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Human/Nature: Art and Landscape in Charleston and the Low Country

John Beardsley, curator; Roberta Kefalos, associate curator
Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, South Carolina, 1997

As part of a series of occasional art exhibitions hosted in conjunction with the annual Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, thirteen artists were invited to the city to propose installations of their work in the city and surrounding Low Country that might resonate with the particular cultural and natural history of the region. The invitation resulted in twelve projects by thirteen artists. Some installed existing work, while others created new site-generated projects. Among the former were Magdalena Abakanowicz and Thornton Dial, whose sculptures were found in the historic gardens at Middleton Place and whose paintings were hung at the Gibbes Museum. Among the latter were Patrick Dougherty, Herb Parker, Charles Simonds, Ronald Gonzalez, Esther Mahlangu, and Martha Jackson Jarvis, who drew on African American vernacular traditions to create an installation of oyster shell houses, mosaic and ceramic rain barrels, and bottle trees. While most of the work was temporary, the blacksmith Philip Simmons and topiary artist Pearl Fryar collaborated on a churchyard garden intended to last well beyond the exhibition.  

One project was indoors: House by the Water by multimedia artist Mary Lucier, which featured video images of ghostly figures in historic houses juxtaposed with hurricane footage, all projected on the exterior of a house on stilts in the darkened interior of an old brick warehouse. Two projects were by landscape architects: Martha Schwartz paid homage to the labor of enslaved women in an installation called Field Work, which featured cotton sheets hung in long rows linking slave cabins with an agricultural field across an allée of live oak trees; Adriaan Geuze built a wire pavilion hung with Spanish moss reached along a wooden boardwalk deep in Cypress Swamp Gardens.

The exhibition was on view from May 23 to July 20, 1997. It became the subject of a book published the following year. It received its most extensive review by Eleanor Heartney in the December 1997 issue of Art in America. 

 

EXHIBITION IMAGES

  Photography by Len Jenshel

Martha Schwartz, Field Work, 1997. Cotton sheets, steel posts, cable and clothes pins. McLeod Plantation, James Island, SC. View from a field of sweetgrass.
Martha Schwartz, Field Work, 1997. Cotton sheets, steel posts, cable and clothes pins. McLeod Plantation, James Island, SC. View past slave cabins.
Martha Schwartz, Field Work, 1997. Cotton sheets, steel posts, cable and clothes pins. McLeod Plantation, James Island, SC. View toward slave cabins from sweetgrass field.
Martha Schwartz, Field Work, 1997. Cotton sheets, steel posts, cable and clothes pins. McLeod Plantation, James Island, SC. View under live oak allée.
Ronald Gonzalez, Scattered Remains: Corpus, 1997. Plaster mixed with marble and granite dust over welded steel and wire. Installed at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston
Martha Jackson Jarvis, Rice, Rattlesnakes, and Rainwater, 1997. Mosaic and oyster shell houses, rain barrels with ceramic fish. Installed at St Luke’s Reformed Episcopal Church, Charleston.
Martha Jackson Jarvis, Rice, Rattlesnakes, and Rainwater, 1997. Mosaic and oyster shell houses, rain barrels with ceramic fish. Installed at St Luke’s Reformed Episcopal Church, Charleston.
Mary Lucier, House by the Water, 1997. Mixed media and video installation, approximately 18 feet high. Installed in a warehouse off upper King Street, Charleston
Adriaan Geuze, Cypress Swamp Garden, 1997. Steel posts, wire and Spanish moss, wooden decking and benches, 20 x 30 x 60 feet. Installed at Cypress Gardens, Moncks Corner, South Carolina
Adriaan Geuze, Cypress Swamp Garden, 1997. Steel posts, wire and Spanish moss, wooden decking and benches, 20 x 30 x 60 feet. Installed at Cypress Gardens, Moncks Corner, South Carolina
Adriaan Geuze, Cypress Swamp Garden, 1997. Steel posts, wire and Spanish moss, wooden decking and benches, 20 x 30 x 60 feet. Installed at Cypress Gardens, Moncks Corner, South Carolina
Adriaan Geuze, Cypress Swamp Garden, 1997. Steel posts, wire and Spanish moss, wooden decking and benches, 20 x 30 x 60 feet. Installed at Cypress Gardens, Moncks Corner, South Carolina