Park Circle Gallery to exhibit works by SCAC emerging artist
‘Don’t It Feel Good?’ features Lucius Nelson
The City of North Charleston’s Cultural Arts Department announced concurrent exhibitions of #SCArtists this week, one of whom is a South Carolina Arts Commission Emerging Artist grant alumnus.
Oil paintings by Lucius Nelson (Darlington) and drawings and paintings by Jazmo Hankins (Mount Pleasant) will be on display at Park Circle Gallery December 4-28. The artists will host a free public reception at the gallery on Friday, December 6, from 5-7 p.m.
Icetreem by Lucius Nelson
“Don’t It Feel Good?” – Oil Paintings by Lucius Nelson
“Don’t It Feel Good?” is a decadent tromp through the surreal Southern gumbo of late-stage consumer culture, spiritual short-circuiting, and human resilience. Borrowing from the methods and imagery of the Renaissance, Lucius Nelson’s oil paintings bask in the syrupy collision of the high-class and the lowbrow. What emerges is at once beautiful and grotesque. “The seedlings of my work were planted in the high fructose toxic goop of Nickelodeon cartoons blended with early exposure to renaissance art,” Nelson explains. Using his background in photography and video, he captures the typically outlandish source imagery for his paintings, attempting to subject the portrait models to bizarre physical experiences meant to illicit unpredictable reactions and thereby capturing a more naturalistic, though surreal, moment. What follows is a slow meditative burn of hundreds of hours of execution in indirect venetian style oil painting.
Lucius Nelson began his art practice at a young age with studio art lessons by day and drawing his own comic books by night. He pursued higher art education at the University of South Carolina and then at the College of Charleston, where he earned a bachelor’s in studio art.
After college, Lucius continued his passion for oil painting, but primarily focused on building a career in independent filmmaking. This took him to Philadelphia to film jazz greats like Gary Burton, as well as a litany of up-start musicians in the area. Lucius returned to South Carolina to work on the film Overalls and Aprons, which explored the crucial relationship between Charleston’s farmers and chefs. When filming wrapped, he traveled in Asia, Europe, and throughout the U.S., eventually settling down in Darlington to focus on painting, raising crops, and deepening his experience in Zen practices. His work has recently been exhibited at ArtFields in Lake City and the South Carolina Biennial at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia. Nelson received an FY24 Emerging Artist grant from the SCAC. See more of Lucius’ work at LuciusNelson.com.
Someday by Jazmo Hankins
“The Ether and the Innerspace” – Drawings and Paintings by Jazmo Hankins
In “The Ether & the Innerspace,” Jazmo Hankins of Mount Pleasant presents a collection of drawings and paintings that explore the origins of ideas and dreams. Do they come from within or without? Are they transmissions waiting for the right antenna to pick them up, or the result of the human mind digesting all that it absorbs? Some of both? What does the dream machine do during waking hours? These are some of the ideas depicted and questions asked in Jazmo’s stream of consciousness approach to image making.
Jazmo Hankins is a self-taught artist, illustrator, and screen printer. His work is often described as pop art, outsider art, and folk art. Though his artwork is representational and narrative, he creates in mainly a stream of consciousness manner, producing images with none or very little preconceived ideas at the onset. “While inspired by everything I see (both the things I love, and the things I hate), I do not believe in questing for ‘inspiration’,” Hankins explains. “I believe inspiration comes from working. I prefer to be surprised by what comes out. It’s all the exhaust of a neurotic, overly introverted person, trying to process life.” View Jazmo’s work on Instagram.
The Park Circle Gallery is located at 4820 Jenkins Ave. in North Charleston. Admission is free and free street parking is available on Jenkins Avenue in front of the gallery, as well as on the adjacent streets and in parking lots close by. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, and noon-4 p.m. on Saturday. The gallery will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday December 25 and 26, for the Christmas holiday. For more information about PCG, call 843.637.3565 or email culturalarts@northcharleston.org. For information on other Cultural Arts programs and artist opportunities, visit the Arts & Culture section of the city’s website.