Art Partnership Mission

The mission of the Art Partnership program is to work in collaboration with academic programs, disciplines and departments across campus to strategically place permanent site-specific works of art into the context of the university environment. This is accomplished by commissioning, regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized artists to create significant works of art for selected locations on the university campus. Completed works visually and conceptually engage the university audience, provoking thought, reflection, creativity and imagination for current and future generations.

In 1996, John Acorn issued a challenge to then President Constantine Curris and the University community to integrate public art into the fabric of the Clemson campus. The resulting Art Partnership program funded by the R.C. Edwards Endowment, matches artists with academic and administrative units to create site specific works in public places across campus.

The program is administered by the Department of Art and is conceived of as a participatory, inclusive process of exchange between the artist and the host unit; both artist and potential sites are chosen through open submission. A committee of faculty and students select the artists, who then participate in site selection.

While each project is unique, they are all born of the larger dialogue between faculty, staff and students that carries the project from initial conception through the final installation. The spirit of open dialogue not only builds a larger context to the work, but opens up lines of communication on campus beyond wall drawn academic boundaries.

The first projects matched painter Bruno Civitico (Charleston, SC) with the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts, sculptor Joey Manson (Central, SC) with the Textile Department, and sculptor Joe Walters (Charleston, SC) with the Psychology Department.

Civitico’s mural-scale painting presents an allegory of the performing arts, with each nine-by-nine foot panel representing dance, music and theater respectively. Located outside Sirrine Hall, Joey Manson’s welded steel sculpture sits across from an outdoor café and mirrors the formal elements of an busy pedestrian crossroad on the south side of campus. Joe Walter’s wall mounted relief casts resins in plant and animal forms that comprise a delicate spiral along a large atrium wall in Brackett Hall. Upon installation, his audience immediately multiplied when this atrium became a computer lab. The next two commissions, Phil Moody (Rock Hill,SC) partnered with the Education Department and David Tillinghast (Seneca, SC),working with Agriculture Departmentand the Cooper Library continued the mix of different media and sites both in and out of doors.

Phil Moody’s point of departure is the classical theme of the three ages of humanity, interpreted in today’s terms through text and photo mural. Located on three levels in the south stairwell of Tillman Hall, Moody’s work must be experienced as a series of fragments that must be synthesized by the viewer. David Tillinghast’s large silo form continually shifts between architecture and sculpture. Located outside of Barre Hall and facing the large mall behind the library, Tillinghast’s twenty-one foot form functions as a meditation space and a poetic reminder of the archetypal agricultural silo form. A call number cast into the floor of the structure references an artist book that is an integral part of this piece and is housed in the reference section of the Cooper Library.

Currently nearing completion is the most recent project by John Acorn (Pendleton, SC), with the Hendrix Student Center and the office of Campus Planning Commission. In recognition of John’s service to the University and his many public works throughout the state, this piece will consist of six eight and one-half foot paper airplane forms fabricated of one-half inch thick aluminum sheeting. The first piece will be suspended in the atrium of the Hendrix Center, while the remaining five will be sited outdoors with input from a group of students that have contributed to the project from its inception.

Although still in its infancy, the Art Partnership project has created, and in some instances recreated, a new awareness of public space on the Clemson campus. The project will continue, with renewed support from President James F. Barker, to build a community of works that in both process and form realize the goals of public access and increased communication on campus.

David Houston – Former Director of the Lee Gallery