John W. Love, center, receives the McColl Award, which comes with a $25,000 grant from the Arts & Science Council to create a new work. At left is former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. At right is ASC President Scott Provancher. (Photo: Calvin Ferguson)
________________________________________________________________________

fe-cund (fe-kend) adj: intellectually productive or inventive to a marked degree: prolific

***

John W. Love Jr. hardly recalls a time when he wasn’t obsessed with things artistic and the process of creating.

Ask him to describe himself artistically and you’re not likely to get a simple answer.

Photo by Moye

“I’m an actor. I’m a poet. I’m a playwright,” he explained during a recent interview. “I create objects oftentimes in reference to my work -- sometimes sculpture, sometimes assemblage. I have a tendency to use whatever mediums are available to me in order to express whatever it is that I need to express or to tell the stories that I’m looking to tell.

“For me, “ he continues, “it’s really about anything that is rich, that is intriguing, that really sort of makes me wake up, take notice, be excited, be encouraged. That’s kind of what drives me as an artist.”

On Monday, Love became the first individual recipient of the McColl Award, a $25,000 grant awarded every three years by the Arts & Science Council. Established in 2001 to recognize the role that former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. and his wife, Jane, have played in supporting Charlotte’s cultural community, the award is meant to help finance the commission of a new creative work.

(Click here to read about other ASC grants)

In previous years, only organizations and institutions could apply. Past winners include Carolina Raptor Center, Carolina Voices, Charlotte Symphony, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, The Light Factory and Moving Poets Theatre of Dance.

This year, ASC extended the grant opportunity to individual artists. Seventeen applications were received in total – about half of them from individuals.

Love, a 1980 graduate of West Charlotte High School and a former theater major at UNC Greensboro, impressed the judges with a proposal he titled “FECUND.”

Qcitymetro.com recently caught up with Love for a Q&A. Some answers were edited for brevity and clarity:

Q. Describe the concept of FECUND as you proposed it.

I can tell you what I know about it at this particular time. It is an interdisciplinary work. It will have a performance component, a gallery component an inspiration component and a workshop component. One of the core questions that the work considers is, what does it take to create a thing of beauty?

One of the answers to that question is insatiability. So ultimately it’s about the necessity of insatiability. What I mean by that is, if you talk about creating a single beautiful thing, if you’re talking about what nature does or has to go through or aspire to do to create a black diamond, or what a mathematician had to do to create a beautiful theorem, you just can’t show up with the okey-doke. There is a certain level of hunger and it never really being enough, never being sated. There is a certain level of insatiability that is necessary in order to create a thing of beauty.

My work has a tendency to be embodied with characters who are simultaneously mythic, surreal and colloquial, and so they have these very rich lives and sometimes they are incredibly irreverent. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re sad. Sometimes they’re poignant. Overall, in terms of Fecund, it’s the world of these characters, the places that they embody, the artifacts of this world. So, that’s the crux of it all.

Q. So I assume the project is still evolving, even in your mind.

Oh, most definitely; it’s most definitely still evolving. It’s nowhere close to being done. The McColl Award was created to support the creation of new work. The launch date for FECUND is spring of 2013.

It’s a really, really great thing to have a grant application that is dedicated to new work, to something fresh. That launches everybody into having to look at the process of creating. So at this point in time, I certainly have some great things that are going to be part of the work, but it’s really all about what my intention is. In some ways, spring of 2013 is just around the corner, but in a lot of ways, especially in a creative sense, it’s a world away.

Q. What inspired Fecund?

I have been creating work for a long time. I have been creating work all my life. So the notion of what does it take to create a single thing of beauty is a huge thing for me. That’s a life question; it’s not just an art question. So the inspiration for FECUND is directly relates to just the inspiration for living and how I approach life and what makes me get up in the morning.

Q. Do you have a day job?

I do a lot of stuff. I’m like any artist that’s trying to do what they do. I work in advertising, as a freelance director and copywriter. I do a lot of intuitive work with people. I have a strong meditative practice, and I lead guided meditation and creative visualization sessions.

Q. What does winning this grant mean to you?

First of all, this is the largest grant monetarily that a person in Charlotte, and maybe in the state, can receive. Being the first individual artist to receive the grant, that’s a lovely thing, coupled with the fact that my work is known for not being easy. It’s known for not being safe. The fact that the Arts & Science Council is enthusiastic around supporting an artist who has the kind of vision that I have, as far as I’m concerned, that gives them major mac-daddy status. So, I’m thrilled, further encouraged, a whole host of things, a host of emotions.

Q. When you say your work is known for not being easy, not being safe, what does that mean?

While I am an unrelenting task master when it comes to the quality and craft of my work, my interest in joyously and unabashedly expressing the depth, breadth, riches and truths of a given moment always trumps any fear-based sense of prudishness, decorum, or appropriateness. It is never my primary, secondary or tertiary intent to shock, freak out or offend. I actually find those things tedious, cheap and boring when they are the sole purpose of anything. However, on the flip, I don't pander to those who easily gasp and clutch their pearls, and many find this sense of freedom to be unpredictable, unsafe and uncontrollable -- thus it instills fear.

Got news to share with Qcity readers? Email us at editor@qcitymetro.com.
Sign up for our weekly email newsletter below

Sign up for our Weekly Email Newsletter Email: For Email Marketing you can trust

Other Ways to Share Twitter Del.icio.us MySpace

Discussions and Submission Agreement