Charlotte Artery

Opening Visual Art Exhibition:  September 25 & October 2 6-9pm

North Carolina Music Factory

820 Hamilton Street

Charlotte NC 28026

Contact: The Charlotte Artery 704-942-4790

With help from a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Arts and Science Council, a small group of artists naming themselves the Charlotte Artery, has come together with a mission to integrate the Arts community within Charlotte. The Charlotte Artery will conduct a series of six exhibitions at different locations over the next year. Their plan is to transform alternative spaces into temporary art galleries for shows that highlight some of the talent that resides here in the Queen City.

The first exhibition this year will open on September 25^th and October 2^nd from 6-9pm at the North Carolina Music Factory in the GLC community room.  Included in this exhibition will include hand-pulled prints, paintings, and fiber art.  There will be a private reception for special guests and press on September 24^th from 6-9pm.

I’ve been driving all over town, distributing postcards for the first Charlotte Artery show. Look for the cards in South End at Carolina Clay Connection, The Common Market, The Trolley Museum and the Charlotte Art League; in South Park at The Paper Source in Phillips Place; in NoDa at The Lark and Key, The Green Rice, Amelie’s French Bakery and The McGill Rose Garden Shop. Uptown, cards may be found at Villa Francesca Italian Restaurant, Clayworks, RockBottom Brewery and the McColl Center for Visual Art.

Look for the cards–they’re great! Even better….look for us next week at The Music Factory!

Charlotte Artery’s first exhibition will be located at The Music Factory in the G&L Center. This is a space that is typically used as an office location, so it provides the perfect opportunity to reconstitute a working space into a temporary art gallery. We’re excited to have this opportunity and look forward to creating an event at the Music Factory.

It’s an exciting time for the arts community in Charlotte, North Carolina. As the banking city reassesses its direction after the economic fallout, positive things are happening on the arts front. For artists, Charlotte has been defined by a struggle for limited resources that have dwindled further still following the failures of the banking industry. As bleak as this picture may seem, there has been an interesting growth in do-it-yourselfers here staking a claim in the creative landscape. Some of these are artists, even more are just art lovers who are trying new business models in creating an environment for artists while nurturing a larger patron base. Some are trying variations on the gallery theme, while others are rewriting how art is presented to the public, while others still are developing the work spaces artists need to produce their wares. Change is happening, and the impact of these developments will soon be clear.

More than anything, Charlotte Artery wants to be a resource to integrate the arts community into the fabric of Charlotte culture. While we hope to be a valuable resource for artists and art patrons, our ultimate objective is to rally together the local creative energies to benefit ALL of Charlotte by making this a “cultural” city where the creative class is more than just a sub-culture. It can be and should be a part of the city’s identity along with the Carolina Panthers and Bank of America.

6 Exhibitions, 6 Locations

Through a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Arts and Science Council, Charlotte Artery will be conducting a series of six exhibitions at six individual locations over the next year. The idea is to transform alternative spaces into temporary art galleries for shows that highlight some of the talent that resides here in the queen city. In so doing, we hope to create a resource for artists while illustrating the benefits the arts can have for the community at large.

Locations Needed

If you are the owner of an unused warehouse, commercial space, or private residence we would love to discuss with you how we can turn your space into a short-term gallery space and how you can benefit from a collaboration with this project. For more information please drop us a line at (704) 942-4790.

The mission of Charlotte Artery is to foster a cohesive art scene, provide studio and exhibition space, and forge cooperative relationships with other art organizations and galleries in the Greater Charlotte Area

Charlotte Artery is an artist run community that leverages marketing and business resources to provide a venue for emerging and mid-career local artists.  Charlotte Artery brings together a broad network of individuals within the greater Charlotte community, who enjoy visual art as an intrinsic part of their cultural experience. Charlotte Artery nurtures extensions of this network into the broader community includes academia, museums, artist communities, groups in other cities, non-profit cultural organizations, and commercial galleries to create a large web of interest and activity in the visual arts in greater Charlotte.

The original members of Charlotte Artery consist of five mid-career visual artists living and working in Charlotte, NC.  This core group will be expanded by the addition of “working-artist members” from the region based on a review of their portfolios by the board or board designated membership jury.

With the launch of Charlotte Artery, we will create an artist run corporation that will develop and maintain an infrastructure within the local arts community and cultivate interest and participation from the public.  It will propose, coordinate and manage non-competitive projects that increase the visibility of regional artists to the community at large, such as community wide Open Studio events or coordinated exhibitions with commercial galleries, artist studios and museums.

The future site of Charlotte Artery will provide both studio spaces for member and guest artists, as well as gallery spaces for public exhibition. Of the two gallery spaces, one will be a formal exhibition space for curated and juried exhibitions and the other an informal gallery space for local artists to show and sell their work. The formal gallery will be a space for juried shows, exhibitions, and installations, bringing regional and national curators and artists into the gallery. The second gallery space will be available to members of Charlotte Artery for solo and group exhibitions.  These changing collections and exhibitions of two and three dimensional artwork, in combination with opening lectures, artist talks, and open studios, will continue to draw the community to the Charlotte Artery center and will continue to benefit the local artists who share the exhibition and studio space at the center.