The dictionary defines fecund as producing or capable of producing an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertile. For John W. Love, Jr., FECUND is an interdisciplinary art project. This new work is also the recent recipient of the prestigious McColl Award in the very first year individual artists were eligible to apply. (Previous winners were all organizations or institutions.)

FECUND is in its infant stage of what will become a multifaceted project culminating in spring 2013. Love shares that his award-winning creative idea, FECUND, is about “planting the seeds of yes.” (The video short provided was created to share his idea with the funding panel. There will be much more to come.)

The McColl Award is given to fund an innovative new work in our community. The 2011 McColl Award’s $25,000 prize — perhaps the largest given to an individual North Carolina artist — will help Love bring his FECUND project to light.

The McColl Award was established in 2001 by the Arts & Science Council, a Knight Arts grantee, to honor the significant role played by Hugh McColl Jr. (former CEO of Bank of America) and his wife, Jane, in advancing arts, science and history in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Who is Love? This native Charlottean is an iconic artist who is an actor, poet and playwright. Like many artists, his experiences and skills are vast. However, unlike most artists, this creative spirit cannot really be defined or confined. The work he creates is complex, rich and multilayered. It compels the viewer to think, feel and experience something deeper.

Love’s work is not about good vs. bad. But, in its purist sense, is about light vs. dark and everything in between. It can be viewed as polarity, yet it is really about continuity. There is “always a bit of grit in the mix” Love says with a smile. And, so FECUND is about the “necessity of insatiability,” meaning incapable of being satisfied. Much of his art is about consumption and transformation, even when it is the characters he “births” and, therefore, about Love’s own insatiable need to express these mythic and surreal stories. He often appears as the narrator, a face, voice or the most public presence of all these characters who “speak” through him.

In a concrete sense, the project itself will have performance, installation, web and workshop components. There will be a dedicated FECUND website very soon and Love website following, which will be the hub for all of this work. These various parts will allow for interaction and will encourage exploration of the question, “What does it take to create a single thing of beauty?” This is not an art question, but a life question. It can be deep, rich and expansive — like the earth — or tiny and almost undetectable, like a seed or a breath.

Love states, “FECUND’s transformational power is in the poignant and breathtaking beauty that emerges when a posture of ‘yes’ prevails.” He continues, “Whether we’re speaking of what it takes for nature to create a black diamond or the mathematician to create a beautiful theorem, my answer to that question is ‘insatiability.’”