The Koger Center Project Winners’ Exhibition

About This Show

The Koger Center Project Winners’ Exhibition is an upcoming group exhibit in the Gallery at the Koger Center. The exhibit features the winning artists from our 2025 call for art sponsored by the Koger Center: Kate Timbes, Lori Isom, Anna Schumann Byars, Colleen Cannon-Karlos, Max Hardy, and Wilma King.

This opening reception coincides with Third Thursday Art Night featuring Ginny Merett.

About the Artists

Kate Timbes (1st Place) is a South Carolina based interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the narrative and functions of materiality.  Working primarily in painting, video, and sculpture, she weaves mediums together, carrying objects, paintings, seeds, weavings, and sculptural handmade paper through physical, emotional, and digital landscapes. Timbes contemplates sourcing of resources, rethinking use as an individual effort to engage in a curious ecological practice. Timbes has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Richardson Family Art Gallery, Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, the Spartanburg Public Library, and the DIS Student Hub in Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition to her studio practice, Timbes teaches papermaking workshops that have been supported by the Tri-State Sculptors Association and Wofford College. Timbes received her BA in Studio Art from Wofford College in 2023.

Lori Isom (2nd Place) Artist Statement: It is fair to say that my life has been quite varied as an artist, and all around creative person. Years of my life were dedicated to working as a professional dancer, singer and actress in New York and Los Angeles, and I’ve had several interesting and fun entrepreneurial pursuits along the way, including owning and operating my own baking business! I am predominantly a self-taught artist, however, I studied illustration in high school, and later fine art and fashion design at Parsons School of Design. I would say that I walk the line between illustrator and fine artist. While I work to tell a story with my art, I also produce paintings that primarily express a particular emotion. Artists like Mary Cassatt, Andrew Wyeth, and John Singer Sargent were ones who greatly influenced my work early on. I suppose that’s how I came to love capturing people.

Anna Byars (Honorable Mention) is an artist based in Columbia, South Carolina. Anna grew up in Lexington, South Carolina, and received a BA in Studio Art and Art History at the College of Charleston. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Southern Graphics Conference, Sawtooth Visual Arts Gallery, and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Anna primarily focuses in printmaking and is currently exploring the idea of transcendence within her work.

Colleen Cannon-Karlos (Honorable Mention) was born in Los Angeles, raised in New York City, and currently resides in Columbia, SC after living in Hawaii for 20 years. Over the years she has worked in a variety of mediums including painting, drawing, photography and ceramics. Conceptually her work is based on quantum physics and ancient metaphysics exploring the illusive abstract nature of reality. Inspiration for her work includes indigenous African, Native American, Asian and Polynesian art forms.

Max Hardy (Honorable Mention) Artist Statement: I’ve always loved to draw and paint and make things and have done so since I can remember. When I was in high school I took a few art classes but other than that I’m self- taught. Lately my paintings have been sculptural and deal with illusion in some way. My process is quite slow with visual art; I only produce a handful of pieces a year.

Wilma King (Honorable Mention) endeavors to combine her experiences of living in 11 states (including Alaska) with her educational background into a visual storytelling collaboration through her painting. Her pursuit and passion goes beyond a daily practice of technique and development. She believes that universality — seeking common ground — is what makes art purposeful. She taught public relations, communication studies, advertising design, publication design, and photography for more than 30 years in American universities in Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina, and taught Study abroad courses in Italy several years. She was an associate professor of Public Relations at both Western Kentucky University (Bowling Green, KY) and Rochester Institute of Technology (Henrietta, NY), and served on faculty at Benedict College (Columbia,  SC), where she wrote the curriculum for, and taught the first courses in the college’s now defunct commercial art program; O’More College of Design (Franklin, TN); Texas Southern University (Houston, TX); The Art Institute of Houston (Houston, TX).