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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Visual Art / Events With Southern Holiday, Dugg Dugg closes a chapter. What’s next?
Posted By Barbara Schreiber on Tue, May 18, 2010 at 10:00 AM
If its seems like every other post on this blog mentions Dugg Dugg, perhaps that’s because in the space of 15 months, this gutsy little group has managed to insinuate itself into nearly every crevice of the Charlotte art community.
And now, Charlotte is in the midst of Southern Holiday, a multi-day, multi-venue effort that began May 14th and continues through the 23rd. Dugg Dugg’s first Southern Holiday in 2009 totally reflected its DIY roots, but this year, institutional heavyweights such as McColl Center for Visual Art and The Light Factory are pleased to have their events under the SH marque.
If this is the first you’ve heard of Southern Holiday, that means you’ve already missed seven events, including Alex Smith’s PaperGirl Project, Annabel Manning and Celine Latulipe’s Interactive Surveillance and Culture Initiative’s Extraordinary & The Something Sideshow. But you still have time for Tuesday night’s Point8 Forum with God City; Long Live the Living, Friday night’s major collaboration between Dugg Dugg and Charlotte Arts Catalyst; Constructing a Thread of Community from the new Women Centered Art Co-Op; and eight other events.
After Southern Holiday, Dugg Dugg’s future is shrouded in a bit of mystery. Next month, founders Andrea Brown and Iris Williamson decamp for New York. Michael Aaron Southard is joining them for the trip up, but will travel back and forth while he rolls out another project here. While they are planning some local events for the next year, they’re also in the process of passing the torch to others who are committed to making sure Dugg Dugg remains a lively and transformative part of Charlotte’s cultural scene.
Full schedule and more info: southernholidayisrad.com.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Visual Art / Events Point 8 Forums are back: First one in new series to feature God City
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Wed, May 12, 2010 at 9:40 AM
So what is “Point 8” again?
It is an informal group of artists, designers, etc. who run the Pecha Kucha Charlotte series, and of course, this blog — right? True, that’s what we have been doing mainly for the last couple of years. However we started off differently. The group, (and later on, this blog) derives our name from discussion forums, which we used to organize. And after a two-year hiatus, we are excited to announce that we are restarting the forums.
What happens at those forums?
They are open venues that bring together creative individuals from a broad range of fields (along with anyone who is interested in arts/design/any kind of creativity) and try to find the common ground between them through discussion and objective critique (see our statement from six years ago). The normal format is for a person or a group to do a short presentation about a topic/theme/idea that they are experts in and/or are passionate about, followed by a discussion about it. The presenters get to reach and receive input from a far broader range of people from outside their normal audience. The participants gain new understanding of ideas, media and concepts which helps broaden their outlook, and their own creative potential (see the list of topics covered over the years).
If Pecha Kucha offers an opportunity to sample a wide range of works and ideas in a short period of time, the forums offer an opportunity to understand one topic in depth, and to discuss it with others from different backgrounds. We consider the two formats to be complementary, and equally important.
The first one in the new series would be next Tuesday (May 18) night at 6 p.m. (more details here). It will be led by the artists from God City.
Why God City?
As most people know, God City is a super-talented, young group of local artists who have been creating waves ever since they joined together in 2005. Their playful and bold work tackle difficult subjects like class, identity, consumerism – issues that that rarely get discussed in the context of creativity (at least in this town).
They are also our home-grown practitioners of “Hip-Hop Art” (a rather simplistic label for a very broad range of approaches, styles and media ranging from graffiti to corporate branding) which is perhaps at a stage where its musical sibling was at in early eighties: mature and complex, and about to transform from an underground movement into one of mainstream global significance (see the recent article from CL Atlanta).
Moreover, the session perfectly ties in with one of our main objectives: to understand and appreciate the talent and potential we have around us, and thus help develop it. Great art requires an enlightened audience. And creativity needs critique.
Be a part of the endeavor. Join us next Tuesday.
What: From the Ain't Gots to the Have Nots — Class, Identity and Art
Presentation & Discussion led by the artists from God City
When: Tuesday, May 18, 6–7:30 p.m.
Where: Mint Museum of Art (2730 Randolph Road 28207)
(Free and open to the public. RSVP not required)
More info: www.point8.org
This session of Point 8 Forum will be a part of a unique 10-day citywide art festival called Southern Holiday. More info here: southernholidayisrad.com
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Visual Art / Events Two shows at The Light Factory evince sense of place
Posted By Barbara Schreiber on Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:53 AM
The arrival of sultry weather is a sure sign that it’s time to head over to The Light Factory for the Members Show and the Annuale. This is the third year that these shows — one egalitarian, the other selective — have been paired.
For the Annuale, entries are accepted from photographers worldwide, but the exhibition’s jurors so far have come from Southern institutions — Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art (2008), Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of contemporary art at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art (2009) and now Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. But even with this run of Southern jurors, everyone involved was still a bit shocked — in a good way — by this year’s results: Although entries came from as far away as Paris, five of the winning artists are from the South. (For those of you not familiar with juried exhibitions, the juror typically makes a selection only from digital images and is provided little or no information about who submitted them.)
The Light Factory’s Third Juried Annuale features Nicholas Dantona, Franklin, Tenn.; John Grant, Charlottesville, Va.; Diana Greene, Winston-Salem; Aspen Hochhalter, Charlotte; Blue Mitchell, Portland, Ore.; and Lori Vrba, Chapel Hill.
Their work ranges from the traditional — Vrba still prints in the darkroom and Greene’s photographs harken back to Edward Weston — to the experimental — Mitchell (characterized by TLF’s Chief Curator Dennis Kiel as “our lone representative of all states west of Tennessee”) has taken a process called acrylic lift and modified it by adding a digital component.
Grant’s luscious images, with their seductive, glossy surfaces, are probably the most attention-grabbing in the show, although several of Dantona’s Harpeth River Watershed photographs (especially one in which cows stare at you with a Village of the Damned intensity) have a compelling strangeness that sticks with you long after you’ve left the gallery.
Over at the Members Show, now in its 38th year, there are the usual highs and lows that you get with a take-all-comers enterprise; however, this show is not primarily about aesthetic achievement (although it does include its share of beauties, such as Byron Baldwin’s moody Night Smoker) but is instead about the depth and richness of a community. In this show, everyone — ranging from some of Charlotte’s most noted photographers to passionate non-professionals who just want the thrill of seeing their work in a gallery — are happy to share wall space. The sense of community may be best evidenced by Hochhalter, whose ethereal Reclamation of Silver Series graces the Annuale, but who submitted a piece to the Members Show too.
To fully appreciate this show, it’s probably best to attend the reception, with its lively mass of photographers, friends of photographers and loved ones of photographers. See you there on May 22.
Light Factory Third Juried Annuale, through August 15, and 38th Annual Members Show, through August 8; opening reception for both exhibitions, May 22, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Details at www.lightfactory.org/photography.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Film / Events NoDa Film Festival returns with The Battle of Algiers
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:24 AM
Charlotte isn’t a great place to be if you are a film buff (especially since the takeover of all independent theaters by Regal). Many notable independent films and documentaries never play in town, and we never get to see them unless and until they are released on DVD.
It is in that context that our frequent contributor Jeff Jackson started the Noda Film Festival in early 2006. Starting with African-American Film, in 2 years’ time we were treated to seven exciting and different fares, which became popular far beyond the imagination of the founder. But then it also fell victim to the same affliction that many such non-profit grassroots ventures suffer from in this town — as the attendance kept rising, the funding and volunteer help kept dropping, until finally the series was put on hold.
So it is great news that the festival is returning this weekend after a hiatus of nearly 2 years. The reborn NoDa Film Festival won’t be a “festival” in the conventional sense, but a series made up of a single special film shown every few months. The first one would be this Sunday (April 25), and it will start with a (literal) bang with the legendary and controversial 1966 French war film, The Battle of Algiers — a movie that won three Oscar nominations including the Best Director, pretty rare feat for a foreign language film even now, and extremely unusual then. Banned in France soon after its release, it soon became one of the most influential movies of all time. This realistic recreation of a historic insurgency apparently became a must-see for all rebel/guerilla groups around the world, from the Black Panthers, the IRA and the Baader-Meinhof Group, to the more recent and dangerous ones like some of the Al-Qaeda factions. It also became a valuable lesson for those who fight such insurgencies, as the Pentagon screened it in 2003 in connection to the Iraq war. (Watch the trailer here.)
The new series of Noda Film Festival is done in collaboration with God City — perhaps the most promising and exciting young artists’ collective of this region — and The Light Factory, the premier film and photography institution in town. The festival, however, still seeks and needs your support beyond attendance. Get in touch with them if you can volunteer or help in any other way. It’s in all our interests to keep it going.
Info: “The Battle of Algiers” @ The Neighborhood Theatre, NoDa. Sunday, April 25 at 4:00pm. Cover: $3. More info at www.nodafilmfestival.org.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Visual Art / Events Sculptor James Clark in it for the long haul
Posted By Barbara Schreiber on Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:19 AM
This past Friday night, Center of the Earth gallery combined a birthday party and some front-porch-style shooting the breeze with a body of work inspired by the sweep of art history, random news snippets and chance encounters.
This was opening night for A Sculptor’s Life, a 40+ year retrospective of work by 87-year-old artist — and birthday honoree — James Clark, who makes Cubist-inflected wood constructions that are both muscular and sensuous.
A conventional interview with Clark is a challenge, but you can pull up a chair and take notes while he engages in a charming monologue about his methods and the things large and small that inspire him. Born in New York City, Clark received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His early work referenced nature, but he was eventually pulled into the then-dominant mode of abstraction. But then “Pollock came along, and I realized all had been said, so I went back to the figure ... I wasn’t exactly making the figure, but I was making natural forms. There was really no point in continuing with abstraction.”
Emotion is thick in this work. Many pieces have innocuous titles, which only heighten the sense of unease. At “Burger King” (1985) depicts what at first looks like a couple standing at a table in a cocktail lounge, but Clark says that it was inspired by the server at a Burger King near his home in Pennsylvania who seemed unaware of her odd, suggestive posture. “Girl Trying on a Beret” (1994) pairs an ordinary gesture with a facial expression that could be interpreted as alarm or resignation.
Many of these constructions have abraded, pitted surfaces and a thick, waxy finish. Some of the wood looks salvaged. But, Clark explains that if something isn’t working, he tears the piece apart to determine what went wrong, then rebuilds it or uses the wood in another work, thus accounting in part for these alluring surfaces. (And speaking of alluring surfaces, make sure you get a 360-degree view of Clark’s figures, because most of them sport fine little posteriors.)
Everyday grief is a thread running through much of Clark’s work; for example, “Broken Heads” was inspired by a Philadelphia Inquirer article about innocent bystanders killed in the inner city in a single year.
Clark lived and worked in New York and Pennsylvania before moving to North Carolina to be closer to family. After several years in Raleigh, he moved to Charlotte two years ago. Despite his brief tenure here, Clark is something of an icon in NoDa. He works in his studio most every day, but when he’s not there you can often find him on his front porch near the Smelly Cat Coffeehouse or walking his dog Milou in the neighborhood.
James Clark: A Sculptor’s Life runs through May 29.
The Vol. 5 of the Pecha Kucha series, which Point 8 Forum organizes, will be this Thursday (April 8) at 7:30 at the Dharma Lounge. The event will feature 10 presentations on a variety of topics ranging from ecology to Brazilian wrestling, as well as music and dance performances. More details @ www.point8.org/pechakucha.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Events TEDx is coming to town
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:10 AM
Do you know TED ...? If not, you should!
TED (www.TED.com), which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, brings together the brightest, the most creative and the most original minds from around the world, to share a stage, to spread their ideas and to "cross-pollinate". Founded in 1982 as a sort of a Silicon Valley think tank of industry leaders, TED grew in scope and reach to become a truly global phenomenon. For example, to take only names that start with the letter G, Peter Gabriel, Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, Jane Goodall, Al Gore and Billy Graham are few of the thought leaders to speak at recent TED conferences (see the full list here).
In 2007, TED started a program called TEDx, which allows cities, schools and other organizations to hold their own independently organized, licensed events under the guidance of TED. Since then every major city across the globe has held a TEDx event. And finally TEDx comes to Charlotte this year on September 24.
The common refrain I've heard since I began this process is "it's about time." At first, I thought it just meant Charlotte should have had its TEDx by now. But now I understand the nuance implied in that statement is that we're a city yearning for leadership and it's high time to do something about it.
The theme for the inaugural TEDxCharlotte is "Big Ideas." Like all TED conferences, it's by invitation only or through an application process. Unlike TED conferences, it's not a commercial venture and guests don't pay to attend. (Attending TED 2010 would have cost you $6,000). Our goal is to bring together creative minds and those who seek to be engaged in order to inspire and connect.
The whole-day program involves speakers who are thought leaders and original creative thinkers and artists from Charlotte and the region who are actively applying their innovative ideas to make our lives better. A lofty endeavor, but more important now than ever before. With the vacuum created by the gradual exit of the "fathers" of modern Charlotte, it's crucial we take a close look at who we are, think about how we should and will evolve, and begin the process of determining who will get us there.
The event aims to be thought-provoking, moving, entertaining, challenging and inspiring. The goal is not to create even more task forces or to undertake studies. The simple beauty of TED is that it's meant to seed thought and discussion, create connections and spark debate. Beyond that, people will take from it and do with it what they will.
For more information, updates and to apply for attending, check out the TEDx Charlotte Web site – or follow the event on Facebook & Twitter.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Save our libraries — a personal plea
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 10:07 AM
The news came out last Thursday: 12 public library branches in Mecklenburg will be closed in 2 weeks and around 150 employees will lose their jobs. They are trying to raise $2 million in a week in a last ditch effort to avoid that. Since then everything about it has been discussed and argued about in all kinds of media, and there isn’t much left to add to that debate. What I offer here is instead a very personal take on the issue.
I grew up in a family and a culture that valued books and reading. But books were hard to come by. Every major town had a public library. However the shelves were mostly empty, the books dusty, old and falling apart. The only good libraries were those attached to the bigger universities, accessible only to the students enrolled there — which made them very exclusive. So when I moved to the U.S. around 11 years ago, I didn’t even bother to check out the public library in the small Kansas town I had moved to. But when I did, I was really amazed by the facility and the collection. Since then whenever I meet someone who has newly arrived in the U.S., I advice them to first get a library card.
The public library system is one of the best-kept secrets of the United States. We who live here often forget that in such a large country, it is so unusual and extraordinary for every small town, and every neighborhood in a city, to have a well-stocked library. In a country that offers no free lunch, we take for granted one of the few facilities that we enjoy at very low expense. And in the changing world order, it is one of our true advantages that the new rising powers like Brazil, China, India or Russia will find hard to replicate.
Back to Charlotte: Of course things could have been handled better here, in one of the best library systems in the country. There should have been a longer notice than 2 weeks. There should have been a longer term plan, so that a brand new facility wouldn’t have to be closed less than 2 months from its opening. But this is not the time to blame the system — it’s the time to try do something. Let us just hope that the county and the library system realize that this kind of genuine concern, sympathy and goodwill from such a large section of the community is hard to come by. They would lose a huge opportunity if they don’t turn this groundswell of support into a permanent citizen organization that would become a safety net if/when something like this happens again. After all, by all indications, this seems to be only the beginning.
For now, $2 million isn’t a big amount for a city of Charlotte’s size and resources, even in the middle of a bad recession; $2 million will not pay for even the building of the smallest of branches that faces closure — but the damage that the lack of $2 million will cause is incalculable.
Please do whatever you can … and then something more. It might be too late by this time tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Visual Art Life’s a (segregated) beach
Posted By Barbara Schreiber on Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:18 AM
If you were to view Leisure Space, Juan Logan’s exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture, with no wall text, no titles, no clue as to what the work is about, you might be puzzled, but you would still be moved. These map-like, mixed media works on panel — characterized by dense areas of color, evocative use of collage elements and a rich, symbolic language — may not be fully decipherable without some guidance, but they have a beauty and depth that evokes emotion and catharsis.
However, it is imperative to know that Leisure Space, is about something, and that something is important to think about — our country’s historic black beaches, places where African-Americans were allowed to congregate during the Jim Crow era.
Not all of the paintings are about beaches per se, but most are about water — or rather, about conflict and control that are made visible when land meets water. As Logan points out, “If you control the water, you control the land.”
A thoughtful catalogue essay by Andrew W. Kahrl details the history and the outrage that inspired these forceful paintings. It provides the backstory to the unease combined with sheer aesthetic pleasure one experiences in viewing Leisure Space.
Works range from the imposing “Help Me, Save Me, Love Me” — in which thousands of puzzle pieces represent the scattering of New Orleans’ African-American population in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — to the quiet, chilling “I Almost Didn’t See You” — a monochromatic work in which figures are rendered invisible and silent. The pieces in Leisure Space seem to have aspects both somber and uplifting, condemning the circumstances that created black beaches, but honoring the solidarity they fostered.
Most art worth looking at generates more questions than answers, and Logan’s is no exception. On March 20, 1 p.m., you can meet Logan, hear him discuss his work and ask some of those questions. For details, visit www.ganttcenter.org or call 704-547-3700.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Visual Art / Events / Architecture The (social) media and the new pioneers of our virtual universe
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:11 PM
A special conference/fundraiser was hosted on Feb. 20, 2010. But it did not take place in one place — it started in Tokyo at 5 p.m. their time, and followed the time zones around the globe to end in San Francisco 24 hours later. During that period, tens of thousands of people in 130 cities around the world participated in it. This “largest global distributed conference ever” was the Pecha Kucha for Haiti event, and 100% of the proceeds went to the Haiti rebuilding efforts spearheaded by Architecture for Humanity. Most regular readers of this blog would know that Point8 Forum, the informal grassroots group this blog derives its name from, organizes Pecha Kucha in Charlotte. The series is held in most other cities by similar all-voluntary groups. And even more impressive is the fact that this whole event was planned and executed in around 20 days.
All this was made possible by media that barely existed five years ago; the word was spread through Facebook and Twitter and by various blogs, the event was streamed live on Ustream, with the founders chatting with the organizers and the audience around the world by Skype video. It was perhaps one of those not-too-common instances where the much-hyped “social media” delivered on all its promise.
PK for Haiti used new media for a rather traditional objective. But art isn’t often about tradition, and moreover, about having any immediate or tangible purpose. In fact, what artists often do is use a new medium for purposes it was never intended for, in the process expand the boundaries of that medium.
For example, Charles Westfall and Layet Johnson, two artists from the University of Georgia, set up a life boat with supplies for a day, and at 8:15 p.m. on Jan. 21, paddled off into the Atlantic off the N.C. coast ... on Google Earth! This performance piece, titled "Platonic Voyage" too was live on Ustream through which they stayed in touch with their landbound audience.
Another unconventional — if a bit irreverent — exploration/journey in the virtual world took place on Second Life, as an artist "recreated" Gandhi’s Salt March by advancing his avatar using a treadmill. You can see that and related projects recorded here.
As our connection to our non-immediate surroundings becomes primarily through the electronic screen, and as our socialization turns increasingly virtual, is the vast expanse of cyber space the last frontier? Are our contemporary Daniel Boones and Davy Crocketts out there in the fringes of the internet, staking it out for us less adventurous souls? Check out the art gallery near you to find out ... or just wait for their tweet.
Related: CPCC will be holding a half-day workshop to discuss Social Media and Visual Art on April 13, Tuesday afternoon at their main campus. Contact Alyssa Wood for more details: Alyssa.Wood@cpcc.ed.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Visual Art McColl Center artists-in-residence invite participation
Posted By Barbara Schreiber on Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:22 AM
While long-time Charlotteans still think of McColl Center for Visual Art as the “old burnt-out church,” and others know it mostly as a place to see an exhibition or drop off the kids for summer art classes, the soul of the Center is its artist residencies.
A typical artists-in-residence program is like a retreat, offering artists a quiet place to work without distraction. But the McColl is different — it’s a place artists come to for intense public engagement. While at work in their studios, artist-in-residence are encouraged to keep their doors open and welcome a sometimes wild array of visitors. And now two artists-in-residence at the Center have upcoming projects that will give non-artists a chance to flex their creative muscle:
Somali-born, Toronto-based photographer Abdi Osman, whose work is deeply influenced by his experiences as a black, Muslim, gay male, is inviting the Charlotte LGBT community to take part in the Queer Reclamation of the Queen City Community Outreach Project. Using disposable cameras, participants are photographing local people, places and icons they feel deserve recognition. Osman will use these images as the basis for a commemorative, limited-edition print, which he will then make available to the community.
With help from a Charlotte Lesbian & Gay Fund grant, over 80 cameras were purchased for this project. So far Osman has distributed more than half of them and will give out additional cameras at Charlotte Black Gay Pride Community Leadership Honors on Feb. 20. If you’d like to participate, contact McColl Center for Visual Art or the Lesbian & Gay Community Center to make arrangements to pick up your camera. All cameras must be turned in by Feb. 28. On March 19, 6 pm.-10 p.m., Osman will unveil his commemorative print at a free, public celebration presented by the Center, Take Over Charlotte and the LGCC.
When Osman started visiting the LGCC, with which he has been working closely since his arrival in Charlotte, he noticed that it served an overwhelmingly white population. In aggressively seeking out people of color, older people and others, he is not only identifying a diverse group for his outreach project, but also hopes to deepen their ties to the LGCC.
Of course, in a successful outreach both the artist and the community benefit. In his studio, Osman is working on a series of portraits, and in keeping with his desire to represent a diverse community, he’s especially interested in finding black LGBT subjects. If you’re interested, contact him through the Center.
Artist-in-residence Shaun El C. Leonardo, of Queens, N.Y., is a mixed media and performance artist whose work is a complex mixture of childhood memories, masculine stereotypes and pop-culture references. He’ll present a free performance workshop at the Center on March 6, 2 p.m.-5 p.m. No experience is required, just a commitment to art as a means of communication. Through an organic process based on movement-oriented exercises that he has devised, Leonardo’s goal is to help participants build the courage and comfort to project themselves as if they were performers.
For more info on the Queer Reclamation Project or workshop registration, contact Devlin McNeil, dmcneil@mccollcenter.org or 704-332-5535, ext. 13.
