Colorful Charleston creator Tate Nation is the artist behind this year’s Piccolo Spoleto poster. It’s the third time he’ll make the poster for the annual celebration of Charleston art and artists, and inside the painting is a reference to his first Piccolo poster, made in 2000.
Over these last 24 years, he’s participated each year in one of the most well-loved Piccolo traditions — the outdoor art exhibition, where during the festival’s 17 days, painters, photographers, sculptors and more take over Marion Square between King and Calhoun.
You can easily find Nation’s tent containing lively paintings of Charleston — just look out for the pink flamingos (which, in fact, can also be found in the poster image).
As the annual Spoleto Festival USA draws globally renowned artists to the Lowcountry for a 17-day extravaganza, the companion Piccolo Spoleto Festival, hosted by the city of Charleston, shines a spotlight on exceptional local and regional talents. This year marks the 45th time that Piccolo Spoleto celebrates arts, culture and community in Charleston.
This year sees exciting new offerings in music, like a showcase that combines hip hop, poetry and harp playing; theater, like the contemporary lesbian tragedy Goodnight Embryos presented by local theater company, The Void; and dance performances, like the special work by Annex Dance Company, It’s Itself, which explores spiritual themes and incorporates visual art. (Read more about the 45th anniversary Piccolo Spoleto in our special insert, included in this issue!)
Making his mark
If anyone knows a thing or two about making art in Charleston, it’s Nation: He’s got a gallery space at 257 King St. and participates in Second Sundays on King Street every month. He ran an art gallery in Shem Creek for nine years, has made T-shirts for the Cooper River Bridge Run and served as the illustrator-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum.
Nation makes vibrant, colorful and textured artworks that capture historic Charleston homes with a whimsical touch, scenic landscapes inspired by his travels — his vivid color palette is especially influenced by Caribbean art, he said — as well as abstract paintings that show off his playful, experimental spirit in the studio.
Nation employs a technique of “building layers upon layers” of acrylic paint on canvas-covered wood panels, using an unorthodox arsenal of serrated knives and dry brushes. Sometimes to achieve interesting textures, Nation said, he’ll press unconventional items into the paint.
“I use all kinds of weird things. One of my neighbors still laughs whenever she sees me working on a painting — She says, ‘I remember walking by here, and you were painting on your porch one day, and you were pressing Legos into the paint,’ ” he laughs. “I mean, everything’s fair game.”
This technique results in dynamic artworks that are just as rich in texture as they are bold in composition. In fact, one of Nation’s favorite memories as an artist was a time that a blind man was able to experience his paintings through touching the textured surfaces.
“I saw a couple looking at some of my paintings, and so I walked over to greet them. I heard her saying to him, ‘I wish you could see the colors right now.’ After talking with them, I invited him to touch the texture on the paintings. A few minutes later I turned and looked, and he’s made his way down the wall and he’s feeling every one of these paintings, experiencing this in a way no one else is … that was pretty cool to me.”
Following his intuition
Nation got his artistic start as an illustrator, following a career as a collegiate swimmer in Kentucky and a short stint as a navigator in the Navy. He’s always felt deeply connected to the water, he said, which is perhaps one of his favorite subjects to depict.
As a freelance illustrator, Nation worked on more than a dozen books and was commissioned by big names for his work, including the U.S. Postal Service, Coca-Cola, Delta and United Airlines among others. He was always playing around with paint, he said, but began taking it more seriously when one of his abstract compositions won the poster design competition for Piccolo Spoleto in 2000.
In 2010, the city of Charleston commissioned him to make the Piccolo poster again, and now he’s done it for a third time in 2024. This year’s poster, which depicts the outdoor art exhibition, incorporates a painting within a painting — the abstract one from 2000 that won him the contest and marked a turning point in Nation’s career.
In fact as the new millenia came, so did changes to the field of illustration, Nation said.
“I was working with publishers and ad agencies, and that world was really starting to change. People got into digital art, and I didn’t want to do digital. I wanted to keep it traditional. I wanted to make things with my hands.”
For Nation, a big believer in fate, the universe rewarded him for sticking to his vision.
“Painting was always a part of my life — but when I entered the poster contest for the first time, and I won, I thought, okay, this is a sign that I should be focusing on my paintings. … I can’t tell you how often something happens, and I step back and go, ‘Woah, I was about to go in that direction, but I went this direction instead because something happened.’ It’s like, man, the universe is looking out for me again.”
Nation’s attention to his intuition, which he sees as signs from the universe, comes into play in his artistic process too, he said.
“Recently I was painting, and I was going to put down this certain color. I had the paint in my hand, for some reason I couldn’t get the lid off, and so I set it aside. When I set it down, I was like, oh, this color over here is the one I should be using instead. This is perfect. Some people call that a coincidence. I say, no, that means it’s really meant to be like this.”
On any given day, if he’s not traveling, snorkeling or swimming, you can find Nation in his studio, painting while blasting The Flaming Lips, Talking Heads or Billie Holiday. If it’s the second Sunday of the month, you can find him chatting up shoppers on King Street. Or for 17 days during Piccolo Spoleto, you can stop by his colorful booth and hear some of his stories from his life of traveling and making art.
The unconventional life path of an artist has its challenges, Nation admits.
“I’ll probably never be wealthy in the bank, but I am so rich in life,” he said. “One of the best rewards about this lifestyle is getting to talk to people. I’ve made so many friends … and for me, the best compliment I can get is that I make happy art. If it puts a smile on your face, then I’ve done something right.”
Learn more at tatenation.com.
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