Dammit Wesley

Art Location: Mint Museum Uptown, Queens Room
Collaborator: Arko
In Response To Picasso’s The Painter And His Model In A Landscape (1963)

Dammit Wesley is a dynamic multi-disciplinary artist who uses his work and platform to provide context and commentary on the black experience through the lens of pop culture. His provocative paintings frequently dissect themes of race and American consumerism. Wesley has played an active, influential role in the southeast arts community for the past decade as the Founder and co-owner of BLK MRKT CLT, developing monthly minority-based art exhibitions and showcases, instructing hip hop-themed figure painting classes, and working as a teaching artist for local institutions. Dammit Wesley holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design from Winthrop University.

Arko

Art Location: Mint Museum Uptown, Queens Room
Collaborator: Dammit Wesley
In Response To Picasso’s The Vert-Galant (1943)

Arko is a Charlotte-based artist and muralist who works primarily with recycled materials to create bright energetic illustration-based sculpture promoting a positive mental attitude. He is known for his free art project which aims to provide the community with art outside the confines of institutions and judgment by creating a scavenger hunt-style activity that gives people a chance to interact not only with street art but with their surroundings in a different way. Arko has also worked with several art collectives in the city and constantly works to promote an understanding and acceptance of street art, murals and graffiti here in the city. He has painted in and outside the United States and thinks of Charlotte as home base for all his explorations.

CHDWCK

Art Location: Mint Museum Uptown, Queens Room
In Response To Picasso’s Guernica (1937)

A non-traditionally trained (self-taught) visual artist, whose aesthetic tastes were shaped in and around East Orange, New Jersey. Whether working with paper, paint, inanimate objects, or human figures, my work is fueled by a fascination with raw texture, strong lines, soft curves, and a desire to celebrate the overlooked beauty in the ordinary. This leads to a unique approach to creating artwork that is equally enticing, challenging and refreshing.

Sam Guzzie

Location: Mint Museum Randolph
Collaborator: Heather Fairweather, Brand The Moth
In Response To Picasso’s Guernica (1937)

It is Brand the Moth’s philosophy that the arts are essential to building stronger communities by establishing healthy expression and cross-community dialogue while developing our unique culture, civic design and city landscape. As “our village” of Charlotte is rapidly growing, it is important now to support public art in our community: art crosses expected and unforeseen boundaries. Public art has the power to showcase our history and identity, uplift marginalized groups and stimulate economic growth. It is with this holistic mindset and approach that all Brand the Moth programs are designed, working towards the betterment of our city as a whole and establishing a precedent for a sustainable future for the arts and our local artist community.

Sam Guzzie is a mixed-media oil painter and installation artist, born in Philadelphia, PA and currently based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Guzzie founded the local nonprofit Brand the Moth in 2016, and continues to serve as the organization’s Program Director. She uses symbolic expression and storytelling to explore the depths of human emotional, mental and sensational experiences of human society and personal relationships. Her work is a study of human connection and intimacy, offering a continued dialogue for interpersonal experience, through both public art programming and personal practice. Sam holds a bachelor’s degree in studio art with a minor in art history from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

Hannah Fairweather

Art Location: Mint Museum Randolph
Collaborator: Sam Guzzie, Brand The Moth
In Response To Picasso’s Guernica (1937)

It is Brand the Moth’s philosophy that the arts are essential to building stronger communities by establishing healthy expression and cross-community dialogue while developing our unique culture, civic design and city landscape. As “our village” of Charlotte is rapidly growing, it is important now to support public art in our community: art crosses expected and unforeseen boundaries. Public art has the power to showcase our history and identity, uplift marginalized groups and stimulate economic growth. It is with this holistic mindset and approach that all Brand the Moth programs are designed, working towards the betterment of our city as a whole and establishing a precedent for a sustainable future for the arts and our local artist community.

Hannah Fairweather is a local mixed-media and installation artist and the Director of Curation for Brand the Moth. Her work explores surreal balances in nature, creating unexpected ecosystems within layers of colored pencil, metallic paint and fabric. Drawn to natural textures and color palettes from a young age, her naturalistic landscapes are influenced by the daily changes in her garden and its creatures. She also holds a BFA in design and is a producer at a local advertising agency. Through the projects she drives, from art trades to curating exhibitions, her focus always remains on balance and connection to each other.

HNin Nie

Art Location: Optimist Hall
In Response to Picasso’s Landscape of Juan-Les-Pins (1920)

HNin Nie is a multidisciplinary artist based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Nie received her associates degree in Fine Arts from Central Piedmont Community College and currently focuses on paintings and sculptures. Illustration is an influence in Nie’s work by her use of images and text to visually portray a story. Through her personal experience as an Asian woman in America, Nie dissects her feminine experience by layering vibrant imagery over unsettling narratives.

Kalin Reńee Devone

Art Location: Optimist Hall
In Response to Picasso’s Mediterranean Village (1937)

Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Kalin Renée is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on the ideas of societal influence and social culture and is known for her use of realism to reflect popular music and movies from her culture and the era in which she was raised: the early 90s to the late 2000s. She studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she received a BFA with a concentration in painting in 2015. In her work, she uses a technique of layering and short brush strokes to add a sense of movement and life to her work. Though Kalin mainly focuses on portraiture, she also creates abstract pieces that combine the themes of fluidity and flux of space. Kalin curated her first solo exhibition in 2019: (Perpetual). This body of work has featured movie stars and music artists that reflected memories from her childhood, creating feelings of nostalgia. Her most notable exhibitions include Local Street, (2021 and 2022) and The Brooklyn Collective, ‘The Renaissance of Brooklyn’ (2023).

Mike Wirth

Art Location: Camp North End
Title: Tashlich
In Response To Picasso’s Houses (1935)

Mike Wirth is a visual artist, digital experience designer, and muralist best known for his thoughtful murals, public art installations, and client-driven commercial design work that focus on major social justice issues and his identity as a Southern, Jewish-American. Over the past 20 years, Wirth’s murals, published works, and digital museum exhibits have appeared in New York, Miami, Charlotte, NC, and internationally in Croatia, Poland, and Germany. Wirth is an avid educator, serving as Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Queens University and as artist-in-residence with the Stan Greenspon Center for Holocaust and Social Justice Education. In mentoring programs such as Five Sense, Iconic Charlotte: A Civic Symbol Design Initiative, and Project Protege‘. He is a founding member and board mentor for the Talking Walls Festival, Charlotte’s first annual, citywide mural and public art festival. In 2021, Wirth was one of 10 artists-in-residence selected for Charlotte’s wildly successful Immersive Van Gogh Exhibition. In December of 2022, Mike was a featured artist in the JADA art fair during Miami Art Week.

Emily Núñez

Art Location: Queens University
Reminiscing Over You (Rememorándote)
In Response To Picasso’s Landscape Of Juan-Les-Pins (1920)

A Charlotte native who recently graduated from Appalachian State University, Emily Núñez is about connecting with her art, connecting her art to her culture and connecting us to her art. Núñez began her creative journey at a young age, pulling inspiration from her artist grandmother. After returning to Charlotte and being determined to find adequate spaces to create her work, Núñez receive a HUG grant from the organization Charlotte is Creative and was able to secure a residency at the McColl Center where she created a body of work called ‘Evidence of my History’. The experience of elements and symbols expressed through a collection of portraits and mixed media that related to her childhood memories gave viewers a window into her Dominican culture.

Frankie Zombie

Location: Optimist Hall
Collaborator: Garrison Gist
In Response to Picasso’s Portrait De Jacqueline Aux Cheveux Lisses (1962)

Born in New York City and raised in South Carolina, Forbes featured artist Frankie Zombie has dived headfirst into what you could call a renaissance Art realm. With a focus of Contemporary Abstract Art forms, Frankie has tapped into the heart of interior design, thought-provoking murals, automotive design, fashionable apparel, philanthropy, civil rights and much more. Leading him to be able to create for some of the world’s beloved moguls such as Pharrell Williams, Miley Cyrus, and Celine Dion, as well as mainstream television networks.

Garrison Gist

Location: Optimist Hall
Collaborator: Frankie Zombie
In Response To Picasso’s Portrait De Jacqueline Aux Cheveux Lisses (1962)

An artist that’s no stranger to the area, Garrison Gist grew up in Rock Hill but spent much of his time in Charlotte with his father. He attended the University of South Carolina where he played football and received a BFA in Studio Art as well as a degree in Art Education. He uses his illustration and graphic design influence to create spray and acrylic paint pieces widely based on popular culture and entertainment. Fairly new to the mural scene, Gist plans to continue to grow and leave his mark on the city and the world.