Writers were my ticket out of the South; visual artists, my compass back home.
Raised on the wide open Mississippi Delta, with pages of expansive porches and miles of two-lane highways for meandering thoughts, I believed that words were a vehicle to see the world. As an English major, my Ole Miss education of bourbon-soaked conversations about the romantic lives of Ernest
Hemingway’s Havana and Walker Percy’s New York spurred me to seek out a definition of myself that seemed somehow bigger than my current surroundings would allow.
So off to New York I went to become a writer when art gallery owner (and true Southern gentleman) Hollis Taggart spotted me in a vintage gold coat at one of his openings and hired me on the spot. More fodder for my writing, I thought. Years of frenetic, ambitious scrabbling to learn the subtleties of the art
of the deal followed. My Alabama-born mother called my twenties “an era of discernment and Yankee wandering.” Nestled in my tiny West Village apartment, inhaling the moon pies she shipped in bulk while the snow continued to fall, I could no longer deny the chill I felt in my bones was more than the
unfriendly weather. It was time to go home.
I never intended to come to Charleston but I believe it was the luckiest decision I’ve made. After fifteen years here, it would take the rapture to dislodge me. Had I become a writer, I do not think I would have had the same sense of place or longing to be in this land. The aging antebellum architecture, cool
breeze off the water, and familiar conversational rhythms were and continue to be a salve to the Northern aggression. Walking the cobblestone streets was a homecoming to a newer version of me that realized home was perhaps the most romantic destination of all.
And then: the art. I was wholeheartedly seduced by the art of the South. A pioneer in the Southern art market, Rob Hicklin gave me a whole new kind of education at his Charleston Renaissance Gallery where
I pored over unsung masterpieces and researched artists I’d never heard of before. I was intrigued by the artists and photographers who pushed beyond the traditional, though, and Rob and I spent many afternoons debating the meaning of Southern modern art. I could not ignore that a new Charleston was
emerging in which contemporary did not only mean paintings of palmettos by living artists.
I eventually turned in my gallery keys as nearby St. Philip’s rang noon-thirty to pursue my own definition of Southern modern. Some doodles on a legal pad, plus blood, sweat, and tears—and a generous supply of bourbon—became Rebekah Jacob Gallery over a decade ago. I seek out artists who stay true to their Southern roots not by solely focusing on the beauty of the landscape but also by unpacking the complexities and conundrums of the place we call home.
The voices of my entrepreneurial father and artistic mother echo in my mind as I foster, exhibit, broker, promote, and champion the artists I believe embody Southern Modern. Controversial subjects ignite me. Bring on the sculpture and photography and mixed media pieces dealing with race and gender and
sexuality. It’s not about when they lived, but how, and where. Let’s address the unspeakable through the visual with boldness and sophistication. Easy is overrated.
I have a particular affinity for documentary photography, whether vintage or contemporary, as it weds a good narrative to the visuals that take up where words end. My favorite Southern authors traveled the Carolinas and wrote about this land of elegant decay; similarly, many photographers poignantly
captured (and still do) the fading structures and archetypal characters in a way that still entrances me.
I started out a writer, but through the visual arts, I found my voice. I had to go away to come home; to close my eyes in order to see.