It's been a busy, cold and sick week or so for me so I can't offer any great stories today. (Other than the fact that my windows are open and I've stopped coughing.)
I will have a big piece about the recession and the arts in Free Times this week, so I haven't been goofing off.
In the meantime, here's a little news.
Bud Ferillo of Columbia (who also happens to be chairman of the S.C. Arts Commission and a long-time arts supporter) just won the Harvey Gantt Triumph Award. The award is named for the man who became the first black student at Clemson University.
Ferillo is the first white person to win the award, which has been given for 25 years. Ferillo was mainly recognized for his work on the documentary "Corridor of Shame" that shows the pathetic condition of eduction for many children, most of them black, in South Carolina.
Ferillo is a native of Charleston and spend some of his younger years working on Civil Right issues throughout the South. He served in state government and for a number of years has run a marking and public relations firm. He's also running Steve Morrison's campaign for mayor of Columbia.
Dewey Scott-Wiley just finished directing "Rent" at Trustus and has several other plays under her guidance there soon.
But right now, she's leading her USC-Aiken students in taking "The Clean House" to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for this region. The quirky comedy by Sarah Ruhl is one of four works selected from about 200 and will be performed early next month at Middle Tennessee State University.
The theater is warming up and raising money for Tennessee by doing the play at USC Aiken Jan. 19 and 20 at 7:30 p.m. $5.Call (803) 641-3305.
The Factor Prize, administered by the Gibbes Museum of Art, bestows on some lucky, good and young artist from the Southeast a whopping $10,000.
The deadline for this year's award has been extended from the end of January to the end of February.at www.factorprize.org
The winners will be selected by a panel last including last year's winner the photographer Stephen Marc. The award was created by Elizabeth Factor, an attorney who was on the board of the Drawing Center and on the Whitney’s Photography Committee, and Mallory Factor, a banker who serves on the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American Theatre Wing boards.
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That's a well-deserved honor for Bud Ferillo...BTW, as somebody who grew up in Charlotte, I feel it's worth mentioning that Harvey Gantt not only had that distinction vis-a-vis Clemson, but that he was the first African-American mayor elected in a major city with a majority-white population, that is to say, Charlotte...and that was over a quarter-century ago. And spinning it back to the cultural realm, the Harvey Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture just opened in Charlotte last fall, and from the outside at least it looks like a pretty nifty addition to the architectural landscape of uptown Charlotte:
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