ARTS FEATURE
THESE WALLS WILL TALK
exhibitions in 2021, including the Local/Street popup show and collaborative It Takes a Village exhibit, both at Mint Museum; as well as the JOY exhibit at Elder Gallery. Earlier in the year, Guzzie approached AaronLopez about potentially taking her spot as chair of
Aaron-Lopez explained how she made Talking Walls a part of her CMS curriculum. It was clear she already understood what the festival was all about. “I really always knew I was crafting that role for someone else,” Guzzie tells Queen City Nerve. “Carla proved herself as that person through her passion
Connecting communities with murals
Carla Aaron-Lopez applies her vision to Talking Walls mural festival
Pg. 8 OCT 6 - OCT 19, 2021 - QCNERVE.COM
BY RYAN PITKIN
It’s important to have goals to work toward, and as Carla Aaron-Lopez’s experience shows us, you don’t always have to know what the goals really mean. While earning two master’s degrees at the Savannah College of Arts and Design in Atlanta, Aaron-Lopez always told herself and others she wanted to run an art department, she just didn’t know what that meant yet. “I used to tell all my friends in Atlanta, ‘One day I want to have my own art department,’ but I never framed what that meant,” she recalls. “Does that mean at an agency? At an institution? What does that mean? I never defined what that meant.” Upon returning to her hometown of Charlotte in 2013, Aaron-Lopez got connected with leaders in Charlotte’s underground arts scene — folks like Dammit Wesley at blkmarktclt, where she now has a studio; and Sam Guzzie, founder of the META mural residency and one of the lead organizers behind the fledgling Talking Walls mural festival. She kept her goals vague while she built connections in Charlotte. “I always start with the underground, hands down,” she says. “Whoever is running the underground of the city, those are the people you want to work with first. Find them. Identify them. Get to know them. Do not have an end goal in the very beginning, because if you have an end goal in the beginning, people smell it, they go away. Nah, I don’t want you to go away. I want to get to know you. I want to understand how you work. I want to understand who you are because I only want to work with high-value people, and those come in different bodies.” She slowly began to build her name in Charlotte, working as a full-time arts teacher but also making her own moves in the scene. She curated multiple
work can be found — NoDa, Plaza Midwood, South End — to neighborhoods in east and west Charlotte where she says art can play a role in telling the rich and diverse history that too often goes ignored in Charlotte.
CARLA AARON-LOPEZ IN BLKMRKTCLT, WHERE SHE KEEPS A STUDIO. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN
the Talking Walls festival committee. That’s when the goal that Aaron-Lopez had held onto for years began to come into focus and build into a vision. “When she asked me if I wanted to take on her position, that was what I thought of: I finally get my own art department,” Aaron-Lopez says. “From there I began to think about all of the possibilities that Talking Walls can become in the future.” Launched in 2018 by artists with the Southern Tiger Collective, Guzzie took the lead role in 2019. The festival is a week-long event that commissions murals from a mix of artists representing local, national and international street art culture. In its first three years, more than 50 artists have made their mark on the city, creating more than 40 murals across Charlotte. Talking Walls 2021 begins on Oct. 18 and will feature some artists from other cities and countries, but will focus more on local artists due to difficulties in setting up travel accommodations during the ongoing pandemic. Guzzie says she began to consider AaronLopez as her potential replacement from the moment of their first conversation, during which
and her work, plain and simple, and she accepted the responsibility humbly, and one that I know is not light to take on.” In her new role, Aaron-Lopez hopes to spread the influence of Talking Walls from Uptown and the fringe neighborhoods where much of the past
We meet Aaron-Lopez on a Wednesday afternoon outside of blkmrktclt’s studios in Camp North End. She’s winding down after a day of teaching, drinking a tallboy of Miller Lite and mixing it up with her neighbors at dupp&swat. Mother, artist, teacher, mentor, curator, Aaron-Lopez keeps a strict schedule as a matter of self care. Weekdays she devotes fully to work: mornings and afternoons are strictly for her students (“They need my presence there because they cuss me out when I’m absent.”), evenings are spent at the studio with her art and artist cohorts, weekends are spent on self and family. “I gotta chill out on the weekend in order to be in a good mindset to continue to serve people, because that’s really what I’m doing is I’m serving people,” she says. When we meet, she has recently opened the JOY exhibit, which wrapped up her 2021 exhibition season as a curator. She is now fully focused on Talking Walls. Her first order of business upon taking the chair position was to expand the Talking Walls board, with an eye on diversity and inclusion.
BRITISH ARTIST PREF AT WORK DURING TALKING WALLS 2019. PHOTO BY OWLEY
