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Poetter Hall was purchased by the SCAD founders in March 1979. Classes began in September of that year.  
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The Arts

Scope out the new ’scapes

Robert Herman’s “Union Square”

Robert Herman’s “Union Square” is on display in “Kaleidoscapes: Views from Material and Immaterial Worlds” at Red Gallery through April 19.

By Hannah Pittard
Published: Friday, April 11, 2003

The Red Gallery’s “Kaleidoscapes: Views from Material and Immaterial Worlds” delivers exactly what the combination of the words kaleidoscopes and landscapes promises. Together, the work of the exhibition’s 33 artists — including students, faculty, alumni and professionals — is itself a kaleidoscope with its myriad complementing and contrasting views, colors, reflections and insights. Individually, however, the pieces are single views — stolen glances and recorded moments of scenes that both disturb and comfort. In this way only are the images on display at the Red Gallery thematic.

In style and in texture, the similarities between the various works cease. Savannah College of Art and Design photography professor Liz Darlington’s “Constructs 4” and “Constructs 5” offer two shadowy, yet strangely comic (look for the bear) glimpses of a remote Czech Republic winter. Robert Gniewek, on the other hand, provides two realistic but eerie oil-on-linen images in “Free Parking” and “Gustafson’s Motel.”

The exhibition includes unique interpretations of landscapes by several artists: from alumnus Michael Runnels’ (M.F.A. photography, 2002) somber “Conflagration,” “Incipience” and “Settlement” that line the wall above the gallery’s front desk to Working Class director Cory Mahler’s “Untitled Space #3, pedestal,” featuring plastic grass and etched plexiglass. Perhaps the most stunning interpretation of a landscape is Guy Johnson’s “Humanscape VII: Self-Portrait.” In this painting, Johnson, born in 1927, captures the nostalgia of a young 20th century America as dozens of smiling famous faces from a time long past stare out at the audience. Perhaps it is Johnson’s details that make the painting: a zeppelin, a female weight lifter, a crashing plane in the background.

Ultimately, there are far too many standouts in this collection to be able to list all of them. Though, for intensity of color, few outmatch Sam Hill’s (B.F.A. illustration, 1993) “Manifest Destiny,” Chia Chiung Chong’s (B.F.A. photography, 1998) “Sunflower #2, Lacoste, France” and Jon O. Holloway’s “Acadia Autumn” and “Medicine Crow.”

“Kaleidoscapes: Views from Material and Immaterial Worlds” is on display at Red Gallery, 201 E. Broughton St., through April 19.