Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Rosenberg.
Hi Carol, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
The story of the Artist League begins several years before the Workshop opened in the fall of 1994.
It started after an advertising executive moved to the area. A student of the arts and former commercial artist, he’d discovered the beauty and the appeal of the Carolina golf community in 1974 and joined Pinehurst. In the years that followed until retirement in 1982, he became aware of the growing interest nationwide amongst artist to establish community workspace.
That awareness triggered a 10 year crusade. It was a grassroots effort and no funding available, the I initial pursuit was to approach existing entities to take-on or aid the start-up of such an artist group.
That was unsuccessful, with the lack of funds the project was put on hold. Until sometime later Charles Lunney and Michael D’Andrea met and began discussing the idea. Community support remained the key to success.
After joining forces supplied with new hope a major breakthrough occurred. Chuck had a casual conversation with John McCrummen Jr., it came to light that the town of Aberdeen had some warehouse space that was vacant. John was a member of the Aberdeen Town Board of Commissioners, suggested a meeting with the Town Manager..
This proved to be exactly what needed to happen. The Town Manager along with the Board of Commissioners came up with the deal:
Half of the Exchange Building for one dollar a year rent!
Of course the building needed some TLC, Mike and Chick went to work. Sweeping, mopping, painting and patching. Since there was no money they had to do everything themselves.
Next they started recruiting members in order to pay the bills, they charged $200.00 a year for membership, eighteen people signed up initially, but they needed twenty to break even.
They opened anyway and at the first workshop in the fall of 1994, two more signed up. And to this day we have new members signing up every week!
Today we have 174 full members and lots of associate members. We have 34 working studios! Each month with the exception of December, we have a new show open in our gallery space. We also have a classroom teaching all sorts of art classes. Three times a year we have 2-4 day workshops instructed by nationally recognized artist. We’ve received grant money the last few years that allows us to tech what we call “mini” classes; they sometimes can be outside our fine arts genre. Most of our members have some sort of art background, being retired art teachers, textile designers, sketch artist, chefs and self taught. We have abstract artist, mixed media, watercolor, pastel, oil and ink. We have monthly critic sessions, still life sessions and soon to add life drawing.
We are a non profit run by our artist volunteers. We have one paid employee.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We rent the building from the town of Aberdeen, and are a non profit. The maintenance of the building is our responsibility which can be very expensive and sometimes challenging to get the funds to put a new roof on but somehow convinced the town to pitch in half. We look for grants to help us. We have some local sponsors, always looking for more!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
In this section I’m going to take time to introduce you to a few of our members who have been with us the longest!
Linda Bruening earned her BAE from Wichita State University. She taught high school art for many years. She’s lived overseas as well as Panama. Linda moved to North Carolina in 2006 and joined the Artist League. Linda is a skilled oil painter both in realism and abstract. She’s studied with nationally recognized artist and has the skills to show it. She’s had several solo shows as well as small group shows. Through the years Linda has won lots of awards her work is in private collections as well as collegiate collection through the region and US. Linda leads the monthly critic and also teaches beginning oil painting, abstract painting and a head and hand drawing class. She occupies studio #5 at the Artist League, she is always willing to answer any questions fellow artist ask! NOTE: Linda is in the 3rd photo
Courtney Herndon is an artist in Pinehurst NC she occupies #6 studio at The Artist League of the Sandhills.
Courtney has studied with many nationally recognized artist. There have also been lots of Plein air workshops in Venice, Italy and the United States. She is a perennial student, always learning something new and getting excited about art! Courtney paintings are in many collections locally, in New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, California and Colorado.
Mary O’Malley is an oil painter at The Artist League of the Sandhills She grew up enjoying drawing, she started with a night school class in 1973. Drawing wasn’t enough. Mary has also attended lots of seminars and taken lots of class along with many hours of painting with success and failure along the way. She has lots of collectors and has won many awards.
I chose to highlight a few of our longest members., we are a league of many, too many to highlight it’s worth the trip to come see! We are located at 129 Exchange Street, Aberdeen NC. Our gallery is open Monday-Saturday noon to three. You can find our class schedule and upcoming workshops on our website. It’s worth a trip to not only come see the show in the gallery, which opens a new one the first Friday of every month from 5-7 it’s free, we have wine and appetizers, that’s free too. You can also walk through the studio space, lots of artists are working during the week.
I do have a commercial art degree but haven’t painted for decades! I joined the Artist League about a year ago, I’m retired now so have lots of time to see if I’m any good? Everyone at the league is very kind and willing to answer any questions and share ideas. It’s a great place to learn.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Being an artist is very subjective. I think you can’t take yourself too seriously, we learn through our mistakes and taking chances makes us grow.
You can’t give up on your first bad painting because there will be lots of good ones in between. Give yourself grace, don’t be too afraid to try, nothing in life is perfect. Take lots of classes and ask lots of questions, your art will find you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://artistleague.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artistleagueofthesandhills
