2023 South Carolina Arts Awards

<Narrator> Brought to you in part by the South Carolina Arts Commission, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪ opening music ♪ I am David Platts, Executive Director of the South Carolina Arts Commission, which promotes the arts and artists across South Carolina and supports the cultivation of creativity throughout our state.

It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the South Carolina Arts Awards for 2023.

Over the next hour, you will enjoy being introduced to some exceptional South Carolinians.

Their creativity and hard work helped make our state a special place we all proudly call home.

It is a privilege for me to join you and our gracious host South Carolina's first lady, Peggy McMaster at the historic governor's mansion for the 2023 South Carolina Arts Awards.

<Peggy McMaster> Hello, David, and hello to all of you.

Welcome to the governor's mansion.

<David Platts> We will celebrate the Palmetto State's a special and unique arts and culture by sharing stories of seven notable artists, arts organizations and arts advocates.

They are this year's recipients of the Governor's Awards for the Arts,and the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Awards.

The Arts Commission is grateful to have South Carolina Educational Television as a partner for this program.

SCETV is the state's public educational broadcast network of 11 TV stations and eight radio stations, and their involvement makes this presentation accessible across the state.

Here in South Carolina, we are blessed with so many things with the beauty of nature, from the mountains to the sea with the rich and colorful history, and most importantly with hard working creative and passionate people.

Both past and present, it is the people of South Carolina who have made and who continue to make our state an extraordinary place.

<David Platts> During this broadcast special, Mrs. McMaster and I have the privilege of recognizing, congratulating and thanking some of these remarkable people and organizations, artists and arts advocates whose achievements have helped enrich the lives of South Carolinians across our state.

Each is unique with their own talents, dedication and accomplishments.

But they are united by three important features, their appreciation of creativity, their devotion to our culture, traditions and quality of life, and perhaps most importantly, their state of residence, their identity as South Carolinians.

Our recognition and celebration of them is really a celebration of us, and of this place that we all proudly call home.

<Peggy McMaster> The arts play an important role in people's lives and their communities across South Carolina.

Individuals and organizations we're honoring adds so much to our state's cultural life.

Today, the debut of short films, by talented South Carolina filmmakers, artists in their own rights, has become a favorite part of the Arts Awards in recent years.

These commissioned artists help document and showcase the award recipients.

<David Platts> That's right.

The filmmakers and films selected not only illuminate the creativity and talent of South Carolina artists, they also capture the soul, spirit and impact of our award recipients more fully than simply reading from a script.

We hope you will enjoy these short films to be shown after some special introductions that we hope will please and maybe even surprise the award recipients.

<Peggy McMaster> The Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Awards are presented in partnership with McKissic Museum at the University of South Carolina.

Introducing the 2023 recipients is museum Executive Director Jane Przybysz.

The traditional arts embody forms of creativity that are rooted in our culture and history.

One generation of artists passes them down to the next.

McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Arts Commission are partners in preserving and nurturing these art forms.

The Jean Laney Harris folk Heritage Awards are one way we do that.

They are the state's highest award for practitioners and advocates of traditional arts.

We are pleased to recognize two South Carolinians dedicated to preserving and presenting our state's longstanding and unique artistic and cultural traditions.

♪ Born on Edisto Island, the place she calls heaven on earth, Emily Meggett grew up on her family's farm.

Standing next to her grandmother, Elizabeth Major Hutchinson, she learned to cook traditional Gullah Geechee dishes.

In 1954, she began her apprenticeship with Julia Brown, a Gullah a woman who was the head chef in the kitchen at the summer home of a family from Maine.

Meggett recalls Ms. Julia telling her, "You do it right or you do it over," and true to her word, Ms. Julia through anything that wasn't up to her standards into the trash can.

Meggett married and had 10 children with Edisto native Jessie Meggett In their home she cooked not only for her family, but community members in need.

To this day when you see the door to her kitchen open, that's the sign she has food to share, no money needed and no questions asked.

Meggett was long encouraged to share her recipes in a cookbook.

Since she'd never used a recipe, it took her friend Becky Smith's help measuring ingredients and writing instructions for each dish to eventually publish Gullah Geechee Home Cooking in April of 2022.

The book quickly became a New York Times bestseller.

I've known M.P.

for a long time it neither of us can remember how we met which says a lot about the friendship because it's just been a constant.

But I was involved early on with the writing with her trying to get the cookbook published.

I think I've read it four times, proofing it but we were all so thrilled when a real publisher, Abrams, took it over, and it just went from there on, to the sky was the limit.

They did a wonderful job and she has just become a culinary rock star, and we just are so, could not be more proud of her.

She's one of our own, and she never forgets that she's truly a child of Edisto.

For someone who has never read a recipe in her life, to end up on the bestseller list for the New York Times, you know, is just incredible.

My favorite dish of hers is her red rice.

Everything she fixes is good.

You're not gonna have anything bad in her kitchen.

But her red rice is, to me her singular dish that she identifies with and that you think of immediately when you're thinking about and it's made with love.

It's just got it every ounce of love that she has for what she does, and for whom she does it and it's reflected in her cooking.

Being in the kitchen with M.P.

is one of the, my favorite parts of my relationship with her because it's always fun, and it's always, I wouldn't say chaotic, but very active.

There's always more than one person in there beside her, often one of her daughters, at least if not two of them will be in there, and she puts everybody to work, you're chopping, you're throwing things away you're doing you're sort of a sous chef to the master chef.

M.P.

's food is reflective of her, I would say.

She makes it with love, and she gives it and shares it with love to people she cares about.

That's how she demonstrates her caring for other people frankly, is by cooking for them taking it to their house if they need it, or welcomed them them into her house.

On behalf of the community of Edisto and I mean all of Edisto and me personally, I want to congratulate M.P.

on receiving this award.

The Folk Heritage Award is a great honor for you and I don't know anyone who more richly deserves it and we're so pleased to have known you before you became a culinary rock star.

♪ <Emily Meggett> When you cook you have to have that love within you to cook because if you don't have that love within you cook you not gonna turn out right.

You have, you had that love and that passion for cooking, you don't have to worry.

It's gonna turn out right.

I don't measure, and all I want you to do is tell me what you want and I'll fix it.

That's all you have to do.

You just have to tell me and I'll fix it.

<Denise Ravenel> She has set a path that many could follow because now when you're in the world like we live in, some history is deleted, but in her cookbook and her experience through life, she's making sure that we remember especially her children and grandchildren and great grands, that we remember that times were not always as easy as it is now, but it was hard for her so we should learn to appreciate where she came from and what she has instilled in us so we can in turn be better citizens in the world.

I would watch her.

I would sit up on the countertop and, whatever she would make, it was interesting.

So I just wanted to know what to do.

So I would just look over and watch her and she's a woman that don't measure.

So it's like, taste feel touch type person.

If it doesn't feel right then it's not right.

You gotta either add something to it.

< sound of food frying > <Marvette Meggett> She's a cook, but she's not one of those cooks that has to measure everything, and I think that deserves to be applauded for you cooking and not measuring and your food still turns out, like, oh my God, this is good!

What did you put in this?

How did you do this?

These are the questions that people are asking because everybody else has to measure something and it has to measure up to a standard, whereas she has this gift from God to put it together, make it meaningful, make it flavorful, make it great for the world, and for everybody else to see that this came from my head, my heart and my hands.

Artists category recipient of the Folk Heritage Award, Emily Meggett.

Congratulations, Emily!

Raised on a sharecropper farm in Bishopville, Hampton Rembert learn to sing gospel at church and family reunions.

When he and his 10 Living siblings were younger, they formed a choir that sang in a different church every Sunday evening throughout Lee and Sumter counties.

Rembert was behind a mule plowing all day with his father at age 13.

When he turned 20, he married his wife Mabel and joined the Unionville A.M.E. Church in Mayesville, where he served as superintendent of Sunday school for 13 years.

He left there to become a truck driver, a job that took him to 28 states.

Never one to sit still, he still works providing lawn care services.

Singing is one of his greatest joys connecting him to his family and faith.

Unfortunately, in 1998, he received an oral cancer diagnosis that required surgery.

Rembert knew it was possible he might never sing again after the surgery.

Happily three months later, he stood at church and testified to his faith and the power of prayer.

But people close to him say that his positive attitude played no small part in his recovery.

25 years later, Hampton Rembert sings twice a month at church and as often as he can with his brothers and sisters.

Congratulation, first of all, to Mr. Rembert on a great accomplishment and as I reflect back on the life that Mr. Rembert has exemplified as an individual for not only for his community, but for his church, as I kind of shattered Mr. Rembert as a child, him not knowing that I was watching what he did and how he's give full service on to his church and his community, it inspired me to want to walk in those same shoes, and as I recall some things that took place in the years of growing up in the Unionville A.M.E. Church, Mr. Rembert not only inspired me to want to sing gospel, but he as well has inspired me to have a desire to serve in a capacity in the church where now I'm serving as pastor of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church of Sumter, South Carolina, and my twin brother along with myself, he's also a pastor of the Bethel A.M.E. Church, out of Sumter.

He was very inspirational and it uplifted different people with his singing.

This was a gift that Mr. Rembert has always had and he continues to use it.

So I want to say to Mr. Rembert, today, congratulations on this achievement, well deserved and we pray that God will allow you to have many more years to spread the Gospel through songs.

Congratulations, Mr. Rembert on winning the Folk Heritage Award.

♪ <Hampton Rembert> Well singing do a whole lot for me.

Different songs helped me through the day.

My family and my mother family, they the ones decided we singing.

We used to have Easter program on Sunday once a year.

The children would have opportunities to say a speech or sing a song.

Most of the time I would be, I was singing a song most of the time and we start from there about five miles from here.

We started at church shortly after I got married in the late 50s early 60s.

I've been the ever since.

They seem to love it.

They seem to love it.

Most everywhere I go after people got to know me if I ever go to their church or anything that they have, they recognize if I'm in the building, they ask me to come up and sing a song or something like that.

Wherever I go, I got to know a whole lot of people by visiting a whole lot of churches.

This is one of my favorites here, Relay For Life.

Retired about 25 years ago.

It helped me out a whole lot because being around cancer survivors.

Well when the doctors told me that I may not talk anymore, be able to talk, because they were going to put a trach in my throat after surgery and think my voice will never leave, and so as soon as I came out the hospital, I started singing again.

It's going on 25 years ago now.

I have a little sickness off and on since that, but The Lord has really Blessed me.

Really Blessed me!

I try to do my best.

My Mamma always say, when you get up, it don't care how bad it might sound to somebody else, as long as The Lord know that's your best.

It'll be alright.

< singing > < church applause > <Jane Przybysz> Congratulations to Hampton Rembert, this year's Folk Heritage Award recipient in the artist category.

On behalf of traditional arts practitionersand advocates across South Carolina, Thank you to Hampton and Emily for their contributions.

<Peggy McMaster> Ladies and gentlemen, the 2023 recipients of the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Awards.

David, can you introduce us to this year's recipients of the Governor's Awards?

<David Platts> It would be my pleasure.

♪ For half a century beginning in 1972, South Carolina has presented the Governor's Awards for the Arts to honor individuals, organizations, businesses and public agencies for artistic achievement, partnership and promotion.

The awardees have not only enriched our state's cultural scene, but through their efforts and accomplishments have expanded the visibility and accessibility to the arts for our communities.

In 2023, we are pleased to add five more names to a distinguished list of recipients.

These individuals and organizations achieve and contribute to our arts and cultural landscape in ways that immeasurably benefit and enriched quality of life here in the Palmetto State.

Their creativity, innovation, leadership and unwavering support for the arts make each clearly deserving of these awards.

♪ Carlos Agudelo h as been Ballet Spartanburg's artistic director since 1991.

Among his choreography offerings are classics and contemporary favorites performed to the delight of audiences.

Under his direction, Ballet Spartanburg formed a resident professional company in 2012, with dancers from around the world.

The company has performed from Spartanburg to Charleston's Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and even to North Carolina, Texas and Nevada, and has staged more than 85 presentations ofAgudelo's choreography.

In 2018, Ballet Spartanburg was the Governor's Award for the Arts organization category recipient.

a native of the nation of Colombia, He began his training in Florida, and before long began dancing with companies in New York City, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Caracas, Venezuela.

Active in his community, Agudelo has received numerous awards for civic engagement.

Carlos is an artist and many people don't know that.

He's an illustrator and an artist and draws out his own costumes.

He goes to fine detail in creating the story but we have the most beautiful relationship.

Even though I'm the executive director, and he's the artistic director, our relationship is equal.

We respect each other so much, but I think what's probably the most important is we love each other, and I think you don't always get that in a working office or situation where people truly do love one another and Carlos is one of those lovable human beings.

You know, Carlos inspires other artists, whether it's visual, or musicians, or writers.

He always allows other artists to come in to his collaborations that he does once a year and he allows them to be open and true to their artistry, never demands for them to, to write it in a certain way or to play it in a certain way.

He allows their own creativity to flourish, and I think that is such a beautiful gift that he gives to other artists.

I think the way that I would really like to congratulate Carlos is for him to breathe in this moment, to understand the love that surrounds him, not only for his accomplishments for 30 years, but the relationships that he has built in this community for him to understand how much love he has created with so many people.

That is his biggest achievement.

♪ My name is Carlos Agudelo, and I'm the artistic director for ballet Spartanburg.

I was born in Colombia, South America, and I came here as an exchange student.

I was fascinated by the American culture, and I just wanted to come to America because I just loved what I saw on film and the music that I heard, over the three years that I've been here in Spartanburg, I've been doing something that I love to do, and trying to affect as many people as I can.

I love my job.

and I work with wonderful people, I had the support of the community, and I just couldn't have a better dream job than what I do.

So I feel very, very lucky and very privileged.

So many things inspire me.

It could be a painting, it could be a play, it could be a movie, human situations, you know, social issues.

The music is the most important thing because the music helps me tell the story.

You always hope that you can create something that people will like.

I love working with young people.

I love working with students and like to see them succeed in their training, go and get professional jobs, become professionals and that's my greatest joy when I see these young boys and girls, they become professionals.

I heard about this program in New York, in Brooklyn, New York with Mark Morris Dance Company.

They were working in conjunction with a Brooklyn Parkinson's group.

I trained in that style, and they say that when they come to my class, they just feel like a sense of liberation.

They can express themselves.

We welcome anybody, not just people with Parkinson's, people with disorders, Alzheimer's, anything, dementia are welcome to the class.

We need to explore social themes.

We need to stay current as to what's important to us as human beings, what is important to us as a society, and we need to explore those things.

The greatest satisfaction is when the piece is complete, and is on the stage and is being performed with lights and music and costumes and the dances are dancing with their hearts out, and then the audience reaction.

The Great Gatsby being Fitzgerald's work so rich, I knew that it would be difficult, but I just took on the challenge.

I think it is more of a theater ballet, it's a drama, a lot of drama in it because there is no words but so I think I created something that conveys the storyline, and so that's probably my favorite ballet, I think.

Ballet dancers are far more equipped to handle any choreographic styles.

You know, directions that they can get from from a choreographer is totally radically different.

There's no nothing in law that you can do without passion.

Any career, any field, you need to have that burning passion and say this is what I want to do.

Live it to its fullest and with passion that is going to get you somewhere.

♪ <David Platts> Congratulations to Carlos Agudelo, the 2023 Governor's Award for the Arts recipient in the individual category.

♪ Making art more inclusive and accessible is a high priority for the Aiken Center for the Arts.

Staff and board of directors use this lens to make the vision a reality for the 40,000 people who come through the center's doors yearly.

The staff strive to incorporate ever ever-changing exhibitions into educational programs.

Instruction from local artists and musicians enables community members to find a creative voice through lessons, camps, workshops and classes with scholarship available.

The organization works closely with the Aiken County Public Schools.

One program brings Headstart four year old kindergarten students into the gallery, and another places authors and artists in schools helping to develop the connection the arts make through learning and life.

Further, the Aiken Center for the Arts serves community members with workshops that meet them where they are, like, no cost to youth summer sessions for those with cognitive and physical disabilities,and even year round classes and arts experiences which relate movement and painting for residents who suffer from Alzheimer's and dementia.

Aiken Center for the Arts has profoundly and just fundamentally made my, the realization of my dream possible.

As an artist, it's you love what you do, but you might not be prepared to take the steps necessary to transform that passion into a business and Aiken Center for the Arts gives you tools and gives you a pathway it gives you a building and a beautiful space to show your work.

It's just this realization of this lifelong dream for I think any artist to, you just always have that dream of one day I'm gonna walk into a beautiful gallery and see my work and that was, that was that moment you know, when I walked into A.C.A.

and saw my work in that display case and saw it arrange so artfully and so skillfully and so beautifully and, had the staff members so excited about my work and asking questions about it and overhearing them talking to customers about it was such excitement.

Since I've become involved with A.C.A.

and due to the amount of exposure, my work has got, a lot of opportunities that I didn't have previously have come to pass.

Aiken Center for the Arts, really made art possible for me.

They create, they helped me help myself to create a business that could be sustainable.

Sustainable.

Congratulations to Aiken Center for the Arts for being awarded the South Carolina Governor's Award for the Arts for 2023.

♪ Aiken Center for the Arts has a broad range of art programming.

We want people in our community from all walks of life and backgrounds to be able to come into the art center and have a creative experience.

Well, we're a large space in the downtown of Aiken and when people come in, off of the sidewalks when they're downtown, they're going to be touched by what's being created in our area.

They'll be touched by the exhibition that's in our main gallery, as well as the Aiken artists guild gallery.

We promote our local artists six days a week in our gallery shop.

So we have probably 140 different artists.

We bring in regional, we bring in national artists, and we try to look for emerging artists that we can give time to as well.

This is a group of painters from the Aiken Artists Guild, and we meet every Friday, and we just paint together.

We're fully supported by the Aiken Center for the Arts.

It's a great relationship that we have together.

<Caroline Gwinn> I'll have to say about our programming is it's a collaborative effort with community members.

Our special needs programming is an art experience, and so a creative experience.

Keith Tolen, is a master teacher that came to us through our connection with South Carolina Arts Access.

He meets these participants right where they are and builds community through art.

<Keith Tolen> They want to create, they want to have fun, even if it requires pushing themselves just a little bit.

<Caroline Gwinn> We have a broad range of classes that we offer as well.

We believe that everyone has the gift of art.

♪ We have a youth orchestra here and it really fill the need for strings instruction in our area.

♪ It's a program that's grown.

It's grown from one youth orchestra to an ensemble.

♪ At the end of the day, it's about relationships and it's about building community through the arts.

♪ I work alongside an incredible staff, and board of directors, and teaching artists and all of the artists here.

I mean, it is personal.

It means a lot because we really believe in the transformational power of the arts.

So the arts is the vehicle but the real win is sharing perspectives, learning from one another and growing as individuals and growing together and building community.

♪ <David Platts> Congratulations to Aiken Center for the Arts, the organization recipient of the 2023 governor's Arts Award.

Born and raised in Lexington County, Ray McManus is ever present in poetry initiatives across the state.

He serves as the writer in residence at the Columbia Museum of Art.

He founded a creative writing program that connects writers with schools and communities across South Carolina, and he directed a creative writing program at a school district consortium here near Columbia.

Ray is the author of four collections of poetry with a fifth scheduled for publishing in 2024.

His poems and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies of Southern and Irish American writers.

He earned his graduate degrees from the University of South Carolina, and is now an English professor at U.S.C.

Sumter, where he teaches creative writing, Irish literature and Southern literature and leads academic departments.

<Hobart Trotter> I'm honored to be able to read one of Ray McManus's poems from the book Punch , which is really about work, and what it means to be working individual.

Houses are set in rows like teeth with yellowed veneers, and the men wake up to clean their yards while their wives pier, three bent slats and blinds to make sure they stay on task.

and they never do.

It's not hard to stare at people who don't live here.

Their young fingers tapping on the dash as they pass through to turn around.

But the men know that the best way to avoid seeing dead birds in a nest is by ignoring them.

Behind the neighborhood trees pushed back and mowers, and the men recognize the tune as a song they've heard since birth.

Their bodies brown from the sun, bent forward, not listening.

I'm a friend of Ray McManus by accident, which is the best way to meet people, I believe.

But, let me first congratulate you Ray, on this accomplishment winning the Governor's Award for the Arts, very well deserved.

If anyone listening here has not had the opportunity or the pleasure read Ray's work, they should do that as quickly as possible because it's good, honest work, and it is, it is exemplary of Ray and who he is, smart young man that, you know, like so many other people in this state and people we know that are very talented individuals, but they don't get a chance to show their talent, and his talent came by accident.

He found that talent by accident through his high school.

And I love the way that you inspire kids as you traveled the state and teach them about poetry and writing, what it means to them, and I think they find you to be a very honest person in that because you're a lot like many of them.

You're not, you know, some highfalutin guy that's coming in with a lot of poetry and a lot grandiose ideas.

You're the guy that grew up in sticks like they did.

So it's something they can relate to and see.

Ray, congratulations on winning the South Carolina Governor's Award for the Arts.

♪ <Ray McManus> Blessing is the light on the solitary highway.

Blessed are the sideways glances.

Blessing is the stretch and the drop of hammer the thumping of tread and the beating of rain.

Blessing is the thunder over smokestack steeples.

Blessing as a diesel blessing as a choke blessing is the body bitten rags.

Blessed is the mud flap center.

Blessing is the rip in the back of the seat, blessing is the stretch, a drop of hammer the ribbon of heat that slips under the valley.

Blessing is the road for the weary traveler.

Blessed is the head coming down.

Yeah, I grew up in rural Lexington County.

Somehow through the grace of God and daring myself, I found my way over to the University of South Carolina and, honestly, that's where things started to really blossom.

And, you know, nobody gets anywhere in this life by themselves and going off to college, I'm with all these people from around the country, from around the world.

They turned me on to so many poets that I had never read before that, that just blew me away.

The journey was unorthodox.

You know, a kid getting in trouble and stealing a book of poetry, somehow finding his way off to college, and somehow finding his way to meet you know, people that could be very influential and for them to take the time and really the graciousness to be able to give me a shot.

So what I really love about Ray as a poet, is that he is raw, he's irreverent, but at the same time, he's like, deeply respectful, of place of where he came from, the arts, of being a human.

I really love how he can connect with people who maybe don't even see themselves as poetry lovers.

As arts lovers, he can connect with the universal in that sense.

<Ray> When I first got into poetry, one of the sort of factors that grabbed me were the beat writers.

I loved just the free range that they would explore spaces with.

But for me, honestly, women poets were always the ones that were just just bad asses.

You know, whether it's Eavan Boland or Sharon Olds, or Carolyn Forshe, or Naomi Shihab Nye, there's just something about their work that just draws me in, and I think that's the beauty of poetry, right?

I mean, it's like music.

We can't always articulate why we like it.

But it speaks to us, it draws us in, I think, you know, that's something I talk a lot with my students about with poetry.

I think what happens, if we only look at it just to try to determine the meaning, then poetry is just a riddle, and if I get it, then I like it.

And if I don't get it, I don't want anything to do with it, right?

And I will ask students inevitably, you know, "Raise your hand if you like poetry."

Nobody raises their hand.

By the end of the semester, "How many of y'all like poetry?"

And they'll all raise their hand, and I think one of the ways is getting them to see that, you know, it's a little bit of both.

I mean, it is finding a meaning, not the meaning.

<Hobart> Ray is the real deal.

He lived what he writes, he understands what he writes, and it comes from deep inside of him, it's not something that's surface or that you can just throw away.

<Joelle> He is not afraid to explore those things that can make you vulnerable as a human, and I think as a mother of a teen son, I like that he can speak around the around masculinity, about what it means to be a man in the New South, and I think that's a really beautiful, simple, raw story, and I think it really resonates with a lot of people.

<Ray> I think about people that weren't necessarily drawn to poetry and hoping that maybe this story or this poem could do that, and sometimes, I don't know, maybe I'm writing to God.

I mean, you know, I have no idea.

There's nobody there to respond.

So it's almost like writing, writing, I mean, I could be writing poems and stick them in a bottle and throw them out in the ocean, see what happens.

But I do try to think of just those everyday people that I think, you know, are walking this earth, and they have not been touched by poetry because they don't think they can be touched by poetry, and if I could somehow convince them that they could, and somehow that was my poem that did it, I can't think of a greater compliment, honestly.

<David> Congratulations to this year's 2023 Governor's Award recipient in the artist category, Ray McManus.

In 1968, a clear warning came stating that American artisans in the traditional building arts were aging out of the job market, and no new generation was being trained to create, restore and preserve American architectural treasures.

With the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, owners of historic Lowcountry properties were forced to find artisans from Europe who could repair damage and restore structures.

All of these real world implications led a group of Charleston's preservation leaders to establish the American College of the Building Arts in 2003 as a unique higher education experience.

The college is the first to combine Old World apprenticeship training with a liberal arts core curriculum.

Students graduate with an understanding of both the creative process and business management, and have contributed to restoration or creation from the Lowcountry to the Oval Office.

<Will> I feel very honored to be a part of such a creative community.

Everyone who comes here loves to make, and it's fascinating to walk down the halls and to see something new go up, or to see a new piece of work being displayed.

My personal practice as an artist, as an artisan, has really evolved and has been really affected by the American College of Building Arts.

When I came here, I was a carpenter, just, you know, I was a wood monkey, just wanted to cut, build, cut, build, and one of the things that I was exposed to at the school is how the process of thinking and critical thinking, design and critique and revisions and design development transform what we make, and how what we make, at the end of the day, matters.

Before I came to ACBA, you know, I could read the plans.

I could do what the plan said.

But I had a fundamental gap of understanding where the plans are the creation, like they're the inception of the idea, and through ACBA, taught me to be a draftsman, taught me to be a creator, taught me to be someone who initiates the design.

There's so much creative energy in the building, that it is infectious.

And I want to congratulate all the professors and people who built this college.

Congratulations, you built a special thing.

♪ <Will> I kind of liken this college a lot of times to like an elite forces training center.

I mean, we are training our graduates with the skills and the abilities to do truly unique and amazing things in the building art space, in the construction space.

Any freshman that comes in, and what I really want to tell them about the college, is that it's all here.

The library is upstairs, you know, your professors have experiences that can totally change and transform your life, but you have to show up and put in the hard work and do it.

And if you do that, like, oh, man, you can go and do amazing things.

♪ <Dr.

Angela> So here, the students not only get a four year liberal arts education, they are trained in CAD, their drawing skills, there's an amazing teacher who's doing portrait painting with them.

And they're exposed to everything with the classical architecture, and then they get hand skills, they get bench experience, and you're not going to get that anywhere else.

Yes, you can get things that are mass manufactured.

But it's the heart-hand connection that really makes a place special, and I think people pick up on that.

They may not be able to articulate how they feel when they walk into a building that they've actually had craftsmen working and putting their energy into the space, but they feel it, and that's why these places are important.

I feel so honored and privileged, oh, I'm gonna get teary now, to be here to share with them something that has touched me so radically in my life and has basically formed the trajectory for my entire life, and to see the passion they have that they bring to the table.

I can come here at all hours of the school.

I could come here at four o'clock in the morning and find some student working on a capstone project.

(tapping sound) <Joseph> What we're doing here in Charleston is more related to stone restoration, stone repair, specifically, the ornament because there are fewer people that do that kind of work.

When it comes to brickwork and masonry construction, there's a broader field, but we're lacking in this country in terms of architectural sculpture, whether it's new or repairing the old.

In this trade, such an old trade, you're always worried about it dying out.

The people that taught me had just completed Liverpool Cathedral in England, and they thought they were going to be the last stone carvers.

We were working on a cathedral in New York City and we thought that would be it for us once that cathedral was completed.

But as it turns out, there's a bit of a building boom now in stone.

All these old quarries have opened up.

Technology is now making it possible to extract the stone from the ground in a way that we couldn't do before.

It's very encouraging to see that it can still be done and that there are young people that want to do it.

A lot of people, I run into this a lot, where they'll look at an old building and they'll say, "Well, you can't do that anymore, We just can't make these kinds of buildings."

Well, that's not true, and I can show you freshman work here that I would put on a building right now, people that have only been carving for a few months.

So when you have years under your belt, then you're really contributing to keeping this old tradition alive and keeping these buildings intact.

♪ <David> Arts in Education 2023 Governor's Award recipient, the American College of the Building Arts.

Congratulations!

It is fair to say that few things have altered the cultural landscape in South Carolina to the extent of Spoleto Festival USA.

Each year, visitors from around the world flock to Charleston to enjoy its many delights.

Helping take the festival to soaring heights was Nigel Redden, who retired as the festival's general director in 2021 after serving in that role for a total of 31 years since 1986.

Redden has management experience with festivals and arts organizations across the country, and was director of the National Endowment for the Arts' Dance program for five years before coming to Charleston.

He is president of the Spaulding-Paolozzi Foundation and serves on the board of South Arts.

In 2001, he was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, and was promoted to Commandeur in 2019 by the Republic of France.

He has received honorary doctorates from the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina, though he resides outside the state.

Currently, he is leading the project that will honor 36 Africans buried in the late 18th century, whose bodies were disinterred during renovations of the Charleston Gaillard Center.

<Joel> When I met him, the festival was in distress, and I was among several business people who were very concerned that it might fail.

And it would be bad for the festival, but it would also be bad for the state and bad for Charleston if we were to allow it to fail.

So we were committed to saving it.

But we needed Nigel to make it work, and he was incredible in that regard and never seemed to panic over what was going on and always seemed to have the confidence that we could pull it out, and we did, and it slowly got better, and we took care of all the things that had caused the problems, and then he just continued year after year to produce a remarkable festival.

It's hard for me to imagine the circumstance where the festival could have survived and experienced such prosperity, were it not for Nigel.

His unique talents and knowledge about the festival, about the arts, and about Charleston and the whole environment which, without that, I'm not sure we would have made it.

<Nigel> I was t he child of a Foreign Service officer, and so we moved around a lot when I was young.

My early memories are living in England, where we moved when I was four, and we left there to come to the States when I was nine, but when I was 12, we moved to Naples and subsequently, to Rome, and that, basically, was the formative period of my childhood.

I went to high school in Rome.

I came back to the United States to go to college, and while I was in college, I took Italian just to keep my Italian going, and after my freshman year, the teacher, my Italian teacher, asked if any of those of us, and there were only two in that class, would be interested in volunteering to work at the Spoleto Festival in Spoleto, Italy and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.

And I thought this would be terrific.

So I started working at the festival in Italy in 1969.

I was there for five years, and by the time I was 20, which was after my third summer in Spoleto, I decided I wanted to be the American manager of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto.

It was almost 19 years after the festival had been started in Spoleto, Italy, a festival began here.

And again, I heard about it and knew that this was something that I would love to get involved with.

I left Spoleto and became the general manager of an opera festival in Santa Fe, and I missed the variety.

I mean, I love opera, but I also love dance.

I also love theater.

I also love the opportunity to do things that are based in a particular place with such a history as Charleston.

When artists comment on society, they comment on their own lives, they comment on the lives of others, and when we can hear those comments, and when we can absorb those comments, I think that we appreciate life just a little bit more.

I mean, they're thinking about their own humanity.

And by extension, they allow us to think about our own humanity.

And sometimes what they say offends some people, and it will.

I became involved with the Anson Burial, which is now called the Anson African Burial Memorial, when I realized that I had walked past the place where 36 people of African extraction had been buried after their bodies had been found during the renovation of the gaillard.

The bodies were reinterred halfway between the Spoleto office and the entrance to the gaillard, and I'd walked past it pretty often, and had not noticed the plaque on the ground.

And the plaque says, "This is going to be temporary."

So I talked to the mayor, and he convened a group of, I think, 20 to 24 people to discuss what should be put there, and Stephen Hayes came up with the idea of having hands that extend beyond a fountain, represent each of the 36 people who are buried, and so 36 pairs of hands would be cast from people whose age, gender, and ethnicity matched that of the bodies that were discovered.

I think when the arts are most important is when we sort of assess ourselves, which doesn't mean that there aren't other wildly important parts of our lives.

But I do believe that the arts have this singular possibility of making us see ourselves differently, and making us think.

♪ <David> Congratulations to Nigel Redden, a recipient of a special award in this year's Governor's Award for the Arts.

♪ We salute all the parties whose contributions and achievements have earned them the South Carolina Governor's Awards for the Arts in 2023.

♪ Mrs. McMaster, it is always a pleasure hosting this with you.

Thank you for helping introduce this impressive group of artists and advocates from across our state, and thanks to you and Governor McMaster for your hospitality hosting us as we celebrate the artistic achievements and contributions of our fellow South Carolinians.

<Mrs.

McMaster> You're quite welcome, David.

It was an honor to host this wonderful ceremony for another year.

A big thank you to our viewers for joining us to celebrate, and congratulations again to our recipients.

<David> Indeed, and to each of them, we're grateful, and thank you for your many contributions to the arts, creativity, and traditions that serve our communities and state so well.

We hope you enjoyed the documentaries and surprise testimonials, and that this ceremony shows you our appreciation for your many accomplishments.

As we conclude, it was Pablo Picasso who once observed, "Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life."

This year's award recipients exemplified this washing away of everyday dust, helping to make our state more vibrant, more beautiful, more alive for all South Carolinians, and for those fortunate enough to visit.

And to our audience, we appreciate you joining us for this special event.

The South Carolina Arts Commission and the University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum are already anticipating another exceptional group of artists and art supporters next year.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ <Narrator> Brought to you in part by The South Carolina Arts Commission and by viewers like you.

Thank you.