Coming Home to Your Creative Practice: Disability Mindset & Community Interdependence featuring Charlie J. Meyers

On this episode of the Bold Creatives Collective Podcast, TJ speaks with Charlie J. Meyers about the importance of embracing radical acceptance of perceived limitations and putting your health first. Charlie also highlights the importance of accomplishing your dreams together through community interdependence. We discuss how to know when you've found the right partnerships and collaborators. This includes how to ask for your needs to be met within a gallery show, project, or other art-related activity. We will explore how disability arts praxis can help you make positive changes in your studio practice and career (regardless of your current health status). ​​​Charlie J. Meyers (he/him) is an American artist and curator working in figurative abstraction and portraiture. His work explores intimacy, memory, and the contemporary queer experience. 

In 2021, Charlie was featured in several magazines, including Alien Literary Magazine, Clover and Bee, and The Purposeful Mayonnaise, appeared on the Bold Creatives Collective podcast, wrote a curator’s pick for PxP Contemporary, and an art review for Vantage Art Projects. 

In 2020, he began an online curatorial project, the Moon Cheese Curator, through which he facilitates connection and discussion with artists, curators, collectors and others, examining the interface between the body and art production. Via this project, Vantage Art Projects invited him to curate his first virtual exhibition.The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, United States Artists, and Creative Capital awarded Charlie an Artist Relief Grant in 2020 in response to the pandemic. In 2022, he was awarded an Illuminate the Arts Grant by the City of Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE). 
His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions throughout North America and the UK.

 From 2019 to 2021 Charlie managed the production and assembly of haute couture clutch handbags by designer Jeffrey Levinson, which are carried by high-end boutiques such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Net-A-Porter.

 Noted exhibitions in 2019 include Penn State University, Sanger Gallery, and Amos Eno Gallery of NYC. In 2020, he participated in shows in Key West, FL, and London UK.

 Charlie has been a recipient of several educational grants and awards including the Vermont Studio Residency Grant, Helene Couture Award for Excellence in Painting, and the Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts Fellowship. In 2017, he was a visiting artist lecturer at the Sherwin B. Nuland Institute in Bioethics at Yale University. 

From 2016 to 2017, his work was on tour in public and private galleries throughout the province of Québec with the Montreal Arts Council. Other highlighted exhibitions in Montreal include Parisian Laundry, Donald Browne Gallery, Lilian Rodriguez Gallery, Joyce Yahouda Gallery, and Gallery B312.

 Charlie paints in his studio in North Philadelphia.Charlie's IGMoon Cheese CuratorTJ's CoachingIGTJ's Art IGhttps://www.tjwalshcoaching.com/Host & Producer: TJ WalshEngineer: Daisy James