One of the main efforts of the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts is bringing art to the public eye. Their primary focus is in the literary arts (as evident by their name) but they promote visual artists as well.
Last Friday marked the latest poster release party for their quarterly 4x4CLT series. The project pairs four poems with four pieces of art on original posters that are displayed in over 40 venues across Charlotte. The event was hosted by The Light Factory, a local gallery with an emphasis on photography. The event offered a poetry reading, a platform for the artists to discuss their work, an unveiling of the latest poster, and free alcohol & snacks (because what better way to gather artists?).
The June poster is comprised of work by poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi, photographer Greg Banks, and painter Kate Vasseur.
Calvocoressi's work is frank, accessible, plucking scenes from everyday life. She has a warm, effortless spirit to her, the kind of person who befriends everyone she meets. She often uses humor in her poetry (something of a unicorn in the poetry world) while keeping a foot in those dark shadows of the human condition. The selection she read from covered themes of rural life, horses, and bee charmers.
Banks and Vasseur share some similar subject matters. Banks, who is widely practiced in different methods of photography, pulled largely from family history when creating his work. This includes the Harlan, KY mine strikes, witchcraft, and snake handling. The black and white photos elicit a mood of Appalachian superstition and makeshift medicine. Vasseur's paintings have a dark, pastoral quality to them, depicting deer, skulls, and bleak color palettes.
There are a host of folks responsible for bringing 4x4CLT to life, including Charlotte Lit founders Kathie Collins and Paul Reali, curator Lisa Zerkle, designer Jennifer Garrison, and a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Look for more to come in the series this fall.