On Thursday, Oct. 27, the smART Gallery on 210 N. Queen Street will host an “Artist Talk” featuring Connie Hull, one of smART Kinston’s artists. The Artist Talk begins at 6 p.m.

Connie will present ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ - A Portion of Cultural and Economic Disparities Served within a Menu of Worldwide Hunger.” The work is a walk-around, no-touch project designed to express symbolic, organic, tactile, and visual imagery to enable the work to become an objective and personal experience in the eyes of the beholder. 

Connie’s art represents life’s challenges through her philosophy of “transitional art.” Being a physically challenged artist, Connie believes in adaptational methodologies, including finger and pallet painting, polymer clay sculpting, and coil and slab pottery. 

A studio art graduate of Elizabeth City State University and long-time college educator, Connie believes that everyone can utilize art as a healing modality in some form and in some way. As a cancer survivor Connie fervently believes that art transcends many physical and emotional challenges, offering a way to manifest feelings and bringing beauty to stricken souls.

But her interest in art bean much earlier in her life. Her grandfather had a major impact on her.

“A huge influence in my life was my grandfather who was trained at an art school in New Your City,” she said. “Long before graphic design, my grandfather spent his career on scaffolds painting freehand with gold leaf on doors and windows for business of all kinds. Sometimes, when I go home to Allentown, PA, and drive down Hamilton Street, I look up and can still a glimpse of my ‘Pappy’s’ work. He was a true artist!”

She became interested in polymer clay creation after she experienced a massive stroke in 2002. Paralyzed on her right side, part of her rehabilitation was to squeeze “a stupid little red ball.”

“While watching a craft show on TV, I saw an artist making figures out a new medium, polymer clay,” she said. “I thought it looked much more like fun than that red ball, so I ordered some polymer clay. Literally, within weeks, I gained strength in my hand and found that I had an ability to create figures and animals of all kinds.

“Within months, I was teaching classes at Michaels Crafts and at our local library.”

The “Artist Talk” series is hosted by the smART Kinston City Project Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit committed to building Kinston and Lenoir County’s creative economy. Organizers envision Kinston as a hub for the arts in eastern North Carolina, from visual to performance art, from literary to culinary art, from contemporary to folk art, and everything in between.

The Foundation is a partnership-based organization that collaborates with residents, artists, the Kinston Community Council for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, civic leaders, nonprofit organizations, and other state agencies and community partners. smART Kinston is grateful to its funders, which include the Educational Foundation of America, the Kinston-Lenoir County Tourism Development Authority, and the Kinston-Lenoir Committee of 100.

Do you believe the arts have the power to transform Kinston? If so, please make a tax-deductible donation through this link on the smART Kinston website: Donate — smART KINSTON CITY PROJECT FOUNDATION. The Foundation also counts on support from volunteers and individual donors.

In a relatively brief period, the smART Foundation has amassed impressive achievements. Just some of those achievements include rehabilitating more than 50 homes in the Arts & Cultural District, seeing Thomas Sayre’s “Flue” installed, new murals and public art in downtown Kinston and the Arts & Cultural District, and establishing the smART Gallery to showcase the work of smART artists.

Thanks to the work of the Foundation, the Community Council for the Arts, and their partners, Kinston now has the most extensive public art trail in North Carolina.

Be sure to seize the opportunity to meet one of the many smART artists here in our city. That meeting may release the artist within you.

Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.