Vanessa Albury | A. Bills-Levi | Gayle Brooker | Lisa Chou | Margaret Clarke | T. Davidson | Steven Davis | John Duckworth | Meghan Henley | Krist Mills | Sue Murray | Dorothy Netherlands | Rachel O’Neal | Larissa Patel | Lynn Patterson | Matt Smithson | Jonathan Walsh

To create an exhibit drawn from works by Studio Art graduates may seem to be a daunting task; faced with so many choices, the result could become merely arbitrary or too disparate to cohere as an exhibition. But in fact, my experience was quite the contrary. All artists have at least one thing in common—they all have influences. And for all of these artists, one of their most influential experiences was the time they spent as Studio Art students at the College of Charleston.

In this exhibit, I see the influences as well as the individual accomplishments of artists who studied here at the College. Whether faintly or pronounced, the impressions of their Studio Art professors resonate in these works. The goal, however, of myself and Dr. Marian Mazzone was to choose a select group of Studio Art alumni whose works have continued to develop, becoming their own unique creations and contributions. By limiting the selection to Studio Art graduates of the past ten years, we were able to look at the work of artists who are still developing their sense of “self” in the art world, while also still having some identity with the College.

Townsend Davidson was born in Childress, Virginia in 1979. He attended the College of Charleston where he received a degree in Studio Art in 2001 and degree in Art History in 2002. In the year 2002, Davidson’s work was included in several student exhibitions at the Simons Center for the Arts, College of Charleston, including the Annual Young Contemporaries Juried Art Exhibition at Halsey Gallery. His work was also selected for the 2002 Piccolo Spoleto Juried Art Exhibition and Print Studio South’s Juried Picture Show where he received a second place award. The City Gallery, operating under the auspices of the City of Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs, hosted an exhibition of Davidson’s work in 2003.