Just spent a day and a half up in Charlotte, visiting my mom and playing a house concert on Sunday afternoon...this morning we popped into the Jerald Melberg Gallery on Sharon-Amity Road (near intersection with Providence Road) to see a small but powerhouse exhibition of very recent works by the South Carolinian artist Brian Rutenberg, now based in New York City. Rutenberg's vivid abstract paintings, inspired by the natural imagery of the Low Country, are almost too intense to be fully appreciated in the intimate space at Melberg. Maybe it just seems that way to me because I'm recalling the extraordinary retrospective of this (still quite young) artist at the State Museum in Columbia in 2006, in a much larger and airier space. I became a fan through seeing that show, and the fact that Rutenberg turned out to be a fellow Glenn Gould fanatic cinched the deal for me (when the Nickelodeon Theatre played "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould" three years ago, Rutenberg was on hand to introduce the film and the effect Gould's legacy and example had on his own life as a creative artist).

Anyway, this is a marvelous show and is up only until the end of this week, so if you are in Charlotte or have reason to be there this week, don't miss it. Here is more information from the Jerald Melberg Gallery website. And if you do see this exhibit, make sure you have lunch or dinner next door at Eddie's. And for that matter, you're not far at all from the Mint Museum on Randolph Road, which has a big show up (until late June) of masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art.