Known as a haven for art and creativity in the South, Savannah College of Art and Design serves as a place for students and visitors alike to bask in art in an accessible space. With rotating exhibitions from both world-renowned artists and former students, people rarely expect the amount and quality of art the university fits onto its compact campus.
The SCAD Museum of Art is located less than four hours from Atlanta, and houses boundary breaking art exhibits alongside the university’s prized permanent collection.
Make the trip to Georgia’s own historical city, Savannah, and carve out an afternoon to check out the SCAD museum’s current exhibits, all meant to open your eyes to what modern art can be.
“Platform as Platform,” created by New York-based artist Sarah Crowner, takes up more than 200 feet of space with bright blue tiles. Guests to the museum are encouraged to walk over Crowner’s exhibit as they make their way to different parts of the museum. Using custom-made terracotta tiles sourced from Guadalajara, Mexico, this is Crowner’s largest tile installation to date.
“In the same way that tiling is a pragmatic way to cover a floor surface, so is sewing a pragmatic way to join bodies of canvas and painted color together,” Crowner said about her work in 2024. “The laborious process – the pattern making, cutting, painting, tracing, trimming, sewing, stretching, and then undoing that and doing it all over again – is a way for me to understand painting.”
Crowner’s exhibit will be on display at the museum until June 9.
Ken Gun Min’s “The vastness is bearable only through love,” takes a bold perspective on fantasy, with large canvases that mix plants, animals and human bodies that all seem not quite of our world. Using Japanese bookbinding glue on raw canvases, Min’s art utilizes both western oils and Korean pigments to create the bold colors seen in his work.
The art also implements East Asian textiles in a nod to Min’s heritage. “The vastness is bearable only through love” will be displayed until June 22.
By far the most immersive of the exhibits, Jónsi’s “Vox” invites museum guests to experience sights and sounds in a brand new way. The exhibit features a dark room with lit up screens on the walls, and the lights on the wall correspond with a sound similar to a whale’s call, made by the voice of the artist, Jónsi.
Guests are encouraged to stay in the room as long as they want, while the noises and lights on the wall grow more intense as time passes. According to the museum, experiencing this exhibit can be described as “visceral” and “a spiritual respite.”
Jónsi’s ”Vox” will be available for viewings until June 22.
Christina Quarles’ “Far from Near” mixes fantastical art with cartoons, in an exhibit that seems to change directions as you move through it.
Quarles’ exhibit begins with large and colorful paintings of human figures engaging with one another, before guests encounter a wall of drawings, part of her “100 series.”
These drawings span a year in the life of human emotions, often depicting those emotions with word or thought bubbles, and using song lyrics and common phrases to further drive home her points.
According to Quarles, her work deals primarily with the “illusory boundaries that demarcate the self,” and that theme comes through in both her paintings and her drawings. “Far from Near” will remain on display until July 6.
A trip to Savannah can be a quick respite for Atlantans who want to see something new without having to go too far from home. Turn that yearly trip into an artistic revelation and check out the SCAD museum on the university’s Savannah campus.
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