Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
July 22nd, 2010
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We recently had a chance to tour the new Mint Museum uptown, and wow! I’ll let the pictures above and video below speak for themselves.
On July 20, 2010, The Arts & Science Council presented its next vision for a for Mecklenburg County. You can read all the details on their website.
Present were community leaders like Mayor Anthony Foxx, Mary Lou Babb, ASC Immediate Past Present Board Chair, and Marc Manly from Duke Energy, ASC Board Chair. Each spoke of the need for a vibrant and diverse community, engaged in arts and culture.
This year’s priorities
ASC laid out three priorities for the upcoming years:
- Restore education funding
- Develop a new cultural action plan
- Address the future of funding through innovation
Future Initiatives
ASC President Scott Provancher laid out ASC’s vision for the future — the Cultural Action Plan. Provancher highlighted previous plans that included public art, cultural facilitates, educational programs, and tourism efforts. He also gave us a peek into the future by announcing the silent launch of the planning process for the upcoming Cultural Action Plan that will tackle the “new normal” of the economy and new, innovative giving models eluding to a possible “cultural marketplace” or a Match.com of sorts; matching donors to specific projects.
2010-2011 Cultural & Community Investments
ASC’s first round of investments total $8,213,100, with museums, science centers, and historic sites receiving over $4M, performing arts receiving $3.3M, and education and community & diversity projects receiving the remainder.
- 4700 full time jobs in the arts, cultural, science, and history sector
- $157.96 million in local economic activity
- 93.3% of respondents think arts, science and history organizations make a positive contribution to the quality of life in Charlotte-Mecklenburg
- 79.8% of Mecklenburg residents support county funding for programs (UNC Charlotte Urban Institute Report)
- young people who are invoked in cultural programs are 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievements
- Charlotte Culture Guide included over 60,000 cultural events in 2009.
Posted in Art, Charity, Economy, Fundraising, Mecklenburg County, Music, Outreach, Performance, Theater, UNC Charlotte, education, photography
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The 6th edition of Charlotte Pecha Kucha Night went down this past Friday. Pecha Kucha Night continues to evolve and always showcases some of the best and brightest in the QC. Earlier this year, Charlotte Pecha Kucha was selected the city’s “Best Creative Gathering” in the Charlotte Magazine “Best of the Best” awards. PKN CLT is presented by Point8 Forum and, for the second time in a row, a packed Dharma Lounge hosted. Douglas Welton again served as MC for the event. Below is the list of presenters.
Natalie Bork
Crista Cammaroto
Ana Jofre
Jason Kierce
Robert Kosara
Jack Ossa
Carlos Salum
Cathy Sheafor
Wolly Vinyl
Mike Wirth
So, we CLTBlog.com folk volunteer for a lot of stuff around town if you haven’t guessed already. One thing we’re regularly involved with is Pecha Kucha (@PKNCLT) and tonight is one event we really encourage everyone in Charlotte’s creative class to attend. Tonight we’ve got presenters speaking on a wide range of topics from physics to art and design.
Point8 Forum, the organization that brought Pecha Kucha to Charlotte, gives it’s presenters, who are an eclectic, evolving hodgepodge of Charlotte’s great creative talent, the following guidelines (which I am including to help explain this very unique event):
The only restriction is the number of images (20) – and the time you have for each slide (20 seconds each). So you are limited to 6 minutes 40 seconds.
But beyond that there aren’t that many restrictions. No subject is off limits, all points of view [are] allowed. It will be you, your subject, and the audience. So, you can come to vent, promote, posture, or proselytize… (Some of the things allowed include… talking, singing, hopping around on one leg, remaining silent, looking kinda intense, letting your puppet do the talking… not that we expect you to do all/any of that. Just reminding you that these options are out there…)
The hashtag for tonight is #pknclt6. Here’s the list of speakers from the Point8 Forum website:
Natalie Bork
Crista Cammaroto
Ana Jofre
Jason Kierce
Robert Kosara
Jack Ossa
Carlos Salum
Cathy Sheafor
Wolly Vinyl
Mike Wirth
Douglas Welton will be back as our MC for Volume 6.DHARMA Lounge, 1440 South Tryon, Ste. 105, Charlotte, NC.
FRIDAY July 16, 7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Doors open at 7:00.
Admission is $5 at the door. Cash bar. The Common Market will be selling light food & snacks.
For those of you who were too late to register to attend TEDxCharlotte, this is your chance to come see a nice cross section of people who will also be presenting in September! If you’re interested in which speakers will also be presenting at TEDxCharlotte, here’s the link to their speakers list.
We hope to see you there and feel free to come say hi! I’ll be manning the Pecha Kucha newsletter sign-up table handing out buttons (don’t forget to pick one up, they’re different every time), Matt Tyndall is running the presentation visuals and local celeb/photographer James Willamor will be on hand snapping photos (He’s the official photographer)!
Posted in Architecture, Art, City, Entertainment, Events, Feature, Music, Nightlife, Opinion, Outreach, Performance, South End, photography
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Billy Fehr (of Rock and Roll Stop the Traffic!) saw the above man step out of the cab he was driving and set out a space to pray towards Mecca on the sidewalk near Trade & Tryon. Nothing really unsual there, except that he was facing North not towards Mecca, and at the head of his prayer rug he had placed a portable credit card reader.
More pictures on Billy’s blog. What do you think?
After a successful run last summer, The Center City Green Market will bring back free walking tours beginning this Saturday, July 10th. The walking tour will leave from “The Square” at Trade and Tryon at 10:30am Saturday morning and last approximately 1.5 hours. The tour starts on the North side of Trade Street (aka Bank of America territory) and weaves through Historic Fourth Ward. After a brief stop back at the Green Market for water and to pickup those wishing to opt-in for the 2nd half, the tour will continue on the South side of Trade Street (aka Wachovia territory….I mean Wells Fargo territory) through the new Cultural Campus and past the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The tour will be complete at approximately Noon and those walking the entire tour should wear comfortable shoes and plan to walk about 1.5 miles. Below is an excerpt from a Blog post I wrote last July providing some highlights of the tour.
Plan to spend time looking up at the Charlotte skyline
The walking tour participants range from all ages, backgrounds, and home towns. The majority are not from Charlotte. They either heard about the tour from the Uptown hotel where they are staying for the weekend, or they are visiting friends who live in Charlotte and have asked to see what downtown Charlotte has to offer. I typically have visitors from the West coast (usually bankers that decided to extend their business trip to Charlotte for the weekend) and at least one couple from overseas. I was very surprised last year how many foreign visitors we have pass through Charlotte. And now with US Airways extending the international flights to/from Charlotte and the opening of the Cultural Campus, I expect even more visitors from the likes of Paris, Rome, and Germany. Last summer, I even had a former neighbor from South Charlotte come up from the burbs and to his surprise, the converted suburban to urban-guy was leading the tour.
Victorian Homes in Historic Fourth Ward
People are very enthusiastic about the city and are surprised to still see so many cranes still rising in a deep recession. I get comments about how clean our city is, the diverse use of public art throughout the city, and how we intelligently use our green space (everyone thinks that our interactive park, The Green, is so cool). Visitors also comment on Charlotte’s commitment to the arts (4 new arts venues on South Tryon doesn’t hurt) and how livable they perceive the city to be. Unfortunately, I can’t avoid our one black eye along the tour path – The Park – but all in all, our city shows very well. In addition, I carry my pen and paper to pickup an occasional tidbit that I didn’t know. For example, I now know that the huge flowers in Fourth Ward Park are Canna Flowers – hey, I never claimed to be a Botanist!
The new Bechtler Museum of Modern Art
During the tour, I have several morsels that I share such as the fact that both Elvis and Frank Sinatra played at the now fire-gutted Carolina Theater. Or that Bank of America corporate center may be the tallest building in Charlotte with 60 stories, but there are 24 other skyscrapers in the United States that are taller. It is hard to imagine that the World Trade Center towers were almost twice as tall as B of A – wow! Or that Eifirds, Belk, and Ivey’s Department Stores anchored Uptown’s retail from 1924 to 1990, the year when Dillards acquired Ivey’s and shut down the last of our big box department stores in the Center City. After the acquisition, a bond referendum to turn the Ivey’s building into a magnet high school was shot down, and instead the mixed use development that now boasts one of Uptowns premier residential addresses in Charlotte now anchors 5th and Tryon (by the way, some very cool condos in the Ivey’s).
Finally, I always get a few off the wall questions such as “why would I raise my children in the center city?” My response is that I actually received a Christmas card from one of our regular homeless women last December (true story, and my kids know Terri by name). I consider the city a very safe place as long as you are street smart. People always ask where our professional athletes live – the Trademark condo is a trendy spot for several Panthers. I suspect several will be making The Vue their home later this Fall. My favorite question is, “why do you do the tour for free”? My response – I love to show off Charlotte and if this is my small contribution to turning Charlotte into a world class city, then that’s what it is all about. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the northeasterners head home to their congested city only to later decide to relocate to an ‘easier life’ in CLT. That’s what happened to me….and I will never look back. I’m even eating que, banana pudding, and Bojangles now.
Following this weekend, the next tour will be run from the Green Market on Saturday, July 24th. I will tweat the August schedule shortly. I hope you can join me. And please send me ideas, atta boys, and criticisms via this blog. You can also follow my tour tweets at @robcummingsclt.
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Back at the start of this month, the founders of Dugg Dugg: Iris Williamson, Andrea Brown, and Michael Southard, moved to NYC.
Over the past couple years, Dugg Dugg’s events have consistently featured some of the area’s freshest art and artists, and attracted some of our city’s most curious attendees.
But alas, the call of a larger, more art-friendly city was too much to resist for these three artrepreneurs. I caught up with them the day before they left, across the street from the old Dugg Dugg space on 36th street, to pick their brains on a number of things, including their motivations for leaving, the future of Dugg Dugg, the challenges of being an artist in Charlotte, and what our city could do to become more friendly to start-up artists (and musicians, theatre, tech businesses, and so on, for that matter).
The video above highlights some of the more sound-bitable moments from our hour-long interview. I’ve also broken down the entire interview into 9 major topics, edited down for brevity, and embedded below in the following order:
- Tell us about you, and about Dugg Dugg
- You’re moving to NYC, tell us about that
- What are your immediate plans?
- Dugg Dugg is staying behind though, how is that working?
- How did you become involved in the local art scene, and how have you seen it evolve?
- Let’s get critical: Why are you leaving Charlotte?
- Any advice for upcoming artists living here?
- Where will you be in 5 years?
- Final thoughts?
You can also watch the entire interview back-to-back at the very bottom.
Tell us about you, and about Dugg Dugg
watch this video in HD on YouTube
You’re moving to NYC, tell us about that
watch this video in HD on YouTube
What are your immediate plans?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Dugg Dugg is staying behind though, how is that working?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
How did you become involved in the local art scene, and how have you seen it evolve?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Let’s get critical: Why are you leaving Charlotte?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Any advice for upcoming artists living here?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Where will you be in 5 years?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Final thoughts?
watch this video in HD on YouTube
Complete interview
What does that even mean?
Well, refer to the Bohemian Index (PDF link).
Richard Florida, author of The Creative Class works with the Martin Prosperity Institute in Toronto. In his words:
“The index charts the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas. We measure it as a location quotient, which basically compares regional employment to the national norm, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and StatsCan.”
What are your thoughts?
Thx to @jritch for the tip.
What does that even mean?
Well, refer to the Bohemian Index (PDF link).
Richard Florida, author of The Creative Class works with the Martin Prosperity Institute in Toronto. In his words:
“The index charts the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas. We measure it as a location quotient, which basically compares regional employment to the national norm, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and StatsCan.”
What are your thoughts?
Thx to @jritch for the tip.