Artspace: An engaging hub of creativity
On the corner of Davie and Blount Streets in downtown Raleigh sets 30,000 square feet of thriving artistic energy and inspiring creativity.
Inside what was originally the city’s livery, housing the carriages and horses for transportation services in the early 1900s and later transformed in the 1950s into the site of Sander’s Ford Car Dealership, is Artspace. It's one of the largest open-studio artists’ facilities in the country that is carving its own indelible mark on Raleigh and the Southeast.
Since 1986, this non-profit visual arts center has worked diligently to carry out its mission of making the arts not only accessible to the public, but infectious. Enter Artspace and engage with the resident artists within their personal studio spaces to truly experience the artistic process in action.
Take your own self-led tour in the two-story, lofty space, complete with three galleries and twenty-seven individual studios featuring artists working in a broad range of media. Here you can indulge and appreciate the intimate settings within which you can watch and speak with individual artists as they create or simply quietly admire their works.
You’ll no doubt notice Paris Alexander’s figurative and abstract sculptures of carved stone and hard plaster featured in his first floor studio. Across the hall you’ll find Susan Farrar Parrish, who can take random, found items and transform them into a sculptured three-dimensional collage of new life and meaning.
Ascend upstairs and chances are you’ll be lured into Eric McCray’s space, where his vivid canvases seem to breathe life into all his subjects -- even his still life, or as he calls it, his “not so still life." These are merely three of the rousing, notable artists in an environment that houses a total of 35 talented creators.
Included among the permanent artists are two rotating artists in residence. The Regional Emerging Artist-in- Residence program awards a six-month residency in January and July to promising artists in their formative years, and the Summer Artist-in-Residence program features an established, professional visiting artist for one month who develops work while teaching classes to the public during the Summer Arts Program.
Artspace places a dedicated emphasis on its community outreach programs through interactive workshops with area schools and community organizations and through art programming for at-risk youth. This positive impact on the community, combined with its ongoing efforts to bring in regionally, nationally and internationally recognized artists’ exhibits complete with demonstrations and gallery talks, continues to solidify Artspace as the premier organization of its kind in North Carolina.
Access to Artspace is free of charge while the illuminating experience you walk away with is priceless.
HelloRaleigh Tip: Visit the Artspace website for its various educational workshops accommodating a range of talent levels and ages.
Posted by Angela Risko
