USCB Center for the Arts will be hosting five local Beaufort artists for an exhibition of original art and photography. The opening reception will be on Friday, September 7^th starting at 6:00 p.m. and running until 7:30 p.m. Plan to come out and enjoy the bounty of Lowcountry creativity. The gallery is located at 801 Carteret St., for more info call 843-521-4145.

Bill Mead believes Beaufort is surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. The colors here are subtle, deep greens and rich browns. These paintings are basically landscape and still life combined; an attempt to merge the spiritual and the sensual. Bill used to be partial to tragedies, but experience has taught him life is tragic enough without painting pictures of it. Now he likes to believe his paintings give the mind’s eye a place to rest and bring comfort to the weary traveler.

Mary Grayson Segars is an award-winning oil painter who paints mostly Lowcountry scenes, including palmetto trees, ocean waves, marsh, and local folks. She uses a very limited palette of primary colors and is drawn to objects or scenes with dramatic light and shadow. Mary paints almost daily at her studio at ArtLofts. She teaches multi-day workshops in Georgia, North Carolina, and various sites in South Carolina, and she teaches one-day classes each month in Bluffton and on Spring Island. She participates in 4-5 outdoor festivals each year, including ones in Atlanta, Naples (Fla), Ponte Vedra (Fla), and Charleston.

Donna Kirkpatrick began making photographs in her early teens after setting up a darkroom in the family basement. Upon moving to Lady’s Island about six years ago, she transitioned completely to digital photography but the work still has the feel of traditional black and white darkroom prints. Donna uses photography as a tool to examine her philosophical and spiritual musings. The images begin with a camera and thus are derived from recognizable subject matter. However the style of abstract expressionism is quickly imposed, often leaving behind what many think of as reality. In her current work, abstraction is used to explore the theme Escape from the Given. Ideas that are explored include the perception of reality and how choices of what we want to see and how it is presented affect perceived reality. If these arbitrary choices are discovered, artificial boundaries that are self-imposed can be surpassed and what is currently accepted as a given truth can be escaped.

Cabell Heyward received his MFA from the University of Georgia in 1997. Art making for him is a meditative experience where he collects his subjects from his own interior junk stores and trash heaps. The result is painting, a carefully rendered unreality in oils, assemblages and sculpture. He lives in Beaufort, South Carolina, with his son.

Lana Hefner has received numerous awards for excellence in painting. Her work is represented in private and corporate collections though the United States and Canada. Her landscapes in oil, pastel and graphite concentrate on simplified shapes and expressive color to convey the mood and emotional content of place. They speak of serenity, power, thoughtfulness and the ever-changing beauty that convey the mood of this special place. Concerned with color and the essentials of design, she takes this most elemental landscape towards the abstract. She will present a very large “skyscape” that will hang beside her smaller studies.