Charly Swing
Charly Swing is applying her skills as an artist and art activist to collaborate with community in forming the world we inhabit. Her work is influenced by the work of Rick Lowe, the founder of Project Row Houses. While working at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Charly had many late night conversations with Rick on the topic of forming the place where you live; responding to the challenges of that place, and treating it as a medium to be shaped with intent and vision.
Charly’s artistry is strengthened by a diverse background that offered her the opportunity to experience the most rural to the most urban, to befriend the most economically deprived as well as the rich and famous, from handling the art of master artists to treating contemporary artists’ work with the respect that it may one day be considered a masterpiece, and knowing that art lives on when truly experienced by viewers. Charly also had the great honor of teaching children and seeing them grow through the rich power of story-telling, movement, and creativity.
Today, as the founder of ArtCity, Charly works with a grassroots coalition of artists who empower and inspire their peers by creating opportunities for collaboration, cross-pollination, and multi-media diversity. This summer ArtCity collaborated with the City of Eugene to create three very successful events that brought artists together with the community on the Third Friday of each month when multidisciplinary artists took to the streets and activated the downtown space as a free and open Studio Without Walls, a moment in time and place where relationships prosper, artists grow, and art happens.
Charly earned her MFA at the New York Academy of Art, was published in (t)here Magazine (NYC), and exhibited at Flower’s Gallery in Chelsea. Charly was Chief Preparator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, worked as a Waldorf teacher in Pasadena & Santa Fe, sold other people’s art in galleries in Santa Fe, created commissions for interior designers in Santa Fe, was the Mount Maker at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and built out the interiors of boats across Alamitos Bay from where she lived on her 36’ wooden ketch in Long Beach, California. Charly grew up on a farm in northern Illinois and currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. Life is an interesting ride.