Charleston Currents #14.01 | NOV. 1, 2021
VIVID AND MAGNIFICENT. An immense retrospective of the work of contemporary artist Jasper Johns, who grew up in South Carolina, explodes off the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Learn more in Andy rack’s commentary today. See something you think our readers would enjoy? Snap a shot and send it along. Photo by Andy Brack.
Editor’s Note: Today’s issue marks the beginning of the 14th year of publication of Charleston Currents. Happy birthday to us!
FOCUS: Battle for state’s top education job getting started now
COMMENTARY, Brack: The creativity of Jasper Johns is mind-blowing
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Charleston RiverDogs
NEWS BRIEFS: DIG SOUTH Tech Summit to return in May 2022
FEEDBACK: Tips to avoid news indigestion helpful
MYSTERY PHOTO: Bold building
CALENDAR: Learn more about climate change at Nov. 10 event
Battle for state’s top education job getting started now
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | State Superintendent Molly Spearman’s announcement last week that she wouldn’t seek reelection was an early surprise, but not particularly unexpected.
Spearman
She’s made progress in upgrading the state’s perennially limp education system the last few years by helping to provide much-needed boosts to teacher pay, update the school bus fleet and consolidate some small districts, which should lead to better education in those areas.
But in the recent months of the pandemic, she struggled with her own Republican Party in efforts to keep students and teachers safe. Whether it was about mask mandates or virtual schools, the General Assembly and Gov. Henry McMaster always seemed to be poking their fingers in school business that should have been left to the state’s constitutional officer elected to deal with schools.
A few politicos reportedly already are scrambling to figure out whether they’ll run for Spearman’s job, which likely will take on a new importance in 2023 for one reason: It will soon pay more. Spearman currently earns $92,007, but thanks to a recent change in the law, the job’s salary soon will be set by the Agency Head Salary Commission. That means the new superintendent will certainly earn six figures, not five — probably in the $250,000 range. That, in and of itself, will draw lots of candidates.
Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, said the next superintendent should be a strong leader who always asks, “Is it good for the children?”
“It’s crucial that this person has education experience and can hit the ground running,” she told Statehouse Report. “We had deficiencies in literacy and math prior to COVID and we need someone that will communicate with educators on the best strategies to ensure South Carolina students are receiving the best education possible.”
We hear through the grapevine that several education and Statehouse leaders are considering a run for state superintendent, including some district superintendents.
Collins
Two names that consistently crop up are state Rep. Neal Collins, a Pickens County Republican who has served in the General Assembly since 2015, and Ellen Weaver, president and CEO of the Palmetto Promise Institute in Columbia. It’s the think tank founded by former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint to push conservative ideas.
Collins, a lawyer, confirmed he is exploring a bid for Spearman’s job: “Serving on the [House] Education Committee, Children’s Committee, Education Oversight and House Oversight over the past seven years, I witnessed Superintendent Spearman serve our state with grace in extremely difficult times,” he told Statehouse Report. “The future of our state is education and our state deserves a student-focused leader.”
Weaver
Weaver also confirmed her interest in the job, saying she had been approached by a number of people about it and was strongly considering it..
“Our next superintendent must be focused on ensuring that every child receives an excellent education, empowering parents to make decisions for their children and providing the very best support to teachers,” she said in an email. “COVID has laid bare education faultlines that have been growing in South Carolina for decades. It is going to take bold vision, brave leadership, and a real team effort to transform these stubborn obstacles into the opportunities our students deserve.”
State Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson insisted it was crucial for his party’s candidate for the job to be an educator. He complained that Republicans had been hurting education for years by pushing charter schools, vouchers and other ways to lower public investment and support in public education.
“Democrats believe in education. If you do not have an educated citizenry, you’re never going to bring in good jobs,” Robertson said.
- Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
The creativity of Jasper Johns is mind-blowing
See if you can find your home state in this abstract map of the United States.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | A broad retrospective of the art of South Carolina-raised Jasper Johns is too much to absorb. Hundreds of paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures split between museums in New York and Philadelphia, cover several periods of the career of the artist, who still lives and works in Connecticut.
The Whitney Museum of American Art hosts half of the Mind/Mirror exhibition, which features familiar and iconic works by Johns, as well as pieces that offer insights into his creative depth over more than six generations. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, another museum with which Johns has a long relationship, hosts a second half of the show, which features more than 500 pieces of Johns’s work.
Here’s what the Whitney says about the show, which started in September and runs through Feb. 13: “Johns’s early use of common objects and motifs, language, and inventive materials and formats upended conventional notions of what an artwork is and can be. His profoundly generative practice helped spark movements including Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, among others, and has inspired successive generations of artists to this day.”
After witnessing the boundless enthusiasm in Johns’ familiar paintings of flags, targets, numbers and other icons, one realizes how much the intense artist produced through the years. There’s a section of the exhibit where viewers see works that Johns developed when he lived in Edisto Island in the 1960s. You can see palmetto fronts as part of one painting and representation of the blueprints from his grandfather’s house in Allendale in others. There also are paintings in what obviously was a gray period and others from a more recent celestial period.
Frankly, it was all a bit much — but in a good way. To truly appreciate the depth and breadth of Johns’s work, another visit to the museum — plus a jaunt to the companion exhibition in Philadelphia — will be required. (If you go, make sure you check the times that the exhibitions are open. Philadelphia’s museum is oddly closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.)
Another map of states.
This overwhelming display of modern art cements Johns’s position as one of America’s most important artists and, perhaps, the greatest living artist in the country today.
The High Line
Note a famous skyscraper in the background.
A fun part of the quick trip to New York was a jaunt down the High Line, the public park in Manhattan’s West Side built on an old, elevated train line. It features art, plantings and great views of the city in a section that stretches a few blocks from Penn Station to the Whitney.
Levy cleans her sculpture.
Along the way, we met New York artist Hannah Levy, who was cleaning a marble and stainless steel sculpture of a large orthodontic retainer in an outdoor alcove along the narrow park’s path. She said the piece, created during the pandemic, has been up for about six months and will come down in March.
“The piece points to the strangeness of orthodontics and comments on straight teeth as a marker of class, in part because of orthodontics’ exorbitant price,” according to the artist’s statement near the work. Not exactly the kind of thing you expect to see every day — but certainly interesting and thought-provoking, as was all of the art in the Whitney just a few hundred yards away.
If you get a chance, see the exhibits of Johns’s work. If you can’t, learn more about him. And check out local museums and galleries and explore how local works can provide new energy into your day-to-day life.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Charleston Currents, and publisher of the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
Charleston RiverDogs
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Charleston Currents to you at no cost. This issue’s featured underwriter is the Charleston RiverDogs, who won the first championship in franchise history in 2021. By becoming the Low-A East champions, the team brought home the first championship to the Holy City since 1922.
The Lowcountry’s leader in sports entertainment, Charleston RiverDogs baseball is an attractive, affordable medium for your group or business. The RiverDogs, now affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays, offer one of the finest ballparks in Minor League Baseball — Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Park.
Three short words sum up the everyday approach taken by the Charleston RiverDogs front office. The brainchild of club President Emeritus Mike Veeck, the nine-letter phrase “Fun Is Good” is meant to be a guideline and daily reminder of how employees should approach their jobs and in turn capture the imagination of the fans to turn them into repeat customers.
- Visit the ‘Dogs online at: RiverDogs.com
- To meet all of our underwriters, click here.
DIG SOUTH Tech Summit to return in May 2022
A past DIG SOUTH talk.
Staff reports | The College of Charleston will partner with DIG SOUTH to host the 10-year anniversary of the DIG SOUTH Tech Summit, a premier Southern event to connect global brands with regional startups. The event, which will be May 11-13, will be held at the TD Arena, where DIG SOUTH launched the event in 2013.
“The College of Charleston is excited to partner with DIG SOUTH again and to serve for the next five years as the physical home of their annual tech summit, which brings to Charleston many of the country’s top minds related to technology, business and innovation,” College of Charleston President Andrew T. Hsu said in a press release. “The team at DIG SOUTH, led by CEO and founder Stanfield Gray and CFO Sunny Gray, has done a remarkable job of building and expanding ‘Dig Nation’ over the past decade in order to assist and support businesses in their networking, marketing and talent acquisition needs.”
Each year, DIG SOUTH invites the South’s top executives, entrepreneurs, startups and leading global brands to convene in Charleston for three days of inspiration, networking, fundraising and strategic know-how. The 2022 theme for DIG SOUTH Tech Summit is “Resilience.” Attendees will learn strategies to make their companies and themselves more resilient in disruptive times.
In other recent news:
Garland
Feds settle Emanuel victims’ lawsuit for $88 million. The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced an $88 million settlement of a lawsuit that claimed the Federal Bureau of Investigation was negligent in failing to stop a South Carolina man from buying the gun he used to kill nine people in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The settlement, which will be split between five survivors and families of the victims, reportedly is one of the largest civil rights settlements in history. “The mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church was a horrific hate crime that caused immeasurable suffering for the families of the victims and the survivors,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a Thursday statement. “Since the day of the shooting, the Justice Department has sought to bring justice to the community, first by a successful hate crime prosecution and today by settling civil claims.” Read the full story.
State’s future gravitates toward bigger cities, study finds. While the Palmetto State may sometimes seem quaint in the eyes of the nation, South Carolina ranks among the fastest-growing states in the union, increasingly gravitating toward urban centers. In an interesting series offered today, The State newspaper looks at issues facing big cities across the state — from Charleston, Columbia and Lexington to Greenville, Rock Hill and Myrtle Beach. More: The State
S.C. increasing payments to child care providers. South Carolina’s social services agency says it is now paying more money to providers in the program that subsidizes child care for low-income families. More: AP News.
Virus positivity rate at 5 percent. South Carolina health officials on Friday reported 729 total cases of COVID-19 Oct. 29, with 984 new cases. A total of 46 new deaths, 32 of which were confirmed, were also reported Friday. With 28,202 tests reported, 5 percent were confirmed positive. Officials said COVID-19 vaccine booster shots also were widely available across the state.
Two of S.C.’s U.S. House districts could change significantly due to population changes. South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District “reaches fingers into Charleston and Columbia,” one senator said, adding that the two big cities need to have their own unique representation. If the district changes, it also likely would change the first district, which stretches from Charleston to Beaufort. More: The State.
Millions of acres of Southern marshes threatened. Salt marshes, which cover 1 million acres from the Outer Banks to north Florida, face danger from changing climate and rising seas, according to a special report. More. The State. Also learn how the coastal development boom endangers salt marshes.
First Lady visits Charleston hospital, base. In the closing days of breast cancer awareness month, First Lady Jill Biden toured the Hollings Cancer Center in Charleston on Monday. Later, she stopped at Joint Base Charleston to congratulate crews there for executing one of the largest humanitarian airlifts in history at the end of the Afghanistan war. More: AP News. Biden also said “South Carolina has a piece of my heart” in her Charleston visit.
- Want more headlines every business day that are like this? Visit our friends at SC Clips.
Tips to avoid news indigestion helpful
To the editor:
Your suggestions for avoiding news indigestion were helpful. The vetted news we are given every day in the Charleston City Paper (CCP) is worth appreciating.
We could be reading Facebook news, [instead of ] enjoying the comfortable feeling that this [outlet] is not another fake news propaganda article about our community. Editors and reporters with names are the algorithm.
Community standards reduce the distribution of false news and inauthentic content is a lived journalistic standard. Facebook’s rules and standards do not measure up. Political advertising policies enable readers to identify the sponsors. Integrity is achieved by applying policies that limit the abuse of the platform by inauthentic users.
Readers can tackle misinformation in their online experience with monitored feedback. Besides integrity, day by day CCP content just gets better.
— Fred Palm, Edisto Island, S.C.
Send us your thoughts by email
We love hearing from readers. Comments are limited to 250 words or less. Please include your name and contact information. Send your letters to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. | Read our feedback policy.
Bold building
Here’s the top of a bold building. It isn’t in South Carolina, so where is it? Send your best guess to editor@charlestoncurrents.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live. And if you’ve got a clever mystery photo for our readers, send it to the same address (Try to stump us!)
Our previous Mystery Photo
Last week’s mystery, “The pink cone,” showed the outside of Tinto y Crema, a gelateria that used to be known as Belgian Gelato. It’s on Vendue Range just down from Waterfront Park. Readers say it has among the best gelato around.
Several new guessers joined this week. Congrats to all who identified the location: Tensie Campbell of Charleston; Barry Shear of West Ashley; Joe Mendelsohn and Phil Falzone, both of James Island; Andrew Cowan of Daniel Island; Jay Altman of Columbia; Pat Deussing of Apex, N.C.; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Christel Newton of North Charleston; David Lupo, Chris Brooks, Kirk Zerangue and Amanda Castagneto, all of Mount Pleasant; and Tammy Greene.
Send us a mystery: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send it along to editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
Learn more about climate change at Nov. 10 event
Staff reports | If you want to learn more from Lowcountry leaders about human-caused, accelerated global heating, you can attend discussions Nov. 10 by the Charleston Climate Coalition at the American Theatre, 446 King St., in Charleston.
Dubbed “Surge Sessions: Dispatches on the Climate Crisis,” the event is tied to coincide with the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, organizers say.
“With the Surge Sessions, we want folks to come to a deeper, more holistic understanding of the climate crisis — its severity and inequities, and the creative and human forces rising to answer it — and in the end to feel energized to join the climate liberation movement,” said coalition co-founder Belvin Olasov in a press release.
Speakers will give short talks on topics ranging from damage to coral reefs, melting glaciers and resulting sea level rise to environmental justice and cultural preservation. Among those scheduled to talk are Queen Quet of the Gullah Geechee Nation, College of Charleston marine biologist Phil Dunstan, reporter Tony Bartelme, engineer Jared Bramlett and oysterman Cyrus Buffum.
Those who attend are asked to give a $10 donation. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Mask and proof of Covid-19 vaccination are required.
Also on the calendar:
Winter Wonderland exhibit. Nov. 1 to March 27, 2022, Lowcountry Image Gallery, The Charleston Museum, 360 Meeting St., Charleston. This exhibit showcases colorized photographs of remarkable snow days captured by residents of Charleston dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More on tickets and hours.
North Charleston art show: Nov. 3 to Nov. 24, Park Circle Gallery, 4820 Jenkins Ave., North Charleston. Mount Pleasant painter Brad Carroll and Johns Island artist Lee Garrard will be featured in this exhibition of paintings by the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Department. Admission is free. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 pm. Wednesdays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
Holiday Festival of Lights: 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m, Nov. 12 through Dec. 31, James Island County Park.. Visitors can drive through the impressive three-mile light spectacle with more than 750 illuminated displays. The festival also includes other holiday activities like train rides, marshmallow roasting, a climbing wall and more. There also will be a Winter Wonderland, which features the area’s largest holiday sand sculpture made from more than 50 tons of sand. You and your family can also explore the shops, an enchanted walking trail and the amazing dancing light display. Tickets It is recommended that visitors purchase tickets in advance online. Also on the calendar:
Birds of Prey flight demonstrations: 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Thursdays and Saturdays, Center for Birds of Prey, 4719 Highway 17. Awendaw. The center has reopened its doors to visitors after closing due to the COvID-19 pandemic, inviting people to once again come and explore the world of raptors through an outdoor program and flight demonstration. Tickets: . $20/adult; $15/children age 3-17.
Bird-watching at Caw Caw. Every Wednesday and Saturday — particularly through the end of February — you can see a plethora of birds at Caw Caw Interpretive Center in Ravenel as they make their way through the Lowcountry. The two-hour regular walks, which start at 8:30 a.m., are through distinct habitats that allow participants to view and discuss a variety of birds, butterflies, and other organisms. Registration is not required. Participants are encouraged to bring their own binoculars. A paid chaperone is required for participants ages 15 and under. Max. 10 participants. Fee: $9; free for Gold Pass holders. Open to all ages. More: Caw Caw Interpretive Center.
Farmers markets
Closing in November
Summerville Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, First Citizens Bank parking lot near Town Hall, 200 S. Main Street, Summerville. More. Closes Nov. 20.
Charleston Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, Marion Square, 329 Meeting St., Charleston. More. Tentative closing Nov. 27. Holiday market to open temporarily in December.
Closing in December
Holy City Farmers Market: 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Wednesday, Holy City Brewing, North Charleston. vendors rotate weekly to provide shoppers with a tiny but mighty shopping experience. vendors will be selling a range of products from specialty foods, home and body care to arts and crafts. More info. Closes Dec. 18 with holiday market.
Open year-round
West Ashley Farmers Market: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Wednesday, Ackerman Park, 55 Sycamore Avenue, Charleston. More.
Sunday Brunch Farmers Market: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., every Sunday, Charleston Pour House, 1977 Maybank Highway, James Island. While the market is discouraging people from spending too much time hanging out during the market, everyone is invited to shop their local vendors. More info.
Sea Island Farmers Market: 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., every Saturday. Charleston Collegiate Campus, 2024 Academy Rd., Johns Island. More.
Goose Creek Farmers Market: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, 519 N. Goose Creek Blvd., Goose Creek. More.
- If you have any online events, drop us a line (editor@charlestoncurrents.com) and make sure to put “Online event” in the subject line. Similarly, if you’ve got cool ideas for stuff to do while in isolation at home, send them our way.
- ORDER NOW: Copies of our new book, 350 Facts About Charleston, are in Lowcountry-area bookstores now, but if you can’t swing by, you can order a copy online today.
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