Steven Chapp & Diane Kilgore at if ART Gallery

if ART Gallery presents two simultaneous December-January solo exhibitions of paintings and prints by two Upstate South Carolina artists, Easley’s Steven Chapp and Greenville’s Diane Kilgore Condon. Both exhibitions, Running With Crows and Holding The Songbird respectively, opened last week and will run through January 10, 2014.Steven Chapp, owner of Black Dog Press, will conduct a drypoint workshop at if ART on Saturday, January 10, 2015, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm. During the workshop, participants will create their own drypoint plates, which will be printed by Chapp at the end of the workshop. Enrollment will be limited to 10 participants; cost is $65 per participant. Those interested should contact the gallery to enroll. 

Both artists typically include a lot of animal imagery. Chapp has a go-to-bird, the crow, which features in many of his monotypes, drypoints, linocuts, woodcuts and other prints as a metaphor for humans. Kilgore Condon creates in her oil paintings fantastical but technically often possible scenes featuring birds of many kinds, bees, deer, hare, geese, dogs and other animals. 

Chapp (B. 1952) is a native of Kansas City, Mo. For three decades, hehas been a steady presence on the South Carolina art scene, especially in the Upstate. Best known as a expert printmaker, Chapp has shown in galleries, art centers and museums throughout the region, including the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Burroughs and Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Spartanburg (S.C.) Art Museum and the Pickens County (S.C.) Museum of Art and History. He worked on two projects with artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in Kansas City in 1978 and Key Biscayne, Fla., in 1983. In 2011 and 2014, Chapp organized Shifting Plates I and II, traveling exhibitions of works by South Carolina printmakers. Chapp has retired as a teacher for the Greenville County School District. He holds an MFA in printmaking and drawing from Clemson University and a BFA from Appalachian State University. 

Kilgore Condon (b. 1964) is the owner of ArtBomb Studios. ArtBomb, established in 2001, launched what is now Greenville’s most important arts district, the Pendleton Street Art District. The Wassau, Wis., native was raised in the East and Midwest and in 1983 moved from Florida to Greenville to attend Bob Jones University. There she studied with Carl Blair and in 1988 received a BA in Fine Arts. Kilgore Condon is among the South Carolina Upstate’s most prolific and respected painters.