COTTON ALLEY
Cotton Alley serves as a passage from the White Street parking lot behind Wells Fargo and the Center for the Arts to East Main Street.
Between 113 and 121 E. Main St. | Rock Hill, SC 29730
York County artists involved in the ArtPop Street Gallery program were among the first to be invited to participate in the inaugural Cotton Alley Gallery exhibition. Artworks by five artists were selected for display:
Dylan Bannister
Twins at Southland Supermarket
STATEMENT | Bannister's work utilizes technologies of the past, and he finds the scavenger hunt of finding these now-antiquated devices just as rewarding as using them for creative purposes. His interdisciplinary approach unites contemporary practices in photography and video with traditional media such as printmaking and collage. Conceptually, Bannister draws connections between the error-ridden images synthesized by analog video equipment and the formation, storage, and recollection of memories.
BIO | Dylan Bannister is a visual artist and printmaker based out of Rock Hill, SC, where he maintains a studio practice and engages with the town’s growing arts community. In 2016, he earned his B.F.A. from Winthrop University, where he then taught as an Adjunct Instructor of Fine Arts, educating on artwork documentation and portfolio organization. Bannister has also worked as an assistant to other professional artists; having designed web-based galleries, aided in classroom settings, and managed studio spaces.
Chris Smith Evans
Banana Repair
STATEMENT | Feelings about the world around me press into my thoughts in the studio. Accepting these emotions without bias or judgement helps me keep my vision simple as I interpret them with guidance from my "inner adult."
In my Lowcountry studio near Charleston, verdant dramas unfold in the wetland bogs. Favorite fauna and animals, warm, loamy soil, and active, outdoorsy type friends populate my environment. On the other hand, my studio south of Charlotte in Rock Hill has an intellectual, artsy feel and pulses with a vibrant creative community and bustling economic growth. Blending the strong feelings evoked by these two disparate locations requires an expression that encompasses both, yet remains faithful to each experience. What works best is to create many smaller painted components which can be assembled together to form one work; The urban energy and architecture of the Piedmont finds expression happily next to a quiet Lowcountry botanical. Neither fractured nor fused, these modular paintings form an aesthetic cooperative amongst themselves, to create works of many sizes. There is no limit to how few or how many panels are required to create "a work."
BIO | The granddaughter of a feisty San Francisco reporter, Chris Smith Evans has lived a life immersed in fine art. Prior to setting up her studio in Cottageville, S.C. in 2009, Chris lived for three decades in New York City and Chicago. During her years in Manhattan Evans became a frequent participant in Soho Gallery exhibitions, with her work appearing alongside such artists as Andreas Serrano, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub and May Stevens. Her artwork has also garnered attention from art critics Lucy Lippard, Suzanne Volmer and Grace Glueck.
After moving her studio to Chicago in 1991, Evans became increasingly involved in social justice and fair trade activities. During her long associations with Chicago area Mennonites and 10,000 Villages she lived a quiet and secluded life, painting scenes of her tenement suburb and the farms of Indiana. Chris earned an M.A. from Saint Xavier University in 2009 and an M.F.A. from Winthrop University in 2019. In addition to her fine art, Evans' has originated a communication language for adults and children who lack access to traditional forms of verbal communication. Calling the language The Help Code, Evans has most recently presented the Code at the South Carolina Office of the Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Task Force in Columbia, SC. Chris Evans is also a current art lecturer at public colleges in South Carolina.
Amanda Foshag
Faded Souvenirs
STATEMENT | There are aspects of the human experience that we all connect to. My works seek to bring those basic simplicities to the surface. Colors that are universal triggers for emotive experiences, layering and juxtaposition of material that speaks to the veils that conceal our memories or, triggers that push them to the surface, and the metamorphosis of our physical and feeling selves. These sparks are at the heart of what we all share - the human condition.
The work I make traces the path of experiences, choices, and stories. These moments and memories, that I give form, in part draw from my own journeys and observation with the places and the people that surround them, personal histories, memory, and the emotive qualities of these moments.
I look for my work to present the viewer with two dimensional and sculptural forms that exemplify the power that the choice of materials can bring to a work, and how the handling and processing of a material can imbue feeling and emotion from a given recollection to a piece.
My materials are diverse, fiber or wood, soft or hard.
Narratives, stories, journeys, and memories are what drive my creative process.
Words such as fragility, gravity, intuitive, fluid, and transitory, can describe how I create and what I leave for the viewer to experience.
Cycles, shifts, change, emotions, and feelings are glimpses into the conceptual ideas present in my work.
Navigating these fragments in my drawings, paintings, and sculptural forms lets the viewer trace through the feeling and emotive response present in my visual storytelling.
BIO | Amanda Foshag has a background in various media. Her current focus is drawing, weaving, fibers, and mixed media sculpture. Foshag completed her Bachelor of Arts with a focus in art at Roanoke College in Salem, VA in 2002. During the next decade, while working as a fine artist, she was active in the Lake Norman Area’s arts community. She held curatorial positions for local arts organizations including Mooresville Arts. In 2017, Amanda completed her Master of Fine Arts in general studios at Winthrop University with a concentration in sculpture and drawing. She also served as a teaching assistant for 3D design during her time in the program. Her work was selected to ArtFields in Lake City, SC in 2014 and 2015. Amanda combines her skills in sewing, crocheting, and natural reed weaving that she learned from her grandmother as a child with more contemporary, sculptural methods, incorporating them with materials such as plastics, glass, ceramic, and steel and with fiber weaving.
Joanna Henry
Our Secret Garden 2
STATEMENT | My work is about capturing a moment in time and the story behind it, in an effort to knit contemporary, personal and painterly concerns, into a cohesive conversation about representation and story-telling. These paintings are an analysis of my culture and the positioning of a woman of color as the author. So, as I've continued to grow on this path I have been blessed to come to the realization that when I paint, it isn't just for my own gratification. I’m giving people the chance to see my work and take from it whatever they need. Whether it be a personal connection, healing, new conversations, or just wanting to experience a new perspective.
BIO | Originally from Florida, Joanna moved to South Carolina in 2007, where she began an education in art. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Winthrop University in 2015 and went on to intern with the Charlotte Art League and the C&H Museums of York County as well as curating exhibits with SouthEnd ARTS. Joanna is an ArtPop Street Gallery alum and has had her work shown on major billboards throughout Charlotte. Additionally, her work has been featured at multiple exhibitions, and art markets. Currently Joanna continues her practice as a studio artist in SC.
Kristen van Diggelen Sloan
Bullseye Mandala (In Golden Ratio)
STEATMENT | I pursue nature’s deep design through current scientific revelations while also tracing the commonalties in mystical and contemplative practices found in all the world’s great religions. Mystical narratives nearly always transcend any type of institutionalism and speak of a spiritual universalism that I aim to address in a contemporary visual way.
I explore my ideas in painting through still life, landscape and figuration – adopting some elements from abstraction. I also make ceramic figurative sculptures and conceptual crafts.
My more recent ceramic work is inspired specifically by the Southern craft tradition of the face jug, and the early desert mothers (women often portrayed as both harlot and heroine, Babylon and Jerusalem). My current series of metallic mandala paintings are about struggle and transformation. Influenced by Eastern mandala configurations and functions, the paintings also hint at the mathematical order in nature (the radiuses of the concentric circles are divided by phi [golden ratio] to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd powers etc. until they disappear into the center), muqarnas in Islamic art and Christian halo forms. The pandemic, social unrest of our times, mental health concerns as well as autobiographical narratives are also present in the content.
BIO | Kristen van Diggelen Sloan received her BA in Visual Art from UCLA in 2006, and her MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009 where she received the prestigious Graduate Fellowship in Painting. She has exhibited her work nationally at Next, Art Chicago, the New Wright Gallery in Los Angeles, in San Francisco at The Headlands Center for the Arts, The Diego Rivera Gallery and locally at The McColl Center for the Arts in Charlotte, NC. She has received numerous awards and nominations, and her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, 7×7 Magazine and CHome Magazine among others. She relocated from San Francisco to the Carolinas in 2014, and currently lives and works in rural York County, SC.
Special Thanks for the support from
ArtPop Street Gallery.
