Columbia Airport Looks to Liven Space, Boost Local Artists By Continuing Exhibition Series

Posted 1/19/22

When Harold Branham spoke with the Chronicle, his brother was set to fly in to see his most recent exhibition — which he’d see before he left the airport. Branham, a Blythewood-based …

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Columbia Airport Looks to Liven Space, Boost Local Artists By Continuing Exhibition Series

Posted

When Harold Branham spoke with the Chronicle, his brother was set to fly in to see his most recent exhibition — which he’d see before he left the airport.

Branham, a Blythewood-based artist who paints distinctly South Carolinian sites and scenes with a bleary photographic quality that evokes poignant feelings of nostalgia and faded memory, is the final 2020-21 selection in the Columbia Metropolitan Airport’s Art in the Airport program. The initiative places work from a different local artist in between the windows in the elevated hallway connecting the West Columbia airport’s lobby and terminal.

“I got a brother that lives in Salt Lake City,” Branham said. “And he’s coming back on the 20th of January just so he can go out and see the exhibit at the airport. He’ll be getting off the plane at Columbia and he’ll be walking through the connector there to take a look at his brother’s artwork.”

In the case of Branham’s work, this makes for striking contrast, with portals filled with real-life scenes of mechanized air travel interspersed with frames containing art steeped in the rural firmament of one specific place.
Kim Crafton, director of marketing and air service development for the airport, explained that this kind of visual enrichment for the space is a big emphasis, spotlighting the vibrant colors of previous featured artist Ija Charles as another memorable example. The program is also meant to spotlight the increasing artistic diversity of the Midlands, which helps the airport by presenting its home as a place people might like to come back to and explore at greater length.

“That’s the whole point of this showcasing diversity, showcasing age diversity,” Crafton said. “Harold is in his 70s. He’s wonderful. He’s just like that granddad, like everyone’s granddad. [It’s also] regional diversity, kind of geographically, because we’re looking throughout the region. We don’t want just Coloubian, like people from Columbia, City of Columbia. But [also] age, race, gender, because all of those have such different perspectives to bring.”

The airport also hopes that the selected artists benefit from being exposed to people who might not otherwise see their work. And that’s often been the case. 
Branham reports selling several prints, though no originals, as a result of his exhibition. Christopher Garvey, the first artist for 2020-21, had even more luck.

“I was able to get so much more visibility to my work being displayed at CAE, even during the pandemic,” he told the Chronicle. 

“I was able to gain a few commissions and one of the pieces there was accepted and exhibited in ArtFields last year,” Garvey said referring to the world-renowned art competition that takes place each April in Lake City.

Submissions to become one of the 2022 selections for the Art at the Airport series are due by 5 p.m. on Jan. 28. To be considered, artists must reside in the Midlands counties of Calhoun, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lexington, Orangeburg, Richland, Saluda, Sumter, Lee, Clarendon, Newberry and Aiken. 

For more info, call (803-822-7856) or email (kcrafton@flycae.com) Kim Crafton.

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