Elsewhere

Elsewhere is a quirky museum in a former thrift store featuring eclectic objects & artist residency programs. Elsewhere has a large amount of Greensboro public art. Everything in this section is somewhere in or around Elsewhere. Enjoy exploring the art!

Location: 606 S Elm St, Greensboro, NC 27406

 

The Swings at Elsewhere

The Swings at Elsewhere by Colin Bliss are a series of swing sets throughout the Elsewhere building, made of collection wood restored on the top surface but left as it was found on the underside. They range in size from miniature to functional, life-sized swings. The swings both express a childlike spirit of play and the adult desires for romance and intimacy, both qualities the artist found inherent to Elsewhere.

 

Urban Gray Ballroom by Troy Briggs, Michael Milano, Joe Jeffers, David Moré, and Jeff Kolar and Meredith Kooi of Radius

The Urban Gray Ballroom is an alternative space inside an alternative space created by Elsewhere artists-in-residence for Museum as Instrument special residency. Located in between Elsewhere’s two storefronts, the stairwell at 606 & ½ S. Elm Street is a street-side staircase theater equipped with a full audio arsenal including the Werkstatt-01 synthesizer donated by Moog in Asheville, NC. The space is available for indoor and outdoor performances, contact the museum for performance opportunities and scheduling.

 

Neighborhood Murals

Neighborhood Murals, South Elm Projects, 2015, latex paint

101 Gate City Blvd,  600 South Elm Street, 608 South Elm Street, 410 Arlington Street, 115 E Lewis St,

Artist team Milagros Collective created 6 neighborhood murals on buildings and objects in the area. Their inspiration came from decaying concrete plaster on the sides of old brick building facades. Along with their signature hash mark patterning, they used the shapes of the concrete to create a visual narrative and connectivity on each of the sites they painted. Their work extended two blocks in the neighborhood and covered the storefront on one business, the side of 2 others, a corner on a 2-story building, a wooden fence, and a round globe monument leading into Downtown.  This project was funded by ArtPlace America.

Neighborhood Murals is a series of site-specific murals along South Elm Street that connect architectures and create a sense of visual cohesion for the neighborhood. Each mural incorporates elements of its unique architectural context along with forms modeled on the cracked plaster shapes on a weathered wall at the intersection of South Elm and Lewis, near the center of the neighborhood. The colors chosen for the murals — brick, rust, cement whites, sky blues, and floral pastels — were inspired by the palette of the neighborhood. Together the colors and shapes of the murals give them a camouflage-like quality that transforms the architectural surfaces and further promotes a sense of connection between the buildings and their urban environment.

The Porch Project: Black Lunch Tables

Heather Hart started the building of her sculpture The Black Lunch Tables. An extension of a 10-year conversations project with the same name, this sculpture acts a physical manifestation of her community conversations around racial equity and civil rights history. The sculpture consists of a series of 5-wooden deck platforms in a spiraling pattern with 5 specially design picnic tables. The sculpture will stand as a permanent community accessible structure along a future Greenway loop around the city, and as a functional community meeting space for the predominantly black Ole Asheboro neighborhood. This project was funded by ArtPlace America.

The Porch Project: Black Lunch Tables is an interactive sculpture designed for intimate conversations and community events for Elsewhere’s South Elm Projects. It takes the lunchroom phenomenon of self-segregation as its starting point, evoking the pivotal Greensboro sit-ins at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960. While its form is based on principles of sacred geometry and Dunbar’s Number, a theory of the perfect threshold of a functional conversation. These tables for five might also serve as an activated memorial for the Greensboro Five: Sandi Smith, Dr. James Waller, Bill Sampson, Cesar Cauce, Dr. Michael Nathan. This Porch Project reserves a place for conversation among neighbors, and a space to consider and challenge the evolving socio-political landscape at this intersection of Greensboro’s community. The site is on the corner of Bragg Street and Arlington Street, 2 blocks from Elsewheres museum in downtown Greensboro, NC. Contact museum@goelsewhere.org for more information and to program.

Solar Energy Commons

Installed in February by Greensboro-based Soleil Energy Solutions the 4.8 kW solar panel array on the museum’s roof offsets the museum’s electricity use. As part of a larger sustainability effort, Elsewhere invited artist Elliott P. Montgomery to connect the rooftop solar array with the street. Elliott installted a Town Solar Station on the museum’s facade. The project is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) as part of a formula grant received by the City of Greensboro, North Carolina.

 

Hopscotch

Agustina Woodgate painted a giant hopscotch around the neighborhood. She spent 6 days painting 8 sidewalk segments in the neighborhood. A continuation from a hopscotch she started in Buenos Aires, her installation picked up at #1693 and went to #3082 in Greensboro. Utilizing community support, we were able to hire 13 students ages 14-22 yrs old from 4 colleges around the neighborhood to help with the painting for the project. The hopscotch served as a great way to announce the projects to the public and to frame the geographic area where the South Elm Projects are happening. This project was funded by ArtPlace America.

 

Kit-O-Cart

Artist Chat Travieso created a pop-up mobile trailer parklet. Capable of traveling and setting up in any parking space, this piece is an all-in-one work that rethinks how we look at parking spaces as public spaces. It’s mobility and smart kit design allows for flexible configurations and multiple uses for activating the city.

 

The Yard by Greensboro Permaculture Guild & Common Ground

This collaboration between 2 local Greensboro artist teams has helped to produce a grand community public space maintained and supported by 3 business owners in the neighborhood. With a specialty in ecology, the Greensboro Permaculture Guild has provided the landscape design plans and local planting expertise to create a smart, organic design for this public space. Commons Grounds, contractors and designers of various natural spaces in the city, have executed the plans including grading, building of rock walls, installation of a water cistern, concrete paths, and the installation of a drip irrigation system.

From the planning to execution this project took 4 months and is one of the most community involved processes to date. It has become a model for collaboration between business owners, a classroom for permaculture classes, a meeting space for the community, an event space, and going forward it will also serve as a garden for growing produce. It has completely changed the nature of a semi-used greenspace into a thoughtful and elegant destination for the city.