The Storyteller

WCA Hosts Art Exhibition Featuring Art Inspired by Stories

By P.A. Geddie

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. An upcoming art exhibition in Winnsboro puts that idea to the test. It features paintings, photography, and 3D art, each created from an artist’s interpretation of a written story. 

The Storyteller art exhibition takes place from November 18 through January 23, 2027, at Winnsboro Center for the Arts (WCA). 

The works of young adult and children’s book author and illustrator Belan Woo take center stage. Her story of “Tomyo and Bleu and the Chickens” is about an orphaned goose named Bleu who hatches on a nearby farm and grows up with a flock of chickens. He’s torn by confusing parental admonitions, the pain of hatred and bullying from the cockerels, and the shame he feels from being different. Not knowing his true identity, he is tortured by his innate longing to swim in the water and fly in the sky.

The story’s cast of colorful imagined characters tells of how rigid beliefs, cruelty, hatred, self-importance, and prejudice, mixed with self-doubt, not only affect the individual, but the entire community — only benevolent attributes save all. This is a story of forgiveness, self-redemption, and ultimately finding true freedom when there is respect, care, and love for one another, regardless of differences.

Woo wrote the story as her sons were leaving for college. She wrote about the conversations she wanted to keep having with them as they went out into the world. 

“The story is a gift,” she says, “to pass on these important traits I tried to instill in my characters like kindness and helping each other.” 

Whether through her words or the illustrations throughout her book, or her other art pieces including watercolor paintings and colored pencil drawings, Woo never strays far from that message or her place in preserving and passing down the stories through matriarchal lines.

“I’m proud to be a woman,” she says. “Women visualize and dream so differently than men. Women make beauty with their hands like as a gardener, a weaver, or a mother. Women are repositories for stories. The power of stories, especially handed down from the matriarchs, is lacking in our society. The stories from the grandmothers are infused with important values.”

More than 20 of Woo’s illustrations from her book are part of The Storyteller exhibition.

Also included in the exhibition are regional artists’ interpretations of short stories by Georgia Lange Moore. Donna Page is illustrating one of Moore’s stories titled Guy Noir, The Road Dog, about a curious and entertaining black shepherd.

Page and fellow artist Dianna Powrie have co-chaired a committee of volunteers who coordinated the outstanding WCA art exhibitions since 2019. The Storyteller is their last as they pass those duties on to the creative team of Wendy Koehrsen, Linda May, and Nancy Beauchamp for 2027.

Other art from local and regional artists that complement the theme of their favorite children’s books are also on display for The Storyteller. The written stories are available during the exhibition for those who want the “thousand words.”

Visitors are invited to meet the authors and artists at a reception from 4-6 p.m. on December 3. It includes an ugly Christmas sweater contest and refreshments are served.

The WCA gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. For more information, visit winnsborocenterforthearts.com.