Winyah Rivers Foundation’s mission is to protect, preserve, monitor and revitalize the health of the lands and waters of the greater Winyah Bay watershed. As a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, the foundation hosts the Waccamaw Riverkeeper Program and advocates for clean water and healthy communities throughout the Winyah Bay watershed, including the Waccamaw, Sampit, Lumber, Little PeeDee, Great PeeDee, Lynches and Black Rivers, all of which discharge into the Winyah Bay estuary. Their annual photography contest is a fundraiser to help support the program’s promise to protect clean water. It also allows the Winyah Rivers Foundation to highlight an important asset of our area, our river sytems. “The goals of this contest are to highlight the natural beauty of the Winyah Bay watershed and to support the Waccamaw Riverkeeper program of Winyah Rivers Foundation,” says Reggie Daves, board member for the Winyah Rivers Foundation.
Contest categories are: wildlife, scenic, hurricane/flood and Georgetown County. Awards are: Best in Show – $150 cash prize; 1st place winners in each category – $100 cash prize; 2nd and 3rd place winners – non-cash awards; and Viewer’s Choice – $50 cash prize.
May 29 – September 2, 2018
This summer, the Art Museum presents The Water’s Fine, a group exhibition of five exceptional contemporary artists working in black-and-white photography and hyper-realistic painting, all who depict people in—or contemplating getting in—water. Participating artists include painter Samantha French (Brooklyn, NY), photographer Carl Kerridge (Myrtle Beach, SC), photographer Wayne Levin (Honolulu, HI), painter Matt Story (New York, NY) and painter Charles Williams (Charlotte, NC).
What is it about being in water that gives us a natural high? For one, it’s the experience of that sense of the sublime—the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic—when one feels the smallness of oneself engulfed in endless view of the vastness of a large body of water. Such a feeling connects us back to nature– back to the basics– reminding us that we are lucky to be alive. Feelings of weightlessness, zen and complete freedom fill our hearts and minds as we float atop of and suspend our bodies in water, turning upside down and all around. All we have to do is hold our breath. This is the atmosphere we hope to achieve for our visitors when they come to experience The Water’s Fine this summer at the Art Museum. Museum guests can expect to see a variety of hyper-realistic, large-scale paintings and captivating black-and-white photographs of people depicted swimming, floating, diving into, contemplating getting into and even turning flips in bodies of water. Paintings will be grouped with photography in ways that present aesthetic relationships to one another in terms of their imagery, mostly in respect to the way the human figure is rendered under water.
The Art Museum invites you to come on in…the water’s fine!
the artists:
Samantha French was born and raised in Minnesota and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Her current body of work explores the idea of escape, the tranquility and nostalgia for the lazy summer days of her childhood and is inspired by the artist’s own reflections and memories of her childhood summers spent in the lakes of Northern Minnesota. French actively exhibits her paintings and is included in many private and public collections throughout the country while her work has garnered extensive international and national press. She is a full-time painter and keeps a studio in Brooklyn, New York.
Carl Kerridge grew up with a camera in Norwich, England. For over 15 years, he has resided in the US and run a successful and award winning photography business. His work has been featured on magazine covers, national ad campaigns, billboards and websites. In his spare time, he creates fine art photography inspired by some of his favorite photographers: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts and Edward Weston. Kerridge strives to incorporate appreciation for beauty into each work and to create a powerful and lasting connection between the image and its viewer. His collection of underwater black-and-white nudes focuses on the female form and the texture created by reflected light.
Wayne Levin has spent a career photographing the eerie and mysterious underwater world. Working in black and white, he removes the surface illusions about the ocean and the assumptions about underwater photography. Levin earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in CA and his MFA from Pratt Institute in NY. His monograph, Through a Liquid Mirror (Editions Limited, 1998), received the Hawaii Book Publishers Association’s award for Book of the Year. Levin received the Photographer’s Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council (1989); and the National Endowment for the Arts (1984). His photographs are widely exhibited and are in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in NY.
Matt Story studied art from an early age and demonstrated a unique skill for rendering verisimilitude, or hyper-realism. After graduating from UCLA, he worked extensively throughout North America in film and television production. Story has worked for over 20 years from his studio in Los Angeles. His method of oil painting on canvas and panel closely resembles the classical method, used for centuries by masters such as Titian and Caravaggio, two of Story’s heroes, fastidiously building up thin glazes, painting “fat over lean” with traditional materials. His work is included in private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Contemporary realist painter Charles Williams’ compelling art intends to capture human emotive responses to the natural environment and our surrounding reality. Rather than shy away from personal fears or challenging societal constructs, Williams embraces the world as it is and interprets that reality in his work. His paintings are inspired by personal experience, historical photographs and current events. The Georgetown, SC native is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in GA. He received his MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
The Water’s Fine is generously supported by:
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, which is now in its 21st year. A diverse array of media, including ceramics, collage, drawings, graphics, mixed media works in both two and three-dimension, paintings, photography, sculpture, textiles and wood carving, all completed by local artists within the past two years, will be exhibited.
This year’s judge is professional artist Douglas Balentine of Charleston, SC, who recently exhibited at the Art Museum (summer 2017). Balentine has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. In 1977 and 1978, his family lived in Paris, France, which was a particularly formative experience for nine-year-old Balentine. Among the innumerable stimuli that daily Parisian life offered, exposure to art in the Louvre proved to be of lasting influence. Balentine went on to study art at Parsons School of Design in New York and at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. In the mid-1990s, Balentine moved back to Charleston, where he began to explore the natural and historic beauty of the area through classical principles that had taken root during his studies. The historic southern city and its environs offered a seemingly eternal source of inspiration.
Winyah Rivers Foundation’s mission is to protect, preserve, monitor and revitalize the health of the lands and waters of the greater Winyah Bay watershed. As a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, the foundation hosts the Waccamaw Riverkeeper Program and advocates for clean water and healthy communities throughout the Winyah Bay watershed, including the Waccamaw, Sampit, Lumber, Little PeeDee, Great PeeDee, Lynches and Black Rivers, all of which discharge into the Winyah Bay estuary. Their annual photography contest is a fundraiser to help support the program’s promise to protect clean water. It also allows the Winyah Rivers Foundation to highlight an important asset of our area, our river sytems. “The goals of this contest are to highlight the natural beauty of the Winyah Bay watershed and to support the Waccamaw Riverkeeper program of Winyah Rivers Foundation,” says Reggie Daves, board member for the Winyah Rivers Foundation.
Contest categories are: wildlife, scenic, hurricane/flood and Georgetown County. Awards are: Best in Show – $150 cash prize; 1st place winners in each category – $100 cash prize; 2nd and 3rd place winners – non-cash awards; and Viewer’s Choice – $50 cash prize.
May 29 – September 2, 2018
This summer, the Art Museum presents The Water’s Fine, a group exhibition of five exceptional contemporary artists working in black-and-white photography and hyper-realistic painting, all who depict people in—or contemplating getting in—water. Participating artists include painter Samantha French (Brooklyn, NY), photographer Carl Kerridge (Myrtle Beach, SC), photographer Wayne Levin (Honolulu, HI), painter Matt Story (New York, NY) and painter Charles Williams (Charlotte, NC).
What is it about being in water that gives us a natural high? For one, it’s the experience of that sense of the sublime—the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic—when one feels the smallness of oneself engulfed in endless view of the vastness of a large body of water. Such a feeling connects us back to nature– back to the basics– reminding us that we are lucky to be alive. Feelings of weightlessness, zen and complete freedom fill our hearts and minds as we float atop of and suspend our bodies in water, turning upside down and all around. All we have to do is hold our breath. This is the atmosphere we hope to achieve for our visitors when they come to experience The Water’s Fine this summer at the Art Museum. Museum guests can expect to see a variety of hyper-realistic, large-scale paintings and captivating black-and-white photographs of people depicted swimming, floating, diving into, contemplating getting into and even turning flips in bodies of water. Paintings will be grouped with photography in ways that present aesthetic relationships to one another in terms of their imagery, mostly in respect to the way the human figure is rendered under water.
The Art Museum invites you to come on in…the water’s fine!
the artists:
Samantha French was born and raised in Minnesota and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Her current body of work explores the idea of escape, the tranquility and nostalgia for the lazy summer days of her childhood and is inspired by the artist’s own reflections and memories of her childhood summers spent in the lakes of Northern Minnesota. French actively exhibits her paintings and is included in many private and public collections throughout the country while her work has garnered extensive international and national press. She is a full-time painter and keeps a studio in Brooklyn, New York.
Carl Kerridge grew up with a camera in Norwich, England. For over 15 years, he has resided in the US and run a successful and award winning photography business. His work has been featured on magazine covers, national ad campaigns, billboards and websites. In his spare time, he creates fine art photography inspired by some of his favorite photographers: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts and Edward Weston. Kerridge strives to incorporate appreciation for beauty into each work and to create a powerful and lasting connection between the image and its viewer. His collection of underwater black-and-white nudes focuses on the female form and the texture created by reflected light.
Wayne Levin has spent a career photographing the eerie and mysterious underwater world. Working in black and white, he removes the surface illusions about the ocean and the assumptions about underwater photography. Levin earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in CA and his MFA from Pratt Institute in NY. His monograph, Through a Liquid Mirror (Editions Limited, 1998), received the Hawaii Book Publishers Association’s award for Book of the Year. Levin received the Photographer’s Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council (1989); and the National Endowment for the Arts (1984). His photographs are widely exhibited and are in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in NY.
Matt Story studied art from an early age and demonstrated a unique skill for rendering verisimilitude, or hyper-realism. After graduating from UCLA, he worked extensively throughout North America in film and television production. Story has worked for over 20 years from his studio in Los Angeles. His method of oil painting on canvas and panel closely resembles the classical method, used for centuries by masters such as Titian and Caravaggio, two of Story’s heroes, fastidiously building up thin glazes, painting “fat over lean” with traditional materials. His work is included in private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Contemporary realist painter Charles Williams’ compelling art intends to capture human emotive responses to the natural environment and our surrounding reality. Rather than shy away from personal fears or challenging societal constructs, Williams embraces the world as it is and interprets that reality in his work. His paintings are inspired by personal experience, historical photographs and current events. The Georgetown, SC native is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in GA. He received his MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
The Water’s Fine is generously supported by:
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, which is now in its 21st year. A diverse array of media, including ceramics, collage, drawings, graphics, mixed media works in both two and three-dimension, paintings, photography, sculpture, textiles and wood carving, all completed by local artists within the past two years, will be exhibited.
This year’s judge is professional artist Douglas Balentine of Charleston, SC, who recently exhibited at the Art Museum (summer 2017). Balentine has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. In 1977 and 1978, his family lived in Paris, France, which was a particularly formative experience for nine-year-old Balentine. Among the innumerable stimuli that daily Parisian life offered, exposure to art in the Louvre proved to be of lasting influence. Balentine went on to study art at Parsons School of Design in New York and at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. In the mid-1990s, Balentine moved back to Charleston, where he began to explore the natural and historic beauty of the area through classical principles that had taken root during his studies. The historic southern city and its environs offered a seemingly eternal source of inspiration.
Winyah Rivers Foundation’s mission is to protect, preserve, monitor and revitalize the health of the lands and waters of the greater Winyah Bay watershed. As a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, the foundation hosts the Waccamaw Riverkeeper Program and advocates for clean water and healthy communities throughout the Winyah Bay watershed, including the Waccamaw, Sampit, Lumber, Little PeeDee, Great PeeDee, Lynches and Black Rivers, all of which discharge into the Winyah Bay estuary. Their annual photography contest is a fundraiser to help support the program’s promise to protect clean water. It also allows the Winyah Rivers Foundation to highlight an important asset of our area, our river sytems. “The goals of this contest are to highlight the natural beauty of the Winyah Bay watershed and to support the Waccamaw Riverkeeper program of Winyah Rivers Foundation,” says Reggie Daves, board member for the Winyah Rivers Foundation.
Contest categories are: wildlife, scenic, hurricane/flood and Georgetown County. Awards are: Best in Show – $150 cash prize; 1st place winners in each category – $100 cash prize; 2nd and 3rd place winners – non-cash awards; and Viewer’s Choice – $50 cash prize.
May 29 – September 2, 2018
This summer, the Art Museum presents The Water’s Fine, a group exhibition of five exceptional contemporary artists working in black-and-white photography and hyper-realistic painting, all who depict people in—or contemplating getting in—water. Participating artists include painter Samantha French (Brooklyn, NY), photographer Carl Kerridge (Myrtle Beach, SC), photographer Wayne Levin (Honolulu, HI), painter Matt Story (New York, NY) and painter Charles Williams (Charlotte, NC).
What is it about being in water that gives us a natural high? For one, it’s the experience of that sense of the sublime—the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic—when one feels the smallness of oneself engulfed in endless view of the vastness of a large body of water. Such a feeling connects us back to nature– back to the basics– reminding us that we are lucky to be alive. Feelings of weightlessness, zen and complete freedom fill our hearts and minds as we float atop of and suspend our bodies in water, turning upside down and all around. All we have to do is hold our breath. This is the atmosphere we hope to achieve for our visitors when they come to experience The Water’s Fine this summer at the Art Museum. Museum guests can expect to see a variety of hyper-realistic, large-scale paintings and captivating black-and-white photographs of people depicted swimming, floating, diving into, contemplating getting into and even turning flips in bodies of water. Paintings will be grouped with photography in ways that present aesthetic relationships to one another in terms of their imagery, mostly in respect to the way the human figure is rendered under water.
The Art Museum invites you to come on in…the water’s fine!
the artists:
Samantha French was born and raised in Minnesota and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Her current body of work explores the idea of escape, the tranquility and nostalgia for the lazy summer days of her childhood and is inspired by the artist’s own reflections and memories of her childhood summers spent in the lakes of Northern Minnesota. French actively exhibits her paintings and is included in many private and public collections throughout the country while her work has garnered extensive international and national press. She is a full-time painter and keeps a studio in Brooklyn, New York.
Carl Kerridge grew up with a camera in Norwich, England. For over 15 years, he has resided in the US and run a successful and award winning photography business. His work has been featured on magazine covers, national ad campaigns, billboards and websites. In his spare time, he creates fine art photography inspired by some of his favorite photographers: Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts and Edward Weston. Kerridge strives to incorporate appreciation for beauty into each work and to create a powerful and lasting connection between the image and its viewer. His collection of underwater black-and-white nudes focuses on the female form and the texture created by reflected light.
Wayne Levin has spent a career photographing the eerie and mysterious underwater world. Working in black and white, he removes the surface illusions about the ocean and the assumptions about underwater photography. Levin earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in CA and his MFA from Pratt Institute in NY. His monograph, Through a Liquid Mirror (Editions Limited, 1998), received the Hawaii Book Publishers Association’s award for Book of the Year. Levin received the Photographer’s Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council (1989); and the National Endowment for the Arts (1984). His photographs are widely exhibited and are in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in NY.
Matt Story studied art from an early age and demonstrated a unique skill for rendering verisimilitude, or hyper-realism. After graduating from UCLA, he worked extensively throughout North America in film and television production. Story has worked for over 20 years from his studio in Los Angeles. His method of oil painting on canvas and panel closely resembles the classical method, used for centuries by masters such as Titian and Caravaggio, two of Story’s heroes, fastidiously building up thin glazes, painting “fat over lean” with traditional materials. His work is included in private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Contemporary realist painter Charles Williams’ compelling art intends to capture human emotive responses to the natural environment and our surrounding reality. Rather than shy away from personal fears or challenging societal constructs, Williams embraces the world as it is and interprets that reality in his work. His paintings are inspired by personal experience, historical photographs and current events. The Georgetown, SC native is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in GA. He received his MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
The Water’s Fine is generously supported by:
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, which is now in its 21st year. A diverse array of media, including ceramics, collage, drawings, graphics, mixed media works in both two and three-dimension, paintings, photography, sculpture, textiles and wood carving, all completed by local artists within the past two years, will be exhibited.
This year’s judge is professional artist Douglas Balentine of Charleston, SC, who recently exhibited at the Art Museum (summer 2017). Balentine has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. In 1977 and 1978, his family lived in Paris, France, which was a particularly formative experience for nine-year-old Balentine. Among the innumerable stimuli that daily Parisian life offered, exposure to art in the Louvre proved to be of lasting influence. Balentine went on to study art at Parsons School of Design in New York and at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. In the mid-1990s, Balentine moved back to Charleston, where he began to explore the natural and historic beauty of the area through classical principles that had taken root during his studies. The historic southern city and its environs offered a seemingly eternal source of inspiration.
Winyah Rivers Foundation’s mission is to protect, preserve, monitor and revitalize the health of the lands and waters of the greater Winyah Bay watershed. As a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, the foundation hosts the Waccamaw Riverkeeper Program and advocates for clean water and healthy communities throughout the Winyah Bay watershed, including the Waccamaw, Sampit, Lumber, Little PeeDee, Great PeeDee, Lynches and Black Rivers, all of which discharge into the Winyah Bay estuary. Their annual photography contest is a fundraiser to help support the program’s promise to protect clean water. It also allows the Winyah Rivers Foundation to highlight an important asset of our area, our river sytems. “The goals of this contest are to highlight the natural beauty of the Winyah Bay watershed and to support the Waccamaw Riverkeeper program of Winyah Rivers Foundation,” says Reggie Daves, board member for the Winyah Rivers Foundation.
Contest categories are: wildlife, scenic, hurricane/flood and Georgetown County. Awards are: Best in Show – $150 cash prize; 1st place winners in each category – $100 cash prize; 2nd and 3rd place winners – non-cash awards; and Viewer’s Choice – $50 cash prize.