When ArtFields first launched in 2013, the idea that a quaint, small town in the Pee Dee could be an anchor of the regional or even statewide arts community seemed fairly quixotic. After all, Lake City has little in the way of traditional arts infrastructure, even with the support of financial titan and benefactor Darla Moore, who has poured money into the city in recent years in an effort to forge an arts-based identity for her hometown. Can you really fashion a major arts festival out of nothing but cash and a pipe dream?
As it turns out, the answer is a fairly unqualified yes. The festival, a nine-day art competition held in Lake Citywith $140,000 in cash prizes available to artists from around the Southeast, has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. There are thousands of submissions, and hundreds of paintings, sculptures and installations dot both traditional galleries and unlikely retail and restaurant locations throughout the city.
And for Midlands-based artists, it’s become a central force on the arts calendar each year, with many returning again and again.
This is in part because many of the festival’s prize winners have had Columbia ties. Michaela Pilar Brown won last year’s $50,000 grand prize, while Jim Arendt, who earned his MFA at USC, was the inaugural recipient. Kirkland Smith took home the first People’s Choice Award for her assemblage portrait of Steve Jobs. But its local importance is driven more by the networking opportunities created by such a large festival, despite its odd location.
For painter Ansley Adams, who lives in Rock Hill, but like Arendt, got her MFA at USC and taught as an adjunct at the university for years, ArtFields has always been in her orbit, even if she often missed the submission deadline.
“I had been wanting to do that for so long, but I missed the application deadline three years in a row,” she admits. But it was the reputation of the festival and the esteem local artists held it in that drove her interest.
“I’ve talked to people over the summer before, and they’re already planning the piece that they are going to submit to ArtFields,” she notes. “They are anticipating the festival now, as opposed to maybe the first few years where it was this kind of unknown thing.”
For Adams, it’s less about the tantalizing prospect of the prize money or even the exposure so much as the community of the event itself.
“In a hypothetical way, the prize money sounds fantastic, but it’s a little bit like playing the lottery or something. I don’t think very many people are entering just for that reason,” she says. “It’s definitely a great way to network within the art community, because you’re going to meet a lot of those artists while you’re there and you have this thing in common that you both have done ArtFields.”
Columbia graphic designer and award-winning illustrator Cait Maloney, who also participates in the festival each year, shares similar sentiments.
“It’s less about the prize money and more actually getting my art seen,” she points out. “I also like when everyone’s there for closing weekend and it’s totally transformed into another town. It’s really surreal when you go back to pick up your piece after like seeing all these people there after all of the activity the next day.”
Like Adams, Maloney notes the sense of community that has formed around the festival.
“I’ve started to meet other artists from around South Carolina or wherever else and getting to know them and seeing them again the next year,” she explains. “That’s kind of fun, too. And running into Columbia people is super-fun, too, because it’s like we’re all camping out together.”
Adams also says there’s something entrancing about a small town going big for an arts festival that might have a particular attraction to South Carolina artists.
“I think we all have a small town near us even if we’re in the city and don’t live in one, so we can really identify with Lake City and what it needs and how it is revitalizing that town,” she offers. “I think we all kind of identify with that small-town feel and how it’s taking a big bite out of the arts culture. They’re like, ‘We’re small but we’re going to make a big impact.’ I think it resonates with all of the artists.”
What: ArtFields
Where: Lake City
When: April 26-May 4
More: artfieldssc.org
Let us know what you think: Email editor@free-times.com.
