DEANE ACKERMAN

A native of Illinois, Ackerman attended Northwestern University for one year, and then continued her college work as a sculpture major at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Married, with 3 children and 3 grandchildren, she has been a Sumter resident since 1965 and is a charter member of the Sumter Artist’s Guild, which was founded in 1972. She worked exclusively as a sculptor until 1980, producing many pieces now found in private collections across the country. Though she has worked in a variety of mediums, her focus for the past 30 years has been colored pencil drawing, for which she has won numerous awards.

In 1993 she became a member of the newly founded Colored Pencil Society of America. The original organization, started by a small number of artists, has now expanded to include approximately 1800 members, with chapters in 10 other countries. Each summer the CPSA has an international exhibit in a different city in the US, and this year marked her 11^th time being juried into the annual exhibit, and her 3^rd time as an award winner. In January 2005, the Sumter Gallery of Art presented a Deane Ackerman Retrospective.

 Ackerman’s artist statement: My interest in art began in early childhood. Moving from one medium to the next, I first discovered sculpture in high school. I found the three-dimensional form fascinating. After years of working as a sculptor, I had the desire to move toward color, and also back to the basics of all art – drawing. When I discovered colored pencil 30 years ago, it was just by chance, browsing through a bookstore. Seeing the colorful spine of a book titled, “Colored Pencil”, I knew before I had pulled it from the shelf that I had found “IT”! That was the starting point of a very exciting and challenging journey that I have been on ever since.

A lot of thought goes into my decisions on subject matter and composition because I know it will be an investment of months. I’m always looking for “the light”, because between light and dark is the drama of the piece. Objects that are transparent or reflective are particularly fascinating to me, especially viewed through glass and water. Being able to examine and capture that special moment, in time and light, with all of its intricate depth and detail, is what I find so satisfying and colored pencil drawing offers me just that.

Reflecting on what has held my interest and driven me to express myself as an artist over almost all the years of my life, I really cannot say. All I know is that my passion for it has never diminished. I have always had some art project in progress or in my head, observing my surroundings. Maybe it’s somewhere in my DNA, but wherever it springs from, I am most grateful.

TERRELL CLARK

Clark is a native of Meridian, Mississippi, who currently lives in Atlanta. Clark is a photographer with an exceptional eye who possesses that rare ability to capture those precious moments in life that would otherwise be missed and forever lost in the vortex of forgotten memories. Clark’s beginning in photography was in ninth grade, he built a pinhole camera from a Maxwell House coffee can. To this day he still has his first picture, which was taken with the pinhole camera.

In addition to crisscrossing the US, his camera has taken him to different parts of the world, including various countries in Africa and Europe, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, St. Thomas-US Virgin Islands, Tortola- British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Grand Bahama Island and recently Cuba.

His work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and publications, and on-line publications including The Meridian Star, Huffington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Gulf Scapes Magazine, Season Magazine and Loft Life Magazine. Past exhibitions include Mason Fine Art, Arnika Dawkins Gallery, Photography Center of Atlanta, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, Georgia State University, Atlanta, The Hub, Atlanta, Johnson C. Smith University, North Carolina, and Clay’s Gallery in Atlanta. Corporate clients include Renaissance Waverly Hotel, General Electric (GE), Jennings Holdings, Java Vino, Sip The Experience Coffee Shop, Blue Linx, Marquette University, Life University and Khoshnood Law Firm.

2009 saw the release of Clark’s first monograph, EYES OF UGANDA, A Sociological Perspective. December 2015, 3 large-scale pinhole works of Terrell Clark were part of a group exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta), his first museum showing. In 2016, Clark’s catalogue, “EYES of Havana, Chromatic Life” was published in a limited edition.

Clark Artist Statement: I am excited to include several low fidelity images [the color square images] that I basically took with a “toy” – a plastic, $30 Holga in which the only controls I had were the film ASA and composition. No fancy bells or whistles, filters, lenses, etc. to complicate things – just pure photography. This camera captured the true color essence of Havana and the daily musings of the Cuban people