Videos
Big Stories: New York Academy of Art Panel
Originating at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, GA, the exhibition Big Stories
travelled to the New York Academy of Art (on view January 26th to March 4th, 2024).
As part of their programming, NYAA had a panel discussion moderated by Carl Dobsky
and Noah Buchanan, and it featured Zoey Frank, Bo Bartlett, Amy Sherald, and Vincent
Desiderio.
The exhibition Big Stories, curated by Bo Bartlett, Noah Buchanan, and Carl Dobsky,
is a survey of large scale Contemporary Figurative painting informed by the narrative
tradition. Whether the narratives occur in the imagery on the surface, or are deeply
embedded in the paint, the paintings of Big Stories open up the viewers thoughts and
feelings about our shared stories and call us to find meaning in this existence.
Please view the artist panel, Big Stories Panel Discussion Video
COMPETERE: A Talk With Artist Couples
This talk, moderated by our Interim Director, Michael McFalls, features a panel of
six of the artists in our exhibition, COMPETERE: An Exhibition of Artist Couples,
on display from April 8th, 2022 – June 17th, 2022. The panel includes artist couples
Inka Essenhigh & Steve Mumford, Betsy Eby & Bo Bartlett, and Kate Javens & Wade Schuman,
as they go over their work, the show, and what it’s like to be an artist couple.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, COMPETERE: An Exhibition of Artist Couples Video
Raheleh Filsoofi Artist Talk
This virtual artist talk with Tennessee Fellow Raheleh Filsoofi is based around her
artwork in the South Arts 2021 exhibition in the Bo Bartlett Center.
Artist Biography: Nashville resident Raheleh Filsoofi (b. 1975) was born and raised in Iran and has
lived in the US South for more than 17 years. Among her solo exhibitions are those
at Spinello Projects Gallery in Miami, FL; Georgia Southern University in Statesboro;
Texas University of Houston Downtown; and Abad Gallery in Tehran, Iran. Two-person
exhibitions include those at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA, and Rosemary Duffy
Larson Gallery in Davie and the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County in Lake Worth,
both in Florida. In the United States, Filsoofi’s work has been included in group
shows in some 10 states, including at Strohl Art Center in Chautauqua, NY; C24 Gallery
in New York City; Brickell City Centre in Miami, Arts Warehouse and Cornell Art Museum
in Delray Beach, Bailey Contemporary Arts Center in Pompano Beach and Art and Cultural
Center/ Hollywood, all in Florida; Veronique Wantz Gallery in Minneapolis, MN; and
the Imago Foundation for the Arts in Warren, RI. In Iran, Filsoofi has shown at the
Contemporary Art Museum of Isfahan and, in Tehran, the Iranian Artists Forum, Saba
Art and Cultural Institute and Niavaran Cultural Center. Filsoofi holds a BFA from
Al-Zahra University in Tehran and an MFA from Florida Atlantic University in Boca
Raton. She teaches ceramics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Artist Statement: Through years of multi-disciplinary practice, I’ve kept pace with rapidly changing
socio-political debates around the world and their relatively expansive influences
on human conditions. Immigration, borders and cultural communications are today’s
most fundamental discourses, which are immensely interwoven with notions of identity,
belonging and inhabitation. Art can be an intermediary language shared between individuals,
nations and cultures, addressing these issues by touching the innermost layers of
personality within people.
I’ve used different aesthetic strategies by experimenting with a wide range of materials
relevant to my subject matter, such as ceramics, poetry and ambient sound and video.
I use those media to negotiate and access concepts of heritage, place of origin, orientation
toward or away from origin and cultural adaptability. My multimedia installations
are rooted deeply in my cultural, Iranian background and the new identity I acquired
as an immigrant. The installations aim to challenge the viewer’s existing point of
view and personal perspectives about others and themselves. These interactive pieces
invite the onlooker to delve into my recollections of sense, sound, place and memories
of my journeys across national and international borders.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Raheleh Filsoofi Artist Talk
Looking Male Artist Talk
Watch this virtual recording as the curators of our Looking Male exhibition, Michael
McFalls and Rylan Steele, speak with photographers Brittainy Lauback and Carl Martin,
as well as poet Nick Norwood, about their work in the exhibition.
Check out our Looking Male Artist Talk
South Arts 2021 Georgia Fellow Myra Greene
Atlanta artist Myra Greene (b. 1975) is a New York City native. Her work is in the
collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Fine Arts
in Houston, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Studio Museum in Harlem,
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, and the Princeton University Art
Museum. She has had 17 solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Among them
were those at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; Williams College Museum
of Art in Williamstown, MA; Atlanta’s Museum of Contemporary Art; and Corvi-Mora gallery
in London. Greene’s work has been in more than 50 group shows nationally and internationally.
She holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an MFA from the University
of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Greene is the chair of the Department of Art & Visual
Culture at Spelman College in Atlanta.
Artist Statement: “My work explores abstractions of race and the body. Engaging with textiles, the
focus of my artistic practice is the manipulation of color and how our understanding
of color is completely dependent on its context – materially, culturally and historically.
By mimicking and evoking the color brown when printing and dyeing fabric, the resulting
colors are reminiscent of my skin tone, creating a conceptual visualization of identity
politics.
In Piecework, fabrics are systematically dyed their complementary color in order to
create a smooth transition to brown. Inspired by traditional Dutch Wax patterns found
on African textiles, I further silkscreen digitally stitched patterns onto the dyed
fabric using metallic inks. Laden with cultural and historical references (triangles,
for example, provide insight into my personal history as well as into movements in
the diasporic slave trade), these works emphasize the power of hue and form and their
ability to create an abstraction based in the illusion of space through color.
In Mixed, each piece is a composition of hand-dyed strips of fabric that fade from
rich tones to brown. The final construction is a gradation that calls attention to
the intricacies of each layer that creates the whole. The dyed textile is seductive
in nature. In its lack of uniformity, it undulates, uncovering captivating textures
on the surface of the work. The color brown is not a pure color, but a tone, a composite
and a beautiful blend of complex information.”
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Myra Greene
Virtual Panel Discussion: Juan Logan: Creating and Collecting
This is a panel discussion with the following individuals:
- Michael McFalls, Interim Director of the Bo Bartlett Center
- Chris Whittey, the Alan F. Rothschild Distinguished Chair of Art at Columbus State
University
- Shantay Robinson, Freelance Writer of Black Arts and Culture with Contributions to
Burnaway, Black Art in America, and more
- Juan Logan, artist showcased in Creating and Collecting at the Bartlett Center
Working out of his studio in Belmont, North Carolina, artist Juan Logan continues
to expand his art’s unyielding call for social responsibility. A retired University
of North Carolina Professor, Logan’s installations, sculptures, prints, and paintings
are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, the Mint Museum of Art, and many more. Through his many exhibitions
and a very successful career, Juan has amassed a collection of works from his friends
and sources of inspiration in the art world. Not only will this exhibition share his
many holdings by the most important artists from the 1970s to the present, it will
also present Juan’s own work in dialogue with his collection. The galleries will
examine the role that Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Robert Motherwell, Thornton Dial,
and more have played in Juan’s practice as an artist and how collecting has informed
his creative process.
Check out our virtual panel discussion, Juan Logan: Creating and Collecting Video
Virtual Panel Discussion: Music as Image and Metaphor at the Bo Bartlett Center
This is going to be a panel discussion with the following individuals:
- Curators of the exhibition: David W. Houston currently the Director of the Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi and
Florence Neal is Co-Founder and Director of Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, New
York.
- Composers: pianist Michael Kowalski and percussionist Allen Otte.
- Artist and Professor of Art, Hannah Israel
The discussion will center on the exhibition at the Bartlett Center, Music as Image
and Metaphor. The exhibit brings together forty-one works by twenty-eight artists
from the Kentler Flatfiles focused on the theme of music. The theme of music-as-image
includes works that were directly inspired by or are illustrative of sound art, while
the image-as-metaphor theme encompasses a diverse group of works that, directly or
indirectly, reflect the structure and artistic goals of musical composition and improvisation.
We will also discuss the suite of one-minute musical responses to each graphic work,
specially created by Michael Kowalski and Allen Otte for the installation at the Center.
Check out our virtual panel discussion, Music as Image and Metaphor at the Bo Bartlett Center Video
Bo Bartlett Interview for "The Artist's Voice" with Jerry Hardesty
The Artist’s Voice podcast empowers artists to share their stories and promote their work. They may
share success and challenges with the intent of helping other artists and enlighten
the public. Artists from all creative genres are encouraged to guest on the show.
In this episode, Jerry Hardesty interviews Bo Bartlett. Bo is an American Realist painter who has taken his creativity
to film and recently released “Things Don’t Stay Fixed.” Bo lives and works in Columbus,
Georgia.
Check out Bo Bartlett's Interview
Alyssa Monks "Hiraeth" Gallery Tour & Talk
On January 7, 2021, The Bo Bartlett center hosted a virtual Art Talk and Gallery Tour.
Bo Bartlett, Betsy Eby, and Alyssa Monks treated viewers to a virtual walkthrough
and conversation about Alyssa’s exhibition at the Bartlett Center, Hiraeth.
Born in 1977 in New Jersey, Alyssa began oil painting as a child. She studied at The
New School in New York and Montclair State University and earned her B.A. from Boston
College in 1999. During this time, she studied painting at Lorenzo dé Medici in Florence.
She went on to earn her M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in 2001. She completed
an artist residency at Fullerton College in 2006 and has lectured and taught at universities
worldwide.
The tension in her paintings is sustained by the composition and also by the surface
quality itself. Each brushstroke is thickly applied, like a fossil recording every
gesture and decision, evoking the energy of the handmade object. The unpredictable,
activated surface recalls the human experience, creating empathy in the work. “I strive
to create a moment in a painting where the viewer can see or feel themselves, identify
with the subject, even be the subject, connect with it as though it is about them,
for them.”
Check out Alyssa Monks "Hiraeth" Gallery Tour & Talk
Sherrill Roland Art Talk
Virtual Art Talk from the Bo Bartlett Center featuring Chris Whittey, Alan F. Rothschild
Distinguished Chair of Art & Department Chair and South Arts 2020 Southern Prize and
State Fellow winner, Sherrill Roland
October 15, 5:30 pm
Sherrill Roland is a North Carolina native, born in Asheville and currently living
in Raleigh. Roland received a BFA in design and MFA in studio art from the University
of North Carolina, Greensboro. Roland creates art that challenges ideas around controversial
social and political constructs, and generates a safe space to process, question,
and share. He is the founder of the acclaimed “Jumpsuit Project”, intended to raise
awareness around issues related to mass incarceration. The work grew out of personal
history, from the ten months he spent in state prison on a wrongful conviction just
as he had started his last year of grad school in 2013. Based on new evidence, Roland
was exonerated of all charges in 2015. He was awarded the 2020 Southern Prize by South
Arts. His work is included in the South Arts Exhibition at the Bartlett Center on
view August 18, 2020 – January 8, 2021
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Sherrill Roland Art Talk at the Bo Bartlett Center
Introduction to The Bo Bartlett Center
The Bo Bartlett Center is a multi-functional art space that goes beyond the typical
art gallery. With programs that center on the community and exhibitions that showcase
a spectrum of possibilities and new ideas, the Center has a multitude of enriching
and inspiring practices. Through outreach with children and at-risk populations in
the surrounding area, the Center takes on the role of educator by showing communities
the ways in which they can express themselves. By having rotating exhibitions of both
regional and internationally known artists, the Center gives those who visit a new
way of seeing and understanding art. As a whole, the Bo Bartlett Center is an accessible,
creative, and enlightening space that serves as a cornerstone in the ever-growing
Columbus art community.
Check out our Introduction to The Bo Bartlett Center Video
Damascus Road
Here, Bo Bartlett focuses on his piece from 1988, Damascus Road, which showcases a contemporary vision of the biblical story. Depicting tragedy and
ideas of systems being broken down, Bartlett alludes to ways in which society at the
time, and even now, was struggling to simmer down from turmoil.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Damascus Road with Bo Bartlett
Civil War
This piece from 1994 depicts Bartlett’s coming to terms with displacement from the
South and used the Battle of Nashville as inspiration. Here, Bartlett focuses on themes
of race and injustice. Bartlett suggests that the viewer sees past the tragedy and
towards a better possible future through masterful painting techniques in light and
color.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Civil War with Bo Bartlett
Parents
Parents is a painting made in 1984 that depicts Bo Bartlett’s parents in a setting he made
from recollections of his own childhood home life. He represents his father standing
and staring sternly, a man made from war and religion, and his mother almost in a
standby position. It is a scene with contrasting sides.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Parents with Bo Bartlett
Object Permanence
Painted in 1986, Object Permanence focuses on roles played in the artist’s life by himself and his own family over time.
The title alludes to the idea of objects existing even when you do not sense them,
something in which babies have not developed yet. Using objects and placement, Bartlett
alludes to impermanence in childhood and a family set apart, among other symbolic
gestures.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Object Permanence with Bo Bartlett
Tarmac with Bo Bartlett
In this video, Bo Bartlett shows his work, Tarmac, finished in 1986. This work describes a tragic ending to a flight and the aftermath.
By using color and placement, Bartlett is able to connect parts of the image to create
a story of what happened to cause such a tragedy.
Check out our Tarmac with Bo Bartlett Video
Hiroshima
A popular work at the Center, Hiroshima, showcases Bartlett’s incredible ability to collect stories and ideas and combine
them to form an image that tells a different but similar story. In the 1994 piece,
the viewer sees a woman looking off into the distance, and through the title, one
can allude to the fact she sees the blast from the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima from
World War II. This painting is able to capture an imagined moment of what may have
been experienced right before the bomb dropped.
Check out our artist talk for our exhibition, Hiroshima with Bo Bartlett
Leviathan
A painting with a straightforward religious context, Leviathan shows the biblical story of Jonah in a contemporary light. Not only that, but Bartlett
finds it a way to represent where one can also find themselves in their own lives
and how that could connect to the world.
Check out Leviathan with Bo Bartlett
Good Old Days
Made in 2000, The Good Old Days is a family-oriented image that focuses on Bartlett’s ideas of a fishing family’s
life in Maine. Made during a time in which he claims as better days, hence the title,
Bartlett focuses on the simple pleasures of family life.
Check out Good Old Days with Bo Bartlett
P2 Talks High-Density Framed Art Storage
In this edition of P2 Talks, we discuss an art museum high-density art storage project
with David Houston, Executive Director of the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, GA.
The project included static and high-density mobile art rack.
Check out P2 Talks - The Bo Bartlett Center / Art Gallery in Columbus Ga
Bo Bartlett Center Installation, Opening and Insight
Bartlett speaks on his art and process while stills of the installation of his paintings
in the Scarborough Gallery are prepared, stretched, framed and hung before the grand
opening.
Check out Bo Bartlett Center Installation, Opening and Insight Video