Group de 'Ville

Diane Kilgore Condon
Art Visionary

Leave it to an artist to see the beauty in a crumbling, century-old, ten-thousand-square-foot former general store on “the wrong side of the tracks.” When a friend sneaked painter Diane Kilgore Condon inside the West Greenville building (hoping it wasn’t trespassing, since the door was kicked in), she knew she had found the space she was searching for. “Our original goal with the Art Bomb Studios was simple,” she says, “to provide affordable studio space for anyone who was really serious about creating great work.” A decade later, the nonprofit Art Bomb is home to fifteen artists—metalsmiths, potters, painters, and printmakers—and has been a keystone for West Greenville’s transformation from an abandoned mill village to a thriving artists’ colony chock-full of galleries and studios. “Looking back, I have no idea how it came together,” Kilgore Condon says. “But at the time it made perfect sense.”

Edwin McCain
Hometown Voice

Never completely comfortable
in the high-profile music world that accompanied his late-’90s breakout (spawned by the megahit “I’ll Be”), singer/songwriter Edwin McCain chose to remain in his native Greenville over the big-city lights. “I was really impressed with how much the city was changing,” he says. “When I was in high school, the rule was I could have the keys to the car, but I better not go downtown. Now downtown has just exploded.” And McCain has done his part to help it along. In 2006, he cofounded the annual Euphoria festival (this year September 22­–25), a celebration of food, wine, and music that underscores the depth and breadth of the city’s revitalization. McCain puts on an outdoor concert in downtown’s revamped riverside amphitheater, and venues that once sat boarded up now host chef’s dinners and wine pairings. “Being home where everyone knows me for me,” he says, “that’s where I want to be.”