American Drive Exhibition Opens June 23 At Pickens County Museum

The Pickens County Museum of Art & History will be presenting three new exhibitions from June 23 through August 16, 2012. Please join us from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 23 as we host a reception to meet the artist featured in “American Drive: An Exhibition of Works by Steven Bleicher”. Also opening that evening will be the exhibits, “Selvage: New Works by Jim Arendt” and “The Landscape in painting: works by John Brecht, Cathy Zaden Lea, Carla Padgett & Bill Updegraff”. All three exhibitions will continue through August 16, 2012.

Steven Bleicher, a tenured professor in the Visual Arts Department, is an Associate Dean in the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts at Coastal Carolina University. He received both his BFA and MFA from the Pratt Institute in New York. Steven has worked and taught at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn College and The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in addition to serving as the Assistant Dean of the School of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

In April 2011 the second edition of Steven’s book Contemporary Color: Theory and Use was published by Cengage Press. It is considered the most comprehensive text on color theory and use. Steven’s new book Art and Design Foundations will be published by Pearson-Prentice Hall later this year.

Steven is also an accomplished artist whose work is included in many major collections. His artwork is widely exhibited both nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

When asked about the work in American Drive, Bleicher said, “My body of work has an underlying theme of Americana. Currently, I'm using the subject matter of great old highways such as Route 66 and the Dixie Highway as a point of departure. So much of American life has been and continues to revolve around our mobility, highways, and their effect on our lives. These themes are essential to my work.”

He continued, “The central images in these works are a continuation from earlier work. They are a combination of graphite and digital elements, starting with photographs or sketches from the selected landscape or site. I then couple these images with maps and souvenirs or mementos from the local area. While many of the items have a kitsch quality to them, they are not meant to have a condescending tone, but are really celebrations of our uniquely American zeal for collecting, bringing back souvenirs from our travels and vacations. These items directly relate to the imagery and maps adding additional components or layers of meaning to the work. The souvenir elements augment the images giving a more complete sense of place. In addition, they provide an editorial or narrative component to the work and are also another means for viewers to be able to engage the work. The pieces are displayed in shadowbox frames that are large enough to hold both the two and three-dimensional elements in a confined and unified space. My work is about remembrance and recollection. It's about our human need to capture a space in time, a fleeting moment and preserve it.”

The Pickens County Museum of Art & History is funded in part by Pickens County, members and friends of the museum and a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Located at the corner of Hwy. 178 at 307 Johnson Street in Pickens SC, the museum is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Thursdays from 9:00 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Admission is free but donations are welcomed.