Category: McColl Center for Visual Art

Art sprouts on doomed building

The long-lived but still-doomed Virginia Paper Co. building on West Third Street uptown sports new art on its boarded-up windows. It’s the result of a collaboration among artists with ties to the McColl Center for Visual Arts, students at Hopewell High School, the Arts & Science Council and the Charlotte Knights.

Artist Annabel Manning, a former McColl Center artist-in-residence, worked with the students and their teacher, Ben Permeaux (a future McColl Center teacher-in-residence) on collages inspired by artist Romare Bearden, a Charlotte native and the namesake of Romare Bearden Park, which is to be built in Third Ward if/when the county parks department can find the money.

The students looked at Bearden’s work, then used computer software to create their own, contemporary visions of what a Bearden collage might look like today. The vinyl panels were installed Monday on all the upper level of windows and all the windows facing Third Street. Each panel is the work of a different student.

The historic and architecturally significant building is owned by the county but has been leased for $1 a year (for up to 99 years) to the minor-league baseball team Charlotte Knights, which has planned to demolish to build a new uptown stadium. But with the economic crash, the Knights haven’t moved forward with their plans. Under the lease agreement the county could void the lease if the Knights can’t have their stadium ready to open by fall 2011 – which doesn’t look likely. But so far the county hasn’t opted to do so.

In my role as Observer editorial board member I’ve written before about the Knights’ lack of upkeep of the building. Last summer a city building code inspection found the Knights weren’t keeping the building up to code. It found trash, kudzu and standing water, as well as evidence vagrants had lived there. The new boarded-up windows resulted from that inspection.
And now, at least, some of those boarded-up windows have a more pleasing appearance. It’s to the Knights’ credit they’ve cooperated in the artistic endeavor.

PHOTO CREDITS:

Romare Bearden-inspired vinyl panels on the Virginia Paper Co. building (Nov. 15, 2010, photo by MELISSA SUE GERRITS/Charlotte Observer)
Broken windows mar historic building (Feb. 16, 2010, photo by MARY NEWSOM/Charlotte Observer)

Extremely cool Charlotte urban video goes viral

Of course those you who you regularly attend the monthly Civic By Design meetings (second Tuesdays at the Levine Museum, 5:30 p.m.) already saw this months ago, but for those who haven’t, there’s an extremely cool video of Charlotte’s urban history that’s in the process of going viral online The last 3 minutes of it were featured on Huffington Post.

I’ve heard from a number of folks around the country asking about it. Rob Carter of Brooklyn was an artist in residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in 2007, and made the video using Charlotte’s history as its theme. Be sure to listen, not just watch. The sounds are important to the experience. For instance, Charlotteans will recognize the buzzing noise, as the crown is being kicked offscreen, as that of a hornets nest. Other viewers may not know that General Cornwallis, whose troops occupied the hamlet of Charlotte for a few months during fall 1780, referred to his hostile reception as a “hornets nest of rebellion.”

Watching the NFL stadium fly in and land is fun, too. The stadium’s design and suburban-office-park-esque setting in what should be urban territory downtown led some local urban designers (those not on the team’s payroll, at least) to complain that it looked like a flying saucer had landed.

Happy viewing.

Here is a clip from the longer video linked above:


Metropolis by Rob Carter – Last 3 minutes from Rob Carter on Vimeo.