Carl Blair on Many Levels

The whimsical sculptures of veteran Greenville artist Carl Blair will be on view February 2 through March 16, 2008, at the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina.

Carl Blair: Sculpture includes carved wooden three-dimensional works and newly created painted relief sculptures. The subjects in both are animated barnyard animals in humorous and sometimes poignant pursuits, such as the rooster encumbered by leg irons in the 2007 sculpture Escape from the Chain Gang or the bird perched precariously above a chaotic scene in the 2007 sculptural relief Liberty is Not Free. The exhibition includes some fifteen works, all recently created. Some have never before been publicly shown.

These anthropomorphic sculptures comprise a new dimension for Blair, who is best known for landscapes and abstract paintings rendered in oil, gouache, and acrylic. The creations begin as a rough sketch:  large, positive shapes are hewn from boards of spruce pine using a band saw. Details are cut from the negative scraps and glued or nailed into place. Once the wooden elements are assembled, each work is coated with several layers of gesso and then finished in richly hued acrylic paint.

“The work is done on the proposition of ‘acting first and thinking afterwards,’” says Blair. “This process gives each one uniqueness, life, and believability. Like an extemporaneous speech, as my work progresses, there will be change. The only thing that stays the same is that the two-footed creatures stay with two feet and the four-footed creatures stay with four.”

A native of rural Atchison, Kansas, Carl Blair developed an affection for barnyard animals as a child. “I was surrounded by many wonderful and unique animals in my early youth,” he says. They were an inspiration and joy to me. If I know anything well in this world, it is my friends the animals and the landscape they so enjoy and inhabit.”

Blair was a member of the art faculty at Bob Jones University for forty-one years, and he has taught for some twenty years at the Greenville County Museum of Art. Among his recent visits to the museum were sessions with youngsters taking part in after-school classes and summer art camps. The children were transfixed as Blair demonstrated how he draws and how color infuses life into a drawing. The artist has also taught at the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and the Greenville Fine Arts Center.

His paintings and sculptures are represented in more than 100 museums, galleries, and institutions and more than 2500 private collections within the United States. He was honored for his contributions as an artist and an educator when he received the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005. His work can also be seen at Hampton III Gallery in Taylors, South Carolina, which assisted in organizing this exhibition.

Carl Blair will explain these new works in a gallery talk at 6:30 pm on Thursday, February 7. The talk is free and open to the public.

The Greenville County Museum of Art is located at 420 College Street, on Heritage Green in downtown Greenville, SC. The Museum opens Tuesday-Saturday at 11:00 am and Sunday at 1:00, closing at 5:00 pm except on Thursdays, when galleries remain open until 8:00. The Museum is closed on Mondays and major holidays. For information, call 864/271-7570 or see http://www.greenvillemuseum.org.
Admission to the museum remains absolutely free.