Free Times’ interview with John Sims ended with us seated on a gallows.

There’s no question that education has taken a serious hit recently. Schools of all types have struggled to adjust to virtual classes and shif…

In the weeks and months ahead, we can all get used to reading sentences like this: The COVID-19 quarantine had a large impact on the latest ex…

The road to resuming in-person events in Columbia has been filled with fits and starts as COVID-19 continues its slow march out of our lives.

Like many arts institutions in many towns, the Arts Center of Kershaw County in the Midlands town of Camden felt the sting of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Composer James Lee III is a measured person, even in conversation.

COVID-19, and the year of events and attractions we lost to it, puts a new emphasis on appreciating the things we’ve always been lucky to have.

For galleries and art spaces in the Vista, the 12 months leading up to this week’s Artista Vista were quite different from previous outings of…

If you’ve been anywhere near a car radio in the last 30 years, you’ve heard of Grave Digger. Or, to put it more accurately, you’ve heard of Gr…

The essence of conceptual art usually resides in the idea alone. In “Red Square, White Letters,” for example, Sol LeWitt substituted the names…

Columbia's vibrant arts scene, driven in recent years by multiple gallery openings, festivals and special events nearly every month, came to a…

Caletta Harris didn’t plan on becoming an activist. She didn’t plan on dedicating years of her life to advocacy on behalf of Columbia’s homele…

Artists get lonely, too.

This week, Columbia City Council had to reckon — like everybody else — with how to react to events trying to come back as the COVID-19 pandemi…

Back in 2019, La Tropa, South Carolina’s only Spanglish theater company, wrote and produced a bi-lingual play called “Ceviche o no Ceviche.” T…

The threat of COVID-19 may not be gone yet, but warmer weather allows for live entertainment to spill outdoors, even if modifications are nece…

The South Carolina State Fair food drive-thru, held as a fill-in for the annual fall event in October, is back for a second round next month.

It’s not even officially open yet, but Mazie Cook has a sweeping vision for NOMA Warehouse, the 4,500 square foot building she co-owns. The pl…

William Starrett has never been bound by the constraints of what ballet is supposed to be.

“It was something I could do cheaply and would entertain people,” Columbia filmmaker Christopher Bickel told Free Times while discussing his n…

The graphics that One Columbia has provided for free use are strewn with pithy reminders of good pandemic behavior — “Wash your hands,” “Stand six feet apart,” and “Stay at home if you can.”

The department's annual Spring Concert is being staged live in Drayton Hall amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There are some artists who people just know, even if they don’t know their name. M.C. Escher is one of them.

The interplay between natural landscape art and more functional objects allowed Amanda Smith to interrogate how things like camouflage prints, which work culturally, as well as functionally.

It didn’t take long for The Luminal Theater to make a big impact in Columbia.

After this story went to press, Trustus Theatre decided to postpone all but the opening night of its upcoming production.

Food has been on Lori Larusso’s mind since she was a child. The award-winning Louisville artist has spent 20 years creating paintings and inst…

What a 2020 it could have been: “Amadeus” at the University of South Carolina, the local premieres of big Broadway musicals such as “A Gentlem…

Frequent flooding helps to create a forest rich with biodiversity, and Stuart, an acclaimed experimental music composer and percussionist, aimed to put people right in the middle of the park.

Two institutional arts venues will reopen this weekend, and both have one big thing in common: They make money off people paying to see things.

The road may have been a little rocky, but Columbia’s two professional ballet companies are back in action, returning to the Koger Center for the Arts with back-to-back productions of “The Nutcracker” just in time for Christmas.

Karen Magradey, assistant director at the Koger Center for the Arts, reflected on normal days during a recent call with a subscriber to the ve…

Wim Roefs, the owner of if ART Gallery in the Vista, is all about getting people to look at art in different ways.

There may be quarantines and social distancing, curfews, mandatory mask limits and occupancy limits, but an audacious collective of dancers at…

The museum has kicked into high gear to convert many of its lecture and educational offerings to the web, striving to provide the same community-focused programming it did before COVID-19.

One by one, theater groups are getting back to doing what they do best: staging live theater.

There’s something oddly fitting about the prospect of watching a Columbia Baroque performance from your living room. The group’s raison d'être…

The theater, recognized as the country’s longest continually running community theater organization, managed to weather the unexpected halt to its 101st season.

Tapp’s, a nonprofit home for artist entrepreneurs, is very much concerned with finding ways to support creatives during this tumultuous time.

The plans include prominent groups like the Columbia Children’s Theatre and The Jasper Project, and the involvement of a stalwart local artist like theater fixture Darion McCloud.

With October and the Halloween season comes a whole new set of events figuring out how to handle life during COVID-19.

You’ll see several different artistic styles in “Through it All I RISE!” Columbia artist Keith Tolen’s new exhibition at the Arts Center of Kershaw County.

Until last weekend, I hadn’t seen a concert since March 10.

Most years, Mike Harley wouldn’t program two concerts at outside venues. He certainly wouldn’t plan a virtual broadcast to fill one of his dates.

One of the most striking paintings Joel Cothran has created is also the simplest. With a jagged spray of purple text across a plain white canv…