Carolyn Creative

On Friday night, Kevin and I went to the McColl Center to celebrate a decade of art and nurturing artists.  For those of you who don’t know the story, the McColl Center was built on the site of an abandoned church in uptown Charlotte.  In 1985, the church caught fire and stood abandoned for ten years until Bank of America bought it in 1995 and turned it into an artist’s colony.  There were crazy thunderstorms on Friday night; inside the stone building it felt a little medieval.  It was a little crowded and I was grateful I brought my own water bottle but wished I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The exhibit proudly showed off some of the accomplishments of their artists and we ventured upstairs to view the small studios of the artists in residency.  That was really interesting!  We saw their materials, works-in-progress and items and photos from which they draw inspiration.  It felt like stepping into somebody’s head.  Well, we were invited to step in, after all.

I’ve been thinking how nice it would be if everybody had a little corner of the world to be creative.  And you don’t have to be a sculptor, photographer, painter, or writer.  What if you had your own nook to make a scrapbook of panda pictures?  Or play solitaire on a big computer with no disturbance?  Maybe you could practice playing pool or magic tricks.  What would you do in your own private creative nook?