Month: February 2016

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

The Ides of February

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The games must be played. However uncomfortable the next six weeks may become for the Memphis Tigers and their beleaguered head coach, at least 11 games remain on the schedule (counting at least one in the American Athletic Conference tournament). As of this writing, the Tigers are 13-8 with a 4-4 mark that has them tied for seventh place in the 11-team AAC. If the empty seats at FedExForum and calls for Josh Pastner’s job have been unsettling to this point, just wait for the reaction to a nosedive — if a nosedive occurs — while 68 other programs book tickets for next month’s Big Dance.

Last Saturday’s loss at SMU can be viewed one of two ways. Glass half full: The Mustangs are a tier above every other team in the AAC (as the standings indicate), making a loss — even a blowout — on the team’s home floor nothing worthy of teeth-grinding. Glass half empty: The dramatic gap in talent between the SMU roster and the one at Pasner’s disposal accentuates how far this program has fallen, and how large the gap has become between reality as a Memphis Tiger and the dreams of a Sweet 16 (let alone Final Four) appearance.

Larry Kuzniewski

Shaq Goodwin: ‘We’ll man up.’

Forget the Tigers’ horrid record against ranked teams under Pastner. For now, the U of M program needs to find ways to merely beat its own league’s elite: SMU, Connecticut, and Cincinnati. Since moving to the AAC from Conference USA in 2013, the Tigers are now 4-12 against this trio of league exemplars. You can’t compete for national championships unless you can compete for your conference title. Which makes this week at FedExForum maybe the biggest two-game home stand of the 38-year-old Pastner’s career. Sweep Connecticut (here Thursday) and Cincinnati (Saturday) and the Tigers will find themselves at worst tied in the loss column with the Huskies and Bearcats this time next week. Split these games or (teeth-grinding time) lose both, and we can consider the nosedive underway. This is the collateral effect of the home loss to East Carolina on January 24th. Memphis must knock off a team it’s not expected to beat. One, at the very least.

Can the Tigers sweep this week’s contests? So much must happen to counter what we’ve seen of late. Freshman star Dedric Lawson is averaging 14.4 points and 9.0 rebounds this season, but averaged 8.5 points and 6.0 boards in the Tigers’ two narrow losses at UConn and Cincinnati last month. Lawson must make a difference against an AAC power before we can consider him truly among the best freshmen in Tiger history. Trahson Burrell must be the player who came an assist shy of a triple-double in the loss to ECU, and not the one who disappeared (eight points, two rebounds, no assists) at SMU. And the Tigers simply must find offensive support for their “Big Three” of Lawson, Shaq Goodwin, and Ricky Tarrant Jr. Two starters against the Mustangs — Sam Craft and Markel Crawford — failed to score. “Organizing” the team (Craft’s specialty) and marking the opponent’s top gun (Crawford’s) are important, but Tiger opponents have taken to sagging on Lawson and Goodwin. Points must be generated elsewhere.

Surely the Tigers welcome turning a page on the calendar, having finished a 4-5 January highlighted only by the narrow win over Temple at home and a road beatdown of UCF. Pastner and his staff would be wise to erase (or hide) any indication of the January stumble-fest. Make February a season within a season. Take the two big games this week, then focus on winning four — if not five — of the remaining six. (SMU comes to town February 25th). Six wins this month would put the team on the cusp of 20 when we next turn the calendar to March where college basketball’s elite are separated from the hoi polloi.

This team knows what’s being said about its performances to date. “I’ve been here a while,” said Goodwin after the Temple win, “and I know how they do Coach Pastner. My sophomore year, I asked him why, and he said, ‘You gotta win. You gotta win big games.’ We’ll accept that. We’ll man up on that. But we pay attention to it, and we’ll get it right once we get on a winning streak.”

If a winning streak is to happen for the 2015-16 Memphis Tigers it will start this month. Would it be enough to erase January, to lower the temperature on Josh Pastner’s hot seat? Come Thursday night, we’ll have some answers. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Lisa Mac

This week’s Music Video Monday is tying the knot. 

Lisa Mac says she knew she wanted to direct the video to her first single “Hurricane” while she was recording it. She and Isaiah Conyers shot the video at Memphis’ Studio688 because it “…holds a special place in my heart because it’s where my whole creative journey began. So, as my song’s production began to take shape in the recording studio, a vision for my video began to take shape in my head. A whole team of people came together, including my parents, to help bring my vision to life. My stylist, the talented Tara Skelley, played a huge part in helping bring it all together. We created the whole set ourselves, with the help of my mom, who is exceptionally crafty. We Pinterested, thrifted, and DIYed until my whole vision for the video was complete. Everything that you see in the video was either handmade, or recycled and repurposed from used items. The white Valentine’s box of chocolates that you see in the video was originally purchased off of Amazon, and it was definitely past Valentine’s season:) I threw out the chocolates, spray painted the whole box, and then decorated the outside with rhinestones and ribbon. My mom replaced the old chocolates with handmade heart-shaped white chocolates.” 

Music Video Monday: Lisa Mac

If you would like to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Art Art Feature

Corkey Sinks’ art explores the old world through the new age.

Corkey Sinks, the newest resident artist at Crosstown Arts, is a recent Memphis transplant. Sinks moved to the South six months ago from Chicago, where she studied and practiced fiber- and material-based arts. Her intricately patterned quilts, weavings, and drawings reference “conspiracy and culture-building and science fiction.” Past works by Sinks range from a book that she calls her “demon baby project,” for which she researched turn-of-the century myths about paranormal children, to a series of cardboard crystals that Sinks formed out of recycled material.

When we met at her studio this past weekend, Sinks was in the process of preparing for a new show at the Memphis house gallery Southfork. Several geometric weavings, made using a traditional jacquard loom, hung on a far wall. Despite the weavings’ newness, the patterns in the fabric appeared somewhat faded, as if time had removed some of their detail. “I like all of the metaphors of pattern,” Sinks said. “But I also just formally really enjoy a spread of pattern.”

Art, ritual, and patterns

Flyer: What do you think draws you to traditional patterning and traditional ways of making?

Sinks: My work has always been about pattern. I have always been interested in the recurrence of things in narrative and the recurrence of images in film. I studied a lot of propaganda and Soviet montage, so the repetition and rapid juxtaposition of images builds meaning. It really is part of what makes us human, that we see patterns in things, regardless of whether they are actually there.

You have made quilts out of plastic as well. Can you tell me how you arrived at that process?

I started making these on an industrial heat press that I had in grad school. I was playing around with plastics, and the result was that it was really flat, and I think that I wanted to be able to work larger than the bed of the press. So I started playing around with a hand iron, and I realized that it took on this more sculptural form. I found that really appealing.

I started making the plastic triangles that make up that quilt to escape my brain and focus on something that I could do with my hands. The process became a system that evoked some kind of paranoid ritual but could create a great output.

Speak more on the cardboard crystals.

I was doing my laundry, and I started folding a box of Tide into these shapes. I love these shapes. I’m buying crystals all the time. While I don’t really think I believe in them, but yet I think … “This protects me against vampires. I need it.” I have rocks all over my house and workspaces, and beyond their supposed meanings, I love the forms of them.

I hope that in my work, whenever I reference anything that is new age, pyramid-scheme-y, or cult-y, that I am empathetic. I think the desire to have something to belong to, to identify with and truly believe, with all of yourself, is really enviable.

Are the drawings you make on grid paper plans for a quilt or their own thing?

Whenever I am stuck, I am drawing. The drawings can be a finished product or become something else. In one series of drawings, I’m using text that is darker versions of self-help phrases on cross-stitched pillows or inspirational posters. All this work is about trying to have power, whether it is some kind of control over yourself and your life or evoking some kind of spiritual or political power.