Opening Reception, Educational Events Highlight Fall Galleries Series

Quick Facts

"Between the Springmaid Sheets" and "Remnants: A Collection of Rock Hill's Visual Alterations" will show in the Rutledge and Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick galleries.

An opening reception for both is scheduled for Sept. 7.

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ROCK HILL, S.C. — Winthrop University Galleries will kick off two new exhibitions focusing on textiles and their industry in art and design next month, beginning with an opening reception Sept. 7.

From Sept. 10-Oct. 26 in the Rutledge Gallery, “Between the Springmaid Sheets” explores the provocative ad campaigns of textile entrepreneur Col. Elliott White Springs, who inherited his father’s South Carolina textile company in the 1930s and formed The Springs Cotton Mills Corporation.

Springs launched the controversial ads deemed “risqué” at the time with original maquettes illustrated by artists such as Rockwell Kent, Fritz Willis, James Montgomery Flagg, E. Simms Campbell and Wales Turner of Spartanburg. The illustrations will be featured alongside the printed advertisements as seen in Esquire, Colliers and Look magazines.

The exhibition runs concurrently with “Remnants: A Collection of Rock Hill’s Visual Alterations” by New York designer and photographer Mara Kurtz in the Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Gallery.

Kurtz photographed Rock Hill in the early 1970s prior to the federally funded “beautification program.” The photographs demonstrate the evolving industrial impact on the community’s urban landscape underscoring the ability buildings, signage and structures have to give meaning to space and establish its identity.

A free opening reception for both exhibitions will be from 6:30-8 p.m. Sept. 7.

A series of lectures and other educational programming is scheduled with the exhibits:

• Principal of Mara Kurtz Studio, award-winning graphic designer, photographer and photo-illustrator Mara Kurtz will give an artist talk on her exhibition on Sept. 7 at 3:30 p.m. in the Patrick Gallery. Her work has been published in Conde Nast Traveler, Metropolis, Metropolitan Home, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Travel and Leisure, and The Wall Street Journal. She has received awards from The Professional Association for Design, Art Directors Club, Communication Arts, Graphis, How, Print, Society of Illustrators, Society of Publication Design, Type Directors Club. She has been a faculty member at Parsons School of Design since 1990 and teaches online classes in The New School graduate media studies program. She was president of the Type Directors Club from 1996-98.

• Director/producer Steve Folks, SCETV executive producer Amy Shumaker and Springs Close Family Archivist Ann Evans will show the SCETV documentary “Miss Springmaid” and lead a discussion Sept. 13 at 8 p.m. in Dina’s Place.

• American University’s Dr. Despina Kakoudaki will lecture on “At Home and At War: The American Pinup in the 1930s and 40s.” Kakoudaki teaches interdisciplinary courses in literature and film, visual culture, and the history of technology and new media. Her interests include cultural studies, science fiction, and the representation of race and gender in literature and film. Her lecture will be Oct. 8 at 8 p.m. in 119 Rutledge Building.

• The University of South Carolina’s Dr. Lawrence B. Glickman will give a lecture Oct. 18 at 8 p.m. in 119 Rutledge. Glickman is chair of the Department of History and studies labor, cultural and consumer history. He regularly teaches courses on post-Civil War America, the U.S. in the Gilded Age, Progressive Era and the 20th Century.

• UNC-Charlotte’s Ken Lambla will lecture on Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. in 119 Rutledge. Lambla is dean of the College of Arts + Architecture, where he has been on the faculty since 1983. He received his environmental design degree from the University of Kansas and his master’s in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. His career in both education and practice is focused on architecture and the arts as forms of community development and advocates social responsibility, craft and innovation.

Showing simultaneously in the Lewandowski Student Gallery will be the MFA Works in Progress until Sept. 7. Beginning Sept. 17-Oct. 2 interior design renderings and drawings will be on display in the gallery.

For more information, call the Galleries at 803/323-2493 or e-mail Karen Derksen, Galleries director, at derksenk@winthrop.edu. Follow the Galleries online on Facebook or Twitter.

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