'The Beautiful Unknown'

Friday art walk could take you to places you've never been before

My favorite thing about art is that you can create things that don't exist.

The infinite amount of amazing things -- images, ideas, feelings -- whirling around your head at any given moment is nothing less than impressive, astounding, dizzying and at times scary. Truly a fascinating thing, the mind itself is a wealth of creative potential.

Imagine being able to not only tap into, but also manifest in tangible form, some of your most vivid dreams. Being able to transfer what's in your brain into something other folks can see or understand is great, but what artists in particular often excel at is adding yet another element to what is produced. The good ones go beyond their skills to add their own emotions and passions, their intuitions, their core selves.

In honor of this week's big art walk, we've highlighted a few artists whose true selves shine through in their works. If you look carefully, these works are more than pretty images, they are little glimpses of that individual's own beautiful mystery.

That being said, there are many, many, amazing artists, receptions, events, etc. taking place all weekend, especially with the art walk events 5-8 p.m. Friday.

Be sure to check out as much as you can, as it's impossible for us to list everyone we love here!

'Different Strokes'

Robert Lange and Nathan Durfee thought it would be fun to see what would happen if they worked on some paintings together.

Their styles are vastly different. Lange's paintings are hyper realistic and detailed and are often of figures or still life. Durfee's works are colorful narratives of made-up creatures that live patchwork worlds. This doesn't sound like the most feng shui pairing one could make, but actually, the melding of their worlds is surprisingly Zen and, frankly, a whole lot of fun.

For this collaborative show, called "Different Strokes," they each began five paintings in their own style and then handed them off to the other. The result? Ten amazing paintings, each representative of their individual styles, but working together beautifully on each 16-by-20 panel. Expect to see things such as a Lange-styled Buddha sitting in a Durfee field with a large, pink Durfee elephant hovering above him in "Michael's Light Hearted." Or an angry panda a la Durfee who is sitting in a precise Lange hand amid a bunch of heavenly Durfee clouds. The painting is titled "Grumpy Till the End," and the angry panda has thrown down his harp and is about to toss his halo.

And the jewel of the show is a collaborative piece with Lange, Durfee and accomplished woodworker Michael Moran.

Moran is creating a console table, on top of which there will be mounted a small door (about 16 by 20). The little door will rotate, and when opened on one side, there will be a Lange painting inside and a Durfee painting on the other side.

It's going to be awesome.

And if you're a collector, you might want to call the gallery before Friday.

Transformations

Jill Hooper's work is precise, passionate and classic.

She studied classic Italian realism in Florence, Italy.

She is the youngest artist in the Gibbes Museum's collection and a featured artist at the Greenville Museum.

She grinds her own pigments.

She always paints from life, no matter how the light changes, the model moves or the fruit starts going bad.

She is stunning, intelligent, complex, sensitive and kind, and a spirited painter.

For Hooper (and most people), fall is a time of change, of introspective transformation. Her newest collection of still lifes all "have a quiet demeanor that relates ... they were painted in the same autumn light ... during the same time period," she said. And they are all reminiscent of Charleston.

"La nature morte is certainly not as still and dead as it would seem. The fruit flies are swarming by the day, rotting plums are changing hue and leaves are wilting into graceful shapes and shades of golden brown. It's not quite like chasing cloud effects, but there is a point where you decide which stage of the wilting to capture," says Hooper.

"Having an idea and then making nature bend to it is interesting. You end up bending back and sometimes finding another unexpected answer to get the effect and meaning you're looking for. It's truly a joy working from unpredictable/uncontrollable nature whether it be in posing the model, picking the perfectly ripe persimmon with the wilting leaves and sister fruit clinging next to it or finding the dirt path with a lonely craggy tree to paint. ... One has the idea and then nature adds its quirks."

Endless layers

Dorothy Netherland has her own way of doing things. Most noted for her vintage-inspired paintings on layered panes of glass, Netherland has received much attention in the past year, including being one of the featured artists at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park during this year's Spoleto and Piccolo season.

Staying true to her style and method in her upcoming show at SCOOP studios, she has made collages out of imagery from many different sources, and then painted those onto stacked panes of glass.

"Each composition, which I created out of pictures from various magazines, both current and vintage, served as the starting point of the piece, and as a drawing reference. The freedom that came from the plethora of potential imagery, and the detail required in the painting of these complex compositions, which are set in landscapes, was quite a challenge," says Netherland. She intends to keep exploring this way of working.

"As always, the work reflects my concerns, feelings and neuroses. I feel as though these paintings more specifically suggest ideas about transition, the subconscious and the anxieties of parenthood. I think that the clash of imagery, and the potential for multiple interpretations, is in keeping with our cut-and-paste world, where multitudes of information and pictures can be used to provide endless layers of meaning."

'Poetic reality'

Some people decide on a subject to paint and paint it. Some people have absolutely no clue what they are going to paint and rely on their intuition to guide them. Artist Randall LaGro is the second type.

Based out of Taos, N.M., and already collected by various museums, LaGro paints his own abstract "poetic reality." His works are not always "easy," meaning sometimes they take a little while to settle with someone.

At first glance, they just appear to be abstract renditions of dreamscapes with vague shapes of figures showing up here and there.

LaGro paints what his intuition tells him. Remember your intuition? That little voice or feeling that prompts you to do certain things or evokes the weird feeling you get around someone untrustworthy? You know, the one you often toss to the side, only to realize later that you should have listened to your gut? Well, LaGro listens, and the works he produces are filled with so much emotion and passion that even if you don't completely understand the shapes and colors, the feelings in the painting reach out and grab you.

Showing exclusively at the Mary Martin Gallery, LaGro has been here conducting an Intuitive Painting Workshop this week and will be at the opening Friday night with a gallery full of passionate paintings.

At the Core

The Art of Core Consciousness. What does that mean? For some, those words just go "woosh" above their heads. For others, a smile of recognition and understanding blooms on their faces.

Personally, I experienced the "woosh" and then the smile.)

The Art of Core Consciousness is an artistic manifestation of the experience of what is going on in your subconscious. It is reflective of the core of who you are: not your polished exterior, not your rehearsed life story, not your sexy "catwalk," a term Iamikan, the featured artist at The Art of Core Consciousness gallery, often uses to refer to people's interactions with society.

With his colorful, flowing artwork, Iamikan strives to make people more aware of not only their own consciousness and its potential, but also the collective consciousness of our entire reality.

Insert "woosh."

The art of getting to and understanding your core consciousness is a concept a bit difficult to grasp because it is both complex and simple. That is one of the reasons why artist Iamikan and his business partner, Atmah Ja, a trained yoga instructor and massage therapist, work with one another.

Together, they are able to create a multidimensional environment to help access and understand core consciousness through art, massage, yoga and teachings.

If you go

This is just a sample of the art openings during this month's art walk. For information on other galleries, visit www.cfada.com or call 819-8006.

Also, visit Plum Elements, 161 ½ King Street, for a group show of local artists, called ' Twelve: Light Black'

Ann Long Fine Art, 54 Broad St., 577-0447, www.annlongfineart.com.

Atmah Ja's The Art of Core Consciousness, 29 Broad St., 577-3111, www.atmahjas.com.

The Mary Martin Gallery, 39 Broad St., 723-0303, www.marymartinart.com.

Robert Lange Studios, 2 Queen St., 805-8052, www.robertlangestudios.com.

SCOOP studios, 57 ½ Broad St., 577-3292, www.scoopcontemporary.com.