The College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture will present an exhibit “Remembering ‘Her’ Time- The Art of Bernice Mitchell Tate”. The exhibit opens on May 17, 2012 and will run until August 17, 2012.
“Remembering ‘Her’ Time- The Art of Bernice Mitchell Tate” is a material culture, historic, fine craft, and art installation exhibition honoring the collective spirit of female identity and African-American womanhood.
The exhibit serves as a personal tribute, a “herstory”, recognizing the life and times of Tate’s mother, the late Veronica Robinson-Mitchell of Sheldon, South Carolina. Furthermore, it is a celebration of Lowcountry culture and authentic African-American Gullah-Geechee heritage.
Bernice Mitchell Tate is noted for her amazing mixed-media sculptural collages that transform material culture into art. Her process of fused continuity creates works of uninterrupted connections by blending images. Her newest project is inspired by and based on design elements of nearly fifty years from hand-sewn quilts created by her mother.
Tate has co-developed the innovative method of fused continuity, a process involving the digitizing of selected design elements or entire quilts into digital library formats, from which selected components are arranged into shapes and reproduced on specially treated overlay sheets and applied in superimposed patterns to the surface of “anything” to create the visual content of her work.
Arguably, this exhibition is a joint presentation; the actual quilts by Tate’s mother are juxtaposed throughout the exhibit to provide tangible verification of how material culture is transformed into an installation of mixed-media collage works.
The art exhibition’s grand opening will be at held at 7:00PM on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at the Avery Research Center, located on 125 Bull Street in Charleston, SC. The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP only if attending by Monday, May 14, 2012 to Savannah Frierson at 843-953-7609.
