Goodyear Arts

The story

In 2015, three Charlotte artists—Amy Bagwell, Graham Carew, and Amy Herman—convinced a commercial developer to hand over a doomed Goodyear Tire shop in Uptown slated for demolition. The deal was straightforward: give local creatives paid stipends and workspace inside a derelict building before the wrecking ball arrived. That original tire shop was knocked down, and their second temporary location met the exact same fate, but the experiment survived. They kept the name and migrated in 2018 to Suite 200 inside Camp North End, a sprawling former military quartermaster depot and industrial campus.

Unlike conventional white-cube galleries run by administrative suits, Goodyear remains strictly artist-led and aggressively grassroots. Resident artists receive paid stipends, round-the-clock facility access, and woodshop and screen-printing equipment, with program alumni sticking around as part of a permanent collective. That independence yields work you rarely see in commercial venues: experimental 16mm film screenings projected on celluloid, floor-to-ceiling fiber installations, and avant-garde sound performances where audience participation is part of the blueprint.