Charlotte's appetitie for avant-garde jazz at Dialect Design is juiced up - Read the Article!

From the Charlotte Observer's pages - an article by Courtney Devores last Friday:

>>Experimental avant-garde jazz isn't necessarily popular with mainstream audiences, but local musician Brent Bagwell (Great Architect, the Eastern Seaboard) says there's a market for it in Charlotte.
"There are probably 500 people in Charlotte that would like this (music) if I could reach them consistently," says Bagwell, who has booked fringe jazz and improv artists at The Milestone, Lunchbox Records and Century Vintage since moving to Charlotte from Brooklyn in 2004.

His latest venture is a monthly Modern Music series at NoDa's Dialect Design, which kicked off in October with Chicago Luzern Exchange, a collaboration between American and Swiss musicians. Trumpet and bassoon soloists Jacob Wick and Katherine Young will perform Wednesday. Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani ends the three-month series on Dec. 19. Great Architect will also perform at each event, and Bagwell hopes to book more shows there in 2011.

"I'm a hopeless optimist," says Bagwell, an S.C. native who studied English at the University of Georgia before turning to an intense, self-guided private musical instruction program and playing in bands while living in New York.

"It's unfamiliar music. It reflects things that are happening right now. Anyone I could coerce into coming to see a show, they're going to be into it when they leave. I was not so sure about things a few years ago. Now I feel like there is this influx of people in their early twenties... they know everything from the Internet," he says of young audiences that are as familiar with John Coltrane's later catalog as they are with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

"There is also the McColl fellowship art sorts who love it, too."

The NoDa art space's cork floors, exposed brick and intimate setting make it a great place to hear soloists like Nakatani, whose work he describes as "riveting." Of Wick he says, "I think he likes to do this solo thing as a test of his own mettle. I set him up with a house show. He wanted to play something super-intimate with 20 people. By the end of his set, everyone was paying attention - and that's some serious authority for someone in his early twenties to yield." <<

you can pick up the whole article at the observer

The Charlotte Observer today - "To keep busy, many contractors turn to renovations"

We stumbled over this article by Kerry Singe in the Charlotte Obsever today:

>> Two years ago, interior designer Irene Suchoza spent most of her time working on the insides of new, multimillion-dollar buildings.
Today, the associate at Gantt Huberman Architects is helping clients rethink existing structures, figuring out how to give old buildings new life and do so on a tight budget.
As demand for new commercial building projects has dried up, more contractors, designers and architects are finding themselves chasing smaller jobs that they might have once been too busy to do.
In March 2008, about a third of commercial building permits issued that month in Mecklenburg County were for renovations. In March, renovations and upfits accounted for more than 60 percent of permits issued. An upfit is work done to an existing space to fit a tenant's needs.
The total number of commercial building permits granted has plummeted since peaking in 2008. The Queen City was once dotted with construction cranes as firms, particularly banks, expanded. The growing demand, combined with easy capital, fueled a building spree. Then the recession hit, banks cut their spending and developers abandoned projects.
To survive the doldrums, construction companies are wooing firms that are either downsizing or adding employees but staying in their existing space.
Some building owners are taking advantage of relatively low labor and material costs to make their buildings more energy efficient. Other clients simply don't have the money to build as big as once planned but want to make changes.
"Upfits is definitely one of the big names of the game right now," said Dave Simpson, N.C. building director for Carolinas AGC, a contractors' trade group. "People in the construction industry are interested in doing any kind of construction, whether it be new buildings, old buildings, upfits, downfits, you name it. They're extremely hungry right now."
Getting more for their money
Johnson C. Smith University had planned to build a new student union building. Then the recession hit, and the university couldn't afford a $15 million center, said Gerald Hector, the university's vice president for business and finance.
So, the university reached out to its architect, Gantt Huberman Architects, to see what could be done to update the existing center, with its confining offices and stark blue and gold color scheme.
The firm spent 10 months redesigning three floors. Ultimately, the university spent around $1.5 million on changes that included updating the cafeteria flooring and ceiling, modernizing the color scheme and creating a contemporary glass partition that doubles as art.
Recyclable carpet and new lighting fixtures were installed in the upstairs lounge, along with a flat-screen TV and surround sound. The bottom floor, known as the bullpen, was opened up and modernized to create a more friendly gathering place.
When the renovated space was shown to alumni at homecoming last year, they were "blown away," Hector said. Besides making students happier, Hector said, the space could encourage alumni to donate more money.
"We could not afford to go out and borrow or pay for a new building out of whole cloth, but we had to do something," Hector said. "Sitting back was not an option for us. We were able to get a lot for a lot less money."
The senior designer on the project, Suchoza said she and her colleagues were able to negotiate with manufacturers who shaved as much as 10 percent off prices. She found a manufacturer, for example, willing to offer "rock bottom" prices on environmentally sustainable linoleum, keeping with the university's interest in using "green" building materials.
She said she's looking forward to designing a new student center when the university is ready. But it was nice to see fast results. She estimates it would have taken up to three years to design and build a new student center.
"It's really nice to have immediate gratification," she said.
A different type of work
Because renovations and upfits are typically quicker to complete and cost less than new construction, companies rely on a steady supply of the smaller jobs.
Of the $172 million worth of building permits issued in March, renovations accounted for $55 million.
"It's why architects are struggling these days," said architect Harvey Gantt, a former Charlotte mayor. "You have to do a lot of them."
RT Dooley Construction Co. is doing a large number of renovations in uptown, benefiting from the center city's oversupply of new office space.
Office vacancy rates have risen to recent highs - hitting 8.8 percent last year, up from 2.5 percent the year before - as an expected 3 million square feet of new space comes on the market. Tenants have been able to negotiate cheaper leases and upgrade existing space. Or they're moving to newer buildings.
"It's steady work," CEO David Dooley said of tenant upfits. His firm has been busy preparing the 48-story Duke Energy Center for occupants. "I think over the next five years, you'll see a pretty active market."
Interiors work requires different thinking and customer skills than new construction, said Dooley, whose firm was acquired last year by Balfour Beatty Construction U.S. Renovations are sometimes done at night or weekends. Employees may work in occupied spaces.
"You've got to be very detail-oriented," Dooley said, "and you've got to over communicate because you've got people working around you." <<

Read the whole article in the Charlotte Observer

The Charlotte Observer - "A cabinet of curiosities and one-person shows"

This is what Linda Brown wrote in the Charlotte Observer about our current show:

"At Dialect, which functions as an architectural studio in NoDa by day, a multimedia art exhibit, Instructions for Displacements combines fiction, photography, sculpture, and sound design. Themes include "Lost children, found trash, dirt-encrusted manuscripts, secret chambers, and hypnotic soundscapes."

A free-form wall piece by Diana Arvanites, "Mister Pastor's Wall of Curiosities," constructed of string and found objects, includes a real-life cassette tape. This obsolete artifact swings indolently above a dangling plastic Batman figure. Nearby, limbs of chubby china dolls, a bottle opener, tiny vertebrae, a cicada shell, red wax lips, various knobs, spools and buttons, and a couple of 19th century silhouettes are suspended by thread.

In some ways, Arvanites' installations revisit 19th-century "cabinets of curiosities," such as the collections by the natural scientist Albertus Seba. But whereas Seba focused on things rare and marvelous, Arvanites highlights the commonplace laced with post-modern irony.

Across town on the edge of South End, Joie Lassiter has provided Barbara Schreiber and Peggy Rivers with the discrete spaces needed to showcase their very different art."

Read the full article here >>

And also from the Charlotte Observer's front Page: "Utilities start soaking up sun"

And another piece of interest for us in the Charlotte Observer this morning - go Charlotte!:
"Thousands of panels are soaking up the winter sunshine as Duke Energy launches its solar rooftops program under North Carolina's new green energy law.
For the first time, in a small but significant step, Duke and Raleigh-based Progress Energy will have to make a smidgen of their electricity this year from the sun.
Energy from other renewable fuels, such as wind, wood wastes and chicken manure, will join the mix in two years. Renewables have to account for 12.5 percent of utility retail sales by 2021.
Renewable-energy mandates like North Carolina's, the first in the Southeast and one of 29 nationwide, won't save consumers money. Duke will add 16 cents a month to residential customers' bills to cover its costs.
Advocates say their value is in prodding utilities and smaller operators to invest in power that pollutes less than the coal that fuels much of the state, leaves no radioactive waste and taps free energy.
Large-scale solar is making its debut across the Piedmont.
Duke's panels are going up atop a Childress Klein Properties industrial building in Charlotte, National Gypsum's wallboard plant in Mount Holly, a Food Lion distribution center in Salisbury and an industrial building in Greensboro. All will be online by April.
Duke will announce more commercial, industrial and residential rooftop sites as the year unfolds. The $50 million program will make 8 megawatts of solar power, enough to supply about 1,300 homes.
Construction is also under way on one of the nation's biggest solar farms, a land-based installation in Davidson County, 50 miles northeast of Charlotte.
Its owner, Maryland-based SunEdison, will sell Duke the 16-megawatt output. The first phase went online Christmas week. SunEdison is also under contract with Progress Energy for a smaller solar farm in Wilmington.
Large-scale solar power hasn't previously gotten traction in the Carolinas, despite abundant sunshine, because it's expensive to produce and operates only about 20 percent of the time.
Solar produced less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity this year and has grown little since the 1990s, the Energy Information Administration says. Wind power, by contrast, produced about 2 percent of U.S. energy but has nearly doubled since 2007.
Duke warms to technology
Duke probably would not be heavily investing in N.C. solar without the green energy mandate, said renewable energy chief Owen Smith. But the company is warming to the technology.
"Solar is probably the piece of the renewables requirements that we feel like we have the best handle on," Smith said. "We've received (more than 65) solar proposals from various developers, and costs over the last 12 months have declined."
Companies that generate solar power also are growing innovative, he added, in how they site projects and take advantages of tax credits and stimulus money.
Duke can reap federal tax credits for 30 percent of its investment. North Carolina awards tax credits worth 35 percent of the investment and excuses property taxes on 80 percent of the property's value.
Steve Kalland, director of the N.C. Solar Center, said the marketing clout and public profile of the nation's third-largest utility will give solar power new credibility.
"There's also the concept that a rising tide lifts all ships," he said of the effect on smaller solar companies.
Companies host solar arrays
Duke expects to have no problem hitting this year's solar-power target of about 9 megawatts.
In addition to its rooftops program and SunEdison agreement, Duke will buy credits - proxies for solar power - from two Asheville-area firms, FLS Energy and Vanir Energy. It also plans to buy solar credits out of the state.
Power tools whirred last week as workers labored under a cold, gray sky to install 2,314 solar panels on a Childress Klein Properties building on Reames Road.
As it did with the three other sites announced so far, Duke leases the rooftop and owns the solar array. Its 532 kilowatts won't power the building, instead connecting directly to the electrical grid.
Childress Klein, a real estate company, hasn't invested directly in solar power because it would take years to recoup the money. But the firm proposed three buildings for Duke's rooftops program to help avoid the need to build more power plants.
"We just decided it would be a good way to get our toe in the water," said Chris Daly, a partner in the company's industrial division.
The sites were picked because of their ready access to the grid and potential for making solar power. Apart from modest leasing fees, the companies who agreed to host the solar arrays say they will benefit from solar power's green aura.
Food Lion, which prides itself on energy efficiency, volunteered as a low-cost way to explore energy alternatives. Among them is whether the supermarket chain could expand use of solar power in its 1,300 stores.
National Gypsum's 400,000-square-foot plant makes recycled-content wallboard from gypsum, a byproduct of pollution controls at Duke's power plants. The solar panels on the roof, said spokeswoman Nancy Spurlock, "just add to the fact that it is a green process. >>"

From the Charlotte Observer: "Bechtler evokes feel of New York in Charlotte - 20th-century modern art museum is a first for the Southeast."

From the front page of the Charlotte Observer this morning:
"With a splash of color, whimsy and fun, the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art opened Saturday - moving Charlotte into a new artistic league.
More than 5,000 visitors from across the Carolinas filled the four floors of the building, waiting in lines that spilled out of the lobby and into the adjoining Knight Theater.
"Cool," said 5-year-old Whit Wright of Charlotte, grinning as he danced around a rhythmically rocking sculpture by Jean Tinguely.
"Sexual," said Charlottean Tyler Lee, 30, gesturing toward a maze of abstract body parts woven into a Picasso tapestry.
"Amazing," said art history student Catherine Holt, 25, of Charlotte, who for years has heard teachers preach the importance of seeing art in person. On Saturday, she saw her first Edgar Degas original and said she knows now how right they were.
After a chilly ribbon-cutting outside around noon, visitors got in free to the Southeast's only museum dedicated to 20th-century modern art.
Many of the 116 pieces on display - drawn from a collection of more than 1,400 donated to the city by Swiss-born Charlotte resident Andreas Bechtler - have never been exhibited publicly in the United States.
The striking terra cotta building - one of only two in this country designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta - is as much a work of art as the pieces inside.
The building was financed by the city and county and built by Wachovia/Wells Fargo for $17million, with Andreas Bechtler contributing $3 million to construction costs.
The museum is part of the South Tryon Street cultural campus, which also includes the Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, the Knight Theater and the new Mint Museum Uptown, which will open this fall.
At the Bechtler opening, a mix of visitors - families, bohemian types, women in trendy scarves and teens in fleece jackets - seemed equally delighted with the museum.
"I feel like I'm in New York," said Charlottean Fielding Williams, 43.
"I haven't seen such a collection since I was in some European museums," said Mary Kendrick, 41, of Charlotte, who brought her two young sons to the opening.
Four-year-old Ian Kendrick thought the Picasso tapestry looked "kind of Chinese." His 8-year-old brother, Nathan, noticed how much a wooden Max Ernst sculpture looked like "a laundry rack."
Dan Prickett, former chairman of Charlotte's Arts & Science Council board now living in Charleston, made the trip to town just for the opening.
"This is going to draw people into the city in large numbers," he said. "Rarely do you see in one place in America - outside of New York - a collection of this caliber."
In the fourth-floor main gallery, Charlottean Paulette Henry, 48, looked at a framed painter's towel, complete with paint smudges and ragged holes. On the back, it's inscribed to the Bechtler family by artist Joan Miró.
"Different," Henry said with a bemused expression.
"You'd be surprised what can make art these days," said her stepdaughter, Christina Forbes, 19, of Raleigh.
But Emily Lorance, 28, of Belmont, enjoyed the "playfulness" of the same towel. "It's not often you go to a museum and find such personalized messages," she said.
Architect Botta spoke at the ribbon-cutting and drew impromptu building sketches afterward for visitors, including Mecklenburg County Commissioners Chair Jennifer Roberts.
Through an interpreter, he said he "tried to create a little treasure chest within the city" with the Bechtler building.
Judging by Saturday's reaction from the public, the building and its art have managed to do just that. >>"