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Wednesday

What: Explore artwork across a variety of mediums at the Benedict College Art Faculty Exhibition, hosted at Stormwater Studios through March 15.

When: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., March 4-8 and 11-15

Where: Stormwater Studios, 413 Pendleton St., Columbia

Price: Free admission

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/2nzb9zzm

Thursday

What: Back for the second year, the Columbia Museum of Art is hosting a Ramadan Night Market during March’s First Thursday on Main event. Grab some chai and a bite to eat, check out the museum’s galleries and learn about Muslim cultural traditions. A space for prayer will be reserved for those observing the religious holiday of Ramadan.

When: 5-8 p.m., March 5

Where: Columbia Museum of Art Boyd Plaza, 1515 Main St., Columbia

Price: Free admission

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/em4dh4xj

What: If you've always wanted to learn to line dance, March is your chance. Beginning this week and happening every Thursday this month, visit Bill's Music Shop & Pickin' Parlor for line dance lessons.

When: 6:30-8 p.m., March 5 (four Thursdays in March)

Where: Bill's Music Shop & Pickin' Parlor, 710 Meeting St., West Columbia

Price: $10 per session

What: "Echoes of Georgia O’Keeffe" is Gemini Arts' latest show, coming to the space March 6 through April 17. This week, stop by for the show's evening opening reception.

When: 6-9 p.m., March 6

Where: Gemini Arts, 2847 Commerce Drive, Columbia

Price: Free admission

What: Purchase your ticket today for this Friday night performance at Township Auditorium by Get the Led Out: "A Celebration of 'The Mighty Zep.'"

When: Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m., March 6

Where: Township Auditorium, 1703 Taylor St., Columbia

Price: Starting at $62.85 after fees

What: Explore dozens of aisles of products, from jewelry to pottery and so much more, at this spring's Craftsmen's Classic in Soda City.

When: 10 a.m.-6 p.m., March 6-7; 10 a.m.-4 p.m., March 8

Where: South Carolina State Fairgrounds, 1200 Rosewood Drive, Columbia

Price: $9 general admission at the door

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/35hx246x

What: Back for another year, this neighborhood-themed art festival with scrappy beginnings has become one of Columbia’s finest festival gems. Stroll through the streets of Cottontown to find hundreds of artists selling their wares on front porches and under tents. Live music, food vendors and alcohol sales will also be available.

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., March 7

Where: Cottontown-Bellevue neighborhood, Columbia

Price: Free admission

What: What started in 2017 has now grown into one of the city’s biggest annual events: Irish Fest Camden. Food trucks, live music from Columbia Celtic rockers SYR, Highland games, bagpipes, an Irish pub experience and much more is in store for this Saturday.

When: Gates open at 9 a.m., event 10 a.m.-5 p.m., March 7

Where: Kershaw County Airport, 2203 Airline Drive, Camden

Price: $20 advanced general admission, $25 general admission at the gate

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/2wxfry5w

What: Celebrate SC Ballet’s 65th season by attending the professional company’s performance of “Sapphire Ballet.” Though they were unable to celebrate their 60th season due to COVID-19, the past five years have seen the company get a statewide rebrand — and widen their seasonal footprint across the country.

When: 7:30 p.m., March 7

Where: Koger Center for the Arts, 1051 Greene St., Columbia

Price: Starting at $35 before fees

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/2m3ftwzk

What: Back for the 11th year, the Annual Shamrock Parade is coming down Main Street in Lexington to celebrate the St. Patrick's Day season. From floats to Irish dancers, this celebration is not one to miss.

When: 3 p.m., March 8

Where: Main Street, Downtown Lexington

Price: Free

What: This Monday, bring your kiddos to the Richland Library Wheatley branch to read to a furry friend. At Read to a Therapy Dog, participants get 10 minutes of reading with a therapy pet.

When: 4-5 p.m., March 9

Where: Richland Library Wheatley, 931 Woodrow St., Columbia

Price: Free

More Information: https://tinyurl.com/22b6x6jh

What: Mark your calendar for Women in Art Book Club at All Good Books. The March selection is "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" by Linda Nochlin, and the discussion will be led by All Good Books creative director and bookseller Julie Hansard.

When: 6-7 p.m., March 10

Where: All Good Books, 734 Harden St., Columbia

Price: Free admission

After nearly 20 years in the Sandhills, a Steinway and Sons piano gallery is returning to Devine Street.

The new gallery will open across the street from the former location of the Rice Music House, the Steinway Gallery’s home for nearly 70 years before it shuttered two decades ago.

The new site was purchased by Mark and Katherine Love, the CEO and president of Steinway Carolinas, in June 2024. Mark Love said it “just made sense” for the Steinway gallery to be back downtown.

“Part of what led us to Devine was, of course, the fact that Rice had been there,” Love said. “But it’s also the upscale shopping street of Columbia.”

Rice Music House was originally a gallery that sold a variety of musical instruments, including Steinway Pianos. After moving out of Columbia in 2008, Rice narrowed its focus to selling traditional and electronic pianos.

When the Loves acquired Rice Music House in 2024, they continued under the Rice name until late 2025. However, they always planned to transition the gallery to Steinway to focus on selling the traditional pianos, Love said.

“It’s opening up truly branded for what it is that we truly do,” Love said.

Greenville is home to Steinway’s only other South Carolina gallery, and establishing a gallery in Columbia broadens the market in the state, Love said.

“Columbia is the capital of South Carolina, and in our opinion, that demands a Steinway gallery,” Love said.

In 2025, Steinway Carolinas was awarded the Partners In Performance award by Steinway, which recognizes the Steinway market with the best caliber of sales. This was the same year that Steinway Carolinas’ market was bumped up to a market designation that means it competes against cities like Dallas, Boston and Vancouver, Love said.

Steinway District Sales Manager Chris Gilbert, who attended the gallery opening in February, said the opening of the Columbia gallery helped Steinway Carolinas win its award.

“They represented the brand with class (and) wonderful customer service,” Gilbert said.

When Rice moved out of Columbia in 2008, the building was also torn down. The new location of Columbia’s Steinway gallery is opening across the street.

“Steinway, which is synonymous with excellence, is … the unquestioned leader in the world,” Love said. “It’s just serendipity that it happens to exist across the street.”

Love said opening a gallery in Columbia would help strengthen relationships with arts and culture institutions in the city, including USC’s School of Music.

Tayloe Harding, dean of the School of Music, said the school had a 20-year exclusive partnership with Steinway that originated with the Rice Music House. The School of Music is now looking to attract other large sponsors to aid the growth of the Southeastern Piano Festival, Harding said.

The School of Music has hosted the festival, a competitive and instructive pianist showcase, since 2002.

“Running a festival like this is very expensive … so we’ll be seeking other sponsorships in a way that is a little different than we have in the past,” Harding said. “And yet the Steinway Piano Galleries remains a really good friend and important sponsor of the festival.”

The School of Music owns over 140 pianos, and Harding said they will look to Steinway as they need to replace them in the coming years.

“That expertise is sustained and the Steinway brand has worked really hard to make sure that there’s never been a lapse in that quality through all of the years,” Harding said. “It’s the handcrafted thing that makes them so special.”

Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and members of the City of Columbia Office of Economic Development were present at the gallery’s opening on Feb. 25.

COLUMBIA — The popular fast-casual brand Cousins Maine Lobster announced the launch of its first permanent food truck in South Carolina, which will park in Columbia.

The brand aims to “introduce authentic Maine lobster to the Midlands community,” a press release says.

The Columbia truck will serve Cousins Maine Lobster’s signature menu, including chilled Maine lobster rolls with mayo on a New England-style roll, warm butter lobster rolls, lobster tacos, lobster grilled cheese, and classic whoopie pies.

The food truck will celebrate its official Columbia debut with a two-day grand opening event, kicking off Friday, Feb. 27, from 3 to 8 p.m. at Finlay Fridays at Finlay Park on 930 Laurel St. and continuing Saturday, Feb. 28, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Battle at BullStreet in Segra Park on 1640 Freed St.

Its expansion into the Palmetto State was spearheaded by business partners Dave Blosser and Matt Cobb.

“Seeing an authentic Maine lobster roll served in the heart of South Carolina is something really special,” Cobb and Blosser said in a press release. “We want guests to feel transported to the Maine coast …”

The Columbia market entrance is part of a three-city expansion spearheaded by Blosser and Cobb. The other cities are Charleston and Birmingham, Ala.

The truck will be present at events across the state in the coming months, including stops in Aiken and Anderson, according to its Facebook page. A second truck is slated to launch in Charleston soon, according to the brand’s website. A second Columbia truck is slated for launch in 2027, the release says.

Cousins Maine got its start in 2012 on the popular investment show “Shark Tank,” when Barbara Corcoran invested $55,000 in the company. The fast-casual seafood brand, founded by cousins Sabin Lomac and Jim Tselikis, has grown to include several food trucks, restaurants and a “shore-to-door” online shop. It has locations across the eastern U.S. and is expanding in the Southeast.

Emma Bliss brought a lot of love with her when she came to Columbia in 1898. You can tell by the great big valentine she left behind – a collection of photos of the people and places she saw exploring the city with her beribboned young daughter and Kodak box camera. A cute child and a camera? Strangers would smile; strangers would pose. And Emma, from Rhode Island, would snap her machine and move on.

“She was interested in absorbing this strange place of Columbia,” said Margaret Dunlap, manager of the Walker Local History and Family Center at Richland Library, where the Emma Bliss photo collection is archived. “To her it was a big adventure.”

And so different from Gilded Age Newport, with its super-wealthy families and grand mansions on Narragansett Bay. Columbia was humming with railroads and industry, even the first hydroelectric mill in the country. Thirty-four years after the Civil War and 27 past Reconstruction, South Carolina’s capital city was pushing aside its ruined past. Soon it would be the fastest-growing city in the Carolinas.

Still, pockets of poverty were conspicuous and perhaps to Emma, a White woman from a White area, dire. She didn’t shy away from them. Her photos show Black Columbians in various settings – students in front of their schoolhouses, mothers with young children, a woman outside her crumbling cabin with washpots out front, boys with their dog. She also got a photo of her daughter with Hattie Jones, a little Black girl whose mother was a cook. Like Richard Samuel Roberts would do about 20 years later, Emma captured the mundane in Columbia, allowing an extraordinary lens into their lives.

“Photographs of Black Columbians from this time period are rare, and photos showing White and Black children together – I can’t think of another one,” Dunlap said. As she put it, Emma Bliss had an “inquisitive and compassionate eye.” A new mother, she may have been drawn to scenes of mothers and children.

But she also nabbed photos of men – lots of them. They’re on horseback, firing a cannon, posing for her Kodak at Camp Fornance, a new “winter readiness” camp on the bluffs of the Broad River. Here was where the volunteers of the First Rhode Island and Second Tennessee infantries were training for duty in the Spanish-American War. This was where Maj. Herbert Bliss was stationed as their daily officer in command. And he is why this unexpected collection of seemingly unrelated photos even exist: Maj. Bliss’ wife, Emma, 30, their daughter, Hope, two-and-a half, and her doll, name and age unknown, joined him in this unknown world.

It’s easy to imagine how it all could have happened. Winter was coming. Why stay in New England? See the sights, bring the camera, get visual souvenirs. Or maybe it was more emotional, more fraught. If Maj. Bliss were sent to Cuba or the Philippines, would he come back? Hope was so young, would she remember her father if the worst happened? Bring the camera, get visual souvenirs, hope for the best. Emma and Hope trained down. Where they stayed is unknown.

What is known can be pieced together through public records, obituaries and news of that time. Emma and Hope didn’t escape a bad winter. The St. Valentine’s Day Blizzard of 1899 brought Columbia minus-2 degree weather and 11 inches of snow. (Emma dutifully got a photo of a horse-drawn sleigh.) And Maj. Bliss didn’t go to war – it ended in December 1898. But the men at Camp Fornance didn’t muster out until March 1899, and Emma kept roaming Columbia, most likely by streetcar, getting photos of scenes that drew her.

There’s the Columbia Canal on the Broad River, an unassuming elbow of water in a grassy field. There’s the rarely photographed 1872 Richland County Courthouse, razed and replaced in 1935, bicycles parked in front. When Dunlap saw the photo of the Statehouse columns lying on the ground waiting to be erected, she froze.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really interesting,’ “ Dunlap explained. “To my knowledge, there is no other image of the columns lying on the ground.”

The events Emma Bliss documented are just as important, not only in Columbia’s timeline but the country’s. She was nearby – it’s not certain where – when rows of Black women paraded together, perhaps in celebration of Emancipation Day. And though she didn’t leave a photo behind of it, she probably witnessed the men of Camp Fornance, northern and southern, marching together on a now-unrecognizable Main Street.

“This was the first unifying American war since the Civil War and the first time for Confederate and Union officers to fight together for a common cause,” Dunlap noted, explaining that feelings of bitterness and notions of vengeance were put aside to defend a shared nation.

Not to be dismissed were the economic opportunities war presented. Columbia’s prescient mayor, Col. J.T. Lipscomb, sent a committee to Washington, DC, to offer free land for a training camp to the U.S. War Dept. Already in place were modern modes of transportation, clean and plentiful water, an easy climate. Once the offer was accepted, the 2,500 men who’d come to Camp Fornance would need services. Columbia’s small businesses would jump to their needs. Lipscomb’s foresight yielded rich dividends. Camp Fornance led to the building of Camp Jackson during World War I and to today’s Fort Jackson.

It’s possible those economic maneuverings explain the biggest mystery of the Emma Bliss Collection: Why are there so many photos of the house at 1315 Marion St.? If photos don’t lie, then there was a strong connection, even a friendship, between the Bliss family of Newport and the T.H. Gibbes family of Columbia. A city alderman and future mayor, Gibbes was a banker and treasurer of the Columbia, Newberry and Laurens Railroad. He would have been tending Columbia’s economic forecast. Dunlap figures he may have welcomed Maj. Bliss to Columbia. Maybe in the inexplicable way of people, they took a liking to each other. Maybe T. H. Gibbes, a son of the physician-scientist-university professor Robert Gibbes, had long moved past how his family’s home, with his father’s invaluable collections of fossils and minerals, had famously been destroyed by Union troops in February 1865. T. H. would have been a teenager at the time.

But in the interval between November 1898 and March 1899, when Camp Fornance operated as a training center and then a demobilization center, the present superseded the past. The Bliss and Gibbes families would gather on the wide porch of the Marion Street house, little Hope the centerpiece in her ribbons and bonnets and fur-trimmed capes. On the one occasion when her mother was in the photo instead of taking it, her hands were on her own camera and she was staring straight ahead. It seems Emma Bliss was always focused on what she saw.

WEST COLUMBIA — The highly anticipated Ikie Lu Record Club is set to open in West Columbia on Feb. 19 with plans to combine a champagne and cocktail bar, a restaurant and a jazz kissa to create a unique new dining experience in the River District.

The restaurant’s opening comes after years of planning by owner Matt Catchpole, who first announced the restaurant would be coming to the former Spanish-language church off of Sunset Boulevard in March 2025.

Since then, Catchpole has hosted an occasional event at the space, including a dinner for the 2025 Columbia Food and Wine Festival and a New Year’s event, but he’s mostly focused on creating a food and drink menu and completely reimagining the building with a mid-century modern vibe.

When a Free Times reporter visited the space in late 2025, vintage records filled a shelf against the wall, sleek furniture featuring plenty of natural wood was spread across the seating area and a unique monkey light hung from the ceiling.

Catchpole said he was partially inspired by a Japanese jazz kissa, a café or bar focused on listening to recorded jazz music, and hopes Ikie Lu can be a space where people enjoy listening to vinyl records and be immersed in the restaurant experience.

“As you're listening to music, as you're eating food, as you're drinking wine, as you're having a cocktail, we wanted to help you in that immersion by having this sort of vaguely mid-century design and furniture. And we wanted it to feel almost coastal, but definitely not this coast,” Catchpole said. “And the question is, is it West Coast, or is it East Coast Asia, or is it British West Indies or whatever?”

Catchpole said he wants Ikie Lu to be a place where people leave the rest of the world behind.

“Forget about all the headaches that they've got,” Catchpole said. “Relax and let the worries leave. That's one of the major reasons for restaurants existing in the first place.”

Catchpole’s dedication to creating an immersive environment is reflected in much of Ikie Lu, with the vintage-style speakers incorporated into the décor, the hand-curated vinyl collection, the mid-century modern furniture and wine — which Catchpole said he took care to select based on what companies were working to “showcase their artistry.”

In addition to selling wine by the bottle and the glass, Ikie Lu will open with a limited cocktail menu featuring “really well executed, fresh, well made, very precise versions of classic cocktails.” Catchpole said guests can look forward to drinks like an old fashioned, a Negroni Bianco, a Black Manhattan and a Jack Rudy Tonic Syrup Lime Gin (which is shaken and served like a lime daiquiri).

There will also be a few drinks inspired by his grandmother, the namesake of the restaurant, like a simple Tom Collins and a Miller High Life, which his grandmother would drink just the top layer of when Catchpole’s grandfather opened a new bottle.

And while Catchpole said he wants to create a unique environment, he’s also put a lot of time into ensuring it is approachable and affordable.

“I'm excited about it, because it's the thing that we really enjoy when we travel, is finding a space like this that you feel comfortable and feel relaxed and feel like you can enjoy yourself and appreciate some of the nicer things, without having to spend thousands of dollars to do that,” Catchpole said.

Ikie Lu will look to creatively combine upscale tastes in laid-back styles, particularly with its food menu, which will feature items like specialty hot dogs served with caviar, shrimp rolls and crab dip.

The food options, served on everything from boards to buns, also make it easy to eat throughout the restaurant, which has minimal tables, instead opting for chairs and couches for lounging and conversation.

Catchpole’s hope is that the restaurant will become will become a dinner spot, or a stop for pre- or post-dinner drinks, and an opportunity to enjoy music and relaxed time with friends new and old.

The goal is to “make these things super fun and approachable for everybody,” Catchpole said. “To also take the thing that you really enjoy and love and sort of make that accessible and share it with people.”

Ikie Lu Record Club is located at 601 N Lucas St. in West Columbia and will be open Thursdays and Fridays from 3:30 to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.