise Zone counties as the umbrella organization for this program and already bearing fruit in the region.
Hear more from the young voices of “Create: Rural S.C.” in this video.
YOUNG VOICES VIDEO 5 MINUTES from Cook Productions on Vimeo.