Creative boost
September 30, 2024
ArtPop’s Wendy Hickey matches local artists with paying gigs.
by Page Leggett
If you know about ArtPop, you probably associate the organization Wendy Hickey founded 11 years ago with the art-filled billboards created through its Cities Program.
You’re right — the organization even bills itself as a “street gallery.” But ArtPop has become much more than billboards.
Four years ago, Hickey expanded the nonprofit to include a project-management division called Inspiration Projects. Since its founding in 2020, that division has helped local artists earn more than $700,000.
Hickey and her team act as “matchmakers” in connecting organizations and artists. Companies and nonprofits can engage ArtPop when they have a creative vision they want brought to life.
Lowe’s, Bank of America, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, Goodwill and others have hired ArtPop to manage projects from concept through installation and to recommend qualified artists for the jobs at hand. Murals are a common request, but artists have also created art installations, custom awards, branded accessories such as tote bags and corporate promotional products.
Abel Jackson. Photographs by Alex Cason.
From inspiration to completion
When a client engages ArtPop for an Inspiration Project, they share their vision with Dylan Bannister, a Cities Program artist whose work was featured on a billboard in 2021. Thanks to a three-year grant from LendingTree Foundation, Hickey hired him in late 2022 as director of Inspiration Projects. Bannister helps determine the right artist for the job.
“We start with the project dream, timelines, vision and budget and plan accordingly,” says Hickey, who previously worked in billboard advertising sales. “We only take on the number of projects we’re able to manage. Sometimes, we have a waiting list.”
Upcycled promotional goods designed by ArtPop artist Alex Lieberman and Laurie Smithwick’s sidewalk mural. Photographs by ArtPop Street Gallery Team and Gloria Zavaleta.
ArtPop then presents the client with five vetted artists who match their criteria. The client can contract with one of those artists directly or hire ArtPop to manage the project.
Inspiration Projects have included interior and exterior murals, curating corporate art collections, and staging pop-up markets, where artists get 100% of their sales.
ArtPop’s mission is to help artists in the greater Charlotte region build sustainable careers, and Hickey and her team believe artists should keep every dollar they make through ArtPop. That generosity is unusual, given that ArtPop is almost entirely donor- and grant-funded. In its 11-year history, ArtPop has gotten two grants from the city totaling $18,691. Otherwise, the group relies on donors. “Our donors are everything to us,” Hickey says. “We literally could not survive without them.”
A happy accident
Inspiration Projects began with an unexpected phone call in 2020.
An executive from Salesforce, the cloud-based software giant, called Hickey after finding ArtPop through a Google search. He wanted her to manage a massive mural project that was to be a gift from Salesforce to a major client, Lowe’s.
Hickey had never done that, but she said “yes” right away. She had board support; board chair Will Teichman even came up with the name Inspiration Projects.
Salesforce trusted Hickey to select the right artist for the job. Their only request was that the opportunity go to a Black artist. She knew right away who she wanted.
“I had never worked with Abel Jackson, and I really wanted to,” Hickey says. “He and I had talked for years about how we needed to find the right opportunity.”
ArtPop artist Liz Haywood was chosen as an artist-in-residence at The Village on Commonwealth through Inspiration Projects. Photograph by Hadley Henry Photography.
Artists don’t need to have been a “billboard artist” to be considered for an Inspiration Project. In fact, that’s one reason Hickey was so eager to expand ArtPop’s offerings. “The Cities Program can accept only 20 artists a year — 19 adults and one area high-school senior,” she says. “I’d been trying to figure out how we could support more artists than just the 20. This was the perfect avenue.”
When Hickey offered Jackson the job, he told her he already had a mural design he loved. He’d even secured a big, blank wall in NoDa. All he lacked was funding.
That is, until Hickey told him she had $25,000 to spend.
He brought his vision to life in fall 2020 at 416 E. 36th St., home to a Novant Health clinic, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, a Wooden Robot taproom and Summit Coffee. The 24-by-80-foot exterior mural titled “Self Love” was more than Salesforce’s gift to Lowe’s. It’s a gift to everyone who passes by the playful portraits of three young kids representing seeing love, imagining love and being love.
Show them the money
Saying “yes” to Salesforce was a savvy move. Almost immediately, Hickey realized that project management was a natural extension of what she’d been doing at ArtPop.
The division took off. Just four years in, the 69th Inspiration Project was recently completed.
The organization’s 50th completed project took shape in SouthPark last summer. The SouthPark Association of Neighborhoods commissioned ArtPop alum Laurie Smithwick to create a mural for the new half-acre Anne O. Moffat Park near The Sharon (formerly Sharon Towers). Taking inspiration from the park’s seasonal plantings — and from insights shared by residents of the retirement community — Smithwick designed the sidewalk mural to be uplifting, colorful and whimsical. A trail of chalk-like “bubbles” runs the length of the sidewalk, simultaneously creating a pedestrian path and a sense of hopscotch nostalgia for grown-ups.
For the first two-plus years of the program’s existence, Hickey devoted about 65% of her time to the burgeoning offshoot. Hiring Bannister has allowed her to focus on her work as executive director. (Hickey also hired ArtPop’s third full-time employee, Brooke Gibbons, to lead the Cities Program and serve as director of impact and sustainability.)
Von Jeter created window murals for Lowe’s Tool Rental through ArtPop. Photograph by Faded Fern Photography.
Inspiration Projects may be a newer division, but Hickey’s goal for it is the same as her goal for the Cities Program: to put money in local artists’ pockets. ArtPop artists have described Hickey as a “fairy godmother” — she just keeps developing ways to support emerging artists.
At least one ArtPop “billboard” artist was able to quit his day job to become a full-time artist. But every artist who’s been part of the program gains confidence, a community, a larger social-media following, connections to paid opportunities and an opportunity to sell more work — and for more money.
Thanks to ArtPop, Charlotte is a more colorful, vibrant city. Signs of ArtPop’s magic are seemingly everywhere. Look up to see them on billboards on Interstate 85 and I-77 and throughout the 14-county region. Look down to see art-covered sidewalks. Look all around to see smaller “digital billboards” at locations around town, including at Apex SouthPark, Promenade on Providence and Waverly.
Even Hickey marvels at ArtPop’s reach — and over how a surprise phone call led to the creation of an entirely new income stream for artists. “I did not see this coming,” she admits, “But I wish we’d been doing these projects since day one.” SP
“Self Love” by Abel Jackson, photograph by Brooke Brown Photography
