Splatter CLT — Charlotte, NC.
It's like that moment when you meet someone and think, "Did we just become best friends?" Tim has one of those personalities and feelings when you know how genuine and passionate someone is when you first meet them. Splatter CLT is a fun painting experience for everyone. Offering team building exercises, date nights out or just a pleasant time with someone you care about, it's an escape from reality where you can enjoy yourself and create. How did this all come together? "I was walking through the Mint Museum and thought, wouldn't it be so cool to be in a big white room and throw paint at a wall? It's like being inside of a big painting. I built this white wall in my friend's backyard, put up some canvases, started throwing paint at it, and wondered why everyone doesn't do this. When someone asks where you got that piece of art, you can say, "oh, I made that." How cool is that?"
What is the long-term vision for this? The ultimate goal is to franchise this to different cities. You make your own art here, and now you have a story behind it to share with someone else. The experience of doing it is what I’m looking to maximize here. The ultimate goal outside of the business aspect is to make the hundreds of people who are intelligent, hard-working, creative people who think they are not, understand they are. Because of everything they have done artistically, they either judged themselves so hard because it didn’t look like what a professional artist would have painted or, even if they were good at it, they never got the support. It is so vital to have creativity in any industry. I like to show people that without any artistic or creative background or history — you are going to create something you will love, and other people will see value in that as well. The larger mission is to have people recognize their own creative abilities so that they are not so afraid to make things and they are not judging themselves before they even try. This is just a time where you don’t need to be on your phone, spend time with people you love and enjoy and you get to express yourself for just a second.”
We all have those proud and essential moments where we sometimes forget to go back and reflect on that to see that it has led us to where we are now. What was that proud moment for you? “For the last 16 years, I’ve been doing improvisational comedy. I grew up watching Who’s Line is It Anyway. In High School, I took a theater class as an elective. One day, they said we were going to do some improv. We played a game, and I got a laugh out of something I said. At that moment, I felt like I could do this forever. Since then, I’ve taught improv and started improv groups, and it has been, without question, the most valuable thing I have done for myself because a big part of that is learning how to listen to people. I find that for what we do here, most of it is asking questions, learning about them, and actively listening to people, which was important to me.”
"I became a Theater Minor in College because I loved it so much. I was in a class with my favorite teacher, and we were doing these two-person scenes. I was a class clown, I always wanted to make people laugh but I could do what I needed to do to get good grades. We got into this two-person acting session with the teacher, and I was talking about this serious, dramatic scene we were doing, and apparently, I looked upset. The teacher stopped me and asked if I was okay because I looked really upset. And I told her this is how I normally am when I'm listening and not trying to make people laugh. She said, "Oh, well, it's nice to meet you." And it was that moment that blew my mind, and I realized I don't need to be funny all the time; what's important is being engaged and listening to others when they need to be heard."
