PORT ROYAL, SC, July 15, 2021 –- Emerging artist Verneda Lights believes that "Art is a medicine, and medicine is an art." This is the driving philosophy behind her latest exhibition, Gullah Me, which opens August 6 at the BASEcamp Gallery. Lights will host a private intimate opening by invitation in conjunction with a public virtual exhibit with details to be shared on social media.

The genre-bending exhibit stands at the crossroads of techspressionist, Afrosurreal, and traditional fine art, with the individual works being the product of the artist's own quest to find insight and healing as she cared for her elderly parents and younger brother, who had suffered a stroke. Lights gives vibrant and poignant expression to the reality of sickness, grief, and loss, and the struggle to come to terms with it. Infusing her work with several layers of dualism (art/medicine, tradition/technology, analog/digital), Lights herself is also a bridge between two worlds, having practiced medicine as a physician for 20 years before turning to art full-time.

Gullah Me exists within this realm of juxtaposition and dualism, positioning traditional Gullah art, which uses the application of paint to a physical canvas, within a new paradigm of technology and digital instruments. The result? A techspressionist, post-Gullah visual and emotional experience that melds memory, family, and healing and challenges traditional notions of art.

As an emerging artist, Verneda Lights further shifts the landscape of post-Gullah art by including faces, which historically have not been part of the iconic Gullah art tradition. In her hands, portraiture finds its place within the intersection of tradition and technology and becomes a powerful tool for storytelling and gaining insight into the human psyche.

Visitors to the exhibit can experience this merging of the analog and the digital firsthand, as the framed art prints are accompanied by scannable QR codes that allow visitors to go online to read more about, and purchase, the artwork.

The full 18-work solo exhibit runs from August 6 to September 30 at the BASEcamp Gallery of the Beaufort Digital Corridor, 500 Carteret Street, Beaufort, South Carolina. Seven works by emerging artist Verneda Lights are currently on display in the space, offering a sneak preview of the exhibit.

About the Artist

Verneda Lights is Gullah and a native South Carolinian. Her artwork has received several awards and distinctions, including being juried as a finalist in the 2003 Boston CyberArts Festival.

Her other artistic ventures include being featured in the"Suffra-Jetting" exhibit at Chicago's Woman Made Gallery. Her works have also been showcased at the Whitney Biennial in New York City, the City Gallery on the Waterfront in Charleston, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri, and numerous galleries in the United States.

Lights is a graduate of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a certificate in International Arts Management from the International Leadership Program in Visual Arts Management from Deusto University School of Business, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, and Guggenheim Museum (2017, Bilbao, Spain, and NYC, NY).

In 2001, she founded what is now known as E-graphX Omnimedia, a design firm and business consultancy, which received the British Airways' Face-to-Face award.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lights put her creative and business acumen into developing two product lines featuring art-inspired face masks, accessories, and women's apparel:The Bryn Mawr Collection and Jennylights Designz. Proceeds from the product lines are being donated to her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College.

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ENDS For media inquiries, contact E-graphX Omnimedia at info@gullahme.com or (843) 476-6168.

(c) 2021 Verneda Lights, E-graphX Omnimedia