New exhibit at APSU provides social commentary on southern landscape and lifestyle

Clarksville, TN – The Austin Peay State University Trahern Gallery, with support from the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the APSU Department of Art and Design, is pleased to present “Southlandia”, a body of work by nationally recognized printmaker Andrew Blanchard.

The exhibit opens February 22nd at the gallery and runs through March 18th.

A lunchtime lecture by the artist will take place in the Trahern Gallery at 12:30pm on Monday, February 22nd, with a reception to immediately follow.

With his current body of print-works on mounted wood panels, Blanchard is reinterpreting various places on the periphery of many Southern towns and cities. Ideas of blurred urban and rural county lines, as well as backyard familial issues, all grace the compositions in a tongue and cheek manner. Additional thematic interests are incorporated into the visuals, including socio-economics, race relations, literary references and environmental planning.

Blanchard was born in the wild swamps of Louisiana, and raised in Waveland, a small beach community on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Like most boys who grew up near a beach, he fished and swam until the ring of the dinner bell. Blanchard earned a BA degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2000 and in 2004 an MFA degree from the University of Mississippi.

Blanchard’s prints have been collected throughout the United States, as well as in Hawaii, France, Bulgaria, South Korea and the United Kingdom. His mixed-process prints on wood and paper have been included in more than 100 national and international juried printmaking exhibitions.

Recently, several of his prints were included in Schiffer Publishing’s “Printmakers Today,” the 2011 Southern Edition of New American Paintings magazine and the Oxford American magazine, which named him one of the “New Superstars of Southern Art.” His work will be featured in the International Painting Annual No.4, published by Manifest Creative Research Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Blanchard is currently the director of studio art and an associate professor of printmaking and photography at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His work is represented by Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi, and M Contemporary Gallery in New Orleans.

For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Michael Dickins, gallery director, at dickinsm@apsu.edu