Composed of former McColl Center for Visual Art affiliate artists, Core represents a longtime dream of Center Executive Director Suzanne Fetscher to provide alumni artists opportunities for exhibitions and career development once they leave McColl. Obviously this is a great benefit to Center alumni, but the project has an additional objective that should get the attention of every other artist in the area: to further promote and cultivate new audiences for contemporary art in Charlotte. This is something we desperately need, as the local art community’s chronic invisibility has only worsened as galleries have closed or gone into consultancy mode in the last few years.
The founding Core artists are Raed Al-Rawi, Daniel Allegrucci, Crista Cammaroto, Alex Clark, Diane Hughes, Ashley Lathe, Laura Alma McCarthy and Felicia van Bork. This initial group has been working over the past year refining Core’s vision, writing bylaws, developing a website and dealing with the myriad nuts and bolts of starting an organization.
At the moment, Core is nomadic, although the intention is to eventually secure a permanent space. Luckily one of Core’s founding members, photographer Diane Hughes, is also an independent curator, so this inaugural show will take place at her Ayrsley-area space, Hughes Gallery.
Core is already participating in McColl’s 7th Street Windows project, which has turned out to be even more beneficial than anticipated. Since there are more members than windows, it has been necessary to pair up and work collaboratively. “The windows have provided us the opportunity to develop a way of working together and develop a group identity,” says McCarthy. “As a result, some of us are now working collaboratively on other projects, and others have returned to their work with a fresh perspective.”
Core: The Beginning, Hughes Gallery, 2015 Ayrsley Town Blvd, Charlotte. Opening reception, May 20, 6:00-9:00 p.m., viewing by appointment only through June 17; call Diane Hughes, 704-492-9934. corevisualart.org
April Denée describes herself as the type to stop an interesting-looking person on the street and ask them about their story.
Its a trait that no doubt helped her as a freelance journalist. It has now brought her to the unexpected path of writing and directing a feature-length documentary, titled BUSK!; it explores the importance of encouraging street art and performance as a vital part of a citys cultural health and vitality.
Filmmaking may be a new passion of Denées, but it is starting to take precedence over her other endeavors. Give me a meager salary just enough to live on put a camera in my hand, stick me in a room with my editing suite, and let me be happy. Its that simple, she states with obvious determination.
The BUSK! website describes the project as a character-driven documentary about how a small, emerging city can and should encourage street art and performance toward its own social, cultural, and economic growth.
Charlotte has a sometimes tenuous relationship with its budding music and arts community. Never more so than when that art or music is presented outdoors, free from galleries or commercially backed and publicly sanctioned amphitheaters and performance centers.
The issue is heating up as of late, with proposed changes to the noise ordinance that left many musicians, small business owners and fans of live music up in arms taking to Facebook and online petitions to vent their frustration and propose softer revisions. The proposed changes have now been scrapped and the second, revised proposal is still being debated.
Not content to simply make a film, Denée also organized an Uptown busking event called Buskapalooza last week. The idea was to both raise awareness of Charlotte buskers and the ongoing BUSK! fundraising campaign.
A grant from the N.C. Arts Council has covered some of the necessary funding for the project, but supporters of the project can also make donations via the films IndieGoGo page to help finance the film in time for an expected December premiere here in Charlotte. Rewards are available to funders, with different incentives for various donation levels.
Buskapalooza was intended to be a one-off event, but it now looks like it could become a Charlotte staple. The event was so successful that, even before it was over, people were asking when we were going to have the next one, says Denée. I'm already in talks to host another Buskapalooza this summer, so if anyone missed the first event, I hope they can make it to the second. And even if they can't manage that, they'll be able to see Buskapalooza footage on the big screen once the documentary is completed, since the event was documented as part of the film.
While shes clearly excited about the possibility of another Buskapalooza, she hopes Charlotte musicians wont wait around for an excuse to get out there and share their art. Shes confident in the likelihood of that outcome, saying, I can at least say that the buskers who participated in the event last Friday are now more comfortable to go out and busk on their own, having learned about and experienced first-hand the busking-related laws we discussed as part of event preparation and that appear on the backs of their Buskapalooza event badges.
Watch the recently released BUSK! trailer below, and check out those aforementioned busking laws if it moves you to take to the streets with instrument in hand.
BUSK! (documentary trailer) - street art & performance, grassroots creative culture from April Denée on Vimeo.
In the next few days, catch some shows before they close, and see a new space.
LAST CHANCE: You have until May 15 to see two noteworthy photography shows at The Light Factory — Body & Soul in the Middleton McMillian Gallery and Bring the Family in the Knight Gallery.
Body & Soul, an understated meditation on the human body, features work by Joyce Tenneson, Jock Sturges and Mona Kuhn.
Sturges, who often photographs on nude beaches, is represented by Fanny, Montalivet, France, a series of gelatin silver prints taken between 1991 and 2009 that depict a girl’s transition to womanhood. Sturges is periodically harassed by religious conservatives who misrepresent his work, but the images here are not at all salacious. Rather than being exploited, Fanny appears very much in control of the image and her relationship with the photographer. Tenneson’s archival digital prints have an ethereal, pre-Raphaelite feel, and Kuhn’s chromogenic prints of figures and the rainforest document her yearnings for the Brazil of her childhood.
Although The Light Factory had to cover the glass door and post a content warning for Body & Soul, the show is actually soothing and introspective. In contrast, Bring the Family, with work by Tina Barney, Catalina Kulczar-Marin, Lydia Panas and Natalie Young, is far more knotty in its depictions of complex relationships.
Barney’s gorgeous, large chromogenic prints show affluent people at home. Barney photographs what she knows; this is her milieu. Her work delves into a world in which both things and decorum matter; people are stiffly arrayed among their possessions, and every object in a room seems fraught with significance. In The Mark of Abel, Panas’ series of prints, family groups in halcyon settings stare at you in a way that flips the relationship between viewer and image. Kulczar-Marin’s Let Love Reign, a series of digital C-prints, are tender portraits of same-sex couples that show the affectionate ordinariness of their relationships. Young’s gelatin silver prints of pets and her husband’s parents on their farm present yet another example of a created family as an alternative the family into which one is born.
Body & Soul and Bring the Family, through May 15 at The Light Factory, 345 N. College Street. www.lightfactory.org/photography.
NEW SPACE IN SOUTH END: Gaines Brown Gallery, a new (and I hope, continuing) venture, will open May 6 with TransFUSION, an exhibition by Charlotte Artery. South End pioneer Gaines Brown, an exhibit designer and artist who has long been committed to making the area an intimate and vibrant destination, has been converting part of his business into a gallery space and is testing the waters with this show.
I saw the gallery in transition — the exhibition had not yet been installed and modifications were still underway — but you could easily see the great potential of this large, bright space. Brown’s enthusiasm about the possibility of providing a much-needed venue for local artists is palpable.
TransFUSION includes new work by Artery members Julie Benda, Janet Lasher, Ashley Lathe, Bev Nagy, Sharon Dowell, Teresa Hollmeyer, Paul Keysar and Jon Tarleton and guest artists Cher Cosper, Allison Luce, Isaac Payne and Terry Shipley.
Charlotte Artery: TransFUSION, Gaines Brown Gallery, 1520 S Tryon St. Opening reception, May 6, 6:00-9:00 p.m. Closing reception, June 3, 6:00-9:00 p.m. charlotteartery.com.