ByFebruary 8, 2020
This Valentine’s Day weekend, you can share a love of art and community by bringing your friends or special someone to Crown Station for the gallery opening of PDA, a multimedia art exhibit created by Julio Gonzalez and Jillian Mueller exploring cultural perceptions of love and affection.
At some point in our lives, an insurmountable spark in our chests begs us to explore our own versions of sexuality. Manifestations of want and explorations of how to love and to be loved are universal yet deeply personal, and then there’s the hard part– figuring out how to communicate your love language to other humans in hopes they understand and reciprocate. Every form of art finds a medium in which to express this longing: thousands of love songs pulsate in our brains, syncing their rhythms with our heightened heartbeats; poets have scribbled with sweaty palms since the beginning of time about the helpless lure of love and lust; and visual arts convey the embrace of passion or the innocent flutter of one hand brushing against the other.
Within this wide world of figuring out what love feels, looks, and behaves like is the public display of affection, how we choose to share our feelings with those who ignite the spark inside us. Crown Station’s PDA exhibit features a group of 14 Charlotte artists who have come together to share their experiences with love and the ways we express it. Rooted in the context that each different generation, culture and individual has a different approach to gestures of romance, this interactive performance and visual art exhibition will dive into the individual experience of giving and receiving love.
Artists displaying their affections include fiber artist and former Goodyear resident Sarah Terry Argabrite, photographer and writer Micah Cash who recently published Waffle House Vistas, executive director of art collective XOXO Matt Cosper, poet de’Angelo Dia, former McColl Center resident and creator of the annual Dia de los Casi Muertos Julio Gonzalez, experimental musician Sweat Transfer, muralist and graphic designer Megan Gonzalez, visual artists Katherine Kesey, Jillian Mueller, Mayte Martinez, Elisa Marie Sanchez, tattoist Matt Terry, photographer and filmmaker Hamilton Ward, photographer CHD:WCK, and co-owner of gallery/studio BlkMrkt CLT Dammit Wesley.
PDA: An Art Show Exploring Displays of Affection opens February 15 from 6-9 p.m. at Crown Station (3629 N. Davidson St., Charlotte). The exhibition is free and open to the public until March 15.
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