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Our Mission
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide an environment for art practice and exhibition, to encourage, educate, and advance creativity and art appreciation.
The center will provide spaces to create and experience art. We seek
emerging and established artists and offers low-cost shared spaces and
traditional studios.
As a creative center focused on the production of work and displaying
contemporary art for the community, we will also offer cultural
programming, including a variety of public that embrace a range of
activities.
We seek to be a cultural influence for enhanced residential, economic,
and cultural life. We are close to the city center and the USC campus, a
prime location to offer extraordinary cultural events to the wider
community.
Honored to have a write-up in
Honored to have a write-up in
Article on the growing interest!
Article on the growing interest!
Our Story
Our Story
Gemini Arts is a local center for artistic endeavor where makers engage with each other and the public. Our environment provides spaces to create and experience contemporary and experimental art while allowing various groups and artists to interact.
Inclusive in our efforts to attract and encourage young and emerging creative artists alongside more established individuals, Gemini Arts offers low cost and shared spaces as well as traditional personal studios. Our space contains both these working artist studios and exhibition or multiuse spaces.
We offer art and cultural programming, including changing exhibitions and a variety of free or low-cost public events. These events include performances, workshops, and classes that embrace photography, painting, sculpture, theater, dance and music.
Gemini Arts seeks to be an influence towards a diverse new vision for residential, economic, and cultural life. Our center is minutes from the city center and the University of South Carolina campus, placing it in a prime location to offer extraordinary exhibitions and collaborative, artistic events to Columbia-area residents, students, and visitors.
ORGANIZING STRUCTURE
We are a 501c3 non-profit tax-exempt corporation and will be organized as an artists’ co-op, resident artists and volunteers, will act as staff for Gemini Arts under the direction of the Board of Directors. A few contractors will be employed for certain tasks as needed. Gemini Arts is financially supported by its rental of spaces and other diverse sources including the City of Columbia, businesses, foundations and private individuals through donations and grants.
BACKGROUND
A vision of Columbia artist Ron Hagell, Gemini Arts was an outgrowth of the scarcity of studios as well as the costs and availability in the Midlands. In 2022, Hagell was approached by developer Richard Burts, who had assisted artists who lost their facilities in the downtown Tapp’s Arts Center, as well as being the driving force behind the restoration of 701 Whaley Street. Burts and Hagell saw similar possibilities in the 2847 Commerce Drive location for Gemini Arts. The space, empty for decades, presented an excellent blank canvas for an arts center in a location where no such cultural activity has existed.
After contact with Hagell, a deal was arranged with Burts to design and renovate the space together with prospective artists to create an environment dedicated to local current art and artists, resulting in the creation of a gallery and artists’ workspaces.
Open now in the Rosewood community, Gemini Arts seeks to broaden the boundaries of Columbia’s arts districts into the heart of this community. This eclectic area expands with this new and diverse venue reflecting the ongoing revitalization of the surrounding region.
EXHIBITIONS
Gemini Arts is dedicated to regularly changing exhibitions of contemporary and experimental art, with co-op artists, together with a variety of invited exhibitions, being shown in exhibit areas of over 3,000 square-feet.
Gemini Arts is dedicated to regularly changing exhibitions of contemporary and experimental art, with co-op artists, together with a variety of invited exhibitions, being shown in exhibit areas of over 3,000 square-feet.
EVENTS
EVENTS
Gemini Arts plans to contributes to the local art scene by offering educational, experimental, and interdisciplinary cultural activities across the spectrum of visual arts as well as theater and dance in our multiuse venue.
Gemini Arts plans to contributes to the local art scene by offering educational, experimental, and interdisciplinary cultural activities across the spectrum of visual arts as well as theater and dance in our multiuse venue.
WORKSHOPS
WORKSHOPS
Gemini Arts will also offer educational programs for adults and children, including workshops, lectures, open studios and more. We also intending to offer children’s summer programs by resident artists.
Gemini Arts will also offer educational programs for adults and children, including workshops, lectures, open studios and more. We also intending to offer children’s summer programs by resident artists.
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
Gemini Arts will eventually include an artist in residence program that will encourage several artists to focus on their work for a sustained time and with adequate resources by offering a program in a private studio, where artists can concentrate fully on creating and exhibiting during the residency.
Gemini Arts will eventually include an artist in residence program that will encourage several artists to focus on their work for a sustained time and with adequate resources by offering a program in a private studio, where artists can concentrate fully on creating and exhibiting during the residency.
Photo Gallery of Gemini Arts during construction
Meet the Board of Directors
Ron Hagell
Ron Hagell
CEO
Shirley Smith
Shirley Smith
Secretary/Treasurer
With a career in education spanning more than 40 years, Shirley Smith has been an elementary and middle school teacher as well as a university undergraduate and graduate instructor.
She has led curriculum reform efforts at the state and national levels and created and produced digital resources including online courses, distance learning STEM resources, video modules, and virtual field trips used globally.
Currently, she is an independent contractor advising schools how to improve teaching and learning using brain-based research.
She has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of South Carolina and is the author of Navigating the Labyrinth: Teacher Empowerment Through Instructional Leadership (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).
Rosie Craig
Rosie Craig
Board Member
Rosemarie MacFarlane Craig is a Columbia, SC, award winning historic preservationist developer and the retired CEO of the nationally acclaimed furniture manufacturer M. Craig & Company.
She is a two-time recipient of Historic Columbia Foundation Awards, including the Adaptive Reuse Award in 2001 for the DuPre Building, and the Historic Foundation Leadership Award in 2014. Rosie is responsible for saving or reusing more than 700,000 square feet of historic properties throughout the city (including The Palmetto Building, Main Street, Columbia’s Police Headquarters, Justice Square, The DuPre Building, and the Palmetto Compress Warehouse.) She has managed and operated R. MacFarlane Craig Historic Properties as CEO since 1993.
As a founding member, current board member, and three-time president of the Congaree Vista Guild, a cultural arts district, Rosie has been a leader in the Vista Historic Warehouse District for forty years. The Vista has become a driving economic force in South Carolina, responsible for a billion dollars in new investments. It was during this time that she honed her skills working directly with city, county, and state government and elected officials.
In 1995, Rosemarie was instrumental in facilitating the thirty-million-dollar Gervais Street improvement from Assembly Street to Huger Street. This sizeable improvement kicked off an unprecedented wave of development in Columbia.
As president/CEO of M Craig Cabinetmakers established by Charles Michael Craig in 1973, Rosemarie proved her business savvy with marketing skills throughout its longstanding success. Through her guidance, the nationally acclaimed company was represented in ten major market designer showrooms, in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Beverly Hills, Denver, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Seattle, and Charleston.
M Craig Cabinetmakers enjoyed the patronage of countless successful and notable American personalities and icons including Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), Warner Brothers (the movie "Dave"), Warren Buffett, Trump Plaza, and Michael Bolton. The company had the honor of building the South Carolina Senate and House of Representatives desks as well as furniture for the South Carolina Governor’s Mansion showcasing custom built in cabinetry along with several original designs. All while enjoying extraordinary media generosity in multiple design magazines and masthead advertising in Architectural Digest and Veranda.
Rosemarie previously served as chair of the Columbia Tree & Appearance Committee; as a member of the Columbia Hospitality Tax Committee; as a committee member of Richland County District II Enrichment Programs; and recently, as board chair of the Midlands Art Conservatory. Throughout her altruistic career, Rosemarie has enthusiastically supported local artists and nonprofits, and she is glad to be an acting member of the Gemini Arts Collective and board.
Melanie Baker
Melanie Baker
Board Member
Melanie W. Baker is a retired community health nurse. She received a Master’s degree in Community Health Nursing from the University of South Carolina. She worked for many years in continuing education for nurses and also in the area of HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention with the University of South Carolina School of Public Health, the US Department of Defense, and NIOSH (a division of CDC) before retiring.
During her position with the USC School of Public Health she was published twice. Since retiring she has served on many local boards (McKissick Museum, Jewish Family Services, Habitat for Humanity, Auntie Karen Foundation,
and Our Place of Hope) and has been an active community volunteer with The Friendship. In her spare time she enjoys being a grandmother, playing Mahjong, exercising and practicing yoga, traveling, and reading.
Kate Heald
Kate Heald
Board Member
Kate Heald is a Columbia native whose education includes a degree in Sociology from USC. A scientist with an understanding of the importance of creativity, Kate has worked with nonprofit organizations for years because she sees in them the bedrock of the community they serve. She sees nonprofit arts organizations acting as catalysts for the evolution of new art forms, something she supports as a board member and artist at Gemini Arts. Kate is glad to contribute to the support Gemini offers to the personal and professional growth of emerging and established artists by providing them appropriate work spaces and community, a community that begins within Gemini and extends to Columbia’s Rosewood neighborhood and beyond.
Richard Burts
Richard Burts
Building Owner
Richard was born and raised in Columbia, SC, where he attended A.C. Flora High School. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1987 with a degree in economics. He is a former 6-time restaurateur in the historic Five Points neighborhood, and since 1986, has been a real estate developer pursuing his passion of adaptive reuse of historic and abandoned buildings.
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