The Jasper Alley at Tapp's Featuring Janet Kozachek, F. Michael LaRosa, and Bonita Strickland
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Jasper is Back On Main Street for First Thursday Fun! Join us from 6 - 8:30 pm in our old stomping ground at Tapp's! This month we're proud to present Three Shades of Blue, a group show featuring Janet Kozachek, F. Michael LaRosa, and Bonita Strickland. We've also got live music in the works, so stay tuned for that announcement! Come shop, have a drink, and hang out with us in the alley! The artists and Jasper Board members will be on site to chat about their work.
Meet the Artists:
– F. Michael LaRosa is a Midlands native, sculptor, artistic explorer, poet, musician, skinny old man, and perpetual seeker who is still in love with the far flung cultural diversity and personal freedom that truly made America great. He aspires to the motto “Create freely, without judgment or inhibition.”
– Janet Kozachek is an internationally trained and exhibited artist with a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Certificate of graduate study from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Columbia Museum of Art, The Morris Museum, The South Carolina State Museum, and in numerous private collections. Ms. Kozachek is the recipient of numerous art awards, including National Endowment for the Arts State subgrant awards, a Puffin Foundation Award, and a Humanities Council Award. She is the author of The Book of Marvelous Cats, My Women My Monsters, A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time, A Book of Bothersome Cats, and has published in The Colorado Review, Ekphrasis, Porlock, Local Life, The Heron Anthology, Pain News Network, and The Harpy Hybrid Review.
“Creating art for me means remembering how to concentrate within the unavoidable milieu of multiple distractions. My work brings focus to an idea over time. I enjoy the benefits of technology, yet I find solace and meaning in balancing the rapid rush of information with the deliberate slowness that my low tech pencils, papers, inks, and paints yield. Art is often that one grounding thing in a world of perpetual change.
Change has come frequently and dramatically to me. My life and art education took place on three different continents and in multiple languages. Complex and life altering illness took me bodily and intellectually into unexpected terrains. My mixed media works encapsulate this mutability and what I write, paint and assemble serves as a counterbalance to what I perceive as misunderstandings about life, death and health in our culture. Accidents and illness are things that happen more often than not without provocation, yet American culture emphasizes personal accountability in these matters to an almost obsessive extent. Health challenges especially are often framed in the context of a “battle” or as some sort of competitive sport– something won or lost. Indeed, I recently saw a drug company advertisement for a breast cancer drug featuring a woman donning boxing gloves!
My art explores the concept of chance occurrences, the vagaries of fortune, and the illusion of control within a multicultural mileux. This concept of inevitability is clear in my smallest drawing, rendered in inks and charcoals, It Cannot Be Stopped.”
– Bonita Strickland is the owner of The Classic Clef Studio of Guitar and Art Gallery in Lexington, South Carolina. She is a classical guitarist and a visual artist. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree with an emphasis in performance from the University of South Carolina, where she studied guitar with Christopher Berg, director of USC's guitar program.
In 1994, Bonita opened the first studio in the Midlands area of South Carolina dedicated exclusively to the guitar as a fine arts instrument. In 1998, she began expressing her love of music through the medium of painting.
Bonita teaches guitar students of all ages, with a passion for helping them achieve their own individual musical goals. In addition to teaching, she performs concerts and formal events using a wide repertoire, including her own original compositions. When she opened her studio, she had no idea she would soon be pursuing painting as well.
Her artwork has been exhibited in many galleries and art competitions, including ARTFIELDS 2015 in Lake City, South Carolina. She has been honored to receive several awards, including the 2004 MOJA Juried Art Exhibition in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2005 Anderson Annual Art Competition; the 2014 South Carolina State Fair (two awards on the same piece); and the 2003 Folly Beach Annual Competition (juried by Alex Powers). In 2004, SoundBoard (The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America) featured one of her paintings, "Guitars in the Palmettos," on its cover. She was also excited to be featured in Reverberations, SoundBoard's news and personalities column.
Bonita loves bringing together her two passions: guitar and the paintbrush. The guitar music makes her a better painter, and she cannot paint without the inspiration of the music. She thanks God for both gifts and for being able to share them with others, and invites everyone to join her in a journey of Love, Hope, and Peace.
Meet the Artists:
– F. Michael LaRosa is a Midlands native, sculptor, artistic explorer, poet, musician, skinny old man, and perpetual seeker who is still in love with the far flung cultural diversity and personal freedom that truly made America great. He aspires to the motto “Create freely, without judgment or inhibition.”
– Janet Kozachek is an internationally trained and exhibited artist with a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Certificate of graduate study from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Columbia Museum of Art, The Morris Museum, The South Carolina State Museum, and in numerous private collections. Ms. Kozachek is the recipient of numerous art awards, including National Endowment for the Arts State subgrant awards, a Puffin Foundation Award, and a Humanities Council Award. She is the author of The Book of Marvelous Cats, My Women My Monsters, A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time, A Book of Bothersome Cats, and has published in The Colorado Review, Ekphrasis, Porlock, Local Life, The Heron Anthology, Pain News Network, and The Harpy Hybrid Review.
“Creating art for me means remembering how to concentrate within the unavoidable milieu of multiple distractions. My work brings focus to an idea over time. I enjoy the benefits of technology, yet I find solace and meaning in balancing the rapid rush of information with the deliberate slowness that my low tech pencils, papers, inks, and paints yield. Art is often that one grounding thing in a world of perpetual change.
Change has come frequently and dramatically to me. My life and art education took place on three different continents and in multiple languages. Complex and life altering illness took me bodily and intellectually into unexpected terrains. My mixed media works encapsulate this mutability and what I write, paint and assemble serves as a counterbalance to what I perceive as misunderstandings about life, death and health in our culture. Accidents and illness are things that happen more often than not without provocation, yet American culture emphasizes personal accountability in these matters to an almost obsessive extent. Health challenges especially are often framed in the context of a “battle” or as some sort of competitive sport– something won or lost. Indeed, I recently saw a drug company advertisement for a breast cancer drug featuring a woman donning boxing gloves!
My art explores the concept of chance occurrences, the vagaries of fortune, and the illusion of control within a multicultural mileux. This concept of inevitability is clear in my smallest drawing, rendered in inks and charcoals, It Cannot Be Stopped.”
– Bonita Strickland is the owner of The Classic Clef Studio of Guitar and Art Gallery in Lexington, South Carolina. She is a classical guitarist and a visual artist. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree with an emphasis in performance from the University of South Carolina, where she studied guitar with Christopher Berg, director of USC's guitar program.
In 1994, Bonita opened the first studio in the Midlands area of South Carolina dedicated exclusively to the guitar as a fine arts instrument. In 1998, she began expressing her love of music through the medium of painting.
Bonita teaches guitar students of all ages, with a passion for helping them achieve their own individual musical goals. In addition to teaching, she performs concerts and formal events using a wide repertoire, including her own original compositions. When she opened her studio, she had no idea she would soon be pursuing painting as well.
Her artwork has been exhibited in many galleries and art competitions, including ARTFIELDS 2015 in Lake City, South Carolina. She has been honored to receive several awards, including the 2004 MOJA Juried Art Exhibition in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2005 Anderson Annual Art Competition; the 2014 South Carolina State Fair (two awards on the same piece); and the 2003 Folly Beach Annual Competition (juried by Alex Powers). In 2004, SoundBoard (The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America) featured one of her paintings, "Guitars in the Palmettos," on its cover. She was also excited to be featured in Reverberations, SoundBoard's news and personalities column.
Bonita loves bringing together her two passions: guitar and the paintbrush. The guitar music makes her a better painter, and she cannot paint without the inspiration of the music. She thanks God for both gifts and for being able to share them with others, and invites everyone to join her in a journey of Love, Hope, and Peace.
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Where is it happening?
1644 Main St, Columbia, SC 29201-2859, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherThe Jasper Project
