There’s something about old buildings and new art

Kim Overstreet seems drawn to old buildings, which is not particularly surprising since her background is in historic preservation. Ms. Overstreet resigned as director of the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art last month, and now she's moving on to Sacred Heart Cultural Center, where she will take on a part-time position as program director.

She first served as preservation director for Historic Augusta, then as director of the Gertrude Herbert, where she staged contemporary art shows in the landmark 1818 building. At Sacred Heart, she will be a knowledgeable resource for executive director Sandra Fenstermacher in documenting the history and preservation needs of that architecturally significant structure, which dates to the late 1890s.  

Sacred Heart's Gallery is opening its fall season with an invitational exhibit featuring works by 29 artists from the Aiken-Augusta area. All the exhibitors are familiar names to Augusta art patrons. The opening reception is Thursday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and the show will stay up through the end of October.

At the Gertrude Herbert, they're gearing up for the 28th annual juried art exhibition that draws entries from throughout the country. "A Sense of Place" opens at 6 p.m. Sept. 19 with a gallery talk by juror Amanda Cooper of the Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. This year's show includes 38 artists representing 22 states.

Meanwhile, in a not-so-old building, the New Space Gallery at Augusta State University has opened an exhibit of local and national ceramic arts, titled "Inviting the Stars." The show was organized by Clay Artists of the Southeast (CASE), a group mostly from the Augusta-Aiken area, as part of the Westobou Festival. 

Each of the CASE members represented in the show invited one additional well-known ceramics artist (a star) to participate, and there is also one work by Don Reitz, who will present a workshop at the university Sept. 27 and 28.  The 37 pieces on display range from utilitarian vessels to complex sculpture.

New Space Gallery is located in ASU's Washington Hall and is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  A special exhibit related to Native American pottery, organized by CASE member Frits Hommes, will run concurrently with the ceramics exhibit. 

Athens, Ga. sculptor and Fulbright scholar RG Brown III is coming to ASU to construct a public art piece and to exhibit four traditional African canoes he had commissioned as part of recent Fulbright trip. The artist will be working with art students on a project designed for the campus that references archeology and landscape architecture. He will present a lecture at 3 p.m. on Sept. 19, and the art department will follow that with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m., saluting both his works and the ceramics exhibits.

Over in Louisville, Ga., the Fire House Gallery re-opens after summer break with a show of mixed-media landscapes by Georgia artist Nick Nelson, titled "Transcendent Ground," The opening reception is Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m.

A native of Carrollton, Ga., Nick Nelson holds a B.F.A. in painting and drawing from Georgia Southwestern State University and M.F.A. from Georgia Southern. He's curator of education at the Albany (Ga.) Museum of Art.  

The artist says his paintings reflect his view that the natural world is permeated by a mysterious order, one he explores through the juxtaposition of organic forms and hard-edged geometry, drawing on the landscape of the rural south as inspiration.  www.galleryafire.com

"ConTEXTualized: Word as Image" will end its run Saturday at Gallery RFD in Swainsboro, Ga.  Next up is "Beautiful Losers: The Art of Failure" opening Sept. 13 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. as part of Swainsboro's Second Saturday Art Stroll. "Beautiful Losers" salutes the value of error in various guises – rough drafts, flawed ideas, mistakes and accidents. 

The gallery has posted a call for submissions for upcoming exhibitions. First is Four Feet: The Proxemics of Personal Space. Proxemics is a word coined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall to describe the measurable space between two people interacting, and it posits four feet as the comfortable limit of what we know as personal space. Breaching this imagined territory is perceived as a threat; step outside it and one enters the more public domain of social space. Submissions in any media that explore or comment on this intuitive spatial understanding are sought. Deadline is 4 p.m. Sept. 21.

Back to Basics: Exploring Natural Materials intends to highlight the use of nature's bounty in artistic production. The gallery seeks submissions of work in media that employ natural or organic materials or comment on the use of the natural and organic. Submission deadline: 4 p.m. Oct. 2.  Full information on these and other upcoming shows can be found on the gallery's website at www.galleryrfd.org

At the Aiken Center for the Arts, exhibitors for September include Michael Naemsch, Steve Filarsky, Fran Gardner and Gretchen Hash-Heffner, and there is a show of Hitchcock Healthcare children's art as well. A gallery reception is scheduled for Sept. 11 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Other notes:  Augustan Baker Overstreet (brother-in-law of Kim) has a solo show titled "Follies" at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York through Oct. 4.  The opening reception is Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. www.fredericksfreisergallery.com.

Westside High School graduate Casey Cohoon, who was among 13 finalists in the 29^th National Competition for Figurative Sculpture, was awarded the Edward Fenno Hoffman Prize as "the young sculptor who strives to uplift the human spirit through the medium of his or her art." The five-day competition was held in Old Lyme, Conn.