C3 Lab, the co-working and gallery space created for Charlotte’s creative community, takes a stand for arts in South End as the neighborhood grows
A CROWD FILES INTO C3 Lab on a Friday night in April, and the scene is surreal inside the cavernous gallery space. Architectonic, the latest show at C3, contains works by Sharon Dowell, Chris Neyen, and Matthew Steele that explore a changing and divided Charlotte with peculiar imagery. Steele’s massive sculptures, with pins driven inside by a hammer, a baseball bat, and even a gun, garner the most attention from the visitors, a mixed bag of suited 40-somethings and hipsters. Dowell’s vibrant, architectural paintings invite close inspection from passersby, as electronic music swells at the opening. C3 Lab is the right venue for a show such as this, with its front-row seat to the fastest-growing apartment sub-market in the United States.
When C3 Lab opened its doors in 2015, South End filled a few niches in Charlotte arts. Tremont Music Hall and Amos’ South end provided live music backdrops for mid-level touring acts, and a modest collection of galleries hosted the city’s only crawl at the time. Glen and Maria Nocik saw South End as the prime spot for their arts incubator project, C3, which they envisioned as a hub with an event space, several co-working spots for artists, a gallery, and a workshop. “We both invested a lot of time, emotion, and our own money,” Glen Nocik remembers. “For Maria and I, in the beginning, it was either buy a house or start C3 Lab.”
Since C3 Lab began hosting artists and shows, the music venues and a few greasy spoons in South End have shuttered for varying reasons, from rising rents to poor management. Crawls have begun to take foot in other neighborhoods again, with areas such as NoDa returning to its arts roots. And South End’s flagship food truck rally split into several locations.
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