CHARLESTON, SC (WCBD) –  The Gibbes Museum of Art announced the 2018 winner of the Society 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art. 

Leo Twiggs is from Orangeburg, South Carolina and also took home a $10,000 cash prize. 

“I am on cloud nine,” said Twiggs. “It is an unbelievable feeling at this time in my career. For it to happen at the Gibbes, in a city where my ancestors were first brought ashore as slaves, and just 45 miles from where I was born and did my first drawings on the back side of discarded wallpaper, is humbling and heartwarming.”

Each year, the 1858 Prize is presented by Society 1858, a member auxiliary group of the Gibbes Museum of Art comprised of young professionals.

This year, more than 247 artists from across the South submitted applications.

Born in the Lowcountry town of St. Stephen, South Carolina in 1934, Twiggs studied art at Claflin College in Orangeburg and went on to earn a Masters degree from New York University and a doctorate in art education from the University of Georgia.

In 1964 he began his thirty-four year teaching career at South Carolina State University. A year later he began experimenting with batik, a wax-resist method of dyeing textiles.

He was attracted to the medium for its rich tradition and improvisational nature. Much of Twiggs’ work explores family history, cultural heritage, and how the past is manifest in contemporary life.

His series titled “Requiem for Mother Emanuel” recently traveled throughout the southeast, earning acclaim as a powerful tribute to the nine church members slain during the horrific shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

The Gibbes Museum currently has three of Twiggs’ works in its collection: The Omen, Sarah Remembered and Requiem for Mother Emanuel #3. Twiggs will be celebrated at the Amy P. Coy Forum and Prize Party hosted by Society 1858 on Sept. 19 at 6 p.m. at the Gibbes Museum.