OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, SEPT 8, 2023
7:00 - 10:00 PM
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
EXHIBITION RUNS THROUGH OCTOBER 13, 2023
AURA :: A NEW EXHIBITION FEATURING 21 FEMALE + NON-BINARY ARTISTS
+ HONOR BOWMAN HALL’S OCEAN HIGHWAY
We are excited to share with you our sixth exhibition for 2023 : AURA, a group show featuring 21 female and non-binary artists from across the Southeast. The artists in AURA are:
Hannah Adair, Chloe Alexander, Mallory Brooks, Alice Stone Collins, In Kyong Chun, Heather Deyling, Jessica Durrant, Kiara Gilbert, Krista Grecco, Honor Hall, Lisa Hart, Angie Jerez, Kaya Shoots (Adrianna Clark), Stephanie Kolpy, Christina Kwan, Jessica Locklar, Tracy Murrell, Coki Panda, Valentina Custer O’Roark, Stacie Rose, Sophia Sabsowitz, Stephanie Smith, Sandy Teepen
OCEAN HIGHWAY :: Named for a segment of Route 17 as it passes through Savannah, Georgia, Ocean Highway is an homage to American two-lane highways and the nostalgic family road trip.
In coastal Georgia, the road between destination cities and towns is lined with moss-covered oaks, palm trees, marshland and at times, an ocean view dotted with atomic age signs for restaurants, motor inns, and the occasional surf shop.
Painter Honor Bowman Hall has long been inspired by the back roads. In 2009 she completed a five week cross-country loop from New York, New York to Seattle, down the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles, and back to the East Coast on two-lane highways, including famed Route 66. This became the subject of an ongoing painting project to capture the spaces in between destinations.
Hotel pools, tiki bars, garages, convenience stores, and signs for family restaurants dot the landscape and populate this exhibition of life on the way from reality to vacation. The pictures evoke a world of summertime trips with stopovers in sleepy towns along the Ocean Highway.
Honor Bowman Hall (b. 1984) is an artist and educator living and working in Savannah, GA. Hall is from Roanoke, Virginia and holds a BA in Studio Art and English from the University of Mary Washington (class of 2006). After moving to New York in 2007, where she worked in the music industry and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hall relocated to Savannah and received her MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Following her graduate studies, she lived in Anchorage, Alaska from 2013-2017 and was the manager of the International Gallery of Contemporary Art (IGCA), the only not-for-profit exhibition space in Anchorage solely dedicated to contemporary art.
In addition to her work promoting and programming experimental art and facilitating exhibitions and events at IGCA, Hall also created two large murals in Alaska, including one at the Anchorage Museum, and taught Painting and Design courses at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Now based in Savannah for a second time, Hall is the Dean of the School of Fine Arts, Dean of the School of Visual Communication, and Chair of Fine Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).
Hall graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with an MFA in Painting in 2014. During her MFA candidacy, she was selected for a solo studio fellowship at the Elizabeth Foundation in New York, NY in conjunction with the SCAD Painting Department, and was selected to hold her thesis exhibition in conjunction with SCAD’s annual de:FINE Art event. Since her return to SCAD in 2017 as a member of the faculty, Hall continues to exhibit her work at SCAD. She has produced two murals for the university’s Savannah campus, and her artwork is featured on SCAD busses in Savannah and Atlanta.
Hall has held artist-in-residence positions in Savannah, Georgia, Richmond, Virginia and New York, New York and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Her paintings appear in several public and private collections. She is represented in New York by Contempop Gallery, in Atlanta by Kai Lin Art and online by SCAD Art Sales.
Hall is a member of the Friendship Magic Collective, an ongoing two-person art and music project for which she paints and plays cello. FMC’s most recent exhibition, Homecoming, was reviewed for Art Pulse Magazine #33.