ASC Honors – Clara Jones, Music

ASC Honors-Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Arts, Science or History celebrates the lifetime achievements of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg resident in the visual, design or performing arts, history, literature or science. Thanks to the generosity of the Cato Corporation, ASC is also able to honor lifetime achievement in teaching art, science and history for Pre-K-12 teachers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region with the ASC Honors-Cato Lifetime Achievement in Teaching Awards. To find out more, click here.

By Bea Quirk

Clara Jones’s love of music and devotion to her piano students were so intense that when she retired from private teaching in 2011, her house was filled with 26 pianos. To accompany them all, she and her late husband Cedric had enlarged their Lincoln Heights home six times.

Clara Jones honored for lifetime achievement with the ASC Honors award.

“She has reached hundreds — probably thousands – of students,” says her son Rev. Cedric Jones, Jr. “And her impact on their lives went well beyond music.”

Jones began teaching music in Charlotte’s public schools in the 1950s, then began teaching privately when she retired. She also served as minister of music and choir director at Baptist Church West.

It was her love of music and her love of God that enabled Jones to escape the extreme poverty she experienced growing up as a daughter of sharecroppers in Franklin County, North Carolina and Newport News, Virginia. “For me, the door leading to a better world would be through music and education,” she told an interviewer.

When Jones first heard piano music on a radio belonging to her school principal, her life was transformed, she has said in interviews. Seeing her keen interest and then her talent, the principal started giving her piano lessons.

Later, with that same kind of determination and faith, Jones graduated cum laude from Hampton Institute and then came to Charlotte. She also earned a masters from UNC Greensboro.

Her son Cedric says his mother never lectured him and his three sisters about music. “Music was always a part of the household – someone was always playing or practicing.” His sisters all played piano and one other instrument; he played the trumpet.

But for Cedric, his mother’s accomplishments go far beyond music lessons and teaching piano. “My mother had the gift to teach life lessons as well as music lessons and then integrating them together,” he says.

“Even if they did not spend their life playing an instrument, her students learned about preparation, the work ethic, discipline, how to practice and rise to the occasion, which all helped shape their success.”

Like Public Art? Find It On A Mobile Device Near You!

By Nicole Bartlett, Program Director, Public Art

Are you interested in finding public art around you? Would you like to learn more about works you pass on the street here or when you travel? The Public Art Archive is a new site designed to make this information easy to access. A number of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s public art projects are now live on the site – click here.

Pull up the site on your mobile device and you will be able to see any currently cataloged public art near you, in Charlotte or any city. ASC will be working to add more of our artworks to the site in the near future so please keep checking back to learn more. We are excited to be part of this project that helps promote our city, artists and their artworks.

Public Employees Become Artists at NAP

The National Arts Program was established in 1983 by the National Arts Program Foundation to give artists – young and older, amateur to professional – the opportunity to exhibit their work publicly and to be recognized for their artwork with prizes and awards.

Every year for the past 12 years, ASC has partnered with the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and Charlotte Mecklenburg Libraries to bring the National Arts Program to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Government Center. The program is open to government employees, retirees and their families.

The artwork at the show was judged in 5 categories by a panel of art professionals.  This year’s volunteer judges were Nicole Bartlett, Program Director, Public Art at ASC, Monique Luck, Professional Collage Artist and Elizabeth Ross, Art Professor Emeritus at CPCC.

Routinely, the show is the first time many participants have shown their work publicly. This year more than 200 pieces of art were submitted ranging from photographs, to paintings and sculptures.

The artwork is on display at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Government Center until Thursday, February 23. It is open to the public and free to attend.

The video below highlights two of the show’s winners, Craig Carver and Darius Wilson and the artwork that won them top honors at the show.

How Long Is Your Museum Attention Span?

By Aaron Fiedler

How long do you look at a piece of art in a museum? The question intrigued Mexican media artist Rafael Lozano-Hammer enough that he created an installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney that forces viewers to take stock of their own interaction with art and museums.

Using a row of measuring tapes and motion sensors, Lozano-Hammer’s work changes and literally grows based on the amount of time viewers stand looking at it. Hourly, a sheet is printed tracking the amount of time the work has been viewed.

Check out how this very interesting piece works here:

“Tape Recorders” (2011) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

You can read more about the artwork here.

ASC Education: CMS Field Trip at the Mint Museum

For the 2011 Annual Fund Drive, the Arts & Science Council raised an additional $1 million to support arts, science and history programs in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Part of the investments ASC made in education this year included bringing 5th graders to the Mint Museum Uptown so they can experience Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections.

Wow! Four Projects Already Funded on power2give.org

By Aaron Fiedler, Public Relations & Communications Assistant

It’s been almost a year in the making, so you can imagine how excited we are to finally be able to share power2give.org with you. The site launched this morning with 58 projects and as I write this, only 54 still need funding. We couldn’t be happier.

• North Carolina Dance Theatre received $10,000 to help underwrite their performance of Bolero! The power2give gifts will help pay for dancer and choreographer time, and costumes.
• Children’s Theatre of Charlotte received $560 to fill their van with gasoline so they can bring their Taradiddle performances to children, especially those in rural communities, all over North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
• Community School of the Arts received $1,300 to support scholarships for low-income children. The money will support one child’s music lessons for 42 weeks.
• The Charlotte Symphony will receive $600 to buy supplies for their Lollipops concerts. The supplies help small children learn about and connect with music.

We’re excited that the community is already making investments in the cultural sector through power2give. As the days and weeks roll on, I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about the site and the great projects you can impact. Stay tuned this week for more project updates. And don’t forget to check out power2give.org and find a project you’re passionate about!

They’re Random and They’re Happening Somewhere Near You!

For the last year ASC, with a $30,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has been bringing culture, randomly, to Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. At the end of June ASC organized two random acts at various points throughout the county.

The first, on Saturday, June 25, brought four performers from Opera Carolina to the Davidson Farmer’s Market, in Davidson, NC. The singers wowed the crowds for two hours. Here is a little taste from what was experienced:

 

The second, on Thursday, June 30, brought together a quartet from the Charlotte Symphony and two dancers from Passion for Tango. From concourse to concourse, the group wowed travelers both coming and going. Here is a sample of what those travelers got to see:

 

Videos by April Denee/March Blake Media 

Showing The Impact of Arts & Culture In CharMeck

Yesterday, ASC held its annual Impact & Investment event to announce initial investments being made to enhance the cultural life of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.  At this event, as in the work I do as Advocacy Coordinator, the struggle is how to convey the broad impact and importance of what the Arts & Science Council does.  How do we communicate all the work we do for our community? Often, we try to quantify it in numbers:

• $11.3 million will be invested by ASC in the cultural sector this year
• More than 65 arts, science, history and heritage organizations and programs will be funded
• There were more than 4.1 million cultural customer experiences in 2010. That’s more than DOUBLE all of the 2010 Panthers, Bobcats, Checkers, Knights and Eagles games, and the NASCAR Sprint Cup races and Quail Hollow golf tournament’s combined attendance of 1.95 million.
• 1.7 million cultural experiences provided for children and youth
• Over 4,700 local jobs created by our cultural partners
• $158 million in economic impact provided locally by the cultural sector

The numbers are strong, but still are they enough to understand the impact?  Yesterday, we also tried to show that impact though a diversity of experiences – a violin performance by Bob Ennis, pieces from Fame performed by the Student Theatre Guild of Theatre Charlotte, a multi-disciplinary work by McColl Award winner John W. Love Jr. and a spoken word piece by Quentin Talley.

Quentin somehow managed to fit the names of all the projects and organizations being funded beautifully and poetically in to the space of a few minutes. In a final line of the piece he said thank you to ASC for providing “funding to keep the community learning”.

We often think of culture as entertainment, as an outlet, and it certainly can be.  Even more than that though, it is a way to learn and engage.  Culture creates opportunities to bind our citizens together.  In this global and diverse world, cultural experiences provide education that cannot be rivaled. The arts open us up to a world beyond our own, forcing us to see others’ points of view and to reflect.

At ASC, what we do is so much greater than simply providing support for Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s amazing cultural institutions. This organization is truly an advocate for the citizens of our county and their relationship with arts, science, history and culture.

In the climate of the recent economy with public funding to the arts being cut at all levels, it sometimes seems that my task as Advocacy Coordinator is a difficult one. But an event like Impact & Investment reminds me that the task is not so hard if I can find a way to tell the story properly, as Quentin did so eloquently and concisely.

 

Guitar Workshops Helping Expand Student Opportunities

By Shaina Spring, Public Relations & Communications Intern

Last summer, Arts & Science Council (ASC) employees who manage education investments were introduced to the Teaching Guitar Workshops program. The workshops assist teachers in developing successful guitar programs in schools and allow students to get involved in music classes.

In order to expand the program locally, ASC made a $6,000 investment in FY11 to offer 23 music teachers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) the workshops as a professional development opportunity.

The program aligns with the North Carolina Common Core State Standards, which are goals set to best prepare children for success and support the district’s capacity to grow. It also promotes and enhances children’s engagement with the arts as well as interest in school, which in turn helps with important objectives like graduation rates.

Ed Prasse, a guitar workshop clinician who has been playing guitar since he was 13, taught CMS teachers how to play the guitar through a rigorous five day program.

“The engagement of students in the arts is essential and there is a new population of students entering music,” said Prasse. “Band, orchestra and choir is not for every student, so the guitar workshop will draw in kids who wouldn’t normally walk into these classrooms and will provide students with another avenue to get involved in music.”

“There is a certain level of discipline involved and listening is a fundamental activity that will be learned that will transfer to all subjects,” said Bill Myers, orchestra teacher at Bailey Middle School and Hough High School. “Students will develop patience along with math and commitment skills. Art is a form of aesthetics and these students will be challenged to listen and understand what beauty is.”

Many students who take part in band have previously been exposed to music through either private lessons or programs that took place during elementary school; therefore they already have an established sense of discipline. This program, on the other hand, is directed to suffice the needs of middle and high school students who were not as lucky.

“Guitar is another option in the mix of electives in which students may enroll,” says Mark Propst, performing arts specialist with CMS. “The Guitar Workshop aligns perfectly with our NC Essential Standards for Music. We also took it a step further to develop both a middle and high school curriculum.”

The Guitar & Accessories Marketing Association (GAMA) partnered with The National Association for Music Education (MENC) and The National Association of Music Merchant (NAMM) to sponsor the Teaching Guitar Workshops.

Teaching Guitar Workshops will kick off in schools this coming fall. For more information, visit www.guitaredunet.org.

Random Acts of Culture Not So Random

CCI Tuesday

By Ben Kubie, Program Director, Community

This year the Arts & Science Council has been heavily involved in the national initiative Random Acts of Culture. Funded through the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, this initiative is taking place in eight Knight Communities throughout the nation – Miami, Detroit, San Jose, Philadelphia, Macon, Akron, St. Paul and Charlotte. We recently concluded a symposium at the Knight Foundation in Miami where we discussed and continued to refine our best practices. As the coordinator of these in Charlotte, I can convey a couple of things I have learned in our pilot year.

First, a Random Act of Culture (RAC) is anything but random for those involved. The coordination takes time, and the planning involved can include factors such as time of day, audience disposition , crowd control, safety, technical support and the recognizable nature of the work being performed. In other words, “random” is an audience perception.

The primary indicator of RAC success so far appears to be working with artists and venues that have strong buy-in from the very start and are inclined toward partnership. As exciting and straightforward as this idea may be, a classically trained artist, while adventurous, is likely not a busker, and a typical venue is not accustomed to spontaneous performances that may detract from their business (I have actually found venues are wary of anything that sounds like a take-over flash mob).

Typically, in a standard theater environment, the quality of the performance is optimal with the entire design of the space built to support the artistic product. In the “RAC world” the measure of success is not always the perfect quality of the performance, but the transformational quality of the experience as a whole.

A RAC, by its definition, is out of context, and may even temporarily inconvenience some, but the payoff is a shared cultural experience for the viewer and the artists alike. In order to avoid this becoming an exercise for the sake of the cultural community alone, those of us organizing these events need to be creating something of real benefit for our audience, whoever they might be. For behind these spontaneous performances is a much larger concept.

The tide in our modern creative culture is changing with great democratization spanning across the arts, fueled in large part by social media. More than ever, people are participating in creative activities, while attendance to traditional cultural activities remains in steady decline. A trend is emerging in which people want and expect their culture to be accessible and participatory. Furthermore, they expect to have a hand in creating it.

Those of us on the front lines of the cultural scene recognize that it is not enough to have great programming in our museums, theaters and rehearsal halls – the arts need to be geared to find people where they are. With our efforts centered on the viewers instead of the performers Random Acts of Culture strives to build community through the infusion of arts into our daily lives.