Upcoming November Events

Shoe Shrine: Call for Entries
Through November 13 - 5IVE & 4ORTY - Winston-Salem
Shoe Shrine entries on display at 5ive & 4orty. Entries will be auctioned off on Friday, November 13th. Proceeds will benefit the Kelly Jo Petersen Scholarship at UNCSA School of Design and Production.

Society for the Study of AfroAmerican History
November 13 - 5 PM - Delta Fine Arts Center - Winston-Salem
Cost: Free. 336.722.2625

African Night
November 14 - 7:30 PM - UNCG Elliott University Center Auditorium - Greensboro
The African Student Union at UNCG will hold African Night, which will include fashion, dancing, singing, and more from different African cultures.
Cost: $5 before the day of the show and $7 at the door.

Busy-40 Bridges
November 18 - 11:30 AM - Center for Design Innovation - Winston-Salem
A software traffic simulation augments discussion of possibilities for public art, considering the upcoming renovations of bridges along the downtown Winston-Salem stretch of Business Route 40.

More Bridges
November 18 - 12:30 PM - Center for Design Innovation - Winston-Salem
Bridges Connecting Communities, Inc. is Winston-Salem's newest social networking venue, wtih both a virtual marketplace and bricks-and-mortar sites.

15th Annual Will-Read-for-Food
November 19 - 7 PM - Weatherspoon Art Museum - Greensboro
Suggested donation to the Glen Haven Community Center: $5 students, $10 general public. The Weatherspoon Art Museum along with the UNCG MFA Writing Program and UNCG Alumni Relations, hosts the 15th Annual Will Read for Food Fundraiser, which last year raised over $1100 for the Glen Haven Community Development Center. Readings begin at 7 PM in the museum auditorium.

Arts for Life Market Gala
November 21 - 5 PM - 823 Reynolda Road - Winston-Salem
Social and shopping event to benefit Arts for Life WS and the hundreds of hours of art lessons provided to young patients and their siblings.

Enrichment Center Sculpture Garden
Through November 21 - Enrichment Center - Winston-Salem
On the corner of S. Marshall Street and Salem Avenue. The garden includes three cast aluminum sculptures entitled "Things That Fly" created by six of the Center's artists: Trip Collins, Mindy Kistler, Meredith Lamy, Jonathan Lindsay, Paul Quinn, and Valarie Williams.
336.777.0076 x209

Community-Wide Ecumenical Celebration of Thanksgiving
November 22 - Dana Auditorium at Guilford College - Greensboro
Piedmont Interfaith Council in collaboration with the Human Relations Commission of Greensboro, presents 26th Annual Community Ecumenical Celebration of Thanksgiving "Our Community Kaleidoscope" featuring the E. Gwynn Dancers, the First Young American Dancers, Triad Tapestry Children's Chorus, Louis Allen, and representatives from a dozen local faith traditions. Supported in part by a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.
Cost: Free. Contact info@piedmontinterfaithcouncil.org


We Are OneART
Through December 10 - Caldcleugh Multicultural Arts Center - Greensboro
We Are One, Caldcleugh Center's performing arts program extends its scope with its new visual arts program for youth ages 10 and older. Instructed by Floyd Newkirk, nationally known muralist and illustrator, will guide young artists in an exploration of medium, technique, and forms. This semester young artists will create backdrops for We Are One's winter performance.

The Winston-Salem Symphony Partners with African Library Project

As many symphony orchestras struggle to stay relevant in our constantly evolving society, the Winston-Salem Symphony has chosen to take the lead and institute an innovative educational program that will elicit social and cultural change on the local and global level. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Mary Starling In-School Education Program and will be centered around the theme of storytelling and music. In conjunction with this theme, the issue of literacy will be addressed through a book drive for the African Library Project at local schools; a short story competition with winners being awarded brand new violins, and lessons for an entire school year with WSS musicians; and a concert featuring the great stories in classical music.


The Mary Starling Program is the Winston-Salem Symphony’s single largest educational program in Forsyth County for students ages 9-12. Named in honor of a former Symphony Guild member with a passion for music education, the Mary Starling Program offers an introduction to orchestral music for the students of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools through a combination of intimate ensemble performances culminating with a full orchestra concert. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the program will continue to reach all 4th and 5th students enrolled in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools free of charge.

Elsewhere's SEA program preserves and connects South Elm Street neighborhood

Over the course of this year, Elsewhere Artist Collaborative--a living museum set within a former thrift store in downtown Greensboro--has been creating connections within its growing downtown urban neighborhood. With the new Mellow Mushroom and advancing economic development in our downtown "arts and antiques" district, Elsewhere wanted to ensure that neighbors who live, work, and use the South Elm neighborhood had a forum for discussing the growth of their city and transformations of their urban surroundings. We have always been especially interested in our neighborhood's ability to link people across generations, ethnic backgrounds, race, and economic status--from the diverse businesses on our block, to its historic aesthetic character, to a playful culture of passer-bys and players. We set out to create a way to converse and explore these unique connections of the fabulous people who compose our city character.

This spring, with the help of the United Arts Council's PTICA initiative and The Building Stronger Neighborhoods of the Community Foundation of Greensboro, Elsewhere set out to strengthen our neighborhood community while preserving the unique diversity of our downtown district. We launched an ongoing project called SEA (the South Elm Alliance) which hosted and continues to host various events that provide create forums for community exchange (check out the blog here). We held two town hall meetings about the development of our neighborhood, investigated our neighborhood through a mapping photo project and posted on Googlemaps, joined Charlie and Ruth Jones of Greensboro Grub in producing a neighborhood dinner, enjoyed an evening of a free coffee cafe on our block for our neighbors and passerbys, and offered a street screen-printing event so that neighbors could wear the SEA logo around town. We have also held monthly episodes of our performance game CITY, which re-imagines our museum as a pretend city. Participants given visas and are invited to play a variety of characters, run CITY institutions like the library, bank, department store, skyscraper, motel, and more, and generally explore a collaborative game of pretend. We are interested in how this shared story, or fiction, can examine and expose real issues in our surrounding neighborhood. Anyone can play, even if you've never performed before. This year, we've been opening CITY up to many more participants, while continuing to film each event and transform them into movies on youtube.

We have two more events planned before Elsewhere goes on hiatus for the winter (we close the museum from november to march due to lack of heat in our very old building). The first is our living room lecture series on friday october 9th. Anyone is invited to give a 20 minute lecture on something they know anything about. Then the next friday, october 16th, we'll have the finale of our CITY games for the season. Come over and play. Be a farmer a baker a tourist, anyone really. Hope to see you here!

NC Museum of Art Responds to the Environment

The North Carolina Museum of Art Museum Park is a 164 acre stretch of woodlands, trails, creeks, and outdoor art pieces. At the park, visitors experience both art and the environment together and gain an understanding of how the two can respond to each other. Some of the pieces even seem to have a moral message about where items of everyday use, such as newspapers in the following piece, come from and how these relate directly to our environment. The piece, made of newspapers, will eventually decay, becoming a natural part of the cycles of the forest.

The park is also interwoven with information on the local ecology, and the museum works to preserve the natural environment.

"To see Jennie smile" by Steven Siegel. www.ncartmuseum.org

Below is an example of art that is inherently a part of the natural environment. "Pooktre art" by Peter Cook and Becky Northey benefits the environment by absorbing greenhouse gases and fostering other natural cycles of nature. It would be interesting to see what other artists have done that utilize growing, living things to create art.

Pooktre by Peter Cook and Becky Northey. www.pooktre.com

U.S. Artists' Response to Climate Change

Activity in community arts does not have to be introduced by artists.

Years ago, Bill McKibben, renown environmentalist and author, called for U.S. artists to focus on climate age and environmental issues in their work. Artists answered his call. Recently, McKibben discussed his favorite environmental artists in the U.S. in Grist, an online snarky-but-fun environmental newsletter.

A personal (nonlocal) favorite of mine is James Griffioen who documents nature's resilience in response to man-made structures. Check out his series titled "Be Patient."

Apartment Building, Detroit 2007 by James Griffioen
Jamesgriffioen.net

Global Examples of Environmental Art Can Create Local Change

As humans effect on the environment becomes more and more apparent, environmental art has moved from landscape painting to socially engaging art with vivid messages on climate change.

I've heard so much buzz about environmental art lately, I'd like to put forth a few things over the next couple days that I've come across, both near and far. We'll start with the farthest away and move closer. The following piece is located in Beijing, a place on the other side of the world. The piece is a tool of communication on the future of China's population. In my own discoveries, as I move closer to the Triad, the lessons to be learned from these artists and activists become more concrete. I've realized that environmental art can function as more than a tool of communication; it can also be an active method for improving our local ecology.

Beijing


I ran across this piece at one of my favorite blogs, Inhabitat. To prepare for this year's Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, the TckTckTck campaign positioned 100 sculptures of children carved in ice to represent the 1 billion lives that will be lost in China due to water shortages. Ice sculptures sounding cheesy as well? Check out photos of this piece, and you will see it is anything but. It is actually very beautiful and direct.


Here is a video by The Guardian which features some nice shots of the piece.

Sheboygan Students Find Postive Outlet for Anxieties in Composing Raps

A summer school music class which 10 Sheboygan students signed up for is coming to a close. Read in the Sheboygan Press about the students process of learning to channel their frustration and personal experiences into the composition of raps. The songs were then produced by local music artist J Rilla.

If you know of any local programs that use an artistic medium, whether it be painting, acting, writing, etc., please send them along or add them in the comments.