The work of Mel Chin is back at the McColl Center for Visual Art (a Knight Arts grantee) in the exhibition “Mel Chin: Recap,” opening June 28th and running until August 17th. Chin’s work is multi-disciplinary, collaborative and crosses boundaries of medium, style and method.  His main goal is to use art as an invocation to greater social awareness and responsibility.

Chin recently completed a Knight Artist in Residence program at the McColl Center from September 2012 to March 2013, and much of the work featured in “Recap” is from this residency, including a significant part of the Fundred Dollar Bill Project, which brings much needed attention to the issue of lead poisoning. In the exhibition, the Project will be set up as a bank where visitors can draw and deposit their own Fundred, and it will then become part of a larger participatory artwork on the wall of the exhibition. Chin’s hope is that enough Fundreds will be collected to flow off the wall and begin stacking up. In 2014, the Fundreds from Charlotte and across the country will be delivered to Congress by armored truck to advocate for solutions to lead problems in the United States.

Gallery visitors with completed Fundreds at McColl Center for Visual Art.

The Fundred Dollar Bill Project is not the only piece in “Recap.” A range of works from Chin’s collages made out of heirloom family portraits to his hand-drawn animated film “9-11/9-11” will also be on view. As the McColl Center argues, “the variety of works on view in RECAP demonstrate how whether Chin is working in sculpture, film or collage, or insinuating art into unlikely places, like past projects in destroyed homes, toxic landfills or even popular television — individually or collectively, all of Chin’s work investigates how art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility.” And as Chin puts it himself, “I am a recovering conceptual artist.”

The opening reception for “Recap” is Friday June 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. Admission is free and all ages are welcome. A cash bar will be available with $1 beers. Visitors will have the opportunity to draw their own Fundred and meet with other McColl Center artists in residence like Natalie Abrams, Ginny Boyd, Linda Luise Brown, Shelia Klein, Aspen Hochhalter and Jason Watson.

McColl Center for Visual Art: 721 N. Tryon St., Charlotte; 704-332-5535; www.mccollcenter.org