Friday Arts Project 2026—20 Years

“We are writing to inform you that the City has officially issued a termination notice for our lease agreement. Per the terms of our agreement with the landlord, our tenancy will conclude at the end of next month.

All artists must fully vacate their studio spaces by September 30, 2026.”

That last part was in an email sent by our friend Melanie director of our local Arts Council. I am sure she wrote it with levels of trepidation, discomfort and sadness. Sarah and I were on the road at the time in the midst of a trip for familial reasons. What Melanie would not have known at the time is that just hours later–as the clock ticked into September–it would mark the start of Friday Arts Project 20th year.

What a moment of contrasts–having to leave a wonderful studio situation in a cherished building and the start of celebrating twenty years of existence. You might think this would be utterly discouraging? Honestly, there is sadness, but not without hope–there is a smaller purple growing as Friday Arts Project starts its 20th year.

Perhaps a start at the beginning before I explain this side of history.

A young artist named Stephen was flying home from an almost euphoric experience in New York City. He had just finished a summer program there centered on the arts and his Christian heritage. In the midst of processing the whole affair, a fellow college student said to him, “You need to start something at Winthrop”.

As Stephen settled back into his Fall semester, he found several other art students rally around him (including our own staffer Brandi [Voigt] Fox). At the inception Friday mornings and art were central. Hence the name–Friday Arts. And since this was an ongoing “adventure” of sorts, they added the word “Project”. Thus was born Friday Arts Project.

Why we pursue Art and Beauty

In the mid twentieth century a Catholic theologian by the name of Balthasar wrote about Beauty. Our community has used his thoughts to guide us in this pursuit of Beauty. He wrote:

“Beauty…dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another…Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness…We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.” 

Love

Balthasar presciently connected the love of Beauty with the other two classic transcendentals-Truth and Goodness. When Beauty was ignored or even driven away the relationship with Truth and Goodness was threatened, perhaps even broken.

When Stephen and his fellow artists started Friday Arts Project in the early Fall of 2006 one of the motivations was a love for the arts, a love for their talents as artists, and a desire to see that love grow. By cultivating this love they believed they became better human beings, better neighbors. As their love for the arts grew, their love for the art community in Rock Hill grew, and their love for their fellow artists in the community grew. This was a significant way they served their community.

Their pursuit of art was the expression of a pursuit of Beauty-and consequently Truth and Goodness. If they did not pursue their art then they risked no longer being able to love.

One of Friday Arts Project’s values is generosity, and it is in this value that our love of the arts is expressed.

Prayer

But Balthasar didn’t only say love could be lost if Beauty–our art–was not pursued. He also said prayer would be lost as well. When Stephen and his fellow Winthrop students started Friday Arts Project it was not only to cultivate their own ability to love art and their neighbor artists, it was also to cultivate pursuit of that mysterious part of life beyond what we can physically see.

In his 2007 book A Secular Age, philosopher Charles Taylor described our modern age with the phrase “immanent frame” meaning that our culture was governed–or framed–by instrumental and scientific thinking. This left little to no room for what he called an “enchanted” worldview–ideas and beliefs in a world beyond the “frame”. Alongside Taylor’s reasoning Balthasar’s observation of a loss of prayer–if Beauty was driven away–becomes clearer. If you do not believe there is anything beyond the frame, then there is nothing there to connect with, prayer being the most basic act of interaction.

The students of Friday Arts Project wanted not only to cultivate love through their art, but also to engage with the imagination found outside Taylor’s “immanent frame”. CS Lewis once wrote “Imagination is the organ of meaning”. The religious faith of these students invited them into a place of seeing and learning from the unseen truths of this world that existed outside the frame. It is in this space where the power art–and anything truly beautiful–can draw a response of awe. The phrase from FriArts vision statement, “…Beauty exists where Truth and Goodness meet Mystery…” is a summary of this idea.

Many of the early participants of FriArts believe in traditional Christian beliefs.* They wanted to have a place where there was no tension between their art and their religious pursuits, and wished to invite others to this place as well.

Friday Arts Project’s second value is wonder, and it is in this value that our respect for prayer is expressed.

Today and Tomorrow

In the years after the students who started Friday Arts Project graduated, they continued to explore these spaces of art, imagination, Beauty, meaning, religion, and wonder. All while continuing to live in and serve the Rock Hill community.

Our desire is to continue to do the same perhaps in a different way. We still value conversations around issues of art, culture, religion, and faith. We also will continue to take seriously what we create–our craft will always be important to us.

In order to keep our value and mission in front of us we will be exploring the possibility of finding space somewhere in the downtown Rock Hill area. We are not sure how it will happen or if it will happen but we are going forward trusting in guidance from beyond the “immanent frame”. We are also beginning to build a residency program that cultivates artists who find themselves in a similar gap as we have in Friday Arts Project. We are calling it Porchcrop.

In the midst of the work we are doing with FriArts our staff are venturing into new places to assist them in our desire to see Beauty and art grow in our community. Sarah Kennedy Irwin (my wife), and Brandi Fox are taking further steps in making their art and finding an audience as they find their creative voices. Tara Sartain–our newest staffer–will continue to help us cultivate our pursuit for space as she pursues her own art. Chris Fox, along with Brandi, will be continue to help staff the student group at Winthrop, but he also pursue a Masters in Theology at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Charlotte. And I (Kirk Irwin) will continue to try to lead this small little group of creatives as I also pursue a Doctorate of Ministry at Gordon Conwell Seminary.

At Days Superior Close

Emily Dickinson’s poem is a fitting maxim to christen our anniversary year because it carries so wonderfully both ends and hope in the face of change. She engages facing a change with the opening phrases, but then speaks of closings right alongside the glow of sunsets and mountains. I find hope in her defiance and yet, she knows a close is coming, but she views it from “an Everlasting Hill” at “Days superior close”. Quite a contrast, placing something everlasting right alongside the end of a day?

We are experiencing “closings” quite literally. A “close” as we leave the studio we have been in for 8 years. A “close” in the sense of twenty years of doing work in the art community and Rock Hill. But we are also hopeful for what comes in the next 20 for everyone involved in Friday Arts Project, and our community of Rock Hill whom we love.

Our hope comes from a place of commitment to not change our vision and mission, and our desire to serve our art community and beyond. We know that as we pursue our mission within it there is meaning that is beyond Taylor’s “frame”, and a cultivation of the love and prayer that Balthasar so presciently described.

Thanks to all who participated or volunteered for our events, loved us or even prayed for us in the last 20 years. That is humbling, and we do not take that for granted. May the next 20 years bring us more smaller purples and superior closes.

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A Summary History:

• Fall 2026 – Friday Arts Project started by a small group of like-minded students at Winthrop University. Many of the founding students graduate in 2008.
• In 2010 moved into Space 157, the floor above Amelie’s Rock Hill in downtown Rock Hill. On that floor were artists’ studios. Events and concerts were hosted including our first annual forum called “Beneath the Surface” (2012) taking a look at the subject of Beauty and our culture.
• 2013 – forum on Goodness called “A Place at the Table: Creativity in Food and Togetherness”.
• 2013 Kirk and Sarah Irwin move to Rock Hill to staff Friday Arts Project. Vision, Mission, and Values are honed and official non-profit status pursued.
• 2014 – forum on Truth called “Dazzle Gradually: The Allure of Poetic Truth-Bearing”. Artist in residency with Professor/Artist Ryann Cooley Houghton University) called “Art as Experience” with his installation piece “Feel Yourself Seeing”.
• 2015 – the poet’s group “The Sourwood Writers” is started. Monthly poetry readings are held.
• 2016 – Friday Arts Project restarts on Winthrop University campus at Convocation, staffed by Chris and Brandi Fox. 
• 2017 – Exhibition “Foot Machine” held in the Gettys Art Center gallery hallway as part of the International BMX Tournament held in town.
• 2018 – “Chairs and the People in Them” exhibition held in the Gettys Art Center.
• 2019 – Two interns, Dennissa Young and Caitlin Harvey arrive. Friday Arts Project moves into studio #205 in the Gettys Art Center and in partnership with the Arts Council of York County continues managing the Courtroom Gallery.
• 2024 – Forum “Birdsong Like a Canopy: Beauty, Art, and Ecology” held in April.
• 2017-2025 – 36 exhibitions are presented in the Courtroom Gallery.
• 2012-2026 Drawing Nites are held twice a month. Friday AM DIscussions held weekly.

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Kirk Irwin
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

* I must note here and address the possible risk of this kind of thinking in the contemporary art world. Professor James Elkins of the Art Institute of Chicago opened the door of the Art World’s posture toward religion with his inquiring book On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (2004). Elkins was merely asking a question of the Art World, namely why is good art by very religiously devoted people ignored even spurned? Not a “raging” religious person, Elkins has described himself as a “lapsed Jewish boy”, adding to the integrity of his honest query. In the last 20+ years since Elkins’ book others have contributed to this conversation: for example, Elkins’ follow-up book Re-Enchantment (2012), Thomas Crow’s – No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art (2017), Daniel Siedell’s – Curating Faith: Art, Religion and the Curatorial (2023), R Bernier & R Hostetter Smith’s – Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord (2023), and Jonathan Anderson’s – The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art (2023). This thinking is not across the entire Art World, but it is enough places of influence inside that world to cause artists who take their art and their religion seriously to tread carefully in the Art World. We in Friday Arts Project have intentionally wished to place ourselves in that spot between the Art World and the religiously and artistically serious. The way I have said it to friends is “We love art, and we love God.”