McColl Center for Art + Innovation, at 721 North Tryon Street, is free to visit, and also hosts many free events for the public. These days the events are online.
Next up:
Creative Shifts: Susan Harbage Page and Roger Manley
Tuesday, July 28th, 2020
7 p.m.
Free
Every year, McColl Center alumna artist Susan Harbage Page travels to the U.S.-Mexico border in southeast Texas for “aesthetic, archaeological, and archival intervention”. A photographer and visual artist, “The Border Project” necessitates the trip for Harbage Page to discover and photograph objects left behind by migrants and refugees, some documented in her exhibition, “Borderlands: Evidence From the Rio Grande,” at N.C. State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design (now available for viewing in a virtual tour on their website).
Director of the Gregg Museum, Roger Manley—also a curator, writer, folklorist, photographer, and award-winning filmmaker—has worked “to better fulfill [the Gregg’s] missions as both a university and community museum” so there is something for everyone who visits. McColl Center alumnus artist Tom Stanley moderates as Harbage Page and Manley discuss the Borderlands exhibition and why art is essential now, more than ever.
Creative Shifts and the Stimulus series of conversations offer you deeper insight into the work and ideas of contemporary artists. These sessions aim to make connections between McColl Center and our constantly evolving local arts community. Creative Shifts has emerged as a Stimulus focus as artists talk about maintaining their practice through changing times.
The event will be streamed on McColl Center’s Facebook page.
Creative Shifts: LizMiller + Antoine Williams
Tuesday, August 4th, 2020
7 p.m.
Free
“Equal parts absurd, menacing, and poetic” is how McColl Center alumna artist Liz Miller describes her elaborate, site-specific installations and textiles that create a dialogue between reality and illusion. She weaves tension between fact and fiction, lacing metaphorical insight on structural and systemic behavior with humor.
Creating his own mythology about the complexities of contemporary Black life, McColl Center alumnus artist Antoine Williams’s work draws influence from science fiction and his childhood in the rural town of Red Springs, North Carolina. He explores fear, the idea of signs in society, and power in mixed-media art. Moderated by McColl Center alumnus artist Tom Stanley, the discussion between Williams and Miller will consider the value of art during our “new normal” and how amplifying the role of artists is more important than ever.
Creative Shifts and the Stimulus series of conversations offer you deeper insight into the work and ideas of contemporary artists. These sessions aim to make connections between McColl Center and our constantly evolving local arts community. Creative Shifts has emerged as a Stimulus focus as artists talk about maintaining their practice through changing times.
The event will be streamed on McColl Center’s Facebook page.
Creative Shifts: Marek Ranis + Ken Lambla
Tuesday, August 18th, 2020
7 p.m.
Free
McColl Center alumnus artist Marek Ranis’s exploration of social, political and anthropological aspects of phenomena like climate change has led him to Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, and South Africa. Since 2003, the multimedia environmental artist has become an expert on the rapid change of frozen landscapes across the globe in work to create Albedo, a video, photo, and mixed media research project focusing on global climate change and the Anthropocene era. An Associate Professor in the College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte, his work is “an invitation to contemplate our times; some call this “weltschmerz” (world grief) and inspiration for a hopeful future.”
Founding Dean of the College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte and former McColl Center board member Ken Lambla’s career in both education and practice focuses on architecture and the arts as forms of community development and advocates social responsibility, craft, and innovation. McColl Center alumnus artist Tom Stanley will moderate as Ranis and Lambla discuss the National Science Foundation Geology project and the practice of new artistic paradigms in our not-so-normal return to normal.
Creative Shifts and the Stimulus series of conversations offer you deeper insight into the work and ideas of contemporary artists. These sessions aim to make connections between McColl Center and our constantly evolving local arts community. Creative Shifts has emerged as a Stimulus focus as artists talk about maintaining their practice through changing times.
The event will be streamed on McColl Center’s Facebook page.
More upcoming art events
McColl Center for Art + Innovation
721 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 704-332-5535
Virtual
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