28th annual waccamaw arts & crafts guild juried art exhibition

October 28 – December 21, 2025 | opening reception, October 28, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

The Art Museum was conceived by a small but visionary group of local art enthusiasts, among them a group of artists formed in the late 1960s called the Waccamaw Arts & Crafts Guild. Beginning in the spring of 1969, a pattern of art exhibitions was established that continues today. To honor the integral role that the Guild played in the Museum’s establishment, the Museum proudly hosts the Guild’s annual spring juried art exhibition. A diverse array of media in both two and three-dimension, all completed by local artists within the past two years, will be exhibited and judged for awards.

The artwork for this year’s exhibition is juried in by Coastal Carolina University (CCU) Visual Arts professors Meghan O’Connor,  Sandrine Schaefer and Easton Selby. The work is judged by CCU professor Jim Arendt, who received his BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design (MI) and MFA from the University of South Carolina. He has participated in residency programs including The Fields Project in Illinois, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts’ (TN) Tactility Forum and From Waste to Art VI in Baku, Azerbaijan. He’s been invited to teach at Penland School of Craft (NC), Peters Valley School of Craft (NJ)  and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Arendt has received much recognition for his work, including First Prize in Fiberarts International 2019, a place on the short list for The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art (Gibbes Museum of Art, SC) and a spot as a 2018 finalist for the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize, Society for Contemporary Craft (PA). He received the South Carolina Arts Commission Visual Artist Fellowship 2014 and the $50,000 Top Prize at the 2013 ArtFields competition in Lake City, SC. He has juried numerous local, regional and national exhibitions in support of the arts across the country.