Carl Blair
Carl Blair(November 28, 1932 – January 22, 2018) was anartistand, for more than forty years, a member of the art faculty atBob Jones University.[1]
Biography
[edit]A native ofAtchison, Kansas,[2]Blair earned a B. A. in art at theUniversity of Kansasand a M.F.A. from theKansas City Art Institute.In addition to his teaching at BJU, he also served on the art faculty at KCAI summer programs and as a member of the cooperating faculty at the Greenville County Museum of Art, where he taught evenings and summers for 25 years.[3]
Blair exhibited his work in more than a hundred museums, art galleries and universities and won more than ninety national, state, and regional awards.[4]His works have been purchased for more than 2500 private, corporate, and public collections.[5]His exhibitions include the Art in Embassies Program; Ringling Museum of Art; Morris Museum, Augusta, Ga.; and the Hunter Museum, Chattanooga, Tenn.
In 1995, the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, S.C., hosted a major retrospective of his work. In 2000, a 40-year retrospective show was held at theSouth Carolina State Museumin Columbia.
Blair referred to his style as "neither realistic nor abstract. I refer to my work as visual poetry".[6]Although best known for his oil,gouache,and acrylic paintings, late in his career, Blair began exhibiting sculpture,[7]especially whimsical animals crafted of plywood orspruce pineboards and accessorized with found objects such as marbles and screws. He recalled telling his BJU students to "never, never grow up and take yourself seriously".[8]
Blair did not discover he wascolor-blinduntil he was an art student at the University of Kansas; when asked to do a self-portrait, he painted himself green. He once called his color-blindness an asset because he was "not hindered by color combinations".[9][10]After a critic called a Blair exhibition dull, inane. and colorless, Blair said he was inspired to use more bright colors in his work.[11]
Blair served as a member of the South Carolina Arts Commission for twelve years and chairman of the commission for two.[10]In 1970, he and two other members of the Bob Jones University art faculty,Emery BoppandDarell Koons,founded Hampton III Gallery, one of the first commercial galleries in Upstate South Carolina. After he retired from teaching, Blair became president of the gallery, doing "everything from cleaning floors to selecting and hanging art."[11]
In 2005, Blair was awarded the Verner Award for Lifetime Achievement, the highest award given by the state of South Carolina in the arts.[12]
In 2013, the Greenville Metropolitan Arts Council (MAC) created the Carl R. Blair Award for commitment to Arts Education, an award given annually to a Greenville arts educator.[13]
In 2016, MAC honored Blair with the exhibition "Artists Touched by Carl R. Blair", which featured the work of 55Upstateartists who he had influenced and motivated.[14]In the exhibition catalog, a fellow artist described Blair as "challenging, encouraging, helpful, witty, and inspirational to all his students".[13]
References
[edit]- ^"Greenville artist and former Bob Jones University professor Carl Blair has died".greenvilleonline.Retrieved24 January2018.
- ^"I'm a country boy. My dad had 25 coon hounds, wolfhounds and cur dogs, chickens, cows and all kinds of horses and mules. They were my best friends growing up." Cindy Landrum, "Down on the Farm: Nationally Recognized Landscape Artist Tries His Hand at Sculpture",Greenville Journal,February 1, 2008, 54-55.
- ^Duggan, Martha (January 26, 2000). "Carl Blair stays true to his form and keeps painting".Greenville News.p. City People, 5.
- ^Examples of Blair's work from Hampton III Gallery website.Archived2018-01-24 at theWayback Machine;examples from Elderart website.ArchivedJune 10, 2007, at theWayback Machine
- ^"404 Error".greenville.k12.sc.us.Retrieved24 January2018.
{{cite web}}
:Cite uses generic title (help) - ^Greenville News,January 26, 2000, 6N.
- ^Cindy Landrum, "Down on the Farm: Nationally Recognized Landscape Artist Tries His Hand at Sculpture",Greenville Journal,February 1, 2008, 54-55.
- ^Greenville News,February 24, 2008, 1D; Donna Isbell Walker, "Artist, BJU professor Carl Blair dies",Greenville News,January 23, 2018, 1AA.
- ^Ida Kay Jordan, "My Face Was Green,"The Virginian-Pilot,November 23, 1964.
- ^abVoice of the Alumni[BJU] (Winter 1998), 16.
- ^abDuggan, 5.
- ^"Elizabeth O'Neill Verner/Governor's Awards - May 2005".carolinaarts.Retrieved24 January2018.
- ^abWalker, 1AA.
- ^Greenville News, April 3, 2016, D1, D5.Blair's work has also been featured atElder Art Gallery,Charlotte, NC; If ART Gallery, Columbia, SC; and theMary Praytor Gallery,Greenville, SC.
- 1932 births
- 2018 deaths
- People from Atchison, Kansas
- University of Kansas alumni
- Bob Jones University faculty
- 20th-century American painters
- American male painters
- 21st-century American painters
- 21st-century American male artists
- American modern painters
- Artists from South Carolina
- People from Greenville, South Carolina
- Kansas City Art Institute alumni
- 20th-century American male artists