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Villa Voice November 2016

 
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A Dream Comes to Life at the Art Museum | A Message from our Board Chairwoman

 
A Dream Comes to Life at the Art Museum
A Message from our Board Chairwoman

Once upon a time, the Museum’s Education Coordinator, Arielle Fatuova, had a dream: a pottery studio for the Art Museum. Arielle, a ceramist, saw how a pottery studio would provide new artistic opportunities for the community’s children and adults.

Working with our Executive Director, Patricia Goodwin, Arielle began making the dream a reality with architectural and engineering plans to convert a portion of the Museum’s ground floor into a fully equipped pottery studio. With plans in hand, they succeeded in attaining the City’s approval and the Board’s blessing.

As we all know dreams rarely come true without funds to pay for them. This fall, thanks to the efforts of Board member Elizabeth Benton (working with Pat), the Museum received a generous grant from the Chapin Foundation to make Arielle’s dream come true.

The board and staff thank the Chapin Foundation for its recognition of the Museum as a leader and an educational resource in the cultural life of the community and for the Foundation’s continuing support of the Museum’s growth.

I encourage all of you to help us grow. Next year, our 20th Anniversary, there will be many exciting exhibitions and programs, including the construction of the pottery studio. You can make dreams come true too. When you receive our Annual Fund appeal, please join the Chapin Foundation and so many others in supporting the Art Museum.

Details on when studio construction will begin are coming soon. Thank you for being part of our Museum family.

Sincerely,
nancy-cave1
Nancy Cave
Chair, Board of Trustees

Change of Seasons | A Message from Our Executive Director
 
Change of Seasons
A Message from our Executive Director

Every year, we choose an exhibition for the summer months that we hope will be a blockbuster, and generally that’s what we’ve had: artists like Ansel Adams, Norman Rockwell, the much loved Babar’s World Tour, and so on. But this summer’s The Art of the Brick was what we might call. “the mother of all blockbusters!” The exhibition brought in double the attendance of the previous record breaker, Ansel Adams, 2014, and lots of enthusiastic comments from our visitors.

But, as you know, we at the Museum are always raising the bar. So with this very successful summer behind us, we have already moved on to some exciting and intriguing fall exhibits. We now have three new exhibits open. Celia Pearson’s Layerings: A Glimpse of Southeast Asia features the fine-art photography of Celia Pearson, inspired by her travels through Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. As suggested by the title, Pearson’s works are photographic montages of the multifaceted cultures she experienced, many rendered on delicate rice paper and silk.

Logan Woodle: Blessed Burdens features metal sculptures, which are actually functional tools that the artist encountered growing up on the family farm near Conway, but with personal and often whimsical touches – such as a biscuit cutter (titled Aunt Anna’s Biscuits) imprinted with an image of his father’s nanny’s fingers, or his sterling silver and copper gravy boat in the shape of a pig.

And also we have the 39th Annual South Carolina Watermedia Society Juried Exhibition, a perennial favorite consisting of 75 water-based media paintings debuting at the Art Museum. The 30 award-winning paintings will go on to tour the state at participating venues. It will remain at the Museum through Nov. 27; Layerings and Blessed Burdens are on display through the end of the year.

I hope you were able to attend one of our favorite fundraisers the 12th Annual Bag Ladies Luncheon, which was held on Friday, November 4, at the Dunes Golf and Beach Club. As usual, lunch was delicious and the view from the Dunes’ ballroom equally so. Area businesses donated 100 unique and stylish handbags (as well as some exciting gift certificates) for the silent auction, from which proceeds help support the Art Museum’s exhibit schedule and outreach programs. The Luncheon culminated with our one lucky winner whose winning number was called, and she left with a stylish leader Burberry bowler bag on her shoulder. Local celebrity and media maven Diane DeVaughn Stokes, our emcee, added a touch of excitement to the event.

With fall comes our Annual Fund appeal. As you know, for nearly two decades the Art Museum has hosted exhibitions of works by some of the world’s most renowned artists, as well as, many artists from around our region. Our Museum has been recognized by the South Carolina Arts Commission for its outstanding contributions to the cultural resources of our state, and it provides arts and cultural enrichment programs to thousands of children and adults from Horry and Georgetown counties – many of whom have no other access to the arts. When you receive our appeal message – or see it online – we hope you’ll answer it with a generous donation – knowing just how important your contribution is to your Museum and to your community.

And for your holiday shopping you won’t want to miss the Art Museum’s Annual Members’ Shopping Week (Tuesday, November 29 through Sunday, December 4). That’s the week when Museum members can enjoy a 20% discount on all their purchases and savor some delicious pumpkin bread and hot cider. The Shop has recently been “restyled” by Karen Olson and is filled with your favorite cards, books, puzzles, jewelry and calendars as well as some new items for you and yours.

I look forward to seeing you soon at the Art Museum!

Sincerely,
pats-signature-001
Patricia Goodwin
Executive Director

Thank you to the generous sponsors for the
12th Annual Bag Ladies Luncheon
Presnted by: Tara Grinna Swimwear
Supported by: Anderson Brothers Bank, Grand Dunes OBGYN, Massage Envy, Sea Island Trading Co and WebsterRogers, LLP
Media Sponsor: Grand Strand Magazine
Designer Bag Sponsor: Bellamy Law Firm

 

Education Corner with Arielle Fatuova

Education Corner
with Arielle Fatuova

The Museum was filled from top to bottom this summer with The Art of the Brick , making for a busy summer for our Education Staff. If you’ve ever played with LEGO bricks as a child, you can imagine how exciting this exhibit was for our visitors – of all ages. Not only did they see incredible LEGO sculptures by globally touring artist Nathan Sawaya, but they also got to build their own LEGO sculptures.

The Art Museum has been providing free field trips for community groups for many years, thanks to our generous sponsors. This summer, over 800 children from community groups in Horry and Georgetown Counties visited the Museum. These included quite a few newcomers, among them Thomas Gymnastics, the new Murrells In let YMCA and Chesterfield Church summer campers. For those not able to make the trip to the Museum, we took our LEGO activities on the road, visiting groups from Conway to Pawleys Island.

In our last newsletter, we mentioned how popular technology and robotics have become in our area. The result – RoboArt Camp – proved to be a huge hit! Participants were given one-on-one robotics training from Louis Rubbo, President of FLL (First LEGO League) Affiliate Partner, and Brandy Incorvia, Santee Cooper’s Community Relations Education Representative. We were blown away by how quickly these young “robotniks” were able to execute the instructions given them and troubleshoot any issues that came up while programming their robots. We were thrilled to be able to give our kids their first robotics experience schools, and that we hoped to be able to offer a program combining robotics and art.

With summer barely behind us, our fall KidsArt classes began filling up as soon as our new brochures went out. Some of our exhibiting artists, among them metal worker Logan Woodle and watercolorist, Maura Kenny, will be working with our 8-to-12 year-old and teen groups. We know our participants will enjoy meeting these gifted artists while having a hands-on art-making experience.

Working with the Chapin Memorial Library in our summer program, Art & Books Collide, has always been so much fun that we wanted to continue it into the school year. So this September, we have teamed up to provide an hour-long, after-school program every second Thursday of the month at the Chapin Library, for children ages 10-to-14 years. It’s a great way to expose our area youth to both art and reading. We’ve also continued our after-school program at the Waccamaw Neck Library every first Wednesday of the month, and we have seen a lot of new faces! These outreach programs are a great way for us to bring new families into our Museum “family.”

Hurricane Matthew set us back a few lost days, but we will certainly not let that slow us down now! Our annual Día de los Muertos Free Family Day was held on Saturday, October 29, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. This is Ms. Arielle’s favorite Family Day – a great opportunity to create fun activities for all ages! As usual, we had calavera masks for the children to color and decorate (always a big crowd-pleaser) and sugar skulls which our visitors color and decorate with frosting, candy bits and sprinkles. Children also had the chance to make dancing skeletons and to turn a mini pumpkin into a calavera face.

We hope to see you at all of our upcoming events!

Thank you to our generous sponsors for Dia de los Muertos:
Presented by: Publix Super Market Charities
Supported by: BB&T
Food provided by: Fiesta Mexicana

 

Museum Member Brings New Life to Our Carousel Horse

Museum Member Brings New Life
to Our Carousel Horse

Cast your memory back to 2003 (those who were here then), when a local group of art enthusiasts raised money to restore the historic Rivoli Theatre by commissioning, then auctioning off 50 carousel horses decorated by local artists in a wide range of styles and colors. Alas, the Rivoli was never restored, but the Art Museum was gifted one of the horses.

The horse sculpture, painted by artist Charlene Winkler (who died in 2011) has stood proudly on the Museum’s front lawn ever since, through all kinds of weather – including hurricanes – but over the years the stately beast had lost some of its original luster. Hal Vivian, Museum member and friend of the late artist, rode to the rescue and volunteered to provide a much-needed face-lift to the once-colorful steed.

“The colors were in surprisingly good shape, considering the years of wind and rain it had withstood,” says Vivian, who insists he’s not an artist, just “an ordinary handyman,” although he admits to dabbling in sculpture. Among his spare time hobbies are caring for an outdoor train and a 40-foot-long snake created from wood, red aluminum and garden plants at his Murrells Inlet home.

He began the equine makeover by first preparing the surface with a thorough sanding, to remove any remaining gloss and ensure that the new paint would adhere. Then armed with a palette of outdoor paints from Home Depot – Behr ultra premium, to be exact – Hal set about color-matching and then retouching the original work. Working with the horse in its current position, he accomplished the restoration over a period of several days. Mother Nature assisted with a short spell of relatively cool, dry weather.

But before he was able to apply a protective overcoat, along came Hurricane Matthew.
“I went back over after the storm, expecting to see some pitting or chipping,” Hal recalls, “but it was fine. I washed it down – there were some sand and leaves on it – and then I sprayed it with a couple of coats of polyurethane, and it looked great.”

As you can see from the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos, it’s not a horse of a different color – just restored to its original, high-stepping glory.

 

Volunteer Tracey Roode Finds Her 'Community' at the Art Museum

Volunteer Tracey Roode Finds Her ‘Community’ at the Art Museum

If you came to The Art of the Brick exhibit this summer, you probably saw the LEGO mural on the Museum’s Tea Porch: a sort of Lego-by-numbers rendering of the Myrtle Beach skyline, set up to allow visitors to try their hand at creating a LEGO work of art. And if you did, you may have also met Tracey Roode there in one of her first assignments as an Art Museum volunteer.

“I got to play with LEGOs all summer,” she says with a laugh.

A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Tracey’s childhood amusements ran more to Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys and the great outdoors. But she quickly warmed to the LEGOs assignment, sharing the enthusiasm of the youngsters (mostly) who worked on the mural.

“Some of the kids would add things like jellyfish or seaweed – made out of LEGOs – which weren’t really in the picture but were fun,” she recalls. “And one adult made a replica of the Swan Bench (on the Tea Porch). That was amazing.”

Tracey and her husband, Rich, a physician assistant with Doctor’s Care, relocated to Myrtle Beach shortly after New England’s brutal winter of 2014. “I’m actually a winter person,” she says, “but I have to admit I’m not missing it!”

New in town with no local acquaintances aside from Rich’s parents – and as a student in Arts Management in the University of Massachusetts’ online degree program – Tracey naturally gravitated to the Art Museum. There, she says, she discovered her “community,” a place where she could meet new people and share her enthusiasm for the visual arts.

“I worked at the art museum in Worcester, but this museum is unlike any of the others I’ve ever visited,” she recalls. “I immediately fell in love with it. It’s a very warm museum with a real connection to the community.”

What especially appealed to her was the accessibility of the Museum staff, unlike other facilities where staff members mostly seemed “tucked away” from the public.

“Here, a lot of times you’ll see Pat (Goodwin) interacting with visitors in the Museum Shop, at the front desk, or in the galleries,” she says. “I just love that.”

Goodwin has also been a resource for Tracey in her studies. With just two semesters to go before completing her Bachelor’s Degree in Arts Management, she’s been able to get hands-on practical training in museum finance and in researching exhibitions. Upon completing her degree, she hopes to work for a community-based nonprofit arts organization, but still plans to continue as an Art Museum volunteer.

“It’s great to be around amazing art, some from local artists, some from renowned, nationally- known artists, in an atmosphere that’s really warm and welcoming,” she says. “If you love art and love people, this is definitely the place to be.”

THE FRANKLIN G. BURROUGHS-SIMEON B. CHAPIN ART MUSEUM IN MYRTLE BEACH

Myrtle Beach’s Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum strives to be one of the finest visual arts museums in the Carolinas. With 11 galleries that change throughout the year, Myrtle Beach’s only art museum offers exhibitions featuring paintings, textiles, sculpture, photography, video, ceramics, assemblage, collage and more. A visit to the Art Museum’s exhibitions can be enhanced by its lively programming, including artist receptions, tours, lectures, workshops and classes for both adults and children.