Join us for our 2014 arts forum celebrating the profound veracity in poetry, story, music, visual art and feasting in Old Town Rock Hill, SC.
Highlights Include:
FRI, JAN 31
· “The Search for Truth,” exhibition & artist talk by Paul Matheny
· Sandra McCracken in Concert
SAT, FEB 1
· Local, artisanal foods
· Story and Poetry Readings
· Guest Lectures
· Panel & Audience Discussion
· Performance Art
· Jubilatory Carolina Perloo Feast by Dan Huntley, with paired wine & live music.
· Curated Silent Art Auction to benefit local literacy efforts
FEATURING
Sandra McCracken
Singer-Songwriter
Sandra McCracken is an independent singer-songwriter whose smart, soulful blend of folk, pop, and gospel is as progressive as it is timeless. A founding contributor of the Indelible Grace projects, McCracken’s contemporary settings of classic hymns are sung across the country. McCracken crafts songs wedding razor-sharp hooks to incisive, confessional lyrics to create a transcendent portrait of the human spirit. McCracken currently lives, writes, and records at her home in East Nashville, Tennessee.
Maurice Manning
Poet & Pulitzer Finalist
Poet Maurice Manning was born and raised in Kentucky, and often writes about the land and culture of his home. Maurice Manning’s first book of poems, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001) was chosen by poet and judge W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His subsequent books include A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Lone Hunter, Back Woodsman, &c. (2004), Bucolics (2007), The Common Man (2010), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and The Gone and the Going Away (2013). Manning has received fellowships from the Fine Art Work Center in Provincetown and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at DePauw University and Indiana University, and is on faculty in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College and the Sewanee Writing Conference. He is a professor of English at Transylvania University.
Tommy Tomlinson
Columnist & Pulitzer finalist
Tommy Tomlinson spent 15 years as a local columnist for the Charlotte Observer, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. He now writes for publications including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Southern Living, Our State and many others. His stories appear in “Best American Sports Writing 2012″ and “America’s Best Newspaper Writing.” He has also taught writing at Queens University in Charlotte and at workshops across the country. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and was a 2008-09 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Tommy and his wife, Alix Felsing, live in Charlotte with their old yellow Lab, Fred.
Dori Sanders
Farmer & Author
Dori Sanders is from Filbert, SC. Her family operates one of the oldest African-American farms in the region, specializing in Georgia Bells and Elberta peaches. Her novels, Clover and Her Own Place, offer the experience of growing up in the rural South. Dori Sanders’ Country Cooking offers the taste of growing up in the rural South detailing the family recipes and stories told at her peach stand. She received the Lillian Smith Award for Clover. It has been translated into numerous languages. The granddaughter of a freed slave, Ms. Sanders made an address at the Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, MS on the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her speech: “Promise Land: A Farmer Remembers” tied family history, farming and the food we all share together. As Ms. Sanders said in her speech, “Food is universal. A must for survival. Food in its own way unites, it nourishes the body and soul.”
Paul Matheny
Artist and Curator
Paul Matheny is the Chief Curator of Art at the South Carolina State Museum. A 1996 graduate of Winthrop University, he has exhibited his work in the Carolinas and Georgia. His paintings focus on his constant search for truth and honesty in his work and the world around him. The images are drawn from religion, roadside icons and hand painted “sermons”, local legends and myths, vegetable and firework stands, kudzu and the Southern landscape, barbecue and other significant treasures from his region. Journals and the unconventional idea of “sketch books” have always held a particular interest for this artist. In 1999, continuing with his ongoing series “The Search for Truth”, he began a series of work referred to as “journal paintings”, integrating his interest in the visual aesthetic of the written word in journals with his planned images.
Aaron Belz
Poet
Aaron Belz’s poetry has been published in journals coast to coast, from Fence and Boston Review to Eleven Eleven and Zócalo Public Square, and he has given live readings in numerous venues ranging from snooty bookstores and literary salons to improv workshops and comedy festivals. He’s published two books and has a third, Glitter Bomb, forthcoming from Persea Books. He is a contributing editor to Capital Commentary. He lives in Hillsborough, NC, and owns a shop called Hillsborough Bicycle.
Dan Huntley
Southern Food Provocateur
Dan “The Pig Man” Huntley developed his interest in regional cuisines while working as a commercial fisherman in the Caribbean with a Cuban cook and Panamanian crew, and has worked several humanitarian relief missions in Nicaragua and Honduras. He has won several national writing awards in investigative reporting, short fiction and poetry, including the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at University of Michigan. His articles have recently appeared in Garden & Gun and The Local Palate. Huntley lives in York, SC and runs Outdoor Feasts catering; he lectures on Southern food traditions before serving pig pickings, legal moonshine tastings, oyster roasts, catfish frys, and Lowcountry shrimp boils.
Jon Prichard
Performance Artist & Sculptor
Jonathan Prichard was born in Chapel Hill, NC. He received an M. F. A. in sculpture (2010) and a B.F.A. in painting and printmaking (2003) from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. He works primarily as a drawer and property-based performance artist exploring visual representations of psychological states and situations. He finds artistic inspiration in the challenges, obstacles, absurdities, and impossibilities of life. He works to transform these circumstances into stylized beauty and cultivation of wisdom. He is interested in the interconnectivity of artistic disciplines, and enjoys collaborating with dancers, musicians, poets, and artists from other backgrounds. Prichard is a principal member of the performance art ensemble Sinergismo. He currently lives in Charlotte, NC, with his wife Brittney and two cats. He has been working as an adjunct instructor at Winthrop University since 2011, teaching 3D design, drawing, and performance.
Hunter Holmes
Musician
Hunter Holmes is a student and practitioner of Pre-World War II Old-Time Country, Piedmont Blues, Ragtime and Cotton Mill music. He delights listeners with the sounds of the quills, harmonica, kazoo, and guitar as they were played by the traveling southern musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is also an avid 78 RPM record collector. He lives in Laurens, SC with his wife and son.
Sponsors
· MailChimp
· Williams & Fudge
· Outdoor Feasts
· Lucky Duck Vintage
· Assorted Table Wine Shoppe
Support for this project is provided by the Arts Council of York County Small Grants Program, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of SC, and the SC Arts Commission, which received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
With special thanks to Bird and Key.
Locations
FRI, JAN 31
Gettys Art Center | 201 East Main St. Rock Hill, SC 29730
SAT, FEB 1
Morning & Afternoon Events:
Gettys Art Center | 201 East Main St. Rock Hill, SC 29730
Evening Feast Event (5 PM):
The Cotton Factory | 300 Chatham Avenue, Rock Hill, SC 29730
Detailed Schedule to be posted soon.
