A detail from William D. Goebel’s “Blind Willie,” part of a posthumous show opening Tuesday at The Purple Moon in downtown Charleston.

The Purple Moon, 716 Lee St. in Charleston, presents “Native Son: Selected Works of William D.Goebel,” beginning Tuesday (Sept. 26) with a 5 to 8 p.m. reception. Featuring original pen and ink drawing and scarce hand-colored and limited edition prints from the estate of the artist, the show will also release the print “Blind Willie” which Goebel had in the works at the time of his death. More on the artist from a release about the show:

“Native Son: Selected Works of William D. Goebel,” the first posthumous show of artwork from the Estate of the artist, will explore the work, talent and unique perspective of one of West Virginia’s best-known artists a little more than a year after his death. A self-taught artist, known to his friends as “Doug,” Goebel was a former educator and aimed to teach through his drawings, books, and occasional public appearances.

The show features a limited edition print, “Blind Willie,” a homage to William Samuel McTell, who was born in 1901 and lost his sight in late childhood. “Blind Willie” earned the status as one of the most accomplished guitarists and lyrical storytellers in blues history. He became an accomplished musical theorist, able to both read and write music in Braille. The work by Goebel, featured on the cover of Charleston Magazine in December 2005, was a new direction away from his architectural drawings and born of his love of the blues and of Bob Dylan. It is a work that that gives a glimpse of how Goebel’s art had evolved and what might have been. Preparations for this new, limited edition print were in progress at the time of Goebel’s death and completed by his family.

When it rains, it pours photos. Read the posts below for three new photography exhibits now open in Charleston. Here comes a fourth. “Face Value: New Works by Artist Mark Wolfe,” opens Sept. 26 at the University of Charleston’s Frankenberger Gallery. A release on the show describes it this way:

“Morbid” could be one word used to describe Wolfe’s art. The Charleston artist has long held a fascination with death and related imagery around religious themes. In a new artistic venture, Wolfe tarries off the path of the cemetery photography he is most known for and ventures into the arena of live human beings. A new exhibit at the University of Charleston, called ‘Face Value’ includes over 40 photographs of local people. From Mayor Danny Jones and artist Charly Hamilton (at right and below) to Howard who sweeps the sidewalk at Taylors, the photos are high contrast black-and-white digital images that are striking in their simplicity and vividness.”

Wolfe owns and operates Mark Wolfe Design, a small graphic design business in Charleston. He is a Tamarack artisan and has displayed art there and at Annex Gallery, Taylor Books, Renaissance Gallery in Huntington, the juried exhibit at the West Virginia Cultural Center, Della Brown Gallery at WV State, the Sunrise Art Museum, and Covenant House Art Gallery.

Also included in the UC exhibit are his pastels, scratch boards and other related photographic works. Wolfe says: “I wanted to concentrate on a more organic form of expression as opposed to more ornate and architectural objects that I have focused on during the past three years. I wanted to depict the individual personalities that come through even though color, three dimensions and any other form of reference has been erased.”

IF YOU GO: “Face Value” opens with a reception from 5:30 - 7:30 pm, Sept. 26, and runs through Oct. 19 at the Frankenberger Art Gallery, University of Charleston, 2300 MacCorckle Avenue, SE.

“In 25 years of wandering the American desert, I have never seen sand dunes surrounded by water like we found here in the Carson (Nev.) Sink.” – photographer Richard Misrach

Wilderness is usually a fiction. When Ansel Adams took his breathtaking photographs of the Yosemite Valley in the 1930s ands 1940s, it was already a popular tourist spot, but there were no signs in his photos of visitors and cars, nor even roads and telephone poles. To Adams, that would have spoiled the beauty, writes Andy Grundberg in the coffee-table book “In Response to Place: Photographs from the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places.”

Time passed, and a new generation of landscape photographers decided it was time to include people, their animals and their buildings, according to Grundberg. He asked 12 well-known photographers to choose a site from The Nature Conservancy’s “Last Great Places” list and shoot whatever images the photographers wished. Grundberg curated the resulting “In Response to Place” exhibit, which opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in 2001. Fifty of those images, from all 12 photographers, have toured the country since and will open at the Clay Center in Charleston on Saturday, Sept. 16, for a run that extends through Nov. 5.

Featured artists include landscape photographers Terry Evans and Richard Misrach, portrait artists Annie Liebovitz and William Wegman, and cutting-edge art photographers Sally Mann and Lee Friedlander.
It scarcely matters that there are no West Virginia scenes in the show, said Rodney Bartgis, state director of the Nature Conservancy of West Virginia, which, along with Merrill Lynch, sponsors the Clay Center show. “West Virginia isn’t out there by itself. It’s part of that big picture. The birds that nest here often winter in South America.”

IF YOU GO: “In Response to Place” will be on display Saturday through Nov. 5 at the Clay Center. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday toSaturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission, which covers all science and art exhibits, is adults $6.50; children, teachers and senior citizens $5. Call 561-3500.

RELATED EVENT: Curator Andy Grundberg’s will speak on “Contemporary Photography and Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places” in the Clay Center’s Walker Theater at 6 p.m. Oct 16. The talk is free, but a reception afterwards is $15. To reserve a reception spot, send a check by Oct. 12. Call 561-3500

– By Bob Schwarz

“I felt obliged to try to better understand my own backyard. The Gunks are actually an extraordinary hunk - outcropping - of rock, and I wanted to show the raw bones of it.”
– photographer Annie Liebovitz, who visited the Shawangunk Mountains in New York.

“I found that the land is shrinking rapidly around Arches and other protected parks and monuments here, just as it is in Egypt, where development is coming to the edge of the Plain of Memphis. It is important to me that these entrances to our sacred places be preserved.”
– Lynn Davis, who photographed the Colorado Plateau in Utah. “I