Arts Center Busy Fall Kicks Off with “Amerikan Dream” Aug. 28
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Dreamers and visionaries have always driven the creation of art, and at the Anderson Arts Center, the unvarnished, personal and open-to-argument American dream will take center stage later this month.
Beginning Aug. 28, the center will present “Amerikan Dream,” the second installation in a three-part exhibition series by Upstate artists Shay Abramo and Nat Morris. The show follows last year’s “Amerikan Gothic,” which drew substantial crowds to the Arts Center and persuaded the artists and staff that one exhibition might become a larger conversation. A third installment is planned for the same time next year.
The opening reception, free and open to the public, will be held from 6-9 p.m. Aug. 28, and the exhibition will remain on display through Oct. 16. An artist talk is scheduled for Oct. 9, when Abramo and Morris will guide visitors through the gallery, discuss their process, and answer questions. Abramo’s collaborator, a local Anderson County poet, is also expected to read from her work.
For Erin Spainhour, the Arts Center’s executive director, the trilogy offers something more than simply a series of annual exhibitions by offering a continuing artistic narrative. “Amerikan Gothic” generated so much foot traffic and response that when Abramo and Morris proposed a trilogy; the answer came easily. The artists’ work, Spainhour said, offers the center an opportunity to bring the community something it had not seen before.
Abramo describes “Amerikan Dream” as more invitation than answers, asking viewers to consider the dream’s past, its cost, and its possible future, and then to decide for themselves what those questions mean.
“We’re just kind of opening the doors,” she said, “and creating a space for people to have questions and look into the American dream and what they interpret as their dream, the past, what it cost, or what it could be.”
The show will be primarily composed of paintings, but neither artist has confined himself to the expected boundaries of paint and canvas. Abramo plans to include three-dimensional work, photography, and mixed-media pieces, drawing on materials and methods acquired through earlier professional work. Morris will show approximately 18 works, including several pieces that are not paintings.
Both artists describe the exhibition as a chance to work beyond their familiar routines. Abramo said she intentionally places herself in an uncomfortable creative position, testing techniques she has wanted to explore and seeing what emerges. Her work, she said, has often been made “for the people,” through collaborative and community-oriented projects. This exhibition is more intimate — an expression of what happens in the studio when no lesson plan or public program determines the outcome.
“I’m not trying to give a lecture,” she said. “It’s more of an invitation.”
Morris said the trilogy is a meditation on the state of the country over the past six decades, using “Amerikan Dream” to widen the lens opened by last year’s exhibition. The work is intended to provoke discussion though not necessarily agreement. The response to “Amerikan Gothic” was mixed but overwhelmingly positive, and the artists have spent the intervening year revising, discarding, restarting, and refining the work that will now go on display.
“It’s been going on since last year,” Morris said. “Throwing ideas out, throwing paintings out, and starting over.”
For Morris, the opportunity matters partly because the Arts Center has made space for work that may not fit the safer contours of a conventional local gallery show.
“They’re taking a chance by doing something different than what they would normally showcase here,” he said.
The exhibition arrives as the Arts Center moves into a busy fall season. After-school art studio classes will begin in late August for students in grades one through 12, offering age-appropriate instruction in drawing, painting, mixed media, printmaking, art history, hand-building, and wheel-thrown ceramics. The Clay Lab, open to middle- and high-school students, gives younger artists a chance to work with the basic material of the region’s oldest craft tradition: earth, water, fire, and patience.
Adult workshops are also scheduled through the fall, including introductory pottery, printmaking, and a September drawing class taught by local artist Dale Cochran. In September, the center will hold its annual State of the Arts meeting, where it will honor its Volunteer of the Year and Business of the Year and announce its 2027 exhibition and events schedule. Tickets for the annual Art Auction, set for Nov. 7, are expected to go on sale this week.
Spainhour argues that the Arts Center’s role is broader than exhibitions and classes. The building also houses GMAC, Market Theatre, Sounds of Carolina, and Visit Anderson — an unusual concentration of arts, tourism, and civic activity in one downtown space. The center also partners with city and county governments on public art and is working to expand its reach beyond downtown Anderson.
One program of particular importance, Spainhour said, serves at-risk youth, with students from the alternative schools and will add the New Foundations Home for Children this year. Some students attend classes at the center while others receive instruction where they are. For young people who may not have had an art class since elementary school, Spainhour said, art can offer a way to find a voice before they have found the words.
The center’s work is supported by grants, donations, memberships, and business partnerships. Individual memberships begin at $45 a year, and the Arts Center is seeking businesses interested in becoming partners.
That financial arrangement is typical of local arts institutions: a continuous act of persuasion, fundraising, teaching, displaying, and reopening the door. But for several weeks this fall, the larger argument will belong to Abramo and Morris.
