THE OTHER BROTHER Documentary Film by Kristy Higby and Mark Flowers, Friday, October 24, 2014, 7:30 pm

THE OTHER BROTHER
A feature length documentary film

Director: Kristy Higby
Producer: Mark Flowers

Screening @ if ART Gallery:

Friday, October 24, 2014, 7:30 pm
Admission Free

Director Higby, producer Flowers and surviving "other brother" Tom Flowers will be present for Q&A after the screening.

Two brothers, estranged since 1948, share an exceptional bond. One is an art-world insider, and one lived alone in a world of art. This is a film about the ‘genetics’ of art and sibling estrangement. The subject is art but the story is universal.

The younger brother, Tom Flowers (now 86), received his undergraduate degree from Furman University and his MFA from the University of Iowa. The older brother, Jesse Flowers, joined the service right after dropping out of high school and became a recluse soon after serving as a medic during the end of WWII. He lived in a dirt-floor shack without plumbing. Both spent a lifetime making art.

Art by brothers Jesse Flowers, left, and Tom Flowers, right.

From Afar: Jesse Flowers, left, and Tom Flowers, right.

“My films are, in the end, human-interest stories about people being true to their convictions. Sometimes those convictions are inspiring and sometimes they are tragically misguided.” Says Asheville, NC filmmaker, Kristy Higby

The other brother was an official selection of the Bare Bones Film and Music Festival in Muskogee, OK and The Santa Fe Film Festival in Santa Fe, NM. It was screened at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago, IL September 18th and at The Upstairs Artspace in Tryon, NC on October 19. Please contact, Producer, Mark Flowers, mflowers@mountainteastudios.com if you would like to schedule a screening date.

This documentary was featured on the weekly SCETV/Radio’s Walter Edgar’s Journal on September 5^th. Here is a link to that interview http://www.scetv.org/index.php/walter_edgars_journal/show/the_other_brother/

RECENT QUOTES ABOUT THE OTHER BROTHER:

“In “The Other Brother” Kristy Higby has rendered a cinematic miracle, illuminating the extraordinary life of Jessie Flowers -- a solitary, mysterious and troubled man who found solace and meaning in little else but his art. By the end of the film, Higby has woven together so many layers of Jessie’s life in such an artful and profound way that ultimately we feel the man is in the room with us, flesh and blood.”
Tommy Hays author of “What I Came to Tell You” and “The Pleasure Was Mine”

An intimate look into sibling estrangement, The Other Brother considers the significant role of creativity within one’s life by bringing forth the compelling and poignant story of Tom Flowers, Furman University art professor and his older brother, Jesse Flowers, self-taught artist.  Beginning with family interviews and recollections, director Kristy Higby slowly builds a complex, conflicted view of a bond shared by two brothers who last saw each other over sixty-five years ago.  The documentary is a rare invitation to see numerous artworks by both brothers, side-by-side for the first time, in dialogue with each other.

Leisa Rundquist, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art, UNCA

Fantastic premise for an epoch movie. This concept is so beautiful especially during this age of increasing fear and separation through the digital realm, etc. Art has saved my life and helped me carry on through this surprisingly intense journey. Thank you for taking the time to create this heart-warming picture within pictures.

 Sage Neri, Visual Designer

Kristy Higby Film Bio

Higby’s short documentary, Flag Day, received a juror’s honorable mention at the 2005 AFI/Discovery Channel SILVERDOCS (now AFI DOCS) Documentary Conference and Filmfest held in Silver Spring, Md; and a Jury’s Citation at the 25th Black Maria Film and Video Festival in Jersey City, NJ 2006.W.W. Norton chose Flag Day, for inclusion on a Norton Sociology textbook DVD.  Her short documentary, Bowl Digger, received a Director’s Choice award at the 2007 Black Maria Film Festival and a Best Documentary award at the 2007 Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nevada. It was juried into the 3-month long Make it New exhibition at the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC, during the summer of 2007 and toured with the 2007-2008 Short Circuit Traveling Film Festival Sponsored by the Southern Arts Federation.

CONDITIONS OF HUMANS: HINTON, TROTMAN & YAGHJIAN, Oct. 18 – Nov. 9, 2013

 CONDITIONS OF HUMANS:

LESLIE HINTON – BOB TROTMAN – DAVID YAGHJIAN

October 18 – November 9, 2013

Opening Reception: Friday, October 18, 6 – 9 pm.

For a PREVIEW, Click Here.

For installation shots of the exhibition Click Here

Leslie Hinton, Soul Man, 2013, 
earthenware, underglazes and glazes, 
9 x 4 x 2.5 in., $450

Bob Trotman, Mrs. T, 2006, wood tempera, wax, 
steel, 22 x 20 x 23 in., $9,000

David Yaghjian, Yellow Tree, Red Neck, 2013,  
monotype  10 x 10 in., $500

           In its new, expanded space, if ART Gallery will present the exhibition Conditions of Humans: Leslie Hinton, Bob Trotman & David Yagjian, October 18 – November 9, 2013. The opening reception is Friday, October 18, 6 – 9 p.m.  Hinton, a recent addition to the gallery, will present new figurative ceramic sculptures; Trotman will show his quintessential figurative wooden sculptures; and Yaghjian, new paintings and monotypes. All three artists’ work is strongly figurative, exploring psychological, political, social and/or existential concerns.            

            San Antonio, Tex., artist Leslie Hinton (b.1983), a native of Tennessee, made her mark in Columbia between 2006 – 2009, when she completed an MFA at the University of South Carolina art department. Her MFA thesis exhibition was Luna Tic Tac Toe, a memorable spectacle at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia. She holds a BFA from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

            Hinton creates outrageous and funny, intricate ceramic sculptures and drawings featuring figures and animals, often together, in fantastical situations that have a stream-of-consciousness quality. Since 2005, she has been in more than two dozen exhibitions in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California, Hawaii, and Taiwan, where in the spring of 2008 she studied at Tainan National University for the Arts.

            Casar, N.C., artist Bob Trotman (b. 1947) is among the South’s most prominent contemporary artist. The Winston-Salem, N.C., native is no stranger to Columbia, where he has had a solo exhibition at 701 Center for Contemporary Art and where the Columbia Museum of Art recently acquired two of his sculptures. Among the public collections that have his work are the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art in Greensboro, N.C., the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, N.C., the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.

            Trotman wooden, figurative sculptures explore the human body as a medium for thoughts and feelings through poses, dress, gestures, facial expressions, disposition, etc. “I am most interested in expressions of alienation,” Trotman says, “alienation of the self from society, from the physical environment, and even of the self from itself.”

            Columbia resident and native David Yaghjian (b. 1948) is among South Carolina’s most prominent contemporary painters. He was selected for this year’s 701 Center for Contemporary Art’s South Carolina Biennial. Yaghjian holds a BA from Massachusetts’ Amherst College and studied in New York City at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Art. Aside from several solo exhibitions, he has been in some 45 group exhibitions, including at the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art, the South Carolina State Museum and the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum in Columbia, the Florence (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Sumter County (S.C.) Gallery of Art, Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, N.C., the Spruill Center Gallery in Atlanta, Ga, Chaffee Gallery in Rutland, Vt., and Figureworks gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y.

            Going with the flow of his imagination, emotions, free associations and hand and brush, Yaghjian creates figures whose trials and tribulations he catches in symbolic and metaphorical, psychologically pregnant scenes that excel in ambiguity. Some of the paintings express joy, humor and elation, others are contemplative, angst-ridden, dark and disturbing, and many combine opposite emotions.