OPENING CELEBRATION: NATALIE DAISE: THE GREENS IN MY GARDEN
When: Sunday, Oct. 16, 1 – 4 p.m.

Tour of Exhibition with Natalie Daise: 1:30 pm. “Let’s Talk and Taste Collards” with Natalie Daise: 2:15 pm. Live Lowcountry Soul Music with Mahoganëë: 3:15 pm.

Throughout the Day: Gullalicious Pound Cake tastings; Family workshops in making rain sticks and sweetgrass flowers; Reading Circle with Chapin Memorial Library

A professional storyteller and self-taught artist from Georgetown, SC, Natalie Daise explores the continuum of storytelling through art-making. She uses various media, surfaces and natural and found materials, allowing her hand and eye to move a story into a place deeper than, perhaps, sound might convey – an exploration that reveals what may be hidden behind words. Daise remarks, “The process of playing with and discovering what my hands and the materials will do is my spiritual practice and, as such, rises from an intensely personal place.” Much of her work explores the rich traditions of the African-American and Gullah-Geechee communities that nurture her creativity, as well as the process by which creative action shapes these communities. Natalie Daise: The Greens in My Garden features recent paintings comprised of striking oil-and-metal-leaf portraits of both family members and friends, adorned with sweetgrass-woven jewelry, traditional African-patterned clothing and bright halos, all teeming with the symbolic roots of her Gullah upbringing – collard greens and garden flowers.

Best known as “Ms. Natalie” on Nick Jr.’s award-winning television program, Gullah Gullah Island, Daise has developed and facilitated interactive learning experiences for educators, students and others for more than 30 years. She earned a BA degree from Vermont College in 1992 and a MA in Creativity Studies in 2014. Awards and nominations include the 1996 South Carolina Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest honor, and the 1997 State of South Carolina Folk Heritage Award, given for lifetime achievement and excellence in folk art that has enriched the lives of the people in their community and state, as well as a 2017 Merit Award for her painting, Free Your Mind – Redux, in Lake City, SC’s ARTFields competition.