Artist And the Community series

The Artist and the Community series  began in 1994 at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art  in Winston Salem, NC (when it was still a private organization). The landmark series was a staff-driven initiative in repsonse to the late 1980s culure wars that SECCA was intimately involved in. Under the guidance of Director Susan Talbot (Labowsky), the initial idea for AAC was a 2-week to 2-month residency program that brought in well-recognized artists leading to the creation of new work, focusing on issues critical to the community-at-large. It was peramount that the artists establish working relationships with the greater community's diverse population and organizations. Artists included Donald Lipski, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), Fred Wilson, Hope Sandrow, Willie Birch, Mr. Imagination, Eleanor Antin, Maya Lin, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Lesley Dill. The HOME House Project: the future of affordable housing was an outgrowth of the series, opening the idea of community to a much grander scale while still being pertinent to the area.