Florence County – Page 3 – Building a better South

ArtFields, a new annual arts festival in rural Lake City, S.C.

You don’t expect to find a world-class art gallery in Lake City, a rural South Carolina community in the Southern Crescent between Kingstree and Florence.

The Center for a Better South’s Andy Brack wrote about Lake City last week in the online magazine Charleston Currents:

“But that’s just what you can experience thanks to millions of dollars being pumped into the community by native daughter and financier Darla Moore. There’s a lot of redevelopment — even a boutique hotel being built downtown — and an annual art festival, ArtFields, that has $100,000 in cash prizes to draw attention to the area and promote opportunities.

We stumbled upon the Jones-Carter Gallery last week in a visit to the Pee Dee and were blown away. Right now, the gallery is showcasing the work of modern painter William H. Johnson (1901-1970), an African-American master born in Florence. He moved to New York City when he was 17 and saved money to pay for classes at the National Academy of Design. He enjoyed some success with his modern paintings with folk influences, but by middle age, he wasn’t able to sustain himself through art. He reportedly stopped painting in 1956 and lived in a state hospital for the last 23 years of his life.

Johnson’s art — more than 1,000 pieces — almost was thrown away, but was rescued by friends and later given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service honored Johnson’s talent by issuing a postage stamp in recognition of being one of the country’s most important African-American artists.

The exhibit in Lake City is worth the trip. Developed by Morgan State University and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, it offers oils, woodcuts, watercolors and more that dazzle.

But what’s more interesting is the fact that this gallery is in Lake City, home to about 6,500 people, about a third of whom live below the federal poverty line. Like Charleston Place was a linchpin of an economic resurgence in Charleston, the gallery, which was a hardware and grocery store in a previous life, and the hotel under construction may become a similar lure. According to a brochure, the gallery “is convenient to contemporary shops, clothiers, antique stores and several restaurants.”

A dozen years ago, few would have conceived as Lake City as a “destination,” but it’s worth seeing what’s happening in this small Pee Dee town.

Lake City is in the Pee Dee’s Florence County near Interstate 95 in northeast South Carolina. One in five people in Lake City, population 6,715, is white, while some 77.5 percent of residents are black. The city’s poverty rate is more than 32 percent, according to the U.S. Census. The high poverty rate is a testament to Lake City’s rural nature since its home county, supported by the regional city of Florence, has a 19.4 percent poverty rate.

Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.

You don’t have to drive too far in the rural Southern tobacco belt to find an old tobacco barn like this one in the middle of a field west of Lake City, S.C.

As photographer Linda W. Brown notes, “It’s interesting to see these old barns that once, at this time of year, would have been surrounded by ripening tobacco and now are not. ‘Forlorn’ is a good adjective to describe it.”

Tobacco once ruled farming in many parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky because it was a high-price cash crop. But the production and sale of tobacco in the South has changed dramatically over the last 30 years in the South. Tobacco auctions, quotas and government price supports dominated prior to 2004 when reforms eliminated government intervention into the market and allowed growers to produce as much as they wanted [Learn more]. These days, auctions are rare — with only one in South Carolina according to this story — and growers enter into direct contracts with buyers.

Lake City, which recently started an annual arts festival to inject new life into its community, is in the Pee Dee’s Florence County near Interstate 95 in northeast South Carolina. One in five people in Lake City, population 6,715, is white, while some 77.5 percent of residents are black. The city’s poverty rate is more than 32 percent, according to the U.S. Census. The high poverty rate is a testament to Lake City’s rural nature since its home county, supported by the regional city of Florence, has a 19.4 percent poverty rate.

Tag: Florence County

ArtFields, Lake City, S.C.

Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C.