SCULPTURES

Hey, I Was Here First, 2008

Polychrome wood

20 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches

$ 2,900

Help, I've Got Something Stuck In My Bad Eye, But My Leg Feels A Lot Better, 2008

Polychrome wood

23 x 28 x 15 inches

$ 3,100

Bill, He Yaps A Lot But He Don't Say Much, 2008

Polychrome wood

15 1/4 x 6 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

$ 2,900

Zero, 2008

Polychrome wood

32 x 43 x 12 1/2 in.

$ 5,800

The Valedictorian, 2007

Polychrome wood

35 x 29 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches

$ 6,500

Tied To His Mother's Apron Strings, 2008

Polychrome wood

20 1/2 x 24 x 12 in.

$ 2,500

At Wits End, 2008

Polychrome wood, 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 x 26 in.

$ 6,500

Freaked Out, 2008

Polychrome wood

10 3/4 x 11 x 11 3/4 inches

$ 1,200

Jimmy Crack Corn, 2008

Polychrome wood

19 1/4 x 15 1/2 x 13 inches

$ 3,100

Seems Like Someone Is Always Saying Goodbye, 2008

Polychrome wood

13 1/4 x 11 1/4 x 15 inches

$ 1,800

Billy Goat Gruff, 2007

Polychrome wood

18 x 15 ½ x 11 ½ inches

$ 2,100

Ow, My Goiter Hurts Me So, 2008

Polychrome wood

25 x 23 x 11 1/2 inches

$ 3,500

Delusions Of Grandeur, 2008

Polychrome wood

18 3/4 x 11 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches

$ 3,100

The Dope, 2007

Polychrome wood

16 1/4 x 14 1/2 x 25 inches

$ 3,100

Biography: Carl R. Blair

Carl Blair (b. 1932)

Kansas native and Greenville, S.C., resident Carl Blair in 2005 received South Carolina’s Elizabeth O’Neil Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts for Lifetime Achievement. He has been as an artist, administrator, educator and a driving force in South Carolina arts since in 1957, when he began teaching at Bob Jones University, from which he retired in 1998. He has shown in galleries and museums all along the East Coast as well as abroad. His prominence as a painter and sculptor has increased steadily and has been marked by several museum retrospectives since 1995. In 1999, he was included in “100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the 20th Century in South Carolina Arts,” the South Carolina State Museum’s look back at the 20th century.

Essay: Carl Blair

Missing You, 2006

Acrylic on canvas

17 x 17 inches

$ 2,800

CARL BLAIR: Old and New Show

October 2007

By Wim Roefs

Nature always has been Carl Blair’s main visual inspiration – nature and the countryside in general. Even his early figurative work was never far removed from his upbringing on a Midwest farm. His wooden sculptures, of which he has just produced a new body, are of animals, some representative, all of them fanciful. They are a reminder of that farm and of Blair’s insistence that as a youngster, he spent more time with animals than with human beings.

Nature typically is the basis of his heavily abstracted paintings, whether it’s the flatlands of the Midwest or the more mountainous terrain of the South Carolina Upstate. There, Blair lives on Paris Mountain, just outside of Greenville and near Paris Mountain State Park. He has lived there since the 1970s, when the place was still mostly undeveloped.

While the current show is not a true retrospective, it nevertheless gives an overview of what Blair has done with the landscape since 1970. The earlier work in the exhibition, including Ode To An Eastern Dream of 1970, show the darker pallet he used when he moved from figuration to abstraction in the late 1950s, around the time he arrived in Greenville to teach at Bob Jones University. They indicate that Blair was mixing influences that ranged from Charles Burchfield to the Abstract Expressionists.

Those very Abstract Expressionists, Blair’s South Carolina contemporary Leo Twiggs suggested in 2006, might have instigated Blair’s move from his earlier muted pallet to the colorful spectacles he created after he grew into his own style. They showed Blair, Twiggs wrote, that “he didn’t have to draw a tree or a rock. He could use broad areas of colors, letting values and intensities define form.”

He has done so, and still does so, creating works from which colors burst off the surface and that at times seem like fireworks. He paints in wildly differing pallets and with varying degrees of color intensity. Union and Burst Of Spring, both of 1986, show the lighter but luscious, intense coloration that defines many of his 1980s’ paintings. Spring Odyssey, of 1988, continues the light, bright pallet but in an understated, even somewhat faint fashion. In the 2006 paintings in the exhibition, Blair takes a different approach, using high contrasts with black lines and saturated, often primary colors.

Spring Odyssey shows the lively hand Blair brings to his work not just as a painter but also as a draftsman. In it, he adds definition to the blots of pastel-like colors through fine, delicate lines suggestion tree limbs and trunks. Drawing is crucial in many of his 1990s monochromatic monotypes, too. Those works are also evidence that the colorist par excellence Blair doesn’t need color to pull off energetic and sure compositions.

Carl Blair & Anna Redwine: Old and New: October 12-23, 2007

if ART

1223 Lincoln St.

Columbia, SC 29201

(803) 238-2351

wroefs@sc.rr.com

if ART PRESENTS AT GALLERY 80808/VISTA STUDIOS:

CARL BLAIR:

Old & New

&

ANNA REDWINE:

New

OCTOBER 12 – 23, 2007

Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 12, 2007, 5 – 10 pm

Opening Hours: Weekdays, 11 am – 7 pm; Sat., 11 am – 5 pm;

Sun, 1 – 5 pm

From October 12 – 23, if ART will present at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios two solo exhibitions: Carl Blair, Old & New, and Anna Redwine: New. The exhibition opens October 12 with a reception from 5:00 – 10:00 p.m. Opening hours for Gallery 80808/Vista Studios will be expanded during the if ART exhibition. They will be weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sun, 1 – 5 p.m. Gallery 80808/Vista Studios is located at 808 Lady St., Columbia.

Carl Blair, of Greenville, will present oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and paper, gouaches, monotypes and etchings from the early 1970s through 2006. Most of the work suggests the landscape and is executed in an abstracted, lively, colorful, expressionist manner. Anna Redwine of Columbia will show vivid and energetic graphite drawings, on gessoed panels, of insects and other animals. Redwine produced the work earlier this year during a residency at Paris Mountain State Park near Greenville. Blair, too, created most of his work at Paris Mountain, where he lives.

Kansas native Blair (b. 1932) in 2005 received the Elizabeth O’Neil Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts for Lifetime Achievement. He has been as an artist, administrator and educator a driving force in South Carolina arts since he appeared on the scene in 1957. His prominence as a painter and sculptor has increased steadily and has been marked by several museum retrospectives since 1995. In 1999, he was included in “100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the 20th Century in South Carolina Arts,” the South Carolina State Museum’s look back at the 20th century. Blair in 1998 retired from teaching at Bob Jones University in Greenville, where he taught for four decades.

Anna Redwine (b. 1978), a native of New Orleans, in 2000 received a BA in English from the University of Mississippi. In 2006, she received her MFA at the University of South Carolina art department. Her April 2006 masters’ thesis show, Life In One Breath, was at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, organized by if ART.