By Patrice Wilson

“If I see a problem,” said curator and arts advocate Joanne Rogers, “I feel empowered to work towards fixing it.

“Life experience has taught me that I can.”

She spent her childhood in Trinidad, “making mango dolls, listening to stories, making kites,” she said. “We made everything. It wasn’t like in America when you just go to the store and buy toys – you made your toys.”

Now, she equips Charlotte-Mecklenburg artists with the tools and resources they need to make a sustainable life as one of the founding members of the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Center, a creative hub that cultivates relationships between the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community and artists.

A 2022 ASC Emerging Creators Fellowship is helping Rogers advance equity for historically excluded visual artists through mentorship, skills training, administrative support and a professionally outfitted art gallery where the artists’ work is showcased at the highest quality.

“When you walk into a space and the space is upgraded and clean you expect the things on that wall to be of quality, representation matters,” Rogers said. “These artists deserve that.”

A self-taught creative, art and creative expression have always been intrinsically connected to Rogers’ life.

While living in New York, Rogers became active in the city’s arts scene at a time when schools were cutting art programs.

“Where they had taken the arts from, I saw anxiety, depression and crime grow,” she said. “The areas that had access to art were not deteriorating like that.”

Rogers saw how adversely this impacted those neighborhoods, so she began providing arts experiences by bringing the artists to these communities.

When Rogers moved to Charlotte in 2010, she continued the work she began to find new ways to explore her creativity, serve communities with barriers to engaging with the arts and serve artists in these communities.

In 2015, Rogers curated her first exhibit showcasing the work of her husband, Arthur Rogers.

“I happened to watch him one day and I saw how he was working in his element—and I thought to myself, ‘This is this man’s gift. Why is he not working in his gift?’ So, then I was determined to convince him that that’s what he should do and find a way for him to do it.”

This is when Rogers realized that she had found her calling.

“I stood there and had this overwhelming feeling that this was exactly where I belong,” she said. “I get that feeling every time I am in a room full of artists.”

The following year Rogers founded The Palette Table CLT, a group that provides information and increased opportunities to ALAANA (African, Latin-a/o/x/e, Asian, Arab, and/or Native American) artists through mentoring, skills training, administrative support and networking. In 2020 Rogers opened Nine Eighteen Nine Studio Gallery, a gallery that gives artists autonomy to create the art that they want to create.

“You do not tell an artist how to art because then you miss out on their gift,” she said.

Rogers has made herself a creative agent of change, equipping artists with the tools and resources they need to make a sustainable life.

“I am a lover of creativity, I love creatives,” she said. “I feel like they are necessary.”