Join us to celebrate the opening reception of Butch Anthony: Inside/Out and Coulter Fussell: The Raw Materials of Escape on Friday, January 17, 6:30-8:00 PM. We’ll be joined by musician Jake Xerxes Fussell! All College of Charleston students, faculty, and staff, and current Halsey Institute members receive free admission to our opening receptions. Non-members will be charged $5 admission. Sponsored by Icebox.

The Halsey Institute is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Butch Anthony of Seale, Alabama. The exhibition will consist of new images, assemblages, and installations created specifically for our galleries. As a multi-faceted self-taught artist, Butch Anthony creates works that investigate and appropriate images from the American vernacular. His practice includes painting X-ray like skeletons on top of antique portraits in elaborate, often gilded frames. An avid collector of unique and bizarre objects, he created the Museum of Wonder, a modern-day cabinet of curiosities filled with art, artifacts, and antiques including the world’s largest gallstone and an actual footprint from Sasquatch. Anthony also hosts the Possum Trot Auction, a weekly junk and art auction (featured on television’s American Pickers) on his 80-acre parcel of land that has been in his family for generations. He has also built The Museum of Wonder Drive-Thru, the first drive-through art and antiques gallery, also on his property. In addition to making and selling art, building unique roadside attractions, and collecting found objects to incorporate into his own artwork, Anthony built his own house and several outbuildings which have been featured in the New York Times. 

Learn more about Butch Anthony: Inside/Out.

Quilter Coulter Fussell’s early-developed artsview perceives craft and other arts as indistinguishable from one another. Painting, sculpture, and textile work are one solitary entity in her mind. From youth, the combination developed into an unintentional mash-up, resulting in quilts and textile works that defy expectations of the medium. Fussell relies on the no-holds-barred nature of contemporary painting rules to free her compositions from the constraints of pattern. In turn, she simultaneously relies on the strict discipline of traditional craftwork to act as a self-editing tool. 

Learn more about Coulter Fussell: The Raw Materials of Escape.