The public art and mural guide to Charlotte

Charlotte’s public art is mostly new, mostly painted and mostly free, which suits a city that tore down its old buildings and had a lot of blank walls to show for it. This guide covers the park that is itself an artwork, the mural corridors, the studios and councils that make the work, the museums that keep the permanent pieces and the ring-town downtowns where the walls are. Facts about the artworks link to sources; artists and organizations with listings link to the directory.

The park that’s a collage

Romare Bearden Park, 5.4 acres at 300 South Church Street, opened in 2013, is designed around the collages and paintings of the Charlotte-born artist it’s named for, as interpreted by supervising artist Norie Sato: two gardens, a granite courtyard, a formal lawn, waterfalls and a play area with interactive dance chimes (Wikipedia). It’s the biggest artwork in the city and most people use it as a lawn. Bearden was born in Charlotte in 1911 and became one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, and the park is the city’s main acknowledgment. The Uptown spaces guide covers the rest of the block.

The mural corridors

Three walls to start. NoDa, the old mill district, where the artists who founded the Center of the Earth Gallery in the late 1980s made an arts district out of a company town; the walls along North Davidson and 36th Street change every year and the mill village guide has the history. The Rail Trail in South End, along the Blue Line, where the murals on the converted warehouses are the most photographed in the city and the breweries commission new ones every season. And Plaza Midwood along Central Avenue, the eclectic neighborhood whose murals are older, odder and more political. The NoDa, South End and Plaza Midwood pages have the blocks. Our read: walk the Rail Trail from Carson Street to East/West Boulevard on a Sunday morning; it’s a free gallery that happens to have coffee.

The studio behind the civic work

Depeña Studio is the practice of Ivan Toth Depeña, a public artist whose work in Charlotte and beyond sits in the same civic register as the Bearden park: light, data and architecture at the scale of a building. The city’s public art program, run with the Arts & Science Council, commissions work for every public building through a percent-for-art rule, which is why the light-rail stations, the airport and the libraries have pieces most riders walk past. The program’s site has the map. Aaron Libby and the photographers in the photographer guide document it.

The councils and the galleries

ClearWater Arts Center & Studios in Concord is doing what NoDa did thirty years ago: putting a neighborhood on the map with artist studios and galleries under the banner Art Is Social, per its site, and its artists paint Concord’s walls. The Union County Community Arts Council runs Monroe’s exhibitions and its downtown’s murals. Cain Center for the Arts is Cornelius’s hub. Ebony Bloom Tea Lounge & Art Café in Mint Hill is a gallery with tea. The museums guide lists the rest.

The museums’ outdoor pieces

The Mint Museum‘s Uptown building sits on the Levine Center for the Arts campus, whose plaza and the Bechtler Museum’s famous outdoor sculpture across the street are the city’s most-visited permanent public art; the Mint’s Randolph Road campus is the 1837 mint building itself, moved and rebuilt in 1936 (Charlotte’s Got A Lot). The Gaston County Museum of Art & History and the Kannapolis African-American Museum keep the ring towns’ collections.

The ring-town walls

The mill towns have discovered murals as downtown strategy, and the results are on every Main Street: Concord’s around Union Street, Kannapolis’s on the rebuilt downtown by the ballpark, Belmont’s on Main, Gastonia’s on West Main near Piedmont Delicatessen, Rock Hill’s in the Knowledge Park where Collision Cowork sits, Monroe’s on the courthouse square, Waxhaw’s along the railroad. Historic Rock Hill and Historic Cabarrus know which walls are which. The town pages have the addresses.

The signs, which count

Charlotte’s vernacular public art is its signage. The sign companies in the directory, Casco Signs since 1998, Carolina Signs and Wonders, Nano Sign Group, make the neon and the hand-painted storefronts that the mural artists paint around. Alpha-Lit‘s marquee letters are public art for a night. And the water tower at North Davidson and 37th, painted for the neighborhood, is the mill village’s flag (NoDa Neighborhood Association).

The mural artists, and hiring one

The murals are commissions, and the businesses that commission them are in this directory: breweries, restaurants, the coworking spaces, the apartment developers. A mural on a brewery wall costs less than a year of billboards and lasts longer. The arts councils keep artist rosters, and Depeña Studio is the model for the civic scale. Ask the council in your town first; the artists who painted its downtown are the ones who’ll paint your wall.

Finding the walls

The murals move; the corridors don’t. Walk NoDa, the Rail Trail and Central Avenue in any order and you’ve seen the center city’s painted half. The city’s public art map covers the commissioned pieces. The arts councils’ sites list the ring towns’. Instagram, honestly, is the current inventory. And the best public art in Charlotte is the one thing this guide can’t link: the view of the skyline from Romare Bearden Park at blue hour, a composition the city made by accident and the sunset guide tells you when to see. Painted a wall we should know about? Tell us; artists list free in the things to do directory.