MAY 2021
Each month, ArtsGreensboro brings you stories about artists, arts organizations, and individuals whose lives are infused with creativity. Join us in celebrating our vibrant city.
Artist In Focus
BY MATT MARBLE,
ARTIST
GREENSBORO PROJECT SPACE
Matt Marble is an artist, esotericist, and writer currently living in Greensboro, NC. His upcoming exhibition Wondering Stars at Greensboro Project Space explores music, visual art, and poetry through a personal dream-derived divination system. The first in a series of related works, this exhibition features emblematic drawings (alcohol ink on paper) and corresponding musical meditations for guitar (audio recording), as well as documentary video and materials related to the creative process.
Inspired by his ongoing dreamwork as well as studies in esoteric divination traditions, Matt has been developing an emblematic divination system over the last 6 years. Rather than prophesy the future, he employs divination methods to hone his intuition through a symbolic structure of geometric enigmas.
Using a geometric array, crafted from a discarded Amazon box, Matt tosses two beans, randomly selecting two geometric pairs. These resulting pairs then form a single geometric emblem–one of 81 “wondering stars”–which serves as a focus for enigmatic meditation. Within each emblem there are hidden symbolic connections, spontaneous verse forms, colors, pitches—any or all of which may guide meditation and the creative process. Image, sound, and idea then mutually inspire one another. Wondering Stars presents two audio-visual emblematic explorations, as well as a series of related hand-drawn eggs.
Visit the exhibition at Greensboro Project Space from May 18th – June 5th.
More information can be found at greensboroprojectspace.com.
Arts Happening
BY: DANCE PROJECT
Dance Project has been inspiring, educating, and entertaining Greensboro and the state for over 30 years through the NC Dance Festival; their dance School in the Greensboro Cultural Center; and the Van Dyke Dance Group, which maintains the repertory of Dance Project’s founder, Jan Van Dyke. Directed by Lauren Joyner and Anne Morris since 2015, Dance Project’s mission is to cultivate the field of modern dance in North Carolina and to build a stronger community through dance.
Join them this May for Move Together Mini Marathon! A virtual modification of their annual 12-hour dance marathon fundraiser. The Move Together Mini Marathon is a family-friendly evening of interactive dance classes, performances, and moving stories of the ways dance can transform our hearts, minds, and bodies. You can dance along to live classes, learn community dance, show off your skills in their Talent Show, enter a prize bundle drawing for a chance to win exciting goodies from local businesses, or sit back and enjoy the show!
The event is free, but donations are encouraged to help them reach the goal of $12,000 to support the ongoing work of Dance Project’s School, making high-quality dance accessible to as many people as possible through community outreach programs, workshops, scholarships, and affordable dance classes currently offered both online and in-person for ages 18 months to adult.
To learn more about the Move Together Mini Marathon or explore class options, visit their website! www.danceproject.org
AG Making it Work
BY CATENA BERGEVIN, ARTSGREENSBORO DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
Did you know that ArtsGreensboro offers low-cost financial management services to small and emerging arts organizations? This new program is one of several initiatives made possible by donations to ArtsGreensboro’s Reentry and Reinvent Campaign. Many small arts groups rely on volunteers or board members to assist with bookkeeping duties. Investing more staff and board time in mission-specific activities is a better use of scarce resources. Shared services make good business sense. Chaunte Rankin, ArtsGreensboro’s Finance and Office Manager, manages the program along with Administrative Assistant Deb Ruffino.
Currently, the ArtsGreensboro team is working with six organizations, but thanks to a grant award from Guilford Merchants/FirstPoint Foundation, ArtsGreensboro hopes to expand the program to assist more organizations with budgets under $250,000.
Sherri Raeford, Artistic Director of Shared Radiance Performing Arts Company, comments about the program, “As Shared Radiance grew, I found the task of accounting more and more challenging… ArtsGreensboro, Chaunte Rankin, and the shared services provided have been invaluable to our growing company. I sincerely appreciate the support that ArtsGreensboro has provided.”
For more information about the shared services program, click here.
My Art Story
ART AS SELF CARE
BY CHAUNTE RANKIN, ARTSGREENSBORO FINANCE + OFFICE MANAGERThe arts have always been a part of my life. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in school choruses, church choirs, singing groups, or teaching others about music. It’s been a passion since I was a child. Photography came later. I fell in love with being behind the camera and discovered how that moment of concentration on a single subject, to catch the right angle in just the right light, gives me peace when my mind is in turmoil.
This pandemic has taken its mental toll on all of us. Isolation, separation from those we love the most, anxiety, the unknowns of what’s to come. It’s been stressful, to put it mildly. My therapist often reminds me that self-care is often the thing that slips off my radar first when I’m feeling stressed. In one particular session when I was feeling really depleted, she said to me: “You can’t pour from an empty cup. And you shouldn’t have to.”
Coincidentally, a few days later, I ran across an online ad for a 100-day challenge. The fates had obviously been tuned in to my sessions. As luck would have it, I was about 115 days from my 40th birthday, so I decided to start 15 days later and count down 100 days to 40, taking one photograph per day. It’s been a breath of fresh air. There are days when I can share funny or poignant moments with my son, who happens to be my favorite subject to photograph (I can’t imagine why). And then there are some days when I just allow myself to stop and take in that moment of peace right before I hit the shutter button. This challenge has given my peace back. And that’s what the arts do for so many people: peace, joy, self-reflection, creative expression, emotional release. It’s why the arts are not just important, but essential to life. And it’s what Arts Through it All means to me.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
Visit Mental Health Greensboro at mhag.org or call (336) 373-1402
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