A Manning artist will be featured throughout the month of January at the Sumter County Gallery of Art.
Thomas Blackmon won the gallery’s inaugural People’s Choice Award in the Sumter Artists’ Guild Show held in July 2014, for the piece “Farm Across the Way.”
Blackmon specializes in pyrography, “an art form whereby an image is rendered by an artist onto a wood canvas using a continuum of extreme temperature,” he said.
“It is taken from the Greek ‘written’ or ‘drawn in fire,’” Blackmon said.
Blackmon said his body of work features “examples from both the realist and impressionist schools of artistic expression,” and that future projects will focus broadly on “objects, architecture and scenery that characterize life in metropolitan and rural venues around the state of South Carolina.”
As one of the winners of the Sumter Artists’ Guild show, Blackmon will be presented during the Sumter Artists’ Guild Winner Show Thursday through Feb. 6, in conjunction with the South Carolina Watermedia Society Traveling Exhibit. An opening reception will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday at the gallery.
Blackmon said he began working in pyrography about three years ago. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science with a cognate in history from the University of South Carolina.
“I was motivated by an interest in the history and cultural processes that have interwoven themselves into the fabric of South Carolina’s rich heritage,” he said.
Blackmon received no formal training as a pyrographic artist, instead relying heavily on drawing and sketching using graphite, as well as personal research into the styles, techniques and tools of the art.
“It became my medium of choice due to its permanence, which appealed to by desired to preserve visual relics from past generations,” Blackmon said.
Blackmon first exhibited his work in January 2013 at the Tapp’s Arts Center in Columbia. He was named a finalist in the 1st Artfield’s Artfest in Lake City in 2013. He was displayed in fall 2013 in the art corridor of Weldon Auditorium.
He became a member of the Sumter Artists’ Guild in March 2014. Aside from the month-long display at the Sumter County Gallery of Art, Blackmon said he is currently working on augmenting his collection with works comprised of personal photographs and archival images representative of South Carolina.
“It is through the continued dissemination of my work that I hope to generate further interest in southern culture, as well as the art of pyrography,” Blackmon said.
For more information, call Sumter County Gallery of Art Director Karen Watson at (803) 775-0543.
