PODCAST:

On Saturday, February 21, join Second Street Gallery for their annual Gallery Rally fundraiser event with a roaring 20s twist.

TRANSCRIPT:

Ella Powell:

On Saturday, February 21, join Second Street Gallery for their annual Gallery Rally fundraiser event with a roaring 20s twist. For Arts This Week, we spoke with CM Turner from the gallery.

CM Turner:

My name is CM Turner. I work with Second Street Gallery downtown, right off the downtown mall on Water Street at the corner of second and water, and we are gearing up for one of our largest fundraising events and one of the most exciting events on our programming calendar throughout the year, which is our annual Gallery Rally.

Ella Powell:

I see that it features around 30 or more artists. Can you share a little bit about their works?

CM Turner:

The event is a pretty unique and fun event. It is drawing in local creators to produce art, live on the spot, in person, in the gallery. We’ll be featuring over 35 artists, mostly local artists and regional artists from the Charlottesville area, Central Virginia area, and we split them into two shifts so that you’ll have about 20 artists per shift in the gallery creating work on the spot. Those works are then made available for purchase from collectors right there. You can walk out the door with it after seeing it created right in front of your eyes, including works by Erin Eichhorst, Lou Haney, Chicho Lorenzo, Tobiah Mundt, Clay Witt, Sarah Boytz Yoder and a full roster of just amazing creators who work across a number of different disciplines, from painting to drawing, collage, sculpture all the way kind of around the gamut of artistic output.

Ella Powell:

Are a lot of these artists from the local Charlottesville area as well?

CM Turner:

That’s right. Yeah. Most of them are based right here in our immediate community of Charlottesville, the surrounding area here in central Virginia. So these are local creators who also have profiles, not just here in the area, but who are collected beyond the area, established artists as well as artists who are mid-career or emerging. So we do have quite a spread of artists working from folks who are younger and just breaking into their careers or developing their careers to artists who are well established, well collected, and are offering their services to benefit the gallery.

Ella Powell:

Have a lot of these artists partnered with the gallery previously, like with shows or exhibits?

CM Turner:

Absolutely. Yeah. So a lot of these artists are artists that the gallery has an ongoing relationship with. They’ve either been featured in group shows or solo exhibitions, potentially, they’ve led workshops with us or just part of our local arts community.

Ella Powell:

Would you like to share a little bit about the roaring 20s theme that y’all have chosen?

CM Turner:

Absolutely, yeah. So we tend to try to pick a really fun and engaging theme each year. Last year’s gallery rally theme was Sideshow spectacular and kind of digging into some of these aestheticized artistic elements within other aspects of pop culture. So this year, we’re going with a speakeasy theme. We’re kind of leaning into our venue as being sort of half underground, and exploring the grit and ingenuity that was often associated with the revelry of speakeasies and applying that into our evening of festivities centered around visual art.

Ella Powell:

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun. And I guess y’all are gonna have a DJ there as well, absolutely.

CM Turner:

So yeah, DJ, Billy hunt will be spinning tracks that are kind of combining 1920s music, vintage sounds with contemporary sounds, we will run a costume contest for folks who choose to dress up and enliven the event with their best 1920s speakeasy apparel. We will also be running a number of Raffles throughout the evening, although the raffle tickets will help support the gallery and we have some pretty amazing prize packages that patrons can win through the raffles, we have gift cards and certificates to places like Feast Market or Merry Mill Vineyard. We have an opportunity to win tickets to a show at the Jefferson Theater or tickets to the Virginia Theater Festival. So just a really great coalition of kind of arts and culture and local businesses that have chipped in to help support the gallery and our local artists.

Ella Powell:

Nice. I mean, this all sounds great.

CM Turner:

It is an incredibly lively event. It is something where, oftentimes in the visual arts, we have patrons who ask us, or visitors attendants who ask us, you know, how did an artist come up with this idea? How did they make this happen? You know, how do you take an idea that you see in your mind and translate that to a canvas or paper? And this is an opportunity to really demystify that process. And for audience members to really see the creative process in action. You know, sometimes in the arts, we have this idea of a lone genius in their studio, tortured working away at whatever you know their next brilliant masterpiece is. And really, you know, most artists are people in our community. They’re your neighbors, your family, your friends, and so to be able to kind of see what they do and how they translate those ideas from conception to context and composition, making this work happen is really exciting. And then the ability to acquire works from well known artists at a very fixed price. Every piece of artwork produced during the gallery rally is available for collection at $100 instead of a normal kind of silent auction event. Who’s interested in an artwork, we’ll put their name on a list, and then would be collectors will engage in games of chance against each other to see who wins the right to purchase the artwork. It gets pretty heated. People are rolling die against each other. They are engaged in this game of chance to decide who gets to take home a beautiful piece of original artwork right on the spot.

Ella Powell:

Are there other pieces of artwork being sold besides the ones created?

CM Turner:

So we have two exhibitions that are currently on view, which will remain on view during the event. Entry to the gallery rally is free and open to the public, and we are certainly selling artwork that is included in the two exhibitions, one by local arts educator, musician and artist Ryan Trott in our main gallery and in the dove gallery is a solo exhibition by Richmond based artist Sarah hand. So works from those shows will be available for purchase, but the gallery rally itself features these two shifts of artists creating new works live in the gallery. Those works are each priced at $100 a piece. Some people come in with their own kind of strategy of saying, Well, I see 123, artists that I would love to have a piece in my collection. I’m going to put my name down on each of their sheets. I’m going to play the number game, and hopefully I get to walk away with one of these, or maybe I’m going to get to win three dice rolls and walk away with three amazing pieces to add to my collection. And not only am I going to be supporting the gallery, but I’m going to be supporting our local artists, because we split commissions of this work with the artists. So not only are you supporting a nonprofit gallery and our local arts community, but you’re also putting money directly into the pockets of working artists, which is then going to go back into our community. And so not only are you contributing to the health of a vibrant cultural community here in central Virginia, but you’re also supporting our overall economic health in the region.

Ella Powell:

Since the event runs from like five to roughly 9pm would you say artists are creating their work for like, a fraction of that time, or, like, for most of the evening? Or like, how would you lay out the event? Right?

CM Turner:

So, because art practices are as varied as the people who produce them, some artists will show up with a work in process, and they’ll complete their work during about an hour long shift. Other artists will start with a blank sheet or a blank canvas and create their work kind of at lightning speed and produce a completed work in that hour. So each shift runs, as I said, about an hour. The first shift will run from 5:30pm to 6:30pm we’ll have a brief break to swap out and get the second shift of artists working. They’ll work for another hour. After that, we will have an MC for the evening who will be keeping things moving along, Darrell Smith. If you’ve ever seen a show at live arts or have been familiar with our local performing arts scene, Darryl Smith is someone that you’re probably familiar with, an incredibly outgoing, personable individual who really brings a great energy into the space, and we’re very happy to have him serving as the emcee for the evening. It’s a party, for sure. You know, it is a social event that is to benefit the gallery, but it is also a great opportunity,even if you’re not looking to add to your collection, to come to meet local creators, to meet people within our fine arts, visual arts community, to engage with other people who are interested in the arts and enjoy an evening of community dedicated to showcasing the incredible talent that we have within our region. Here, it’s an opportunity for all comers to add something amazing into their collection and to brighten up their own space with a piece of local art or multiple pieces. The fact that the event runs from 5pm to 9pm and that there are two shifts of artists allows folks to come and go as they please. There’s no entry fee, or you can come and go, but we anticipate seeing, you know, audiences in the hundreds, so we will make the schedule available here shortly. I recommend checking in on our Instagram page, on our Facebook page, or at our website, which is www.Second Street gallery.org, and you’ll be able to preview the artist rosters so that you can see who’s producing work in which shift the ability to separate those out, not based by medium or popularity or anything like that, mostly based on an artist’s availability and their schedule. Also works to our advantage in that you don’t necessarily have to be at the event for the full four hours to be able to experience the energy and excitement of the evening.

Ella Powell:

Wear your best 1920s flapper dress this Saturday, February 21 at Second Street galleries, gallery rally fundraiser featuring affordable work from local artists, the DJ costume competition and more from five to 9pm arts this week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more@pvcc.edu for wtju. I’m Ella Powell.