The Pickens County Museum of Art & History is pleased to announce that “A Bluesman’s Close-Up: Photographs of Mac Arnold by Brian S. Kelley” is now on display.
This special documentation of one of our region’s most loved musicians will be on display in the museum’s LaVonne Nalley Piper Auditorium & Gallery through May 30.
About Mac and Brian’s relationship, journalist Cindy Landrum wrote in the Greenville Journal, “Brian S. Kelley was in the audience during one of the band’s (Mac Arnold’s Plate Full of Blues) early concerts at the Happy Cow Creamery in southern Greenville County, just a short trip from Arnold’s farm. The two talked and discovered that Kelley’s parents lived near Arnold. Arnold asked him to come by his house and photograph the band. That led to a long gig – seven years if you ask Kelley, about nine if you ask Arnold – that included album covers, a documentary and a photography book. ‘We started dragging him around the country with us,’ Arnold said. Kelley said the experience ‘still feels surreal sometimes. To be able to combine photography, art and music was a dream.’ That relationship led to a book and an exhibit of Kelley’s photographs of Arnold – on stage, on the bus and on his farm.”
Located at the corner of Hwy. 178 at 307 Johnson Street in Pickens SC, the museum is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Thursdays from 9:00 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Admission is free but donations are welcomed.
For more information please contact the museum at (864) 898-5963. For this and many more events in Pickens County visit www.visitpickenscounty.com.