Red Piano Too Art Gallery Hosts 18th Annual Summer Show
The Red Piano Too Art Gallery is hosting its 18th Annual Summer Show on Saturday, August 7from 10 am – 5 pm. According to gallery owner Mary Inabinett Mack, “Each year around this time we have to stop procrastinating and concretely settle on a theme for our annual August Summer Show. For a long time now, I have been obsessing about art depicting women and water. At home, I have decorated a whole room around this concept, and for the past couple of years I have been working on a series of paintings that I call Women and Water. After much deliberation we finally sort of backed into this year’s theme. I thought it would be interesting to see how other artists treat the theme: Women and Water.”
Each year, the gallery invites all its exhibiting artists to participate in the Summer Show, with a particular artist selected to be the featured artist for the show. The featured artist for 2010 is Saint Helena Island native, Saundra ‘Renee’ Smith. Her creative paintings of acrylics on canvas capture her love of the Lowcountry, with its salt marshes, tidal creeks, and palmetto trees. Deeply rooted in her Gullah culture, she is inspired to portray the beauty of her island home in bold, vivid colors, and bright hues. Smith is a Registered Nurse with a Masters Degree in Health Care Administration, and is employed by the Department of Defense at the US Naval Hospital, Beaufort, SC. Smith’s husband, Michael, inspired her self-taught talent by persuading her to pick up a paintbrush for the first time in April 2008. She is also supported in her work by her two children, Felicia and Michael John, and her greatest fan, three year-old granddaughter Jasmine Lorraine. Smith’s work reflects the fact that her vision is turned inward, magnified, and then projected outward as her artistic renditions of her Gullah Culture. Smith boast that over the past two years her work has been added to the catch of a number of collectors and that one of her painting was purchased by the International Tourism Department in Dublin, Ireland to represent Saint Helena Island’s Gullah Culture.
In addition to Saundra “Renee” Smith, a large number of gallery regulars such as Allen Fireall, Charles Desaussure, Billy Wilkie, Pat Biggerstaff “Nolia”, Pearce Hammond, John Davey, Monikue Cooper, Johnnie Griner, Chris Roberts, “Georgia” Kyle Shiver, Helen Stewart, Lin Sippel, Margaret Warfield, Diane Britton Dunham. Cassandra Gillens, Shaviance Mitchell, Victoria Smalls, Millie Martin, P. D. Saracin, Bobbie Jo Watson, Irene Tison, Amiri Farris, Claudette Humphrey and many others will have there art on exhibit and available to meet and greet exhibit patrons.
Come and meet the artists, share a cold drink and enjoy some live music with friends at the Red Piano Too Art Gallery located at 870 Sea Island Parkway, St. Helena Island, S.C. For more information contact the gallery at 843- 838-2241.
