Rhizome Arts Market Puts Community First in West Charlotte

In the plant world, a rhizome is an always growing, horizontal stem underground that puts out new shoots.

For April C. Turner, a member of the leadership team with QC Family Tree’s Rhizome Coalition, the Rhizome Arts Markets that she organizes in the Freedom Drive/Wilkinson Boulevard corridor are the visible results of that work that’s done underground.

“And like rhizomes, we grow steadily outward with intention,” Turner said. “We recognize that without the work underground, there is no forward progress for the community.”

Speaking in the lead-up to the next market, scheduled for the evening of July 22 at The Arts Factory at West End Studios on West Trade Street, Turner emphasized that the Rhizome Arts Market was created to cultivate a sense of community more than simply act as a place to buy goods.

Drawing from her decades of work as a traditional West African folklorist and dancer, Turner has been purposeful in curating a market based in the African traditions that saw such events as civic rituals.

“These spaces were intentionally designed to slow down time and encourage visits that build mutual trust between community members,” Turner said.

The recurring neighborhood marketplace invites the 40 members of the Rhizome Coalition, a cohort of local artists who work collectively to support one another, strengthen the community and create new opportunities through art, to sell their wares free of charge.

Held in partnership with Here for Good Business Cooperative, Turner envisions the market as a space where artists and neighbors can build lasting relationships. By removing barriers for participating artists, the monthly market opens access to a more traditional small business system.

But the monthly events are about so much more than business.

“This is under the umbrella of the Here for Good Business [co-op], and so I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah, we want to do business,’ but we also want to do it in a way that invites community — between the residents, between the artists, between the merchants, between all the people that have to be a part of community in order for community to be a real thing,” Turner told Queen City Nerve. “It can’t just be one leg of it; we all have to stand together. All the legs have to come together to stand.”

Part of Turner’s work with QC Family Tree has been around community engagement, and it shows in the way she has built out the Rhizome Arts Market. Past events have included musical jam sessions with traditional African instruments that Turner brought from home — drums, shekeres, agogô, etc.

Rhizome Coalition member Jasiatic Usher has served food during the markets while fellow member Bunny Gregory has turned her popular arts bus into a space for kids to take part in craft workshops.

For member artist Courtney Rohan, the market represents another rhizome shoot emerging from the coalition’s growing network.

At the July market, Rohan will share her self-created spirit card collection, which blends original artwork and written guidance while inviting support for her Kickstarter campaign to bring the full deck to life. Her participation reflects how the Rhizome Coalition helps artists move new ideas from creation into the community.

“It’s provided a place to build partnerships with other artists in community,” Rohan said. “Getting to know all the members and participating in events served as a bridge to more creative and professional opportunities, including an artist residency and workshop teaching roles.”

Each market brings new vendors and new experiences. The July market will also feature a range of Charlotte artists with practices spanning visual art, storytelling, design and handmade craft. They include Creative Harmony Arts, Ashaki Ali, KelsoMariCo, Kemoy Callaghan, Pura Candelas, Tiffonyé Wilkins, and Tamara Marlene, among others.

For Turner, the market provides neighbors a chance to connect with their community, supporting local artists and vendors in a literal and figurative sense.

“Here in the United States, we think of [vendor markets] as, ‘Okay, I’m going to sell some stuff, make some money,’ and yeah, you are. That’s fine. It’s good to be able to be the buyer. It’s good to be able to be the seller, the one who’s earning. All of those roles have a part in making everything work,” Turner said. “But the goal is to be able to do these things in a way that builds community and promotes healthy exchanges. So there are opportunities in a traditional market for us to interact outside of the commercial exchange that’s going to happen.”

Then there are the interactions that happen within that commercial exchange, which can also be part of the community-building goal.

“People come for the opportunity to go back and forth, or to haggle,” Turner said. “We might call it haggling here, to have that exchange. It seems like it’s contentious, but there’s an understanding that gets developed about what people need and what people can give. There’s a learning that happens inside of that haggling; it’s not only for, quote-unquote, ‘getting the best price.’”

Within that engagement, at a time when affordability is front of mind for so many folks living along the Freedom/Wilkinson corridor and Historic West End, Turner sees art in and of itself.

“We can struggle, but we can struggle joyfully if that’s what we’ve got to do,” she said. “There doesn’t have to be this heaviness. There’s art where art is involved and we can literally make an art out of everything we do, and that includes coming together to have what could be a purely commercial effort and turn it into something beautiful.”

Making room for ‘Main Character Energy’

The Rhizome Coalition came together in 2022 as an evolution of QC Family Tree’s Culture Bearer arts residency program.

The coalition’s creation was inspired by the Rhizome program originally launched by Alternate ROOTS, an Atlanta-based organization that serves artists and cultural workers throughout the Southeast.

Turner met QC Family Tree co-founder Helms Jarrell while both served as board members with Alternate ROOTS.
The Rhizome Coalition began with meet-ups where artists would share skills and trade advice about creative entrepreneurship.

Read more: Queen City Family Tree is Enderly Park’s Haven of Hope (2019)

It has since evolved to include workshops that help members grow their business, collaborate on grant applications, and work with each other to improve digital portfolios, Jarrell explained to Queen City Nerve.

“We do all kinds of things to help folks succeed in the art-making, but also in the business of art and being an artist,” she said. “And then we also just do fun, supportive community-building types of things together so that we can be attending to each other’s work needs but also our own personal and social needs.”

Wednesday’s Rhizome Arts Market will also mark the opening of the coalition’s latest art exhibit, titled Main Character Energy. While most of the Rhizome exhibits are residency shows highlighting coalition members and Culture Bearer residents, Main Character Energy is one of the few exhibits the organization hosts throughout the year through an open-call system.

The exhibit brings together a collection of artists exploring identity, self-expression and the visual languages that define contemporary culture, according to a release announcing the opening. “Inspired by the confidence and individuality captured in the phrase ‘main character energy,’ the exhibition celebrates work that is unapologetically bold, personal, and visually engaging.”

According to Jarrell, who acted as sole curator for the exhibit, the work that came in was not what she expected when she made the open call for art “in a spirit of summer and a spirit of excitement and joy.”

“I thought that the work would be kind of like street art and pop art, but what has come is more like, portraits of…” she paused to gather her thoughts. “There’s been some that are portraits of angst. Portraits of anger. There have been some of strength. I was kind of thinking it would be kind of like a kitschy and bubble-gum exhibit, and instead what has come across is kind of like the steely stare of resistance. It just feels like a real ‘come at me’ kind of moment.”

While there is a wide range of feelings expressed throughout the exhibit, the submissions did give the exhibit a different type of feel than originally expected.

“I think the main character energy that folks are feeling and then submitting is this moment of staring into the future with strength and resilience and guts,” Jarrell said.

The exhibit will be located inside the Arts Factory at West End Studios, which has become a home for the Rhizome Coalition thanks to its relationship with Three Bone Theatre, which currently stewards the space.

QC Family Tree originally began showing art in the space when it was occupied by Wonderworld Studios and now enjoys more regular hours with Three Bone Theatre in the building. The exhibit will be open for viewing during business hours at the facility, located at 1545 W. Trade St.

“We’ve definitely been able to collaborate in a social way,” Jarrell said of Rhizome’s relationship with Three Bone. “We’ve said, ‘We’re in the same sphere. We have similar challenges, similar good things going on. Let’s see how we can work together.’ That’s been really great because we understand that we share values and we trust each other, so we can move in the space very freely.”

The two groups have been brainstorming ways to work in a more collaborative way, blending the mostly visual art of Rhizome members with the live theatre of Three Bone, though some of those ideas are still in the preliminary stages.

As for the Rhizome Arts Market, Turner said she hopes to grow it in the years to come, but only if the same community vibes that have made it special in the first place can be preserved.

“We are envisioning, eventually, this being something that is a lot bigger, but we also are focused on the Freedom/Wilkinson corridor,” Turner said. “So we don’t want to just kind of jump out and put some big splashy thing out that the neighborhood doesn’t see a way to participate in. And when I say the neighborhood, I mean the whole corridor.”

And it’s likely to work, thanks to the work that’s taken root underground.