MYRTLE BEACH, SC.- For 25 years, the Springmaid Beach Conference Center and Resort has hosted its renowned Watermedia Workshop. Conceived originally as an annual six-day event, these workshops have since grown to twice-yearly, three-week-long courses whose instructors have included such notables as Myrtle Beach’s Alex Powers, Greenville’s Carrie Burns Brown and Guy Lipscomb of Columbia, and all of whom have garnered international recognition.

Celebrating the workshop’s 25-year tradition and the luminaries it has featured, as well as the Museum’s own 10th Anniversary Year, the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum will host Springmaid Beach Watermedia Masters II: A Faculty Exhibition, opening Oct. 28 and running through Jan. 6, 2008.

An opening reception will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, with a Gallery Talk beginning at 6 p.m. by Claudia Thompson, current director of the workshop. In addition, eight of the featured artists will be available to meet guests and talk about their work. The reception is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours for the exhibit are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.

The Springmaid workshop was founded by Stephen R. McCrae, a nationally recognized artist and arts administrator who served as Arts Director and later consultant to Leroy Springs & Co., Inc. in Fort Mill, South Carolina, owner of the Springmaid Beach Resort. The company’s annual Springs Art Show grew under his management to become the Southeast’s largest non-juried art show. Though Mr. McCrae retired in 1981, he remained director of the Springmaid workshop until 1986. He passed away in 2003.

The Springmaid Beach Watermedia Masters II exhibition will feature two works each by the 18 faculty instructors from the November 2007 workshop as well as two of Mr. McCrae’s watercolors. Contributing artists include Carole Barnes, Katherine Liu, Alex Powers, Janet Walsh, current President of the American Watercolor Society and Mary Whyte, among others.

While all the works were created in watermedia, their subjects range from pastoral scenes to abstract portraiture in styles that could be characterized as traditional to contemporary. The exhibit runs concurrently with USC Ceramics: Past and Present, 1992-2007.