Ballet Lubbock dancers will be at the CASP 5&J Gallery posing for sketches at First Friday Art Trail.
Most people who have been to the First Friday Art Trail have seen the Charles Adams Studio Project or Gallery and enjoyed the art with no idea what CASP does for local artists.
“Our main goal can be boiled down to three words: working artist studios, studios artists working. Any order you want to put those in it doesn’t really matter,” Chad Plunket, director of the Charles Adams Studio Project, said.
Art by James Watkins located in the Charles Adams Gallery.
The Charles Adams Studio Project was founded by Charles Adams and received its 501(c)3 non-profit status in 2011. Adams said he started the studio project to hold on to Lubbock artists a little longer and give them a place to create.
“Our premise is that when you graduate from school you lose your facilities, you lose your community, you lose your critique and your tools,” Adams said. “And so, CASP is here to provide working space and working opportunities. Plain and simple.”
After graduating from Texas Tech, Adams left Lubbock and lived in New York for a while. He had a gallery there, but came back because he missed the Lubbock atmosphere.
“I missed the flat, and the dry, and the brown,” Adams said.
Adams lives in an apartment connected to The Charles Adams Gallery. His gallery is for-profit and shows Lubbock artists’ work.
The rest of CASP is a non-profit working towards making art accessible to the public and to artists. Plunket described an artist as anyone, from a drawing 2-year-old to a 70-year-old painting for the first time.
“I’m able to carry more contemporary work, which is kind of more gratifying to me,” Adams said.
The project houses various tools for artists, from amateurs to professionals.
“When you’re an artist, you need tools to do what you want to do, and it’s incredibly expensive to own everything that you might want to have,” Plunket said. “We don’t have everything that we would want to have, but we’re able to provide more maybe what a sculptor could put together in their garage.”
Artwork by Hannah Dean.
Artists can come to CASP and rent equipment to further their skills and careers. The facility also has various studios that artists can rent to work in, three live/work studios, and one artist-in-residence studio. The project also hosts different workshops open to the public and classes for artists.
Elyse-Krista Mische lives in one of the live/work studios. Mische, a mixed media illustrator, has been in Lubbock for a month now and will be staying until December.
Mische usually starts with a drawing then makes a 3-D model from that sketch. In her live/work studio during the October First Friday Art Trail, Mische will have an interactive cloth fort she painted, places for people to pose with her sculptures and some things to purchase.
“A lot of my work is kind of inspired by storytelling, and by using tea bags and coffee filters, they remind me of getting together with friends and reminiscing,” the artist said.
CASP has galleries, but Plunket stressed they are not a museum.
“We don’t collect art, we are about making art,” the director said.
Plunket said the art industry is not an instant gratification industry, but he loves walking through the foundry and the work studios and saying, “I was a part of this, this didn’t exist before we had this idea.”
Drawing by John Chinn.
About Blaine Hill
