Support Black CLT Artists By Visiting Pop-Up Art Gallery At These Restaurants
According to Fox46, two local Charlotte restaurants are hosting a pop-up art gallery in honor of Black History Month. The gallery called “Charlotte Renaissance: An Urban Revival” provides restaurant-goers with a meal and an art show. Not only can you view the art put on display around the restaurant but you can also buy the art – and hopefully you do!
One of the three artists featured is Leon Parker. He told Fox46, “The fact that this is called an urban revival is now inclusion into spaces where Black artists wouldn’t be seen or featured. So that’s what makes this important…” The spaces Parker refers to include NoDa, an area he calls the “art district” because of how largely art is a part of the NoDa culture. NoDa is just one part of Charlotte where gentrification has taken place since the 1960s. Many people were forced out of their homes in historically Black neighborhoods around Charlotte for the sake of redevelopment projects (Fox46).
Highlighting Mental Health Struggles
The gallery’s curator Jaqueline Currie is a licensed clinical mental health counselor. She began to see the struggles artists face to get their art exposure, especially now because of the global pandemic. She told Fox46, “There is so much pressure to create and create. Now you’re in a place where it’s hard to sell your work because people aren’t meeting at museums anymore… Galleries aren’t having showings the way they were anymore…”
Currie said the idea of a restaurant-based art gallery came to her when she realized just how bored she was looking at bare walls while eating. And out of boredom usually comes art.
Where To Go To Eat and View The Displays
Check out the art from three different local Black artists at the “Charlotte Renaissance: An Urban Revival” pop-up art gallery hosted at:
- The Goodyear House in NoDa
- The Golden Owl Tavern at the UNC Marriott hotel
Source: Fox46
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