SeasonArt Series

Rattlesnake is a biannual art magazine and nonprofit based in Greenville and focused on underground contemporary art in the South. Every issue of the magazine features new art and writing along with interviews of local visual artists and musicians. You can find the magazine at retailers like the Greenville Center for Creative Arts and Swamp Rabbit Cafe or purchase online at rattlesnake.press or on Instagram @rattlesnake.press.

Savannah (Savvy) Ralph is a native to Greenville, SC and known for her illustrative and expressive figurative works. Ralph is an art educator with Greenville County Schools as well as a studio artist and Brandon Fellow at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts. Ralph’s work depicts her experience with mental illness and queer identity. She uses expressive brushstrokes, symbolism, and precise color palettes to create underlying messages throughout her art. Ralph works in her own style—a mix of realism, surrealism, and illustration—and pushes the limits of traditional art by including unexpected materials and surfaces. The media in which she prefers to work are acrylic and oil paint, charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and digital art.

Jordan is a multidisciplinary artist living in Greenville, SC since 2018. Jordan began his creative journey at a young age, and his work has continued to evolve throughout his life. His practice has always remained rooted in the intricate beauty of the natural world and the joy he finds in sharing it with others.

He honed his skills at the Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore, MD, one of the oldest ateliers in the U.S. Focusing on the techniques of the Old Masters, he studied charcoal drawing, sculpture, watercolor, oil painting, and artistic anatomy. The in-depth instruction provided Jordan the freedom to pursue a variety of different projects after school, including many outside the realms of classical art.

Jordan participates annually in several exhibitions including Flat Out Under Pressure, a 24 hour competition held by Metro Arts Council. He is a frequent participant with his local Urban Sketchers League and loves to collaborate with other local creatives. He estimates that he has created over 1000 watercolors in the past decade as well as countless sculptures and other commissioned works of art. [email protected] @jordanheidlerartist

Elizabeth is a muralist who captures strange, beautiful, and comforting moments through the use of intense colors and finds inspiration from the community around her. She has been working in mixed media since 1994, with a focus on portraits, murals, and paintings. She currently has work on display at Hotel Domestique, Restaurant 17, and Due South Coffee. You might see some of her murals around Greenville and Travelers Rest if you ever bike the trail, wander the neighborhoods, or listen to Music in the Park.

Equally drawn to color, science, math, and emotion, Mark discovered art by way of chemistry and architecture. After graduating from high school in Lyndon, VT, where he was born in 1976, he entered Dartmouth College with the intention of pursuing studies in chemistry. His interest soon shifted to architecture, a curriculum that required a drawing class. That drawing class changed not only his college major but also his life, introducing him to the world of creative exploration that fuels his passion and intellectual curiosity today. Mark graduated with honors from Dartmouth in 1998 and then earned an MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. He followed that with a year of painting and printmaking in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. He has had fourteen solo exhibitions, the most recent being Far-fetched at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, KS in February 2020. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including New American Paintings, and reviewed by ArtForum, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Two Coats of Paint, the Artblog, Town magazine, and others. He was one of the founding members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville and is a 2019 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. He has been the art teacher at Lakeview Middle School for two years and will be transitioning to Greenville Senior High Academy in the fall of 2024.

Kephira Davis is a painter and photographer based in Greenville, South Carolina. She works in acrylic, oil, and mixed media to create large-scale paintings. Most of Kephira's inspiration is drawn from the sky as well as impressionist ideas and techniques. The themes of her work reflect the complex emotions that come with growing up and exploring one’s place within their family lineage. The process of painting allows Kephira to revisit and dwell in her memories for a while. Kephira received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a 2D emphasis from Lander University, where she also developed a deep interest in art history and curatorial museum and gallery practices. Kephira is a current Brandon Fellow at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts.

Statement: My work embodies the transitory nature of the sky and memory. I photograph transitional periods of the sky, as the colors are more vivid and striking. Digitally, I blend my images together creating more passages that emphasize the transition from reality to memory. These contemplative spaces are often where I exist and become the realm in which my figures exist. From my little hand on my mother’s chest to making medicine in acorns, I explore past moments in time that I’ve shared with my family members, which are still vivid in my mind. The action of painting my images allows me to return to those moments I cherish, and dwell in them for a while.

David Gerhard is an artist, designer, and educator. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Gerhard has called Greenville his home since 2011. He has had art studios in the Village of West Greenville at Artbomb Studios, at Taylor's Mill, and currently at Good Art Co. in downtown Greenville. Gerhard is the Visual Arts Department Chair of the Governor's School for Arts and Humanities, and a Lecturer at Clemson University in the Art Department. He has previously taught at Anderson University and Furman University, as well as the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Printshop. His art has exhibited internationally across Europe and Asia, with prints in permanant collections of universities and museums from Estonia to California. He has received grants from the Metropolitan Arts Council and Greenville's Arts in Public Places commition for his public artwork on Pendleton Street. His drawings and prints have recently exhibited at MAC, the Lipscomb Gallery, Artbomb, and Good Art Co. His artwork will be downtown on trash cans in 2024 as he was awarded in Flat Out Under Pressure.

Terri Bright (Greenville, SC) is a fine art photographer whose work focuses on non-traditional beauty. She photographs details, shadows, and misplaced objects that describe her relationship to things within and around her. The tension between the disorder of her surroundings and her internal desire for pictorial order and beauty is crucial to her working process. With a background in painting, Bright uses her camera to create images of quiet, contemplative spaces. Her photographs are like small meditations, granting permission to pause, and creating space for contemplation. Born in Pennsylvania, Bright lived and worked in New York and Japan prior to receiving her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and moving to Greenville. Her work has been included in numerous national exhibitions, and in 2006, she received a full-year sabbatical grant from the Mellon Foundation. Her monograph (Sonnets, 2016) documents forgotten items and ordinary spaces that possess a kind of wilted beauty that alternately suggest playfulness, tranquility, melancholy, and desire. Bright currently teaches photography at Furman University where she holds the title of Professor of Art.

Elisa M. Golden, a New Jersey native, has made South Carolina her home for the last thirty years. Having studied art in the Northeast, she subsequently moved to Greenville to continue her education at Furman University, earning a Master’s in education. Resident dramaturg at the Warehouse Theatre for over a decade, she currently teaches courses as part of Furman’s Learning in Retirement program. As a studio artist, Elisa's art has been exhibited in a number of local galleries and juried shows---most notably, Artisphere. Primarily a watercolor artist, she works with digital illustration and pencil drawing. Although her style is generally considered to be realistic, she often incorporates a whimsical quality in her work.

Pamela G. Taylor spends her time in Greer, South Carolina and Bluff City, Tennessee or traveling as much as she can with family and friends. She is Professor Emeritus in the School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University where her research on hypertextual assessment strategies in the arts gained her many publications, grant dollars and accolades. She earned her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. She began painting in earnest when she retired and devoted her time to caring for her late husband during his time in hospice. “Looking up” became a mantra for her during this difficult time as she studied and painted well over 100 cloud paintings. Loss continues to follow her just like all of us, and her painting has remained her and others’ solace and impetus for the crucial act of sharing through art and conversation. She likes to think of her sky inspired palette as a metaphor for taking the time to breathe deeply while honoring both life and death. Her goal is to provide a safe, encouraging, and respectful environment that listens and supports. She is active on a number of Facebook and other online sites that center upon grief, memorializing, and comfort. She has recently created a Facebook page entitled “Painting through Loss” and would so appreciate your joining, commenting, adding your own art and stories. http://www.pgtaylorcloudpaintings.com/

AIMEE WISE [ah-mee] (she/her) was born and raised in Spartanburg, SC. She received her BFA in visual art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2008. Her work has been shown in Greenville and Spartanburg, SC; Asheville, NC; Boulder, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; and New York. She has spent time as a freelance art-handler, a butterfly ambassador, a preparator of bird specimens, and a volunteer for local wildlife rescue. She currently daylights as Collection Manager for the Johnson Collection in Spartanburg, and moonlights as an artist and maker in her own right. I am a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of art and science: specifically scientific research, emotional experience, and symbolism. I focus on natural elements, shapes, and behaviors to underline a relationship with the environment, how it fits within our realm of existence, and the ways in which we might understand and appreciate conserving it. Even abstract forms mimic certain natural shapes in ways that we might find relatable, or possibly even wonderous.
[email protected]
@aimee.wise