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.

• Venue for Friday's "Long Live the Living," a Dugg Dugg and CAC collaboration. All images courtesy of the artists/Dugg Dugg.

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.

• David Sackett - "22nd of May"

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.

• Lisa Iglesia — Site-specific Installation

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.

— Barbara Schreiber

Full schedule and more info: southernholidayisrad.com.

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).

• Wolly Vinyl: "Afro SAM." Images courtesy of the artists.

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).

• Antoine Williams: “She Used to Love Him”

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.

— Manoj P Kesavan

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

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.

• Lori Vrba, "Best Friends." All images courtesy The Light Factory.

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.

• John Grant, "Birds of a Feather"

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.

— Barbara Schreiber

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.