50 for 50 with Mary Carter Taub

Photo by disha dewan courtesy mary c. taub

Photo by disha dewan courtesy mary c. taub

“The mission is to be a tiny change agent towards a more inclusive culture and community right here in our quadrant of the universe. ”
— Mary Carter Taub on her project Truth + Tamales, a community-based art and social practice project funded by the 2018 N.C. Arts Council Mary B. Regan Artist Residency Grant
 
 
 
 

50 for 50

50 artists celebrate North Carolina

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Happy Birthday to Jaki Shelton Green! May your next year grant you the same beauty and poetry you share with the people of our state. Share your birthday wishes for our Poet Laureate in the comments below!
A year ago today Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina was declared a National Treasure. You can support the work to preserve her home by joining us at “Celebrating Nina Simone featuring Lisa Simone in Concert,” on Saturday, August 17 at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Details at the link in our bio.
"Kinston's not a big town, and at this point is probably more well known for basketball than music, producing NBA players at a rate (per capita) 63 times higher than the national average. Or as the miracle town that was fortunate to avoid being blown to smithereens when a B-52 crashed in a tobacco field carrying a bomb with 250 times the power of the nuke dropped in Hiroshima. Or as the home base for the popular PBS Television show A Chef’s Life. Or maybe you’ve never heard of Kinston. Maybe like me, you were completely unaware of its rich musical history. Maybe like me, you doubted that giants existed in small fields," says Vergil Demery our summer intern for Come Hear North Carolina. ⁣ ⁣ A couple of weeks ago Vergil traveled to Kinston to experience the 4th Annual African American Heritage Festival, which featured music programming for the African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina. Vergil shared his thoughts on the concert on the @comehearnc blog. His reflections are coupled with photographs captured by Sierra Turner, who is interning with our Folklife Program this summer. Pictured here is Mary Williams, Sandra Shackleford, Darius Shackleford, and Mal Williams. Find the full story at the link in our bio.
The artist team of Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy have long been interested in how our lives intersect with macro-economic, social, and cultural trends, both in their individual and collaborative work. Dietrick has explored the human impact of global trade, with an especial focus on housing markets. Her series, Sherwin’s Wall, zeroed in on the housing crisis and the subsequent foreclosure epidemic in large-scale wall paintings whose energy captured the upheaval viscerally through, in the words of Michelle Grabner, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “the brutalism of the graphic qualities and the ironic color forecasts.”⁣ ⁣ Mundy’s concerns have drawn him to the confluence of public space, information security, and big data. His most famous work is an online data visualization entitled I Know Where Your Cat Lives that tracks the images and location of over seven million cats worldwide using metadata tags from social media. At once playful in its conceit, trading on the Internet’s fascination with felines, and profoundly disturbing in its illustration of vanishing individual privacy, it demonstrates powerfully how art can transcend borders and be a part of larger cultural discussions. As Daniel Barna lamented in his commentary on Refinery29.com, “Owen Mundy just ruined the Internet.”⁣ ⁣ Together Dietrick and Mundy have created mobile apps, single and multi-channel generative animations, and large-scale installations, blending their content interests across a variety of expressive platforms. They continue to develop their collaborative work with the help of Fulbright grants to Germany, Chile, and China in 2017 and 2018. They have exhibited internationally for a number of years and their work has been the subject of numerous critical essays and articles. Both artists graduated with M.F.A.’s from the University of California at San Diego and now live in Davidson, where Dietrick is an Assistant Professor in the Art Department. As a collaborative team, they share a 2018-2019 N.C. Arts Council Artist Fellowship. Learn more about their work at the link in our bio.⁣ ⁣ ⁣
Truth + Tamales is an art and social practice that strives to be a change agent for a more inclusive culture in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County created by Mary Carter Taub, a recipient of our Mary B. Regan Award. Through traditional tamale making and contemporary art making, Truth + Tamales is on a mission to strengthen relationships, build community and bridge cultural gaps by practicing a “stranger to neighbor model.” Over one year during monthly meet-ups, community members socialized, learned to cook tamales with local tamaleras, shared truths, and collectively built the public artwork on exhibit at The ArtsCenter. The project culminates this Friday with special celebration at The ArtsCenter from 6pm-8pm. Stop by to celebrate the large-scale, collaborative, temporary public artwork comprised of safety orange plastic construction fence and brightly colored vinyl ribbon. The piece is on exhibit in the Nicholson Gallery until June 28, 2019. ⁣ ⁣ Photo by Alex Morelli. Learn about Mary Carter Taub and Truth+Tamales at the link in our bio. ⁣ ⁣ #NCarts #NCartscouncil #NC #NorthCarolina #PublicArt #Carrboro #ChapelHill
North Carolina is the type of place where artistic traditions run deep, we're talking generations deep. That is certainly the case for Tipper Pressley's family. ⁣ ⁣ A musician herself, Tipper's father Jerry Marshall Wilson was one half of the famed Wilson Brothers gospel duo who received the North Carolina Heritage Award in 1998. Her daughters - The Pressley Girls - are also active musicians. ⁣ ⁣ "The traditional music of Appalachia has been the soundtrack of my life in the mountains of North Carolina," says Tipper. "My earliest memories revolve around the art of making music. I was blessed to grow up in a family where it seemed someone was always pickin’ and grinnin’ in the kitchen. I often fell asleep to the sounds of guitars, mandolins, and high lonesome harmonies."⁣ ⁣ Creator of the popular blog the Blind Pig & The Acorn, Tipper wrote about her family's musical roots for Come Hear North Carolina. Link in bio. From left to right: Paul, Katie, Corie, and Tipper Pressley.
 
 

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