FRANK
Community Outreach Initiatives
Our mission, as well as being a fine arts gallery, is to enrich our local community through exhibits, events, and arts education. Since our inception, FRANK Gallery has upheld our mission and nonprofit status through ongoing outreach programming and regular events.
Art in Service
Did you know that FRANK is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization? Each year, our community outreach programs continue to grow and expand thanks to our generous donors, as well as the many artists and volunteers involved in turning big ideas into a grand reality for our partner organizations.
Our ongoing FRANK Youth Art Group has been one of our biggest successes and longest running in our outreach programming efforts. Our most recent programming initiative involves a partnership with local organization Boomerang, which has been a wonderful relationship that we are planning to continue to grow! Our monthly Coffee with FRANK series which started in 2019 has been a really fun way to bring in guests to listen to different topics by our artists order to educate our community on arts in an upbeat and fun way surrounded by art, coffee, and donuts — all for free! On a daily basis, we welcome people into our gallery of all demographics and backgrounds and invite them to learn about art in an accessible, friendly, and approachable way by way of our gallery director and artists that work in the gallery every day.
Please stay tuned as we continue to expand as a non-profit organization and bring art and art awareness to our community. We strive to be an approachable art gallery for everyone to learn, so please take advantage of our featured exhibition shows, opening receptions, and our fantastic programming. We look forward to seeing you soon!
Our Programs
We are very proud of the programs that have developed from within FRANK. These programs are conceived, hosted, and run by the artists at FRANK Gallery and continue to grow with the help of their hard work and dedication to our mission.
FRANK Youth Art Group: This program was originally established to give Karen (Burmese) Refugee students living in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area a platform of self-expression. The program now serves many other underserved 6th through 12th graders in the Triangle.
Our students affiliation with FRANK has resulted in many pursuing higher education – Lah Htoo Boh for example just graduated from UNC Greensboro in Fine and Digital Arts and Ree Ree Wei, after graduating from Guilford College, is now Executive Director of Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.
Boomerang Youth partnership: The gallery has been working with youth of Boomerang, a wonderful organization located in Chapel Hill. In the Spring of 2022 a 34-foot fence was painted and completed by artists and kids from Boomerang. Classes with FRANK artists are important to the students this great organization serve. We can’t wait to see how our partnership continues to grow!
FRANK:inFocus: Every Year, FRANK celebrates community through photography. The gallery features community members, students, and photographers working in a variety of processes.
Emerging Artist Program: The FRANK Emerging Artist Program gives promising young artists a unique opportunity to hone their artistic skills and learn the business behind art. Our emerging artists have gone on to successful careers supporting the arts and actively exhibiting as fine artists.
Coffee and Donuts with FRANK Artists started in January of 2019 and still going strong, we started a free series of classes where one of our artists discusses a topic of their choosing to an engaged and caffeinated audience. This series opens up the discussion of art techniques, buying, and much more in an informal and fun setting.
Young Artists: We encourage kids to come in to the gallery and love showing them around. We also help young artists to showcase their work! For example, we helped young artist and budding entrepreneur Nico Martinez with his print making business that donatedproceeds to Save the Children. The gallery also ahas hosted music salons featuring young and college aged performances.
Hero Books: FRANK textile and fiber artist Marguerite Jay Gignoux works with the language arts department of Durham Academy to teach handmade bookmaking to the students. The books are themed “Hero Books” where each student honors their own heroes, these books have been displayed and presented in front of the gallery for a memorable and moving showcase.
Regularly we dedicate our gallery to communities of artists that tend to be underrepresented. In 2021, we hosted “10 Years, 10 Artists” an invitational show juried by Jennifer Dasal (host and creator of the ArtCurious podcast and previously curator of the NCMA). In January 2022, we exhibited the work of 6 local and contemporary North Carolina Native American Artists. In 2023 we hosted an invitational with Latin artists in a variety of media, from around the state, titled FRANK Invita: Arte Contemporáneo Latinx/ FRANK Invitational: Contemporary Latinx Art.
Artist talks and opening receptions: The gallery hosts monthly talks and openings to celebrate the artists in our local community, and to learn more about our ever-changing exhibits. We exhibit the work of over 100 different local and regional artists in our gallery.
