This Saturday, Charleston Music Hall will host a Groundhog Day benefit concert. The concert will feature music by The Opposite of a Train (Bill Carson, Nathan Koci, and Ron Wiltrout), along with performances by Owen Beverly, Jack Burg, John Cobb, Michael Flynn, Clint Fore, Joel Hamilton, Kevin Hamilton, Lindsay Holler, Rachel Kate Gillon, Jonathan Gray, Mark Sterbank, and Stephanie Underhill. The night will also feature a special cameo performance from Mr. Bonetangles by puppeteer, Will Schutze.

Bill Carson, the concert’s music director, says, “This concert is a way for the local music community to show its support for the fantastic contemporary arts programming that the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art provides year-round, and year after year. The Halsey often collaborates with musicians, actors, filmmakers, architects, designers, and others to create its unique multi-disciplinary offerings. The participating musicians all want to shine the spotlight on the Halsey Institute in gratitude for their dynamic and inspirational role in this community.”

The Pulse Dome Project, an exploration in bio-architecture, was ZanFagna’s search for a way to “grow” a house and create a structure in harmony with nature. 

In 2009, after living in Italy, New York, California, Illinois and elsewhere, ZanFagna, with his wife, Joyce, settled in Mount Pleasant, S.C., to be closer to family. Family members approached Mark Sloan, director and senior curator of the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, asking him to look at ZanFagna’s work. Sloan plowed through paintings, drawings, sculptures and more, in a variety styles, but it was the Pulse Dome Project that drew him in. 

In 2012, Sloan curated an exhibition featuring Pulse Dome, as well as work from ZanFagna’s “Cyborg Notes.”

Groundhog Day Concert

Charleston Music Hall

January 31 | 8:00 p.m. | $15–$50

Bill Carson reassembles his cast of like-minded musical friends to share songs at this benefit for the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Performers will include Ron Wiltrout, Rachel Kate, Joel Hamilton, Stephanie Underhill, Clint Fore, Jonathan Gray, and Jack Burg.

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, in collaboration with the Charleston Music Hall, presents an evening of music featuring Charleston’s finest locally and nationally recognized musical acts on January 31, 2015 at 8 p.m. at the Charleston Music Hall (37 John St. Doors open at 7 p.m.).

He’s probably not the first one you’ll notice on stage. His is a small white flame charisma, not a raging red burn.

Bill Carson is slight, bespectacled, quiet, perfectly content to show off his friends. He stands there, unassuming, behind his twangy hollow-body guitar.

So it might come as a surprise to discover that Carson is the primary force making all this music happen.

Offering technical experimentation, metaphoric expansiveness and curiosity, Patterns of Place does not look like any other art that has been made before, and includes a series of six three-dimensional maps that Potter calls Isomorphic Map Tables and 100 1:1 Map Insets, as well as an extensive catalogue and a video about the artist.

In a blog post today, street artist Shepard Fairey laid out his top five moments of 2014 and lo and behold: the show he did this May at the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art was number one. The Insistent Image: Recurring Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns comprised not only Fairey’s prints and paintings, but also four murals and one installation in five different spots in Charleston. (Read our cover story, “Raw Power: Shepard Fairey explores empire and the American Dream this Spoleto season,” on the exhibit here.)

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art may be housed in a modest suite of gallery and office space on the College of Charleston campus, but its reach far exceeds its physical footprint. With a primary focus on artists “in the margins,” as Chief Curator Mark Sloan puts it, the museum shines a spotlight on artists who, given the depth, quality, and imaginative impact of their work deserve to be much better known. As we learned when we spoke with Sloan by telephone, the Halsey deploys a number of strategies to support the artists it shows. Artists receive not only time and space to work at the Halsey in an artist residency, but the considerable resources of the College of Charleston faculty and staff as well as the Charleston community-at-large are available to support the artist’s vision, whether that means technical expertise, help in the studio, participation in conversations with the artist and other events, or even a place for the artist to live while in town. In addition, the organization produces high-quality educational and outreach materials around the artists and their work, including short films, catalogues, and an expansive online presence on the Halsey website. The Halsey recently received an NEA grant to support an exhibit on the work of visual artist and musician Lonnie Holley. In his own words, here is Mark Sloan on the Halsey’s artist-focused curatorial philosophy, the museum’s plan for the Holley exhibit, and how the artists they feature are a little like snowflakes.

Looking at the Indonesian artist Jumaadi’s works, one is reminded of art from long, long ago: ancient Greece, perhaps, or the cave paintings of Lascaux.

It’s not because of any similarities in style. Jumaadi’s work, which will be on display at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art through Dec. 6, is rougher, without the formal constraints of the Greeks or the fluidity of Lascaux. Rather, it’s because Jumaadi’s visual language, like those bygone artists, is one of archetype. Rain, trees, wild beasts, and stark, disembodied human faces haunt his paintings and drawings, creating a world of primordial and universal symbols that one could devote much time, and anthropological study, to reading.