South Carolina Arts Commission promotes state's artistic legacy

South Carolinians are proud of their cultural heritage, and they have every right to be. In all of the principal categories of the arts - the literary, the performing and the visual - natives of our state have left their mark. In the literary arts, South Carolina can lay claim to 19th-century novelist William Gilmore Simms, 20th-century poet and playwright Dubose Heyward and contemporary author Pat Conroy. In the visual arts, one of the most important painters and print makers of the modern world - Jasper Johns - grew up in our state. The performing arts have also been enriched by the contributions of South Carolinians, including singer Eartha Kitt, jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, actress Mary-Louise Parker and celebrated film director Stanley Donen. The list in all three categories goes on and on.

Thus, when Congress passed the law that led to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, South Carolina naturally accepted the challenge of surveying the state of the arts within our border. To that end, Robert E. McNair, who was governor at the time, held the first statewide conference on the arts, attended by more than 250 citizens representing 30 different communities. That groundbreaking assembly recommended the establishment of a permanent state arts commission with the goal, according to McNair, of "enhancing our state in the eyes of others looking for good places to live and to do business."

In June of 1967, McNair signed into law the act that created the South Carolina Arts Commission. The law itself pledged that our state government would "join with private patrons and with institutions and professional organizations concerned with the arts to ensure that the arts will continue to grow and play an ever more significant part in the welfare and educational experiences of our citizens."

In the more than 40 years since that time, the SCAC has worked tirelessly to meet its exalted mission. During its first decade, for example, the Commission established the State Art Collection to serve as a representative sampling of the "best work of the state's contemporary artists." Now numbering 448 pieces by 227 artists, the Collection includes several works by local artists: two mixed media drawings by Aiken native Michael Tice, one oil painting by North Augusta artist Edward Rice and one painting by USCA professor Albin Beyer. All the works in the collection are regularly loaned out to the state's art museums and other nonprofit entities for the purpose of public display.

The Commission is also a granting agency, making awards each year to individual artists and arts organizations across the state. Emerging writers, for example, are eligible to compete for the biennial First Novel Prize; organizations, such as the South Carolina Theater Association, whose membership includes professional, community and school theater organizations, get some of their regular operating funds from the Commission.

With the help of SCAC, major arts initiatives have been launched, including Spoleto USA, the annual international celebration of the arts held in Charleston each year since 1977. Through its Craft Development Program, the Commission has been instrumental in helping to preserve such indigenous craft traditions as Catawba pottery and African-American sweet grass basketry. Through its ambitious Arts in Education programming, the SCAC has made it possible for children in public and private schools across the state to interact with artists and poets in residence on their campuses.

During my nearly 40 years in Aiken, the Commission has consistently supported the arts in our community. Many events in the Etherredge Center, for example, have directly benefited from SCAC funding. I can remember a particularly successful 1986 residency by Dan Waggoner and Dancers - the modern dance group performed on the main stage, visited local public schools and offered a master class to local dance students. Only last spring, the SCAC provided financial support for the induction of Sue Monk Kidd, Percival Everett and Gamel Woolsey into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the state's literary hall of fame. That gala event was held in the Etherredge Center lobby.

In short, the work of the SCAC has had a major impact on the lives of the citizens of our city, our state and beyond. The literary, visual and performing arts contribute in so many ways to the health of our society, and in so far as the Commission supports the creativity of our citizens, everyone benefits. One can cite, in this regard, a 2002 USC School of Business study which estimated that the arts in South Carolina directly and indirectly supported 700 million dollars in wages and salaries, 30,000 jobs, and added nearly $2 billion to our state's economy.

In the final analysis, however, it is impossible to put a price tag on how much the arts enhance the quality of life of all South Carolinians. Life without the arts is unimaginable to me, and that is why I take comfort in the fact that I live in a state which, through the work of its Arts Commission, acknowledges the fact that the arts are an essential part of the human condition.

A Carolina Trustee Professor, Dr. Mack holds the first G.L. Toole Chair at the University of South Carolina Aiken.