Hello.
Today we are in the projective eye Gallery at UNC Charlotte Center City and we're talking
to the new director of galleries for the College of Arts and Architecture Adam Justice.
Adam welcome to UNC Charlotte.
Thanks Meg; it's great to be here.
And you're coming to us from the Mint Museum.
Yeah I was at the Mint museum for the past two years where I was the assistant curator
for modern and contemporary art.
So just right down the street from here.
And while you're at UNC Charlotte in the College of Arts and Architecture you will be managing
the exhibitions and curating exhibitions for this gallery here uptown and then also on
campus.
Right.
Yeah.
Rowe arts and Storrs.
Right.
So that's going to be a big job.
Yeah yeah I'm looking forward to that I've met a lot of faculty and staff and I think
there's a lot of great possibilities and promise to collaborate across departments and also
across the university on different projects and exhibitions.
How did you get interested in art and art making do you make art yourself?
I on occasion I think the more these days is for therapy than anything else.
But I actually started as a painting major in college and I switched to art history because
I fell in love with with learning about history from the visual and from the object.
So I switched art history in and kind of coincidentally fell into curating.
It was never kind of a career goal of mine but but I've always been interested in art
from as far back as I can remember.
But I think really the the big point in my life where I realized art could be something
more than just doodling and drawing was when my father when I was about 4 years old took
one of those Bob Ross instructional classes in my small hometown and he set up this small
little studio in the basement of our house and I would go with him once a week to the
classes and sit and watch him.
Then I would come back home and go into the studio and watch him.
And he really was very determined to learn.
He was very serious about it and so as a young child you know 4 years old I realize I was
the first time I realized that no art could be a serious practice.
Art could be something that you throw yourself into and you learn and it could be down the
road something that you could do for a living.
And my father he stopped painting not long after that I think he got a little frustrated
with the whole process but that stuck with me.
And I still have vivid memories and even today when I walk into a studio classroom and smell
oil paint that's what it takes me to was those moments with my father and so he really indirectly
taught me that art could be a serious thing that I could pursue as a life career.
Yeah that's great and it's amazing to be just four and to experience that.
Where did you grow up.
I grew up in a small town in southwestern Virginia near Tennessee; a small railroad
town.
And I grew up not around art museums.
There wasn't a lot of cultural opportunities where I grew up.
And so it's really kind of amazing that I stayed interested in art all those years and
luckily you know my my mother was a high school teacher she retired after 35 years of teaching
so I had access to the library at the high school even when I was you know in middle
school in elementary school.
And so I would look at art and books in the library that was kind of how I found my museum
moment was in the library of the public school system.
And then once I went to college you know the whole world opened up to me in terms of culture
and diversity and art.
There was a gallery on campus.
It was near Roanoke Virginia where there was a museum so suddenly had all these opportunities
and I realized what I always thought it would be like.
And so I just threw myself and immerse myself into the art world and small central Virginia.
But then in grad school I went to Richmond.
Which they have much more cultural opportunities and met a lot of people there.
And so with every stage of my life I've only kind of fed that need to be in front of art
and to interact with art at a certain level.
And certainly Charlotte is a great example.
Of know just how broad of an art community a city can have no matter its size.
And I really think you know I've only been here two years.
That's been enough to make me realize just how important and how expansive and how deep
the art community is here in Charlotte.
I mean I think that that the university is in this unique position to offer opportunities
within this arts community from an academic standpoint.
So we can you know we can couple the arts experience with the educational experience
make it fun but keep it as an experience surrounded by art and engaging supporting and celebrating
the local arts community that we're in the middle of every day.
Well I know that you prior to coming to Charlotte, you were in Florida and that you have curated
a show in Florida that you helped bring this fall to this gallery here.
Tell us a little bit about that work and that artist.
So I was the curator at Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland Florida for about seven years
and I left there in 2016 and literally two weeks before I left I met with artist Richard
Heipp who's been a University of Florida professor for 38 years and I had always been really
interested in his work he does intriguing painting and so I reached out to him about
a show.
And it just so happened that I first met with him right before I left.
And it also just so happened he was thinking about an idea for a retrospective exhibition.
You know he is right on the cusp of retiring from the University of Florida.
And so we started that conversation and then I left and came to the Mint and he and the
museum director ask if I would at least stay on to curate the show from remotely from Charlotte.
And of course I wanted to do that.
And so Richard and I worked on this show for about two years and it finally opened just
in June at the Polk museum and it spans 38 actually 40 years of his career because some
of the pieces are actually produced by my regiment as a college student.
And it has about has worked for about 10 different series that he's worked on throughout his
career.
The check list is somewhere around 60 to 70 pieces and his pieces are fairly large.
So it's a really large show.
Richard I have been talking about you know where can we take this show where could it
travel.
And it seemed to me like this was a perfect fit because of Richard's experience within
the university world and bringing his work here and and really exhibiting an abbreviated
form of the show that's down in Florida but also engaging Richard and putting him in front
of some of the students here at the University.
He's a great presenter and he's been a teacher for so long that he's really great at connecting
with students through his work.
So not only is it great to have his work here because it's such intriguing a beautiful work.
But also we have this really great advantage of having an artist who has been a teacher
in the art world for so many years and to have him come and visit another university
to speak with some students maybe even go to some of the classes and speak to some of
the painting students but also photography students because his work really speaks to
not only painting but also photography and the relationship between the two.
So there's a number of ways we can program opportunities for students to engage with
Richard on those levels.
Well good; We're looking forward to seeing all of the things that you're going to do
both here in the Center City Gallery and the gallery on campus.
Again welcome to UNC Charlotte.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Really happy to be here And thanks you for joining us for inside UNC
Charlotte.
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