New art alert! As you ride, walk, scoot, bike, and jog through the district, you will notice the utility boxes have been transformed to showcase the work of local artists, creating a more attractive and unique downtown area. Many thanks to Design Element Durham, UNC Arts Everywhere, and the Town of Chapel Hill for helping bring this project to life!
Meet the Artists
Cornelio Campus is a self-taught artist based in Durham. He was born in Cheran, Michoacan, Mexico and emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager – a journey and process that continues to influence many of his paintings. Vibrant colors, iconic American symbols and intricate geometric patterns are recurring motifs found in his work. As an artist with no formal training, his art exemplifies techniques that he learned through observation and which often defy traditional color schemes. Cornelio’s paintings are inspired by his nostalgia for his home town in Mexico and his family, and the customs that I grew up with. He also sees his paintings as a tool for sharing his indigenous background, offering a look into own experiences in the United States. He uses his artwork as a tool for learning and for sparking discussions that will inspire others to learn more about the themes of his work on their own. Cornelio’s focus is three main themes: political issues, Mexican folklore (Purepechas en Michoacan) and Pre-Columbian symbols of Mexican ethnic groups. His art has been displayed in galleries and exhibitions throughout North Carolina, including Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NCSU. Other exhibitions of been shown in The Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington D.C., The Museum of the American Indian Art, and internationally in Venice, Italy, and Bogota, Colombia.
Candy Carver is a North Carolina native who spent her formative years in Elkhart, IN, where she developed her abstract creativity. Working primarily with acrylic and various surfaces from canvas to vinyl, she creates vibrant, textured pieces that touch the soul and excite viewers. Her work can be found throughout the Southeastern US and continues to gain recognition. Carver contributes much of her inspiration to her love for excitement, color, and beauty found in the human form.
Iris Gottlieb is an author and illustrator who works to make serious, confusing or unapproachable information more engaging and accessible for all audiences. Iris has written five books on topics ranging from death to gender to science as well as helped museums, organizations and authors bring (sometimes serious) content to life with drawing.
Fun fact: Iris has collected over 5,000 shark teeth at Topsail Beach, NC!
Phuong Duyen Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American visual artist working primarily with fibers in her adopted hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. Born in Vietnam, she moved to the US with her family as a teenager; Nguyen’s experiences and perspective as an immigrant inform and enrich her work. She sews and embroiders threadbare, abstracted structures and forms. To Nguyen, abstraction is a tool to process and articulate – a formal construct upon which she restructure her stories. It is an act of obscuring the painful details, distilling the most beautiful aspects, and transforming them into tangible objects.
She received her BA from the University of Virginia in 2015 and her MFA from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2022.
Loren Pease is an artist, muralist, maker, beekeeper, former high school art teacher, and mom of three boys. She has painted in many public and private facilities around the country; some of her favorite venues were hospitals, such as Duke Childrens Hospitals. Having colorful murals in sterile environments while children sit for hours getting chemotherapy is incredibly transformative! It makes these places so much more welcoming and less intimidating. And that’s what Loren truly believes: art and music are powerfully therapeutic.
As her career has progressed, she has thought deeply about finding my personal motivation in her career. Ultimately, Loren loves creating things but find the most satisfaction in evoking emotion and hopefully bringing others joy. Beginning in 2000 with her career teaching high school art, she always enjoyed spreading creativity throughout her community – or “pollinating kindness with art.” She taught her students all different media, including ceramics, jewelry making, drawing, and murals.
The colors, shapes, and magic of living things all inspire Loren to pour every ounce of her spirit into her work. Her goal is always to delight her customers by creating something that invites the viewer to pause, think, reflect, and connect with the yumminess of nature and life, like the wings in Southern Village or the new butterfly mural at Gray Squirrel Coffee Co. in Carrboro. Loren hopes that bits of kindness are pollinated with each piece of art she shares with the world!
Made possible by:
