Artist Statement
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Meredith Ritchie Explores Forgotten Part of Charlotte History in Debut Novel
In 2017, as all three of Meredith Ritchie’s triplets prepared to leave for college, she found herself in need of a reinvention. “I knew I needed something to transition and to not be a helicopter parent on three different campuses,” she said, laughing. “I knew I wanted to learn something…
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Fortune Feimster Talks Rise to Success Before Sold-Out Homecoming
The last time Fortune Feimster performed in Charlotte, she filmed her 2020 Netflix special Sweet & Salty. During the show, the Belmont-raised comedian and actor cracked jokes about herself, her family and her Southern upbringing, using true stories to walk the audience through her journey to queer discovery. She also…
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Comedian Eddie Pepitone Talks Comedy Before VisArt Video Show
Asking comedian Eddie Pepitone to help promote anything, even if it is his own upcoming show at VisArt Video, feels ironic. After all, one of the funniest bits in his latest stand-up special For The Masses, named 2020’s funniest special by The New York Times, sees him acting out a…
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Wiley Cash Discusses ‘When Ghosts Come Home’ and What Home Means To Him
Sitting on the patio at Amelie’s in the Park Road Shopping Center on a recent Wednesday afternoon, Wiley Cash was thankful for the respite. The author, who released his fourth novel, When Ghosts Come Home, on Sept. 21, knows well enough by now that book tours don’t offer up much…
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Triple Threat Billy Ensley Talks Community Theatre and ‘Mamma Mia!’
Call him Mister Versatility. To find anyone else in the Charlotte theatre scene who has been celebrated for excellence in so many different areas as Billy Ensley, you would have to summon up the memory of Alan Poindexter, the wunderkind who came out of the UNC Charlotte theatre program and…
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Jean E. Caldwell Takes on Bullying with ‘Yusef and the President’
It’s hard to take the expression “Be Best” seriously when it’s coming from the worst. First Lady Melania Trump’s public awareness campaign purportedly advocates for American youth by stressing the evils of cyberbullying — among other planks — but most Americans know they will be holding their breath a long…
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Audrey Baran Dances Around the Questions
Audrey Baran began attending UNC Charlotte in 2000, graduated in 2003, then returned to the school as an adjunct lecturer in 2009. Though she wasn’t at the school on April 30 when a student opened fire in a classroom on campus, killing two students and injuring four others, as soon…
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Mikey Sevier Puts a Face to All Things Dark and Horrible
The faces are weird and twisted. A malevolent mummy sneers through a veil of rotting flesh. A sickly green skull’s glowing eyes burn with the fires of hell. A grimacing ghoul named Mikey Sevier sports makeup that resembles an undead roadie for Kiss. Sevier is the creepy alter ego of…
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The iNCubator is Co-working for Black Creatives
Back when Tierany Griffin-Purdie lived in Raleigh, where she was born and raised before moving to Charlotte two years ago, the idea of launching an inclusive co-working space where black entrepreneurs and artists could feel at home rather than tokenized or set aside was always bubbling in the back of…
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Davidson Author Confronts Real White Supremacist Threat in Fiction
Local author J.A. Walsh didn’t always want to pen an espionage thriller. He originally had something else he wanted to push. “I’ve got a big doorstop of a book sitting in the drawer of my desk,” Walsh confides. “It may never see the light of day.” Fortunately for lovers of…
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Manoj Kesavan Lowers the BOOM Back on Plaza Midwood
Manoj Kesavan and a dedicated band of artists and volunteers got the BOOM ball rolling three years ago. Where it stops, nobody knows. When BOOM, an annual three-day festival of avant-garde and grassroots performances, first detonated in Plaza Midwood in 2016, its eclectic mix of dance, music and theater succeeded…
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Local Carnival Party Celebrates a Decade of Authentic Brazilian Fun
We all need a night to let loose, Carnival is just the perfect time to do it. While the pre-Lent celebration of Carnival, sometimes spelled Carnaval, is observed in countries ranging from Spain to the Netherlands, it’s biggest in in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. The celebration of culture, history and…
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Artist Statement: Siobhan O’Loughlin Gets Deep in Your Tub
When Siobhan O’Loughlin broke her arm in a bike accident in New York City, her bathing options became slim. With a cast on her left arm, O’Loughlin needed a bath, but her Brooklyn apartment building only had showers. She found herself traveling from borough to borough, visiting friends with…
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Artist Statement: Local Poet and Storyteller Hannah Hasan has the Tough Conversations
Hannah Hasan is a storyteller. Not the stories of fiction or elaborate tales of wonderment and far-away places. She tells the stories of people in Charlotte and gives life to voices that fall on deaf ears in the city. Partnering with Q.C. Family Tree, a nonprofit in west Charlotte’s Enderly…
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Artist Statement: Armando Bellmas Opens the Floor
Armando Bellmas remembers the exact moment when he realized that Charlotte might not be as lacking in culture as people say. It was during a visit to the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, an open house to mark the beginning of a new residency season, when he watched…
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Artist Statement: Alicia D. Williams Begins Again
Alicia D. Williams is a self-proclaimed jack of all trades, but in the end it was always about storytelling. She’s worked jobs as a flight attendant, a bank teller, an actress with the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte and a middle school teacher. But her most important role has been one…
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