Katrina Cherry, Bunny Gregory, Helms Jarrell, and Hoan Rahlan are artists who dream and and conspire together as West Side Creatives. West Side Creatives is birthed out of QC Family Tree’s Culture Bearer Residency, an 11 week community engaged artist in residence program in Charlotte’s West Side neighborhood, Enderly Park.
In partnership with Midnight Mulligan Brewing, the West Side Creatives will rotate fresh artwork into the brewery space once a quarter for a full year, beginning October 2022
Each piece is 24”x36”. They are mixed media pieces, made with acrylic paint, paper, fiber, and ephemera on stretched canvas. To purchase the artwork, text Helms at 704.654.7429 or email helms@qcfamilytree.org. The artwork will continue to hang at Midnight Mulligan until new work is cycled in. We will mark your piece as sold and make arrangements for you to pick it up when we replace current works with new ones. The proceeds from sales will be split evenly between all artists of West Side Creatives.
Throughout this project, the West Side Creatives are exploring a collective art making practice. Each artist will take a turn facilitating the others by teaching their individual process and media. Facilitating artists will also conceive of the theme or content from which all four artists will make a total of 7 pieces. As a practice of cooperative economics, we will split the sales evenly among all four artists.
The first artist facilitator for this project was Helms Jarrell. In appreciation for Midnight Mulligan agreeing to this partnership, we chose to improvise off of the MM logo subject, a moth. Each artist chose a moth as a muse. They created their piece using techniques of layering paint, paper, and thread Helms taught during facilitation. During our time of collective art making, we shared stories, sang songs, and enjoyed laughter with one another. It was truly a delight to create among other artists.
QC Family Tree’s Culture Bearer Residency is meant to build community by connecting individuals across points of difference; build community by nurturing, celebrating, and supporting authentic cultures and creative expression; increase relevance by using arts, science and history to address complex community issues; and increasing innovation by supporting the creation of new and groundbreaking work. This Culture Bearer Residency program highlights the strong role that artists and culture bearers play as leaders in civic engagement and social change. The program demonstrates how dynamic social change work incorporates arts and culture into efforts to positively shape the community.
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