^{Haven Grayson (sophomore, St. James High School; teacher: Joseph Grega) watercolor, 8 x 20 inches, Rising Star Award 2025}

Get ready to see what our area high-schoolers have been up to in their visual arts departments this year at the 26th Annual Horry-Georgetown County High Schools Juried Art Exhibition.

Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum visitors look forward every year to seeing the amazingly creative and skillful work that makes up this diverse and vibrant annual exhibition juried by Curator Liz Miller and Education Coordinators Jayme Carlson and Colin Riebe.

The exhibition is set to open April 19 to May 17, with an opening awards reception on Sunday, April 19, 1p.m. to 3 p.m.

After a full week of jurying at all participating high schools in Horry and Georgetown counties, as well as a viewing visit with our area homeschool high school students, jurors whittle down the hundreds of submissions to the best of the best for exhibition. All art media, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, fiber and more, are accepted. This extraordinary opportunity for teenage art students helps them to gain professional experience in the museum exhibition process.

This year, exhibiting artist Ashlyn Pope will judge the art. Pope is a contemporary ceramic, textile and printmaking artist, as well as Assistant Professor in 3-D foundations at Coastal Carolina University in Conway. Employing Gullah and West African motifs, Pope creates works expressing the human form, always ingrained with African-American culture, as a way of addressing the Black human condition but also the resilience and beauty of the Black community. Her exhibition, A History of Moving Forward II, was recently displayed at the art museum, located at 3100 South Ocean Boulevard, Myrtle Beach.

The art museum recently won an award from the SCAEA (South Carolina Art Education Association) for the annual juried Horry-Georgetown County High Schools exhibition. 

Among last year’s Annual Horry-Georgetown County High Schools Juried Art Exhibition award winners, Haven Grayson, a sophomore at St. James High School, won the Rising Star Award 2025 for her watercolor Lemons (pictured above), Her teacher was Joseph Grega.