Orangeburg, S.C. - SC State’s Fine Arts Center (FAB) Gallery will host an exhibition by artist Michael P. Cassidy on Jan. 15-Feb 15, 2009.

Cassidy’s paintings, drawings, and prints emphasize a synthesis between traditional and experimental approaches to image making. His work challenges the viewer to reconsider the natural environment by skirting between recognition of image and surface. A rural up-bringing created a deep seated connection to nature but an interest in art led Cassidy to the city of Grand Rapids, MI to attend Kendall College of Art and Design. Cassidy soon found his place in the fine arts department.

Upon graduating with a bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking in 2000, Cassidy continued making spiritually based, semiabstract works. An avid outdoors-man, Cassidy spent his free time exploring the natural world, but it wasn’t until a move to South Carolina for graduate school that Cassidy found nature an inspiration for painting.

The vastly different natural environment of the South moved him to combine memories of adventures in the rural Midwest with new experiences in the swamps and forests of the South to make landscape based paintings and prints.

Cassidy received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 2004, from the University of South Carolina (USC), where he is now an instructor of drawing, design, printmaking, and painting. He currently resides in West Columbia, S.C., where he continues to draw inspiration from the diverse Southern landscape.

For more information on Michael P. Cassidy’s exhibition contact: James Arendt, SC State gallery director at (803) 536-7101.

FAB GALLERY in the department of Visual & Performing Arts of SC State University. FAB is located at 300 College Street, NE Orangeburg, SC 29117. Gallery Hours are M-F, 8:30 a.m. -4:00 p.m. (Closed weekends and all University holidays.)

Source: Scsu.edu/