A burned church became Charlotte’s beacon for living artists. McColl Center — housed since 1999 in a Gothic Revival church on North Tryon’s edge, its fire-scarred walls kept as testament — runs one of the South’s respected artist residency programs, hosting artists from around the world for seasons of making, teaching and exhibiting.
The public gets the gallery: exhibitions that grow directly out of the studios upstairs, open-studio nights where visitors wander working spaces, and art classes in everything from printmaking to welding. McColl alumni’s fingerprints cover Charlotte — murals, sculptures, public projects from the residency’s civic-art programs.
It’s the engine room of Charlotte’s visual art: raw process, seriously supported. Walk in on an open studio night and watch the city’s next public masterpiece mid-sentence.
