Third Thursday Art Night: Virginia Russo

About This Show

As a member of the Vista Guild, the Koger Center for the Arts partnered with The Jasper Project to open a new rotating art space, titled The Nook, in celebration of Third Thursday Art Night. This month’s featured artist in The Nook is Virginia Russo.

Artist Bio

Kara Virginia Russo is a mixed media abstract artist born in small town Florida and now based in Greenville and Columbia SC. She holds a BFA from Converse College and has exhibited work across the Carolinas and Germany. After a long hiatus, she returned to her creative practice with a newfound visual language, and the insight of an adult diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Virginia’s intricately layered mixed-media works act as portals into unseen realities. Using watercolor, ink, thread, and collage, she constructs visual manuscripts—part map, part meditation—that reflect her experience as a neurodiverse artist navigating sensory and spiritual landscapes. Her work is deeply influenced by mythologies, stories, and texts ranging from Jewish to Egyptian to the Tao te Ching, all viewed through an ancient eastern Christian lens. Her pieces unfold like journal entries from unseen travels, or manuscripts of forgotten stories. Each work invites viewers to slow down, look deeply, and step into spaces verbal language cannot describe.

Artist Statement

Funded in part by a grant from the Metropolitan Arts Council, Greenville, SC

“What Am I Doing Here?”

twenty mixed-media handmade mounted notebooks

This series is meant to be explored as if turning the pages of a single manuscript. Created over a six-month period and arranged in order of completion, they document a single unfolding reflection.