Flyer style maven Sophorn Kuoy surveys the goods at Allie Cat Arts.
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Month: August 2013
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Three Films You Should Consider
Chris Herrington reviews three offbeat film offerings this week.
- JB
- Kemba Ford
The list of candidates who met Thursday’s filing deadline for a special election in state House District 91 indicates that name identification may play a major role in determining the winner. The seat was held for some four decades by the late, revered former House speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry, and the surname DeBerry is represented twice in the field of 11 candidates.
Dwight DeBerry, a political newcomer, is a cousin of Lois DeBerry, while Doris A. DeBerry-Bradshaw is the sister of District 90 Rep. John DeBerry (no relation to Lois). The extended Ford family figures with the filing of Kemba Ford, daughter of former state Senator John Ford, who is making her second electoral effort after running unsuccessfully for the City Council in 2011.
Other candidates in a fairly non-descript field are Raumesh Akbari, Joshua R. Forbes, Terica Lamb, Clifford Lewis, Kermit Moore, Gregory Stokes, Mary Taylor Wright, and Jim Tomasik. All except Tomasik, an independent, are running in the October 8th Democratic primary. No Republicans filed in District 91. The general election date is November 21.
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Marriage Equality Rally
The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) will host a marriage equality rally on August 31st at First Congregational Church from 7 to 9 p.m. as a response to the state legislature’s declaration of Traditional Marriage Day.
“Our state legislature declared Traditional Marriage Day for August 31st, but it’s a rather unique idea to us because, since we have a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Tennessee, every day in the state is Traditional Marriage Day,” said Skip Ledbetter, chair for TEP’s Memphis chapter.
“We wanted to do something as an alternative where we could recognize couples who have been together here for years but the state doesn’t view them as traditional couples. We want to celebrate their relationships and raise awareness of the hurdles they’ve faced in those relationships,” Ledbetter said.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature attorneys who will offer advice to couples on what limited protections they’re afforded without being married, such as medical power-of-attorney and the creation of wills and estates. They’ll also have a roundtable discussion on voting rights and upcoming elections in Tennessee.
This Friday at 6 p.m., Memphis-based sculptor and installation artist Jessica Lund will be giving a talk about her most recent show, “WREFORD,” in the gallery at Crosstown Arts.
Attendees of the talk might hear stories about Lund’s former landlord (Wreford himself), or the resident apartment complex cat (Elvis), or about what it is like to live in an apartment that, according to Lund, “looked like a scene from Hoarders.”
Lund, who recently received her MFA from the University of Memphis, says that her interest is in how people relate to the spaces they inhabit; how architecture shapes people and their habits. Lund’s concern is with mundanities of property: a neighbor who threaded his failing fence together with an old garden hose, or a weekly $2 fine levied on apartment residents who failed to correctly dispose of their trash.
“WREFORD” is a paean to life in a low-budget apartment complex. (Plexiglass sliding doors, whitewashed metal fences, hair-grain carpeting over cement floor. Rooms that have been vetted by flea bombs and laden with roach motels. For those with an architectural bent: last-ditch Corbusian modernism, rentable for $600ish bucks a month.)
The back wall of the show is composed of insulation, layered concentrically, a zen mounting of that sublime pink stuff usually only seen in half-lit attics. The wall works as a humorous backsplash for other elements of Lund’s show, including an axial sculpture of plywood and intricately cut carpet samples, located center-gallery and looking something like an imploded building.
Lund’s show also conveys a sense of constantly being monitored through motion-censored lights, placed above a series of wall-mounted shoe box sculptures. It is a clever play on the practice of lighting individual paintings in a gallery from above. Rather than unobtrusive track lighting, Lund includes intrusive high wattage outdoor lighting; rather than paintings, small boxes coated in camo duct tape and mesh, arranged into pseudo floor plans.
Lund’s show is cleanly executed without losing a sense of the intuitive. It is successful at communicating the indefinable atmosphere of a place without sacrificing humor.
The talk, and following keg party, will be held at Crosstown Gallery from 6-9 p.m., Friday August 30th.
Images: Katie McWeeney
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New Music from Memphis Artists
Chris Herrington has reviews of three new releases from Memphis bands and musicians.
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One year ago, artist Nicole Phillippe opened up Allie Cat Arts in Cooper-Young to showcase the most diverse collection of local artists and designers Memphis has to offer and has yet to discover. Allie Cat Arts centers around local talent and frequently hosts social events and art openings and classes.
Next to Cafe Ole directly across from the Beauty Shop, this charming little shop indeed features not only art but handmade jewelry, clothing, and the I Love Mi-Me beauty products that first led me there. The fairly small space houses an immense collection. With many pieces reasonably priced, the collection is one you can admire and then afford to take home.
Here are a few “wearable art” pieces that caught my eye, ranging from the colorful felt necklaces to salvaged pocket watches reassembled into jewelry to whimsical earrings of miniaturized desserts. There are even several glass jewelry pieces from Nicole herself. From the wide range of style, I chose a pair of drop earrings by Cindy McKee (shown in last photo) that I thought I would buy as a gift but I ended up claiming them as my own.
Visit Allie Cat Arts to find a handcrafted piece that you will want to claim as your own.
Allie Cat Arts is on Facebook and on Twitter at @AllieCatArts.
Credits:
Felt necklaces by Nikkila Carroll.
Pocket watch “steampunk” pieces by Jan Shivley.
Dessert/food jewelry by Funlola Coker.
Beaded bracelets by Stacy Green.
New music to stream or watch from three Memphis artists:
The North Mississippi Allstars‘ new album, World Boogie is Coming, will be released next Tuesday, September 3rd, and the band is sneak-previewing it this week via the Wall Street Journal. The album was self-produced at the brothers Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch Studio and is being released via the band’s own Songs of the South imprint. You can check it out here.
The Oblivians performed a four-song live set for the music site Daytrotter, running through tracks from their new reunion album Desperation such as “Pinball King” and “War Child.” You can listen here.
Local roots-pop singer Myla Smith will release her album Hiding Places on Tuesday, September 10th and will celebrate it with a release show at Minglewood Hall’s 1884 Lounge on Friday, September 13th. For a sneak preview of the album, recorded in Nashville with producer Brad Jones (Josh Rouse, Over the Rhine, Hayes Carll), check out the video to the album’s first single, “Can’t Say No,” which was produced by the local company New School Media:
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Tamp & Tap
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