Tom Stanley at the computer at if ART Gallery

Below, see Tom Stanley being busy on the computer at if ART Gallery, Nov. 5, 2009.

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

For exhibition installation images, click here.

THE SALON I & II

Dec. 11 – 24, 2008

an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady Street

&

if ART Gallery

1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.

at and between both locations

Opening Hours:

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.

& by appointment

Open Christmas Eve until 7 p.m.

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and Don Zurlo.

Works of Art: Tom Stanley

All works of art by Tom Stanley are available at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC.

Contact Wim Roefs at if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com or (803) 255-0068/(803) 238-2351.

Floating # 28, 2004

Acrylic on panel

33 x 39 in.

$ 2, 800

Across The River #12, 2002
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 20 1/4 in
$2,600

All works of art by Tom Stanley are available at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC.

Contact Wim Roefs at if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com or (803) 255-0068/(803) 238-2351.

Biography: Tom Stanley

Tom Stanley (b. 1950)

Tom Stanley, a Texas native who was reared in Concord, N.C., is among the Southeast’s most active and prominent contemporary artists and curators. The South Carolina Arts Commission recently selected his work for the state art collection. Stanley maintains an intense exhibition schedule throughout the region and beyond, including Europe. He was included in the 2004 South Carolina Triennial, and his work was featured twice in the prestigious publication New American Painting. Stanley lives in Rock Hill, S.C., where he is the director of Winthrop University Galleries.

Essay: Tom Stanley

TOM STANLEY – The Neighborhood

By Wim Roefs

“I think of my images as free floating narratives,” Tom Stanley wrote in 1995. That’s still true for his work, including his most recent series, “The Neighborhood.” In his narratives, Stanley seems to be on the move. He’s “Floating,” “En Route to Hamlet” or going “Across the River,” as his series’ titles indicate. 

As he travels, physically but more so in his mind, Stanley explores human activity. His tableaus are composites of scenes, structures or objects he has seen and symbols, letters and words linked to people and experiences. “The idea, I supposes, is the journey,” Stanley said in 1998. 

In “The Neighborhood,” the eye strolls from a row of houses or larger structures to a church or a power-line tower. Stanley places the elements next to or on top of each other, creating a delicate construction of clues to his views about society. He often exhibits several paintings in a horizontal row, providing complimentary angles on a subject. 

His neighborhoods, Stanley says, represent “built environments that are forms of human expression.” Symbols for oil and electricity are monuments of survival. There are large wheels, often with buildings or other structures balancing on them. There’s a bucket, a spigot or a chemist’s bottle. 

Stanley’s recycling of images in different series suggests that as he emphasizes specific concerns, he’s developing a broader, integrated view of “human expression.” Many elements of “The Neighborhood” already appeared in “Floating,” then placed on large ships, combined with symbols of oil and warfare but also of nature and the circus. Nature, especially trees, as well as boats, wheels and imposing architectural structures featured in “Across the River.” There, Stanley also explored family history – more specifically, the mysterious 1920 drowning death of his grandfather in the Mississippi River at New Orleans.

Many of the elements in the work go back to the early 1990s. Inspired by self-taught artists he worked with as a curator, Stanley began to mine his own experience, memories and environment – “my myth,” as he has called it – in a free-associative, even stream-of-conscious manner. This resulted in colorful, crowded-but-balanced tableaus populated by dozens of small, roughly rendered objects, shapes, structures, symbols and big and small Pacman-like profiles. 

From the mid-1990s, Stanley gave the individual elements in his busy work their own space, isolating them in small, square paintings. He installed dozens of them in flowing, lively narratives called “En Route to Hamlet.” The shape and size of the installation would change according to the space Stanley exhibited in.

Aesthetically, too, the work had a distinctly un-academic, informal feel. In addition to self-taught artists, the paintings related to Art Brut and the likes of Jean Dubuffet and Paul Klee. But already with “Hamlet,” a formalization of Stanley’s work set in. The Hamlet series maintained an informal painting and drawing style, but the isolation of individual elements in sparse paintings gave them a formal touch. 

The late-1990s’ “Profile En Route to Hamlet” series was busy again but clearly and deliberately organized around a large head in profile. And in the “Profiles” series of 2003, the large head shared a rather barren environment with only a few geometric forms. The change since the mid-1990s from rather colorful to a muted, sometimes even darkish palette also increased the work’s formal quality. 

The series “Across the River” of 2002 – 03 seems pivotal. In it, the mechanical, hard-edged drawing style, the strict, calculated compositions and the stylized shapes that define Stanley’s current work begin to dominate. And while the personal remained important, the human figure through the profile disappeared. 

In his last few series, Stanley has intensified the hard-edged, geometric narrative form. He has replaced muted colors with stark black-and-white compositions, sometimes with a touch of red. The human figure is gone even as humanity remains Stanley’s focus. Stanley’s autobiographical presence of the early 1990s has made way for the artist as analyst, as distant observer. “Tom in the world” has become “the world Tom lives in.” 

The Inventory: February 15-26, 2008

En Route To Hamlet (#13), 1995-2000

Acrylic on canvas

13 3/4 x 13 3/4 in

$400

if ART

presents at

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

THE INVENTORY:

A Group Show of if ART artists

Feb. 15 – 26, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, Feb. 15, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 238-2351 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For its February exhibition, if ART presents The Inventory, a group exhibition of artists from if ART Gallery. The show will consist of many new works by if ART artists as well as older pieces from the gallery’s inventory.

Included in the show will be work by Columbia artists Jeff Donovan, Mary Gilkerson, Marcelo Novo, Anna Redwine and David Yaghjian. Other South Carolina artists include Carl Blair, Jeri Burdick, Phil Garrett, Bill Jackson, Peter Lenzo, Dorothy Netherland, Matt Overend, Edward Rice, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, H. Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Katie Walker and Paul Yanko. Furthermore, the show will present work by former South Carolina residents Tonya Gregg, Eric Miller and Andy Moon. Also included are California collage artist Jerry Harris, Dutch painter Kees Salentijn and German artists Roland Albert, Klaus Hartmann and Silvia Rudolf.

Resume: Tom Stanley

Education
University of Vermont, Institute for Industrial Archeology, 1982.
M.F.A. in Painting, University of South Carolina, 1980.
M.A. in Applied Art History, University of South Carolina, 1980.
B.A. in Studio Art, Belmont Abbey/Sacred Heart Colleges, 1972.

Experience

1990-Present
Director of Winthrop University Galleries
Associate Professor of Art and Design.
Rock Hill, S.C.

Answers to the dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Responsibilities include organizing and curating exhibitions in the Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Gallery, Rutledge Gallery and Edmund D. Lewandowski Student Gallery; maintaining University Collection; facilitating public art in campus buildings and on campus grounds; publications; educational programs; community outreach; public relations; and the Patrons of the Gallery including working with development and fundraising.

1985-90
Director of Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury N.C.

Responsibilities included organization and curating year round exhibition and community-based education programs; development/fundraising; board development; and a capital campaign to re-design and renovate facility.

1987-89
Instructor of Art History and Appreciation, Livingstone, College, Salisbury, N.C.

1983-85
Assistant Professor of Art, Barry University, Miami, Fla.

1980-83
Assistant Professor of Art and Historic Preservation, Arkansas College.

1979-80
Instructor of Art, Central Corrections Institute, Columbia, S.C.

1975-77
Resident Designer, Greg Copeland Inc., Fairfield, N.J. & New York, N.Y.

Affiliations
Meta Museum Gathering, Black Mountain, N.C., 1994-Present.
College Art Association
Southeastern Theatre Conference
American Association of Museums
South Carolina Federation of Museums

Artist : Exhibitions
2006
• Two-Person Exhibition, if Art, Gallery 80808, Columbia, S.C.
• South Carolina Birds, City Gallery, Charleston, S.C.
• Alumni Invitational, McMaster Gallery, University of South Carolina.
• Two-Person Exhibition, Center for the Arts, Rock Hill.
• One-Person Exhibition, Glance Gallery, Raleigh, N.C.
• NASCAR Inspired, Hickory Museum of Art.
• State Art Collection, Part II, 1992-2006, Sumter Art Gallery.

2005
• The Neighborhood and Other Recent Works, The Gallery at Carillon, Charlotte.
• Good Art in a Home, if Art, Columbia.
• Homegrown Southeast, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.
• Sommerwende International Arts Festival, gallery twenty-four, Berlin.
• Memory and Place, Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury, N.C.

2004
• Triennial 2004, South Carolina State Museum.
• South Carolina Birds, Sumter Gallery of Art and Burroughs Chapin Art Museum.
• Floating, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Riverfront, New Orleans.

2003
• Une Collection: Homage a Geneviève Roulin, Furor et La Galerie du Marché,
Lausanne.
• New American Paintings, #46, the Eighth Open Studios Southern Competition in
Print.
• across the river, New Works by Tom Stanley, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte.
• Maker Versus Material, Curator: Joie Lassiter, Trizec Properties, Charlotte.
• Figure of Speech: Tom Stanley and Tim Hussey, Halsey Gallery, Charleston, S.C.

2002
• Tom Stanley: Black Mountain Drawings, Jeanne Rauch Gallery, Gaston College.
• Tom Stanley and Alf Ward, Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery, Coastal Carolina.
• La Collection Geneviève Roulin, Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris.

2001
• Accessibility, two installations for downtown Sumter, S.C.
• Public Art and Landscape in the Charlotte Region, The Gallery at Carillon,
Charlotte.
• Reconstruction Eden, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, N.C.
• en route to orleans, an installation for the McColl Center for Visual Arts, Charlotte.

2000
• New American Paintings, #28, the Fifth Open Studios Southern Competition in
Print.

1999
• Recent Work, USC Sumter Gallery.
• Collaborations/James M. Steven, McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina
• Installation of en route to hamlet, Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte.
• Just Racin': Artists Look at NASCAR, Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art.

1998
• Installation of en route to hamlet, McKissick Museum, University of South
Carolina.
• Works on Paper, Zone One Contemporary, Asheville, N.C.
• Triennial '98, South Carolina State Museum.

1997
• Our Connection to the Land, Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art.
• Gary Komarin, Michael Nakoneczny & Tom Stanley, MOFA, New Orleans.

1996
• Installation of en route to hamlet, Spirit Square, Charlotte.
• Combined Talents, 1996 Florida National, Fine Arts Museum, FSU.
• KY/SCnyc (curator/Fiona Ragheb), National Art Club, New York, N.Y.
• Installation of en route to hamlet, Jeremiah Miller Gallery, Greensboro, N.C.

1995
• 18th Annual Invitation Exhibition, Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury, N.C.
• Tom Stanley and Gene Merritt, Meteor Gallery, Columbia, S.C.

1994
• Chiaroscuro - A Contemporary Study of Light and Dark, Montgomery Museum or
Art.
• Art Automat, Context Inaugural Exhibition, Charlotte.
• Award, River Art Festival Exhibition, Greenville, S.C.

1993
• Tom Stanley Paintings, Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt University.
• Invitational Exhibition, Zone One Contemporary, Asheville, N.C.

1992
• Recent Paintings, USC Spartanburg.
• Music of the Canvas with composer David Ott, Waterworks Visual Arts Center.
• Carolina Artscapes 92, a public art billboard project sponsored by Adams Outdoor,
the Mint Museum and the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council.

1991
• Two-Person Exhibition, Chelsea Gallery, Western Carolina.
• Homecoming: Artists Celebrate Their Teachers, Spirit Square Center for the Arts.

1988
• Group Exhibition, Gilliam and Peden, Raleigh, N.C.

1987
• Best Painting, Springs Traveling Exhibition.

1987
• Crayon Show, SECCA, Winston-Salem, N.C.

1986
• Off the Beaten Path, Limbo Gallery, Charlotte, N.C.
• Drawing/Seven Points of View, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

1985
• Positive/Negative, 2-D National, East Tennessee State.
• College of Mainland Print and Drawing Exhibition, Texas City. Tex.

1983
• Arkansas Art '83, Mabee Fine Arts Center, Arkadelphia, Ark.

1982
• Tom Stanley Paintings, Isaac Hathaway Arts Center, University of Arkansas.

1981
• 14th Annual Arkansas Exhibition, Southeast Arkansas Arts Center.

1980
• Tom Stanley: Recent Work, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro.

Selected Collections, Commissions and Public Art
• Workshop artist, Levine Children’s Hospital Art Project, Charlotte Country Day School.
• State Art Collection, South Carolina Arts Commission
• Jean de Matini et Geneviève Roulin
• First Charter Center
• Duke University
• B.F. Goodrich
• Womble, Carlyle, Standridge and Rice
• Offices of the Collection de l'Art Brut
• Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman
• NationsBank
• North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching
• Davidson College
• University of South Carolina
• Carolina Artscapes '92, a public art billboard commission, Charlotte, NC
• Riverworks, Arkansas College Campus, funded by the Arkansas Arts Council

Publications and Exhibition Catalogues
• South Carolina Birds, Wim Roefs.
• Triennial 2004, South Carolina State Museum.

2003
• New American Painting #46, Eighth Open Studios Southern Competition, Open
Studio Press, Boston, Mass.

2002
• Geneviève Roulin, published by Jean de Martini & Furor, Switzerland.

2000
• New American Paintings #28, The Firth Open Studios Southern Competition, Open
Studio Press, Boston, Mass.

1999
• The Carolinas Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, An Exploration of Social and
Economic Trends, 1924-1999; funding from the Duke Endowment.

1998
• Triennial 98, South Carolina State Museum/South Carolina Arts Commission.

1996
• Combined Talents: The Florida National 1996, Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State.
• NY/SCnyc: Works by Contemporary Artists from Kentucky and South Carolina,
The National Arts Club, NY, essay by J. Fiona Ragheb.

1995
• 3 Artists II, Waterworks Visual Arts Center.

1994
• Chiaroscuro: Montgomery 1994 Biennial, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts,
essay by Jane Kessler.