Charleston City Gallery is pleased to present Testaments & Revelations: Second Verse, a three-person exhibition featuring the work of Katelyn Chapman, Ashleigh Coleman and Patrick Owens — artists raised in South Carolina who collectively examine identity, place and memory across the American South. The exhibition opens July 17 and remains on view through August 30, 2026.
Using paint, photography and mixed-media sculpture and assemblage, Chapman, Coleman and Owens draw on different corners of the South — the Midlands of South Carolina, rural Mississippi and Alabama — yet their work converges around shared visual symbols and the paradoxes of Southern life. The exhibition spans painting, photography, and free-standing and wall-mounted assemblages, some interactive, pushing against assumed boundaries and stereotypes of the rural South. The artists call this the "second verse," marking the second time they've come together to explore these themes.
"Southerners are experts in the past," said Fleming Markel, Gallery Director at Greenville Technical College. "We collect, honor, and relive the past. Home is sacred, but the home of our forbearers and childhoods may have only been a mythology in the first place. Contemporary Southerners know deep down that they cannot go home again."
"Testaments & Revelations: Second Verse presents beloved images of the Southern past that also question the path of the future," Markel continued. "Ashleigh Coleman's photographs of her 'feral' children and their shared life with the land. Patrick Owens' forgotten but once-useful objects assembled as records of time and place. Katelyn Chapman's carefully rendered paintings of the substance of the shrinking rural South."
Public Events:
Artists' Reception
Friday, August 14, 2026, 5–7 PM, City Gallery at Joe Riley Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau St. Free and open to the public.
Artists' Talk
Saturday, August 15, 2026, 2 PM, City Gallery at Joe Riley Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau St. Free and open to the public.
About the Artists
Katelyn Chapman holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Georgia (2018) and a BFA from Clemson University (2014). A three-time Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grantee and 2026 Griffith-Reyburn Lowcountry Artist of the Year, she has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, The Hambidge Center, Chateau Orquevaux and The Gibbes Museum of Art. She is represented by Southside Gallery in Oxford, MS and Hampton III Gallery in Taylors, SC. Chapman's realistic paintings — peaches in a box, a hanging crow — draw on her upbringing in the Midlands of South Carolina to celebrate and interrogate rural working-class culture. She lives and works in Charleston, SC.
Ashleigh Coleman is a photographer based in rural Mississippi, recognized in 2022 by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters for her series Hold Nothing Back. She's received fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, and her work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure and Southern Living. Her photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Do Good Fund and the Mississippi Museum of Art. Shooting on a medium-format Hasselblad, Coleman documents rural domestic life through the eyes of her three young children.
Patrick Owens was born in Gastonia, NC and raised in Taylors, SC. He holds an AA in Photography from Greenville Technical College (2005) and a BFA in Sculpture from Clemson University (2020). His photographs are held in the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University, and his recent honors include the 2024 Wiregrass Biennial and the People's Choice Award at the 2024 Coined in the South Biennial at the Mint Museum. Owens' assemblages of found objects and slip-cast porcelain — like Thoughts & Prayers, a rusted wheelbarrow overflowing with ceramic prayer hands — reflect on memory, decay and the country's socio-political climate.
About City Gallery
City Gallery, located at 34 Prioleau St. at Joe Riley Waterfront Park, is owned by the City of Charleston and operated by the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs. The gallery presents regular exhibitions and events featuring contemporary art with a focus on the Lowcountry. Gallery hours: Wednesday–Sunday, Noon–5 PM. www.charleston-sc.gov/