Art is where you find it.
With a heads-up from Ron at Sadlacks, though I got my postcard (but mislaid it), I was off to Wendell Saturday morning. Time for another show at Lovejoy Pottery. Dan and Nancy have become old friends, but they were old guard and I was new when I first met them in the mid eighties. Dan was a big part of the Raleigh Artists Community, a late seventies art entity that I wrote a feature article about in FARCE!, the newsletter of The Paper Plant. RAC was a huge part of the development of the arts community in Raleigh, and provided some interesting memories along the way. Quoting that piece:
The house at 908 West Morgan Street [just across from Irregardless] served as gallery, studio, hang-out and apartment house to various NCSU and Raleigh artists. The atmosphere was informal, very informal by all accounts. Lovejoy, who lived in the house, described the atmosphere as “totally chaotic but a lot of fun.”
Copper Rain, Joy Haymore, Jeff Emma, Willis Williams, and Jeannie Thompson were all founding members. Later current Raleigh artists such as Sharron Parker and Madonna Phillips joined. The group organized art festivals on Fayetteville Street Mall and at Pullen Park, proposed the art center that eventually became Artspace, and in 1979 joined with the new Raleigh Arts Commission to sponsor “Downtown September,” which now goes by the name Artsplosure.
The Lovejoys proudly display this sign and continue to do their pottery. Dan paints his huge, mythical figurative acrylics. Nancy has made most of the bowls and ceramic cups in my house. They have these shows, with an open studio feel, and 6 to 8 local artisans, all well established pros, come in and display their work. Besides the Lovejoys, Marsha Owen, Nancy Redman, John Garland & Mary Paul, and Alan Tingen all participated this year. Cara and I have shown there several times in the past and probably will again.
Lovejoy Pottery is on Watkins Road, just off Rolesville Highway, off 70 East out of Raleigh. It was fun to mix purveying art and visiting with some country driving. I always take the back way home – Watkins to old Milburnie and past the Milburnie Dam. The rural scenes were nifty!
And then to cap it off, here come these young fellows, barreling along in their buggy!
CAM staying alive at Moore Square Museum Magnet
Lee Moore and Nicole Welch conduct an afterschool program each year at Wake County’s Moore Square Museum Magnet Middle School. CAM, Contemporary Art Museum, has sponsored art programs associated with the school “since its first conception,” said Welch at the recent culminating event for the program. It was held at the Raleigh City Museum, which was the perfect venue. Amidst large images of Raleigh’s history, the young students got up in front of a good crowd of parents, friends and artsy fartsies like me, and described their efforts at coming to grips with the real history of Moore Square, essentially part of their schoolyard, and also the ways in which downtown Raleigh operates. They shared research photographs, artwork and tales about the urban history surrounding Moore Square. The Raleigh trivia game they conducted was a riot, and it’s clear that Lee Moore has found a wonderful venue for her wonderful mix of interest and talents. Lee has enriched the Raleigh art scene in so many different ways, with her music, her art, her studio, curating and promoting art through Rebus Works, participating in global art exchanges which have brought fascinating and important art workers into the area – and so much more.
Lee Moore, artist and educator, speaks at the Raleigh City Museum
Lucky kids. And lucky CAM, which has used programs such as this to maintain a presence and demonstrate viability during its long hiatus as a public space. Hopes are high with the new director, who says work to bring the West Street building up to code will begin soon. NewRaleigh just posted on the most recent design plans.
Below is the window display at the Raleigh City Museum in the old Briggs building on Fayetteville Street.
The visual products of the program are on display at several locations in downtown.
Way to go, Lee, Nichole, and Luke! hang in there, CAM!
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Lt. Walsh’s grave – celebration and pseudo mystery
The media firestorm about the secret decoration each year of Lt Walsh’s grave in the Confederate section of Oakwood cemetery was a hoot to watch, since the “decorator” is a beloved private historian who has performed rituals in City Cemetery and performed last rites for bridges quite out in the open for all these many years. I certainly won’t tell you his name. But I joined a group of almost two dozen people at 4 pm on April 13 to listen to the history and context of this particular grave marker. We heard anecdotal history and a reading of the only eyewitness account from the time: the statement of Millie Henry, a ten year old servant girl. If Lt Walsh’s celebration reaches it’s twentieth year next year, and this blog reaches its first, I will post that text next April 13.
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The Oakwood gathering segued into a wonderful party in Oakdale with freshly shelled black-eyed peas and barbeque, both cooked in cast iron over a fireplace made that day out of loose brick. There was some wonderful meeting and greeting, but rather than gossip about it I will share some more graveyard images – some favorites from City Cemetery, where my Walsh friend used to hold candlelight readings of Poe. Truly local and genuine rituals – one of the things that makes Raleigh what it is.
raleighrambles.com
portrait by Guillermo Velasco
Raleigh Rambles 