[ ABOVE: Jacqueline Stuarts’ project in the ARTinnovation collaboration between the NEXT Innovation Center and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts ]
Innovation and art has collided at NEXT Innovation Center.
Senior visual arts students at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities turned NEXT’s writable walls into large-scale works of art as a part of a senior art project that could become an annual event.
Art and innovation are interconnected, said Christy Ashkettle, operations manager at the NEXT Innovation Center, a more than 60,000-square-foot space that houses some of Greenville’s innovators and fast-growing companies.
“Getting youth interested in entrepreneurship is where it starts,” Ashkettle said. “Creativity in the workplace is important. You have to be creative to come up with new ideas.”
The drawings, which range from showing innovation through historic artifacts to something more oblique, are interspersed throughout the building.
They are available for viewing by NEXT entrepreneurs, employees and others through December and early January. On Jan. 12, Bob Hughes of Hughes Development, owner and developer of the NEXT Innovation Center, will speak at a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Jacqueline Stuart’s drawing focused on innovation through fashion and technology.
“I believe fashion and technology goes hand-in-hand,” she said.
She researched fashion back to 600 BC and made sketches of hairstyles and beauty styles dating to today. She mismatched styles of different eras. She paired the photograph with a satellite television dish and drew Mona Lisa with a Mike Tyson tattoo.
Ava Lott’s drawing featured chickens with a human leg coming out of the top of the pile. She said it was designed to illustrate how society has industrialized animals for food, especially chickens.
Stuart said the project was different than usual school projects because of its scale and location.
“It’s good to get experience working around people who are more business-minded,” Stuart said. “Creativity in business is really important.”
Paul Yanko, an instructor at the Governor’s School who is working with the project, said the project required students to work on site and is the largest area most have ever worked on. Each student was responsible for creating work on at least a 4-by-10-foot panel.
“This is very close to what the experience could be like for these students as artists professionally,” he said. “They are creating art for the space and they know this work won’t last and will eventually be erased.”
Ashkettle said the project brought excitement into the NEXT building.
“Collaboration and innovation is important in the workplace, but so is fun,” she said. “Play is important. That’s where ideas come from.”
