by Jess Abbott | Jul 31, 2023 | News
The Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) is delighted to announce the appointment of Javy Pagan as the new Program Director. With an impressive background in program creation, implementation, community engagement, and fundraising, Javy’s expertise is set to propel GCCA’s programming initiatives to new heights.
Before joining GCCA, Javy Pagan served as the Director of Museum Experience at the Children’s Museum of the Upstate. His remarkable accomplishments and dedication in the cultural sector have earned him a reputation as an influential leader with a passion for promoting creativity and the arts in the community. Javy is also a highly engaged and active member of the local Greenville theatre community.
In response to the appointment, Jess Burgess, CEO of Greenville Center for Creative Arts, commented, “We are thrilled to welcome Javy Pagan to our GCCA family as the new Program Director. With his wealth of experience and visionary approach to program development, we are excited to witness our initiatives flourish and make an even greater impact on the artistic landscape of the upstate region.”
Javy Pagan expressed his enthusiasm about his new role, stating, “I am excited to bring my experience in program creation, implementation, community engagement, and fundraising to the role of Programs Director at GCCA. I am humbled to be joining a team of incredible arts administrators, and I am committed to working with them for the betterment of the upstate community.”
As the Program Director, Javy Pagan will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of GCCA’s arts programs, fostering creativity, and expanding outreach efforts to ensure the organization continues to thrive as a leading hub for artistic expression in Greenville and beyond.
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About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
by Ben Tarcson | Jul 1, 2023 | News
July 1, 2023: Greenville, SC – Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) will hold its eighth Annual Showcase on Friday, August 4th, from 6 – 9 pm at 101 Abney St. in the Village of West Greenville. Presented by First Citizens Bank, the Annual Showcase is GCCA’s premiere event for artists and art lovers of all ages, featuring a new Main Gallery exhibition with works from more than 120 local artists & current Brandon Fellows, a special exhibition of youth artwork created during GCCA’s Summer Art Camps, live artist demos promoting classes for the Fall Art School, visits with 25 in-house studio artists, and much more.
Located in the Main Gallery, the Annual Showcase exhibition highlights over 100 GCCA members each year whose work embodies the talent and diversity of GCCA’s vibrant visual arts community. From contemporary paintings to functional ceramics and everything in between, there is something for everyone at the Annual Showcase exhibition. The 2022-2023 Brandon Fellowship exhibition will also be on display showcasing work by emerging artists Orlando Corona, Faith Hudgens, and RaAmen Stallings. In addition, after a competitive selection process, GCCA will announce three new Brandon Fellows for the upcoming 2023-2024 program year.
This summer GCCA’s art camps introduced a variety of visual art mediums to over 150 campers. To culminate all the hard work completed by instructors and campers, the Summer Art Camp Showcase presents a collection of various artworks from campers ages 5-12 years old.
Visitors can also enjoy a free ReCraft family activity supported by AFL Global, new Loft Gallery exhibition by studio artist Tania Ro, and the Greenville County Schools Winners Show will still be on display in the Community Gallery. During the event you can also meet our newest team member, Program Director, Javy Pagan. After First Friday, the Annual Showcase exhibition in the Main Gallery will be open to visitors through Sept. 28 on Tuesdays through Fridays from 9 am – 5 pm and Saturdays 11 am – 3 pm. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call GCCA at 864-735-3948 or visit www.artcentergreenville.org.
About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
by Ben Tarcson | Jun 1, 2023 | News
June 1, 2023: Join Us for the Opening of the GCS Award Winners Show in the Community Gallery. GCCA will host the second annual Greenville County Schools Award Winners Show, opening First Friday, July 7, 2023 from 6 – 9 PM. The award winning artwork from students of GCS elementary, middle, and high schools represents the best of the best from over 90 schools throughout the district. These students worked hard to create the amazing art exhibited in the GCS Winners Show, and the Greenville County School District is pleased to share the artistic accomplishments of the GCS student artists with the community.
About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
by Ben Tarcson | May 1, 2023 | News
Greenville, SC – Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) announced the opening of their latest Main Gallery exhibition, Invisible Planet. The exhibition features the artwork of local Greenville artists Virginia Russo & Joseph Smolin. This exhibition opens on Friday, June 2nd, 2023 from 6-9pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Invisible Planet will be on display in the Main Gallery until Wednesday, July 26th, 2023.
On Tuesday, July 11th, join Russo and Smolin in GCCA’s Main Gallery at 6 PM for an artist talk event in the Main Gallery.
Invisible Planet is an imaginary world that represents untouched beauty and the raw wonder of creation. Russo created “The Planet” which aims to be a refuge for neuro-divergent people who suffer from sensory issues and overstimulation. This world in her work is a mysterious and ethereal land filled with mountains, cliffs, mushrooms, and an ever-present orange sun. Smolin’s experience growing up half-Jewish in the Deep South—Birmingham, AL—is reflected in his symbology and exploration of identity issues. His flamboyant and androgynous characters, as visitors on “The Planet“, challenge gender norms and societal expectations. Smolin’s work delivers condensed psycho-symbolic imagery that deals with themes of identity, religion, oppression, and conformity.
Virginia Russo
Kara Virginia Russo is a visual, performance, and multimedia artist based in Greenville, SC. Upon her adulthood diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, she embraced her inner imaginative world and the elements and symbolism that compose it. Endlessly combining circles, torn paper, and warm colors to create fantastical planet-scapes, she works similarly to a jazz musician, repeating, deconstructing, rearranging, and piecing back together a theme. She has collaborated on musical projects, contributing visual art as well as live performance art, and her work has been shown in galleries in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville.
Joseph Smolin
Joseph Smolin, born and raised in Birmingham, AL, is a Jewish painter and multimedia artist. In 2020, he co-founded Rattlesnake Art Magazine, a journal highlighting underground art in the Carolinas. His contributions, both 2-D and 3-D, were an integral part of the immersive group exhibition Candy Machine. He has also shown work at Modal, Inchoate, Eighth State, and Carolina Bauernhaus. Smolin marries playfully grotesque characterization with bright, candy-colored aesthetics and a dry sense of humor. Joseph has lived in Greenville, SC since 2018.
About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. GCCA’s galleries are open Tuesdays-Fridays from 9am – 5pm & Saturdays from 11am-3pm. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
by Greg | Apr 21, 2023 | News
Greenville, SC – Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) opens their newest Community Gallery exhibition, Messages from the Past, featuring Caroline Hughes & Deborah Puretz Grove. The exhibition opens on Friday, May 5th, 2023 from 6 – 9 pm. Messages from the Past will continue on display through Wednesday, June 28th, 2023.
In Messages from the Past, Caroline E. Hughes and Deborah Puretz Grove test the processes that connect us to each other and our past. Through textures and patterning, we see how textiles, prints, and technologies can be a connecting force to bring understanding and advance towards the future. Caroline E. Hughes investigates personal experiences with place and community through large scale textile works. Aspects of rural living are present in her work. Hughes places an emphasis on her history in those settings as a catalyst for connections and shared experience. Deborah Puretz Grove uses semiconductor plates as metaphors for extending personal memories and connecting people all the time everywhere. In her many series of work, deeds, titles, letters, and family photos, from 1890 – 1950 are juxtaposed by references of semiconductor prototypes of the 1990s to further elaborate on the idea of memory extension.
Caroline E. Hughes
Caroline E. Hughes is a Textile Artist, Educator, and Historian living and working in Upstate South Carolina. She bases her themes of work, tacit knowledge, and craftsmanship in the fading histories of her hometown in rural South Greenville County. That fading, and the changes that affect it, are the basis of the ideas explored by Caroline in her textile work. Her work seeks to bring attention to the importance of a way of life and thought, largely passed over in our modern day-to-day existence. The study of the past is to inform the future. With this belief as a mainspring, her works are created using traditional craft methods and tell an inherent multi-faceted story of craft, community, and belonging.
Deborah Puretz Grove
Deborah Puretz Grove received an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona and a BA from UCLA and Lund University, Sweden. Deborah completed an MA in TESOL at California State University, and hundreds of hours in post graduate art history courses. Grove has traveled to over 40 countries and speaks four languages. Since 1977, Deborah has work within the IT industry in Hong Kong and Redwood City, CA. She has exhibited at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Stanford University; Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois; Napa Valley Museum & the Berkeley Art Museum in California among many other.
About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
by Ben Tarcson | Mar 23, 2023 | News
Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) is excited to announce the opening of their Main Gallery exhibition, Past/Present. The exhibition features the artwork of acclaimed artists Lee Malerich & Dwain Skinner. This exhibition opens on Friday, April 7th, 2023 from 6-9 PM. There will be opening remarks for the exhibition made by GCCA’s CEO, Jess Burgess at 6:30 PM. Admission is free and open to the public.
On Tuesday, May 9th, join Past/Present exhibiting artist, Lee Malerich, in GCCA’s Main Gallery at 6 PM for our ARTalk event discussing her artwork. Past/Present will be on display in the Main Gallery until Wednesday, May 24th, 2023.
In Past/Present, artists Lee Malerich and Dwain Skinner use patterns and myriads of cultural imagery to explore how personal history’s impact us. Through lived experiences, journeys are chronicled and work confronts the past to reconcile the present. Lee Malerich repurposes old furniture, toys, or tools into large wooden sculptures that suggest ways of having lived. Malerich’s history in textiles provide insight into her use of patterning to unify the complex compositions in each sculpture. Beginning in 2019, after years away from art-making, Dwain Skinner created over 100 pieces in what would be his last year of life. This proliferation of mixed media, collage, and found objects largely embodies a deconstruction of nostalgia surrounding ideals of Americana.
Lee Malerich
Lee Malerich is a sculpture and textile artist from South Carolina. Malerich received her BFA in 1979 & MA in 1981 in Studio Art-Textiles from Northern Illinois University. She is a retired teacher and has taught at Coker College, Orangeburg Calhoun Technical College, & Columbia College. Malerich is the recipient of many major grants and fellowships including the South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship in Crafts and the National Endowment of the Arts Regional Fellowship. Her work can be found in the South Carolina Arts Commission State Art Collection as well as in the collections of the City of Charleston and the SC State Museum, among many others. Being originally trained in textiles, Malerich has over the past decade transitioned to sculpture and woodworking. “I started patterning using colored pencils on the surfaces of the sculptures and then I began to play with value in the same way I did in my textiles. I construct reclaimed wood in layers, shadowing the actual construction of my [history in] textiles.”
Dwain Skinner
Dwain Skinner was born in Greer, SC in 1969. He attended the Fine Arts Center, as well as the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He received his B.S. in graphic design from Winthrop University. After completing his degree, Dwain worked as an illustrator and graphic designer until the beginning of 2019, when he and his wife, Meredith, left the corporate world to pursue their mutual dream of opening an art gallery and working as full time artists. As a full-time artist, Dwain constantly explored and refined his personal style. He developed an impassioned interest in mixed media, and would often journey to flea markets and rummage sales to collect small objects for his unique collages. He prepared well over 100 pieces for the opening of Woodbine Studio & Gallery in November 2019. That same year, his illustrations were published in a children’s book, he won the cover of Greenville’s Visitors Guide, and participated in Open Studios for the first time. His experiences provided the impetus for Dwain to continue to move forward as an artist. Tragically, Dwain passed away on November 20, 2019, just ten days after showing his work for the first time.
About GCCA
Greenville Center for Creative Arts is a non-profit organization that aims to enrich the cultural fabric of the community through visual arts promotion, education, and inspiration. GCCA’s galleries are open Tuesdays-Fridays from 9am – 5pm & Saturdays from 11am-3pm. For more information, visit www.artcentergreenville.org, call 864-735-3948, or check out GCCA on Facebook (Greenville Center for Creative Arts) & Instagram (@artcentergvl).
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