The community is invited to view the works of artists Enid Williams and Paul Yanko, now on display in The Lander Art Gallery until Nov. 11. The exhibit, "Predictably Familiar / Unrecognizably Strange," is an exhibit of recent works on canvas, panel and paper completed between 2017 and 2020. The two-part title references the dual aspects of formalism that both artists engage with. These works employ a vocabulary of color and shape that is at once familiar, reinforcing associations while simultaneously prompting the unexpected through unlikely combinations and layering.
About the Artists:
Paul Yanko is a native of Youngstown, Ohio, who has taught in the Visual Arts Department at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville since 2004. He received his MFA in painting from Kent State University and his BFA in illustration from the Cleveland Institute of Art. While in Ohio, Yanko exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and the McDonough Museum of Art. He was the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in 2002, and received the Surdna Foundation's Arts Teachers Fellowship in 2011, which was applied toward travel to Australia to research indigenous art. Yanko's work is included in private and public collections, including those of the Cleveland Clinic, the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Contemporary Carolina Collection at MUSC in Charleston.
Enid Williams was born in Midland, Texas, and grew up in Stephenville, Texas. She received her MFA in painting from Kent State University. Her work has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Penn., the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Greenville County Museum of Art and numerous other galleries across the upstate region of South Carolina. Her art is also included in the Contemporary Carolina Collection at Ashley River Towers at MUSC in Charleston, the Red Oak Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. Williams has taught art classes at Kent State, Youngstown State, and the University of Akron. She currently teaches art at Greenville Technical College's Greer campus. She is the 2012 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, one of only two artists in South Carolina to receive this prestigious award.
The Lander Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. For more information on this exhibit, call 864-388-8477, or email jholloway@lander.edu.
(Biographical information courtesy of Carolina Arts.)