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MOUNT PLEASANT — Downtown Charleston’s Revealed Gallery has teamed up with Mount Pleasant’s White Gallery for an upcoming rock ‘n’ roll exhibit.

Scott Parsons, owner of Revealed Gallery, is one of the two artists being featured in the show, which will include portraits of famed classic rockers across a variety of media. The second participant is one of Parsons’ featured artists and friend Mauricio Sánchez Rengifo, who goes by Masáre.

Both will showcase their large-scale works at White Gallery, 709 Coleman Blvd., for the “TripLineDrop” art show from 7-10 p.m. Aug. 25. There will be food and drink vendors, as well as music by Paul Harris, Graham Whorley and DJ Moldybrain, on-site during the show.

Parsons grew up with a brother eight years older than him who loved comic books. He experienced art from an early age and started to attempt drawing his favorite characters at age 7. In middle school, he gravitated toward graffiti and was hired for his first mural in Washington, D.C., in 1997. He moved to Charleston in 2000 and started doing murals again after a hiatus. In 2010, he transferred from spray can to brush and canvas. He also experiments with acrylic pouring.

“My subject matter isn’t easily defined,” said Parsons. “I paint images that strike me when doing figurative work. ... The pouring paintings I do are experimenting with color and are very organic. I direct the paint to a certain extent, but then it’s kind of out of my control, which is very fun for me and I hope for the viewer as well.”

Parsons said he will be bringing a “whole lot of color” to this show, as well as new pour experimentations. This is the first time he has shown at White Gallery.

Masáre studied and graduated as an architect in Colombia in 2005. He spent six months locked in his studio painting some of the works that will be on display at this exhibit, including portraits of Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.

His portraits are created from layered textures on rigid surfaces; he uses glass, fabric, wood, beads, plastic, metal, glitter, paper, petals and more. The materials used often coalesce with the story of his subject matter.

“Any material and medium the concept of who I am painting, life and work, dictates me to use,” he said. “For instance, in the Kurt Cobain paintings, there was a shotgun. Frida Kahlo, nails; Jim Morrison, fire and soot; Amy Winehouse, wine bottles and plastic roses.”

Masáre said he loves optical illusions and rock music. So this themed show was the perfect opportunity for him.

Among featured pieces will be a reimagined “Dark Side of the Moon” cover featured 16 video laser discs; hypodermic needles embedded into one work; and paintings of David Bowie’s ascending black neon star and Gustavo Cerati’s sidereal evolution.

He has been in Charleston since February. Both Parsons and Masáre have been featured muralists at the former D.B.’s Cheesesteaks on Savannah Highway in Avondale, West Ashley. Masáre has another upcoming mural along with eight other artists in Mount Pleasant.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The local nonprofit Trident United Way is launching its Changemaker Grants program.

This initiative aims to provide resources and support to local nonprofits making a difference in the community.

The Changemaker Grants program will offer investments to improve and expand an organization’s mission.

Trident United Way will award the grants in four cycles before June 30 of next year with a minimum pool of $100,000 dollars per cycle.

Each grant cycle will have a specific focus, beginning with capacity-building grants.

This focuses on skill building for staff members, diversity and equity initiatives, leadership development, management training and strategic planning.

The total of each grant will vary based on the project and financial request from each chosen agency.

Stacy Stagliano, President of Katie’s Krops, a nonprofit that provides fresh produce to those facing food insecurities, says they will be applying for the change maker grant and shares how the nonprofit benefited from a grant earlier this year.

“This year we received a grant to host Spring Fest, which was a spring festival we held in March, and everybody got to come up to the garden and experience the garden,” Stagliano said. “We did plant giveaways. Seed giveaways. We opened our butterfly house; we gained so many new volunteers and supporters from that event.”

President and CEO of Trident United Way DJ Hampton says it all comes down to the well-being of families in the community.

“Changemaker grants will come out every quarter targeted at community needs, especially those things that are in the way of families getting ahead financially,” Hampton said. “So, the goal is to lift up families, Hampton said. This first grant is targeted at capacity building for nonprofits. What’s in the way of them financially, being able to do more of the good work we know they need to do.”

Applications will be open from Aug. 23 through Sept. 11. For Details on requirements and the application process click here.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

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A fondue restaurant chain plans to expand into the Lowcountry.

Bob Johnston, CEO of The Melting Pot, said the Tampa, Fla.-based company is looking to add two locations in Charleston and Mount Pleasant. He cited the Palmetto State’s strong tourism industry as a key reason for the expansion plan.

The chain already has a presence in Columbia, Greenville and Myrtle Beach. It said it hopes to have 15 locations in South Carolina by 2025.

Liberty Senior Living wants to add more units to its South Bay continuing care facility, but it needs an amendment to a planned development because of Mount Pleasant’s moratorium on new multifamily buildings.

3: Number of new restaurants planning to open in the fall in an expanding Charleston-area shopping center.

65,000: Size of proposed new supermarket in a new retail development beside Freshfields Village between Kiawah and Seabrook islands.

2563: Address on Ashley River Road for a fast-food restaurant that recently turned out the lights.

+ More multifamily: A 110-unit townhome development is in the works for the Point Hope area of Charleston on the Cainhoy peninsula.

+ Doctor’s orders: A medical office building is being proposed in Point Hope.

+ Sliding sales: Charleston-area home sales slipped again in July for the 23rd consecutive month.

A social venue called Ocean Club is being proposed at the site of the former Sand Dunes Club property on Sullivan’s Island.

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A meeting this week with legislative panel overseeing the financing of a rail and cargo hub for the Port of Charleston has the State Ports Authority scrambling to adjust the project’s construction schedule.

The development, called the Navy Base Intermodal Facility, was supposed to be fully completed by July 2025.

Barbara Melvin, the SPA’s president and CEO, told a subcommittee of the S.C. Joint Bond Review Committee on Aug. 16 that a portion of the project won’t be finished until a year later.

That didn’t sit well with the panel and a key senior staffer, who told Melvin to find a way to get the entire taxpayer-funded project built on time.

“Come back to us and let us know in 30 days or so whether or not you can make that commitment and, if not, give us a fully detailed explanation why you can’t,” said Rick Harmon, the committee’s director of research.

Melvin responded: “Yes sir, I’m happy to take on that challenge.”

Melvin also presented a document showing the cost has increased to $468 million, up from its original estimate of $349 million.

Taxpayers are only on the hook for the $349 million, money the General Assembly set aside from the state budget. The SPA must come up with the rest from its business operations or by borrowing.

The part of the rail yard that’s been delayed is a southern access that freight trains operated by CSX and Norfolk Southern would use to enter a building where cargo containers would be loaded onto and from rail cars. Melvin said the delay is due to “challenges of engaging with the Class 1 railroads on the southern access infrastructure.”

Norfolk Southern and CSX have long had disagreements over how their trains will access the new container transfer site, which has been in the works for more than a decade. The railroad operators did not respond to a request for comment.

Legislators gave the SPA money for the intermodal project because the maritime agency had said the lack of near-dock rail service was putting Charleston at a disadvantage to other Southeast ports, Harmon told Melvin.

“We heard your cry and the General Assembly decided to put taxpayer money ... into this project to keep the port competitive,” Harmon said, adding the money was intended to ensure the rail yard was built in a “reasonable timeframe.”

He said the state is unwilling to wait three more years for the project to be fully completed, citing the risk of inflation, a decline in cargo volume at the port and other economic uncertainties.

“I think that is unacceptable to ask the state to wait until 2026 (and) take on another three years of financial risk,” Harmon said.

“It was never envisioned that it would be ’26 before we opened and had everything fully completed and functional,” added state Sen. Nikki Setzler, chairman of the committee’s fiscal oversight group.

“Taxpayers will be without that money for that period of time,” Setzler said. “It affects economic development in this state.”

Melvin said she would meet with her staff to see if there is a way to get the southern access completed in time for the rest of the rail yard’s July 2025 opening date.

“We will work diligently to execute the (committee’s) request to shave time off the 2026 timeline for completing additional tracks to bring this in line with the July 2025 facility opening,” Melvin said in an Aug. 18 statement to The Post and Courier. “We are working alongside our rail partners to build this state-of-the-art, near-port intermodal yard, which will greatly enhance our state’s competitiveness and speed goods to market for our customers.”

The rail hub was part of a $550 million deal legislators approved to help the SPA pay for projects it otherwise could not afford. The package also included $150 million to create a barge system that would allow the SPA to transport containers by water from the Wando Welch Terminal in Mount Pleasant to the two-year-old Leatherman Terminal on the Cooper River. That project is about $18.5 million under budget, Melvin said.

Another $51 million was earmarked to repay a loan from the S.C. Commerce Department to the state-owned Palmetto Railways, which had planned to build the intermodal yard before turning the project over to the ports authority.

WASHINGTON (TND) — Federal investigators are in Hawaii trying to determine what caused the horrific wildfire that took more than 110 lives.

Amid drastic situations from Hawaii to Texas, is America's power grid ready for emergencies? (TND)

One possible cause may have been downed power lines sparking the flames, which is bringing renewed attention to America’s electrical system.

Is it up to date, safe and getting the funding it needs? Those are questions being asked almost 5,000 miles away in Washington.

Raising more concerns about the rest of the nation’s electrical system, residents in Texas this week were asked to reduce energy use to avoid strain on the system amid a heatwave.

We're under invested by a few trillions of dollars," said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at University of Texas at Austin. "We're kind of coasting on a grid that we've built in the past century. And we've got a new century ahead of us with different demands.”

The growing demands with more common use include charging everything from computers to cars–investments that aren’t keeping up, according to Rhodes.

One report indicates America will spend between $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030 to modernize the grid just to maintain reliability.

Last summer for Full Measure, Sinclair went to Michigan to see how the transition to wind and solar–and phasing out older coal and nuclear–is stressing the system.

"Do you think Americans should expect more blackouts?" Scott Thuman asked.

"Yes," responded Eric Baker, president and CEO of Wolverine Power Cooperative.

"Does that scare you?" Thuman asked.

"Yeah, it does, and it almost offends me ... Because we don't have a technology that can store energy today, and I don't think we will in a decade," Baker said.

President Joe Biden, a proponent of going more green, recently announced billions more in federal dollars for upgrades.

That funding can help ensure our electric grid is stronger, that the lights and air conditioning and Internet stay on during heat waves and storms and other climate events,” Biden said during an event in California earlier this summer.

But that requires a sometimes-challenging level of government cooperation.

"Because the electricity sector is generally regulated at the state level, not the federal level as much, there's a lot of people who have to be in the room to make those decisions," Rhodes said.

Rhodes said what Washington can do is force those conversations between state and federal decision makers, ease the permitting process, and of course, there’s always a need for more money.