Pg. 43 Dec. 4 - Dec. 17, 2019 - QCNERVE.COM
juried art exhibition featuring underrepresented artists. A speaker is paired with these exhibits to create the Social Justice Speaker Series, which invites the community to engage in a conversation around the theme of the exhibit. For example, September’s “Clearing the Air” addressed air pollution in the Historic West End and featured Charlotte City Council member Dimple Ajmera as speaker. Behind the scenes, SouthEnd ARTs works with artists to help them professionalize their portfolios to prepare for a world that expects corporate-style presentations for funding consideration.
the project. “The kids all came into my studio one day, and instead of painting like individual works of art, they actually decorated and painted individual pieces of paper and fabric and really spent the whole day throwing paint around the room,” he told Queen City Nerve before the opening. “And then I took those painted fragments and used those in the photographs and stitching … The unique part was that they didn’t know, really, what I was going to be doing with them. So they’re expressing themselves in one way, and I’m taking their pieces and turning them into something else, which is really cool.”
Best Exhibit: ‘Modularity’ - Stephen Wilson Mixed-media artist Stephen Wilson’s Modularity exhibit wasn’t just a reflection of his own creative vision, it was a window into the unique perspective of a group of 13- to 17-year-old foster children from Children’s Home Society of North Carolina (CHS). Together with Wilson, the teenagers produced 30 pieces that were displayed alongside his own work for Modularity, which ran in March and April at the New Gallery of Modern Art. As with much of his past work, Wilson worked in fabric, embroidery and applique to embellish and overlay his designs. It was Wilson’s idea to collaborate with CHS, whose mission it is to provide every child with a “permanent, safe and loving family,” whether that is through foster care and adoption or additional social services that help parents provide a more stable home for their children and preserve families in crisis. He said he aimed to make the kids’ artwork flow well with the pieces he had already developed for
Best Art Show: Bree Stallings - ‘Where I’m From’ opening reception Bree Stallings’ aptly titled Where I’m From exhibit was designed to take a deep look into her past, including the spaces where she’s lived and the body — or bodies — that’s she’s occupied. One couldn’t blame Stallings for focusing on herself during the April 5 opening reception at C3 Lab, where she keeps a studio, but she brought on help, and that made all the difference. Before attendees perused the room, which included family photos dating back a century and viewing stations that offered a literal peek into Stallings’ psyche, they sat for local poet Jay Ward’s performance of Things I Would Say, in which he described his experience as a biracial man in America. As a white-passing descendant of Japanese immigrants on her mom’s side and Charlotte natives for four generations on her father’s, Stallings felt Ward’s performance was the perfect contradiction to her own self-reflection.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PR FOR ARTISTS
Best Exhibit: Stephen Wilson and Children’s Home Society
PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN
Best Art Pop-Up: Battle Walls
“We have these very different perspectives on the same While before and after photos mixed with kind of issue, and I thought it would be the perfect thing portraiture give great context to the scale of to tie in all the stuff,” Stallings told Q.C. Nerve, and in the demolition and displacement that Brooklyn saw end, perfect described the evening quite well. between 1958 and 1973, staff has also implemented new technology to help put it all in context. Best Art Pop-Up: Battle Walls Museum goers can download an augmented reality You may have seen Southern Tiger Collective live- app developed by UNC Charlotte professor Dr. Mingpainting on wooden canvases at our Scallywag Chun Lee and graduate student Aashwin Patki to Social event in July, where they built four 4-by-4- help inform their walk through the exhibit. foot boards into a cube and got to work. The STC On one wall, portraits show former residents team has been live-painting at events for some and others who frequented the neighborhood. time now, but for a new event series that launched When one points their phone at the portraits using in June and turned the live mural painting into a the app, they can hear the voices of former residents competition between the four artists on the cube, while seeing pictures of the neighborhood in its collective co-founder Alex DeLarge decided it was prime. In another part of the exhibit, a large map time to bring it up a level and go 8x8. of Charlotte sits on the floor. When using the app, “Because all we do is street art and all I know museum goers can flip through interactive statistics is street artists who go big, we decided to go much that appear on the map, showing how different larger in scale.” The first round of the tournament demographics changed in Charlotte between 1960 kicked off at Mint Museum’s Randolph Road location and 2017. Look for the addition of augmented and featured renowned local artists like Bree Stallings reality walking tours in 2020 to truly allow visitors a (see above), Dammit Wesley, Matt Moore, and chance to step back in time and into Brooklyn. husband-and-wife pair Arko and Owl. Attendees vote by buying raffle tickets — a buck buys a vote — and Best Photographer: Logan Cyrus things have gotten straight up tense at some events, As budgets have deflated in the journalism industry, as the tournament continued at spots around the city the importance of a good news photographer has been like Camp North End and The Collective. lost on many, but it can’t be overstated what Logan Best Multimedia Project: Brooklyn: Once a City Within a City at Levine Museum of the New South The newest addition to Levine Museum’s #HomeCLT series tells the story of Brooklyn, a neighborhood that once housed more than 7,000 African-American Charlotte residents before being razed by urban renewal.
Cyrus’ visuals add to the stories he works on. Whether covering breaking news like the April mass shooting on the UNC Charlotte campus, going in depth on stories like Michael Graff’s reporting for Charlotte Agenda on HEAL Charlotte founder Greg Jackson’s efforts to steer a young boy named Haji off the wrong path, or hitting the campaign trail as he’s done multiple times for national outlets this year, his work adds an emotion to the stories that otherwise might not hit the same.