Leo Twiggs: Shifting Symbols, March 28-April 19, 2014

LEO TWIGGS: Shifting Symbols

March 28 - April 19, 2014

Artist's Reception: Friday, March 28, 6-9 p.m.

Gallery Talk: Saturday, March 29, 1:00 p.m.

For a preview, CLICK HERE

For a BIO and the ESSAY Leo Twiggs Does More With Less, CLICK HERE

Leo Twiggs Shifting Symbols Exhibition Preview

Kingstree Crossing, 2014, batik on cotton,
29 x 24 in., $8,000/SOLD

Figure and Flag, 2014, batik on cotton,
19 x 24 in., $6,500/SOLD

Red Cow Blues, 2014, batik on cotton,
15 x 11 1/2 in., $5,500/SOLD

Black Interior, 2012, batik on cotton, 13.5 x 10.25 in.

Blue Interior, 2012, batik on cotton, 13.5 x 10.25 in.

Anthology Totem,

2012, batik on

cotton, 48 x 12 in.,

$7,000/SOLD

Reclining Fancy Dancer, 2012, batik on cotton,  21 x 24 in., 

The Beach (Series), 2012, batik on cotton, 12 x 48 in., $19,000.

ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY, March 22 - April 2, 2013

To see work from artists in Zoological Society click on their names: 
Roland Albert, Carl Blair, Steven Chapp, Phil Garrett, Tonya Gregg, Diane Kilgore Condon,Peter Lenzo, Philip Morsberger, Marcelo Novo,Anna Redwine, Kees Salentijn, Leo Twiggs andDavid Yaghjian. 

For a PREVIEW of the exhibition  CLICK HERE

For installation shots of the exhibition CLICK HERE

18/100 Southern Artists: The if ART Contingency: October 28- November 17, 2012

18/100 Southern Artists
The if ART Contingency

October 28 - November 17, 2012

@ if ART Gallery
1223 Lincoln St. 
Columbia, SC

1 new book about Southern artists
100 artists in the book
18 of 100 artists from if ART Gallery

ARTISTS' RECEPTION & BOOK SIGNING
Sunday, October 28, 2 - 4 pm

To view works of art featured in 100 Southern Artists available at if ART Gallery CLICK HERE

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART Gallery
(803) 238-2351/ wroefs@sc.rr.com

BOOK SIGNING Message From Home: The Art of Leo Twiggs

LEO TWIGGS

Book Signing

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

7:00 – 9:00 pm

@

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Columbia, SC 29205

for the recently published book

Messages From Home:

The Art of Leo Twiggs

320 pages; 160 color images; essays by Leo Twiggs, William Eiland, Frank Martin & Wim Roefs

Orangeburg, S.C.; Claflin University Press, 2011

Regular Price: $75

Special Book Signing Price: $65

+ 7% sales tax

To reserve copy/copies, please contact Wim Roefs

@ if ART Gallery, wroefs@sc.rr.com / (803) 238-2351

            At its location at 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC, if ART Gallery presents and book signing with batik artist Leo Twiggs for Messages From Home: The Art of Leo Twiggs, which was published recently by Claflin University Press in Orangeburg, S.C. The signing will take place on Wednesday, December 14, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. The book will be for sale during the book signing for a discounted price of $65; the regular price is $75.

            The 230-page book contains 160 color plates of Twiggs' work of the past 45 years and essays by Twiggs, Georgia Museum of Art director William Eiland, South Carolina State University art historian Frank Martin and if ART Gallery owner Wim Roefs.

            In nine short essays, Orangeburg resident Twiggs discusses several series of his work and the personal experiences that were the impetus for the series. Eiland wrote the book’s foreword while Martin contributed an analysis of Twiggs’s work titled “The Art of Leo Twiggs as a Metaphor of Lived Experience.” Roefs essay, “Leo Twiggs: Batik Artist,” provides an overview of Twiggs’ career and working methods as well as a discussion of his work.

            Twiggs is one of the most prominent artists, art educators and art administrators in South Carolina of the past four decades. He is widely regarded as the foremost pioneer in the United States in developing batik as a modern art form. Twiggs was born in 1934 in St. Stephen, S.C.  He received his BA from Claflin University, studying with Arthur Rose. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and earned his MA from New York University, where he studied with the legendary African-American artist Hale Woodruff. Twiggs was the first African American to receive the doctorate in art education from the University of Georgia and the first visual artist to receive Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award, South Carolina’s Governor’s Award for the Arts.

            Twiggs’ paintings are done in a unique batik process that he developed through an innovative manipulation of the traditional technique. He has won international recognition and numerous awards. Several works have been selected for U.S. Embassies in Rome, Sierra Leone and Senegal, among other places.  He has had some 70 solo exhibitions and has exhibited at the Studio Museum in New York and in shows at the American Crafts Museum, the Mint Museum in Charlotte and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Twiggs work is in museum collections throughout the United States.

            In 2001, Twiggs was selected to design an ornament for the White House Christmas tree. In 2004, the Georgia Museum of Art organized a major retrospective of his work, which toured the southeast, including a stop at the S.C. State Museum in Columbia. A Claflin Homecoming, The Art of Leo Twiggs was organized by the Rose Museum at Claflin University in 2007.

            Twiggs’ most recent solo exhibition, his largest to date, is Civil/Uncivil: The Art of Leo Twiggs at Charleston’s City Gallery at Waterfront Park. The April – May 2011 exhibition, curated by if ART’s Roefs, addressed the legacy of the Civil War and Civil Rights in the U.S. South. The exhibition was organized by the City of Charleston in commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

            Twiggs is Professor Emeritus at S.C. State University, where he was chair of the art department and director of the Stanback Museum.  He is Distinguished Artist-in Residence at Claflin University.


To see work from the book available at if ART Gallery, CLICK HERE

Leo Twiggs: Targeted Man Essay

(click on image to enlarge)

Laura Spong: Still Screaming & Leo Twiggs: Targeted Man, February 5-17, 2009

if ART Gallery

presents at

GALLERY 80808/VISTA STUDIOS

808 Lady St., Columbia, SC

LAURA SPONG: Still Screaming

&

LEO TWIGGS: Targeted Man

Reception: Friday, February 6, 5 – 9 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its February 2009 exhibition, if ART presents Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, S.C., two solo exhibitions by some of South Carolina most prominent veteran artists, Columbia’s Laura Spong and Orangeburg’s Leo Twiggs.

Both artists will present new work. Spong will show her trademark Abstract Expressionist oil paintings. Twiggs will exhibit a new series of batik paintings around the theme of “targeted man,” featuring figures adorned with a bull’s eye or target.

Laura Spong (b. 1926) is among South Carolina’s most prominent non-objective painters. In the past three years, Spong has further increased her reputation with several solo exhibitions, including a retrospective at the University of South Carolina’s McMaster Gallery. For her 2006 exhibition, Laura Spong at 80, Columbia’s if ART published a 32-page catalogue. In addition to the S.C. State Art Collection, Spong’s work was purchased recently by the Greenville (S.C.) County Museum of Art and the S.C. State Museum. Three of her paintings also are in the Contemporary Carolina Collection, which was established in 2008 at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Ashley River Tower in Charleston. Spong maintains a studio at Vista Studios in Columbia.

Leo Twiggs (b. 1934) is a native of St. Stephen, S.C., who lives in Orangeburg, S.C., where he taught art at South Carolina State University from 1964 until 1998 and established a museum. Twiggs is widely seen as one of the most important South Carolina artists since the 1960s. His career retrospective, Myths and Metaphors: The Art Of Leo Twiggs, organized by the Georgia Museum of Art and accompanied by a catalogue, completed a two-year tour at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia in April 2006. Twiggs has had dozens of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in the Southeast and beyond, including the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 1964, he received a graduate degree in art from New York University and in 1970 was the first African American to receive an Ed.D. in art education from the University of Georgia. In 1981, he was the first to receive as an individual South Carolina’s highest art award, the Elizabeth O’Neil Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts.