Throughout human history, creators have turned to both written words and visual art to share messages, convey emotions and express their lived experiences and interpretations of the world around them.

This fall, a collaboration between two Arts NC State organizations will showcase the work of students, faculty and local artists in two powerful exhibitions. 

The WORDS = POWER initiative will feature exhibitions at the Crafts Center and Gregg Museum of Art & Design. This includes creative sessions and exhibitions of artwork, as the initiative explores our relationship with words and addresses a variety of issues including beauty, destruction and resilience.

“The basis for the show is that every creative work, regardless of medium, will contain words,” said Carol Fountain Nix, the Crafts Center’s director. “The goal is to provide students with an outlet – and agency – for expressing themselves.”

A Unique Collaboration

Last year, Nix’s collaboration with North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green was featured in the Panoramic Dance Project’s spring concert. Nix hand-painted and designed stage banners using Green’s poetry. From there, she continued to work on ways to bring powerful messages to campus, and Nix and Sara Segerlin, the Gregg Museum’s executive director, set to work on the WORDS = POWER collaboration. 

“This is an excellent opportunity for our arts units to collaborate and optimize our collective impact across campus,” Nix said. “By bringing together written word and visual expression, we are celebrating the talent of our students, faculty and local artists, as well as creating space for dialogue, reflection and connection through the arts.”

The collaboration will feature two shows on display at the two locations this fall. The Crafts Center’s portion of WORDS = POWER will feature a collection of artwork from the Crafts Center community, including works from students, staff and instructors, and will include interactive opportunities for gallery attendees to participate. 

The Gregg Museum exhibition will feature works from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program graduate students guided by associate professor Meg Day whom last year served as Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum, the African American Cultural Center and regional North Carolina writers and artists, including Green, Nix, Anne Storie Wilson and Katy Walls.

“I found Carol’s view on collaboration with the campus and encouraging dialogue and expression compelling, because that is what the arts at NC State are all about,” Segerlin said. “How do you express emotions and perspectives within your medium as a form of craft making?”

WORDS = POWER Exhibition Details

The Crafts Center’s exhibition will run from Sept. 17 through Nov. 14, with an opening reception set for Sept. 17 at 5:30 p.m.

The Gregg Museum’s exhibition will run from Oct. 30, 2025 to Feb. 28, 2026, with an opening reception on Oct. 30, followed by Rooted: Celebrating Nature & Stories on Nov. 8, a poetry session led by Griot & Grey Owl on Nov. 20, and a talk by Jaki Shelton Green on Feb. 19.  

Creative Sessions for Students

Throughout the 2024-25 school year and following summer, groups of students across campus have engaged in creative sessions that embody the spirit of WORDS = POWER. 

Segerlin says the Gregg Museum regularly hosts Day’s creative writing classes as a way for the students to practice ekphrasis or reverse ekphrasis writing, a means of using the visual medium as a way to express words and vice versa.

Segerlin has also enjoyed visiting the African American Cultural Center’s gallery, and is impressed by the range of artist exhibitions curated by Associate Director Quashon Bunch,  especially the I AM: Ascension portraits and poems, which will be featured in this exhibition.

“If you just look around our campus, there are so many different works and expressions that students and faculty are doing of their work, their research, their presentations,” Segerlin said. “So, to me, hosting the exhibition and co-curating it with Carol Fountain Nix and the Crafts Center is a way to celebrate, to champion, to encourage a convening of artists, visitors, students and faculty to explore the concept of WORDS = POWER. From that, we can frame visually how we think about the sense of things that we experience in our life, whether they may be beautiful, whether there may be destructive moments. We also have to work through these ideas of adversity and resilience through lived experience. So those are the core themes that visitors will see through these expressions of artwork that have all been started through words and writing.” 

“These students are hungry for ways to express themselves.”

Within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, undergraduate and graduate students in environmental communication participated in a series of  WORDS = POWER sessions, led by local artist, Melinda Abrams. 

In these sessions, the students had numerous art materials available to them, and were given the freedom to communicate their messages through any methods they chose. 

“These students are hungry for ways to express themselves,” Abrams explained. “I work from the guiding principle that my role is to make the room a safe place to learn, to reflect, to consider, to create while having meaningful conversation,” Abrams said.

“In my mind, communication was only ever successful through words. I had never imagined that it could be so impactful through images, through artwork, through poetry.”

Aidan Schweizer, a fourth-year student studying environmental communication, participated in a WORDS = POWER session and used art to tell the story of animals often being left behind in the aftermath of a natural disaster. 

“It was incredibly impactful,” Schweizer said. “It was something that I had never even thought about doing before. In my mind, communication was only ever successful through words. I had never imagined that it could be so impactful through images, through artwork, through poetry.”

Cindy Rosenfeld, an assistant teaching professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the environmental communication courses, enjoyed seeing her students “find their voice” through art making. 

She explained that she teaches her students the limits of the information deficit model. A belief is often held that people aren’t getting enough information, which is not the case. We are always getting information all the time. Sometimes it’s conflicting information, but we are overwhelmed with information.

“What is often the case is that we don’t have the emotional markers for that information to capture our attention and move us,” Rosenfeld said. “So that’s where art can really complement the words, and it’s an essential component. Art can take information and present it in ways that move you to act but also to feel, and that’s something that often the information can’t do on its own.” 

The Power of Words and Art

Before arriving at NC State to lead the Gregg Museum last summer, Segerlin had already spent a large portion of her career in art-based education. In her first roles, she taught art to middle and high school students in schools in New York City and Los Angeles. 

“I see art as a medium to be able to connect and share your lived experience so that we can better understand each other.”

Throughout that time, she learned the importance of students locating within themselves the ability to celebrate their lived and shared experiences, and discovering the proper medium that best fits how to convey their emotions, values and what they mean through storytelling. 

“I see art as a medium to be able to connect and share your lived experience so that we can better understand each other and build more empathetic understanding,” Segerlin said. “There’s something about art that evokes emotion. For example, I may have an emotion, and you may have a different emotion when you see something. But you want to hold space for this, sit with it and listen to how you’re experiencing this art and what it’s telling you.”

For Nix, the WORDS = POWER collaboration is an opportunity to tell a story and evoke emotions that resonate with both her and a North Carolina audience. Nix is producing a large-scale mixed media installation entitled “Mighty River,” which addresses the personal lives affected by Hurricane Helene last fall. 

“It is an homage to my hometown of Canton, North Carolina, which was devastated by the hurricane,” Nix explained. As a professional calligrapher, her work is based on words and content, which is how she arrived at the WORDS = POWER initiative. “Even if you put one word on a canvas, that word is going to have power. You have to be brave to work with words due to their inherent associations. It’s an act of conviction to put yourself out there and stand behind the content – while still creating something visually compelling. It’s like the artist Henri Matisse said: ‘creativity takes courage.’”