For its February exhibition at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, S.C., if ART, International Fine Art Services, presents Abstract In Nature, a group exhibition with work by South Carolina artists Laura Spong, Mike Williams and Katie Walker as well as renowned first-generation Washington Color Field painter Paul Reed. The show consists of abstract paintings by Reed, Spong and Walker and abstract metal sculpture by Williams. The exhibition opens Friday, Feb. 9, with a reception from 5:00 –10:00 p.m. and runs through Feb. 20. Opening hours are weekdays, 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m., Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., and Sundays 1:00 ¬ – 5:00 p.m. Reed, Spong and Walker are represented by Columbia’s if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln St., (803) 238-2351, which also shows sculpture by Williams.
Washington, D.C., native Paul Reed, (b. 1919) in 1965-1966 was one of the six painters in The Washington Color Painters, the first nationally traveling exhibition of Washington Color Field paintings. The other five painters were Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Gene Davis, Howard Mehring and Tom Downey. Reed’s work is in dozens of museums across the country, including the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the National Museum of American Art, all in D.C., the Detroit Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum in Hartford, Conn., the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. In South Carolina, his work is in the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Columbia Museum of Art, whose acquisition of two Paul Reed paintings was facilitated by if ART owner Wim Roefs. Reed’s work has been in more than 100 solo and group shows, including Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which traveled nationally from 2000-2002.
Columbia’s Laura Spong (b. 1926) enjoyed her most successful year in 2006, both in terms of sales and critical acclaim. Spong sold more than 30 paintings from her 80th birthday solo exhibition at Gallery 80808 in February 2006, which was accompanied by a 32-page catalogue published by if ART. Spong also had solo exhibitions last year at Carol Saunders Gallery in Columbia and Greenville’s Hampton III Gallery, as well as a retrospective at the University of South Carolina’s McMaster Gallery. She was in a two-person show at Atlanta’s Vinson Gallery and in several group exhibitions in North and South Carolina. In April, she’ll be in a group exhibition at the Greenville County Museum of Art that also will include if ART Gallery artist David Yaghjian.
Greenville’s Katie Walker (b. 1970) was in the 2005 Florence, Italy, Biennale, and recently has been in exhibitions at the Upstairs Gallery in Tryon, N.C., Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, the Spartanburg (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Carillon Building in Charlotte, N.C., the Artbomb in Greenville and Brookgreen Gardens in Pawley’s Island, S.C. She was included in New American Paintings No. 40, 2002. Walker holds a BFA in Studio Art from Furman University and an MFA from the University of Georgia.
Sumter native and Columbia resident Mike Williams (b. 1963) recently had a major solo exhibition at Columbia College in Columbia, S.C. Williams is among the state’s most-acclaimed painters and sculptors. In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at Pawleys Island Cheryl Newby Gallery, I. Pinckney Simons Gallery in Beaufort, S.C., and at Newberry College in Newberry, S.C, Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., and the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, S.C.
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