The South Carolina State Museum (SCSM) opened a new exhibit on Sept. 19 featuring the work of South Carolina resident and USC graduate, James Fowler Cooper.
The exhibit features several of Cooper’s original prints, reprints and original etching plates. The original prints and etching plates were donated by Jim Cooper and Mary Cooper Kochansky.
“We can appreciate the history,” said Julie Hamer, museum assistant curator and second-year graduate student in the MFA program for ceramics and sculpture. “[Cooper] graduated from the University of South Carolina. He did his degrees in Latin and English and took a lot of art classes, too. He graduated in 1928.”
Cooper was one of the first students to graduate from USC with a certificate in art. He soon moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League but was forced to return home to Kingstree, South Carolina when his mother became ill in 1930.
“[He] had a lot of opportunities to sketch his surroundings, primarily the farm in Kingstree, South Carolina,” Hamer said. “He was really just showing around his normal everyday life. From his etchings, you really get a sense of the place he was at and a chance to glance at the history of the South through the artist's eyes.”
Hamer helped put the exhibit together.
“A lot of this work has never been seen before,” Hamer said. “This is the first time the plates and prints have been displayed together.”
Hamer’s dedication was acknowledged by her senior curator, Paul Matheny.
“None of this would have been possible without Julie Hamer’s help,” Matheny said. “She really steered this whole project.”
Cooper’s prints and etching plates, the latter of which is being exhibited for the first time, predominantly feature South Carolina landscapes and era-specific farm labor.
“I’ve always had a huge interest in James Fowler Cooper’s prints just because of the subject matter and how they relate to our state,” Matheny said. “There’s a strong sense of regionalism.”
The exhibit features many of Cooper’s etchings from the '30s to 1954. He was a self-taught etcher who received some instruction from Elizabeth White, a nationally recognized artist from Sumter.
“He probably picked the etching process because it’s the hardest thing to do in art,” his son, Jim Cooper, joked. “He was just that kind of man. His work is almost a picture of the era.”
Cooper’s art was first locally recognized after his family donated his prints to USC. Professor Boyd Saunders, printmaking professor at USC from 1965 through 2001, took notice of Cooper's etching plates.
“I realized this is sort of a treasure,” Saunders said. “The strength in his art is his authenticity and honesty.”
The Cooper exhibit can be found on the fourth floor of the SCSM through July 4, 2016. The exhibit features a live etching demonstration by Gene Speer, a past USC employee who currently teaches woodworking with the Commission for the Blind. His demonstration schedule is unconfirmed. For more information about upcoming demonstrations, call the SCSM at 803-898-4921.
More Like This
In Brief: April 3, 2014
By Hannah Jeffrey | April 2, 2014