When Warren Craghead fills his car at the gas station, he might pause to pull out a pad of Post-its, sketch a quick figure and leave the small square of art affixed to the pump.
For the Charlottesville-based visual artist, inspiration and guerrilla exhibitions aren’t the only purpose of such an act.
“For me, art is a way of interfacing with the world and trying to understand it,” Craghead says. “For example, I’m live-drawing World War I. Every day I draw what happened in the war. I’ll do research and watch shows and draw what I see in my sketchbook. I started last year in June, on the day Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.”
In addition to sketches of everyday life, like colorful exchanges between his young daughters, he often turns his attention to historical events that are difficult to look at and process, like the chemical gas attack that killed tons of people in Syria two years ago.
“Drawing makes you slow down and actually look at something,” he says. “I’ve found that people will see my work and say, ‘I had no idea that this happened.’ It can be a way of understanding the world.”
After nearly 20 years of peppering the town and local and national galleries with his work, Craghead is expanding the means by which he shares the lens of art with others. On September 14, he became the new executive director of Second Street Gallery.
After showing, curating and working on the board at SSG, Craghead threw his hat into the ring after former executive director Steven Taylor retired last year. As a contemporary artist, Craghead says the gallery has meant different things to him at different times in his life.
“When I first got here in 2003, it meant that, ‘Wow, this is a place I can be.’ I was delighted by the level of work at Second Street. I did not expect that in a city like Charlottesville.” In addition to connecting with fellow artists, he also found a resource for engaging with community.
“It’s free and open to the public five days a week. We bring kids in here, we bring adults in here, and we talk about the work. It’s not just, ‘Look at our awesome stuff,’ it’s ‘We’ll talk to you about why this is important and maybe has some relevance to your life.’”
Now that he’s at the helm, Craghead says he’s seen even more closely how the gallery embeds itself into local culture. “I’m bolstered not only by a great team, the staff and the board, but by supporters who are legion. People are e-mailing me out of the blue who I had no idea were even connected to the gallery, and they are saying their kid was an intern here or their child was in an outreach program at the Boys & Girls Club.”
This mash-up of cutting-edge contemporary art and typical culture sits at the core of Craghead’s own working philosophy, which, like Second Street, has embraced a balance of both worlds. Founded by artists 42 years ago, the gallery is Central Virginia’s oldest contemporary art space. Craghead, for his part, has worked as a designer and creative director for businesses since he graduated from art school.
“People think having an artist in charge can be risky, but creativity and being an artist does not necessarily mean flakiness and wandering around,” he says. “If you think of T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams, they had responsible day jobs. A lot of full-time artists are running small businesses.”
As executive director, Craghead has lots of opportunity to put those skills to the test. While Second Street’s curator Tosha Grantham designs the vision for each show, Craghead is responsible for bringing it to life through budgeting, fundraising and pounding nails into walls.
But leading the charge means being flexible, too. “I look at places I admire greatly, like Live Arts and The Bridge PAI,” says Craghead. “I see them being open to what’s to come while remaining true to their core mission. I hope to emulate that.”
He says he wants to continue his predecessors’ legacy of community engagement through partnerships, outreach programs and “just being here and being open and having something cool for people to look at.”
That mission of community service continues with the first exhibit of the gallery’s new season, which plays on a theme of sustainability. “Tosha put together a great season based on what that can be,” says Craghead. “Environmental sustainability, of course, but also cultural sustainability, how we keep local cultures alive in the face of globalism and homogenization.”
That conversation begins with “Labels,” the first show in the season, which presents a large-scale installation by South African artist Siemon Allen of more than 7,000 album labels from 1901 to the present.
Debuted in the Slave Lodge in Cape Town and later presented at the Venice Biennial in 2011 (“It’s a big deal,” Craghead says), “Labels” presents chronologically ordered curtains that tell the story of apartheid through albums from all over the world, many of which could not be published in their artists’ home country due to their anti-apartheid messages. Music became the subversive way to spread the word about what was happening.
“To have a work like that here is special,” Craghead says. “I know I sound like a salesman, but I really believe in the gallery and the vision of our curator and what we can share. Don’t come in and look at the work and bow to it. Come here and let’s talk about what you see.”
“Labels” is on display through October 17. Join Craghead, Grantham, Allen and album collector and music aficionado David Noyes for a discussion of the exhibit on the show’s final evening.