The SmART Gallery is hosting an “Artist Talk” free to the public. The event will feature one of SmART Kinston’s artists, Maner Nobles. She will be talking about her art career, her artistic medium, and the experiences she has had through the practice of her craft.

Maner is a North Carolina native and retired state employee whose twin passions are helping people and creating art. She graduated from Woodington Consolidated School and Lenoir Community College.  She has national certification in several behavioral disciplines and management strategies.

I best remember Maner from our time together at Dobbs School. She had a heart filled with concern for the troubled youth at the facility. She worked on the cottage life side, and I worked in the school of the 24-hour facility.

I often told people I worked at the most exclusive school in the state – a student could be admitted only with a judge’s “recommendation.”

The most important mission Maner and other staff members shared was helping young people understand that if they would change their attitudes and expectations, they could change their lives. Maner achieved the needed balance between firmness and compassion. We both understood that to help young people change, they needed consequences for wrong behaviors – and approval and praise for correct behaviors.

Maner says she cannot remember a time when she could not create art.  She won an art contest as a teenager, and winning that contest provided her with training, materials, and encouragement to produce good art. I am sure much of her art reflects our struggles, heartaches, and successes with the young people in our charge.

She has had an interesting life and has much to share. The event will begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 28, at the SmART Gallery located at 210 N. Queen Street in Kinston. For more information, contact Raney Rogers at 828-263-7111.

A word about the SmART Kinston City Project Foundation. This foundation, which operates the SmART Gallery, is committed to bringing talented, working artists into the Mitchelltown Arts and Cultural District to live, create, and share their work with the community.

The program was started in 2015 and currently hosts seventeen artists from around the country. These artists helped to create murals throughout the area. They run workshops in middle and elementary schools where art instruction is not readily available. They also exhibit their works at area venues, in addition to the SmART Gallery, which opened in November 2019.

SmART Kinston is a 501(c)3 non-profit and welcomes donations from the private as well as the corporate sector. The organization hosts regular events to bring art to the fore for those who want to know more about being an artist. The SmART Kinston City Project Foundation is committed to building Kinston and Lenoir County’s creative economy. 

For more information about SmART Kinston and the SmART Gallery, visit  www.smartkinston.com and click on the link to SmART Gallery.

Organizers envision Kinston as a hub for the arts in eastern North Carolina, from visual to performance art, from literary to culinary art, from contemporary to folk art – and everything in between.

Just a few of the accomplishments of SmART Kinston include rehabilitating more than 50 homes in the Arts & Cultural District; pioneering the installation of Thomas Sayre's Flue in the Arts & Cultural District sculpture park; assisting with the creation of new murals and public art in downtown and Arts & Cultural District; and a residency program established with Penland School of Crafts.

Attending the July 28 “Artist Talk” is a good place to start discovering just what Maner Nobles and this foundation have to offer to our community.

Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.