It was 1973, my first summer in Charleston.
Slipping into a steamy town in our overloaded Country Squire, we had pulled up stakes in Chapel Hill for my father’s new job at MUSC. Our rented historic home on Tradd Street. It had an oral history that claimed a Civil War cannonball pierced its roof and a storage-room find of a schoolboy wartime scrapbook populated with Confederacy-friendly political cartoons.
There I met my first friend, Shelly, who lived across the street on the property of First (Scots) Presbyterian Church. In a still-starchy, insular Charleston, her folks’ full-on embrace of the 1970s brought to South of Broad a rare one-two punch of a waterbed and VW Microbus.
One day while riding in the backseat of said bus, I moaned about missing Chapel Hill. Her father reached for a laminated button affixed to the wind shield, handing it back to me.
“Bloom where you’re planted” it read, the words ballooning out in a flower-power font.
That adage pops into my head a lot lately. And it’s an ideal guiding mantra for this new arts column in this newspaper.
With Charleston’s surge of new residents, shifts in cultural leadership and mounting funding threats, there has never been a more important moment to reach inward and stay rooted — to mine what truly defines and distinguishes our arts scene.
In a world lousy with vagaries, many are in a state of free-floating anxiety about life’s necessities such as health, wealth and even its deeper meaning. For decades, I’ve preached and gleaned about how amplifying the arts is one of the most effective well-being checks for a community.
We can and we should rely on our local artists to make sense of the frenetic forces at play today. From years of practice, the creative class is savvy in navigating complex dynamics and equally scrappy in having remained inspired, at times with little more than spit and paper.
With the current offensive directed at suppressing authentic stories, many of which have just come to the surface, it also falls to our storytellers to step in where silence is increasingly, fiercely exacted.
So I’ve accepted Charleston City Paper’s invitation to fire up a frequent column. The aim is to fully mine the nexus of arts and community in this city. I believe this publication is uniquely primed and positioned to do so.
It is one that hits home. As the world reels, I encounter accelerated urgings from thought leaders to look out for one another. That’s a backyard and front-porch proposition. It is time for our artists and practitioners to home in on, well, home.
Let me start with some examples of those that, from where I sit, are getting it right.
- Extra credit: Charleston Gaillard Center continues to dovetail its programming with extensive educational outreach, something that may prove invaluable in the months and years to come. In its 2025-26 season, look for an adapted take on their self-produced Finding Freedom: The Journey of Robert Smalls.
- Cross pollination: The Gaillard is also joining forces with Charleston Symphony to cross-pollinate visiting and local artists. Among the highlights is the world premiere of the ballet Dark Water by New York City-based Complexions Contemporary Ballet that features music by Charleston composer Edward Hart, co-commissioned by the Charleston Symphony.
- Lab results: This spring, Pure Theatre mounted Pleasure Never Lies, a full-scale musical created by Marshall Hagins and Brad Moranz ingeniously exploring themes of female agency. Cooked up in Pure Lab, the new work is essential to ensuring our local work resonates right here and right now.
- Radio Free Charleston: There are other homegrown initiatives going the distance, a sign of their ongoing role in exploring topics and visionaries. Ohm Radio, for instance, celebrates its10th anniversary, having logged a decade on 96.3 FM as a non-commercial, nonprofit outlet regularly sharing the voices and vision of standout community members.
It won’t be long before we are lavished with an arts festival in Spoleto Festival USA, all manner of musical happenings, from chamber music concerts to an encouraging uptick of independent bookstores and literary festivals. I’ll continue to shine light on those who are lending their time and talent to pose questions and to foster exchange.
At the same time, I’ll question choices that run counter to the vitality of our arts scene. Case in point: I have recently observed an arts sector trend to train sights on other places, diverting energy and dollars in ways that may not stack up on a cost-analysis. Charleston should not be leveraged as a stepping stone for greener pastures or glitzier concert halls.
When it comes to Charleston arts, I’m all for risk-taking and failing up. But fair warning: I have a good nose for cynical acts, and at the first whiff of one, I will sing like a canary.
You can reach veteran arts writer Maura Hogan at: arts@charlestoncitypaper.com.
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