Stop twiddling your (green) thumbs and head to the Memphis Botanic Garden’s plant sale. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Botanic Garden)
Plant Sales This weekend is for the plants. Seriously, there are at least three plant sales happening this weekend, so get your green thumb out of your booty and get out there:
Shelby Forest Spring Fest Meeman Shelby Forest State Park Saturday, April 12, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Take part in a Mardi Gras-themed festival with music, food, arts and crafts vendors, wildlife and cultural exhibits, and more. Admission is $5 (kids 4 and under get in free). Get your tickets here.
Cooper-Young Porchfest Cooper-Young Historic District Saturday, April 12, noon-5 p.m. Now is your chance to invade your neighbors’ privacy and get up on Cooper-Young’s lawns as an eclectic mix of bands will play on residents’ front porches at this fifth-annual all-volunteer event. A full schedule and map is available here. Porchfest also coincides with the Cooper-Young Community Yard Sale, which will be held 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. That map can be found here.
The Mid-South Korean BBQ Festival Grind City Brewing Company Saturday, April 12, noon-6 p.m. Grind City Brewing Company hosts a backyard cooking competition of traditional American barbecue and Korean barbecue. General admission tickets come with entry and samples (as supplies last) and cost $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Get your tickets here.
Shop Black Fest Bass Pro Drive + Riverside Drive Saturday, April 12, 2-7 p.m. Shop from Black-owned businesses. General admission is free.
Metal Petals + Healing Roots Exhibition & Silent Auction Reception Evergreen Presbyterian Saturday, April 12, 6-8 p.m. Arts from around Memphis and the country have transformed gun parts into jewelry, sculptures, and gardening tools as part of the Metal Museum and Evergreen Presbyterian’s Guns to Gardens sage surrender program. The exhibition will open with a reception and sale of the items, with larger items staying on display for the community for one month. Proceeds from the sale will go back into the Guns to Gardens safe surrender program and to the artist participants.
Star Trek Day Neil’s Music Room Sunday, April 13, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Trek over to Neil’s Music Room for the 10th anniversary celebration of Shelby County Star Trek Day, where you’ll enjoy Star Trek-themed food, contests, vendors, music, and more. Special guests will Zoom in for a Q&A: Jonathan Frakes, Armin Shimerman, Kitty Swink, and Juan Carlos Coto. More info here.
Huey’s 55th Anniversary Block Party Huey’s (Midtown) Sunday, April 13, 1-8 p.m. Huey’s is turning 55, a good age. I don’t know why we don’t say that past the age of, like, 4. That’s a good age; that’s when they start … well, I don’t know much about 4-year-olds. I’m not around them that much. Maybe being a 4-year-old isn’t a good age to be, but 55, that’s something. At least, for Huey’s. They’re hosting a whole free block party with live music on Overton Park Shell’s Shell on Wheels, a kids zone, community vendors, and local food and beer options. More info here.
Black Arts & Wine Festival Pink Palace Museum & Mansion Sunday, April 13, 2-6 p.m. Shop visual art by Black creatives and sample wines and liquors from Black brands. Tickets are $50.
Babbie Lovett has about 2,000 to 3,000 garments that she’s collected in her 92 years of life as a model, show producer, store owner, and mentor in Memphis’ fashion industry. “You know there’s a fine line between collecting and hoarding,” she jests. “I’ve got a house full and three apartments full of racks.”
But, even as she jokes, she says, “It’s like I have a whole box of paints and crayons that I can use.” For her fashion shows, that is. Just last year, for instance, she put the show together for the University of Memphis: Memphis Fashion Through the Decades. “These last 10 years, all my dreams seem to be coming true,” Lovett says, “because I’ve always wanted my collection to be used for education or for fundraising.”
These days, though, Lovett has to organize her shows by feel and memory, since about two-and-a-half years ago she went blind. “It’s one of the most interesting times of my life. It’s a real journey of learning,” she says, ever the one to take a positive outlook.
Her most recent project has been with the Tennessee Ballet Theater, which will honor the last nine decades of her many-chaptered life with The ICON, Babbie Lovett, Fashion Legend this April. Directed by Erin Walter, TBT’s artistic director, and with works choreographed by Max Robinson and Steven Prince Tate, the ballet will traverse the “peaks and valleys” of Lovett’s life, with four ballerinas representing Lovett. “There are 15 dances, and some are literal depictions of aspects of her life,” Walter says, “and some are abstractions from things that we were inspired by.”
For The ICON, Walter has incorporated pieces from Lovett’s collection in two numbers. “It thrills me because [the pieces in] my collection are really my friends,” Lovett says. “All of my clothes have a story with them. And they’ve never been worn but maybe once or twice, or most of them have been made for shows. And to see them dance just thrills me to death.”
Lovett herself fell in love with dance, long before she fell in love with fashion. “I learned to sing and dance my own way before I could walk,” she says. Even today, she’s still dancing. “I may be as blind as a bat, but in my head I’m just going to keep dancing. … There’s certain music I hear. I get up at night and sometimes I hold on to my walker and dance.”
This production will be the fifth installment of TBT’s 901 Stories, which has brought to life histories of Earnestine & Hazel’s, the Annesdale Mansion, the Medicine Factory, and the Jack Robinson Gallery through dance. “We like to celebrate things about Memphis that maybe people don’t know,” Walter says. “Maybe half of Memphis knows who Babbie is, but the other half doesn’t.”
And to Walter, at least, Lovett is Memphis history. At 92, she began life in the Great Depression, saw the fashion industry boom in Memphis, and took part in it, modeling here and in New York; she built businesses, pioneered “trashion” (taking trash and making it into fashion), and advocated for the arts and causes close to her heart. She was and still is a mentor to many. To try and describe her life in a paragraph is a disservice; to do it in a ballet, however, will put Lovett on the stage, where she’s always belonged, sharing her joy to as many people as possible.
She once wrote, and now recites from memory, no longer able to read or write due to her blindness: “There’s nothing I like better than being a star. Give me your undivided attention. God made the stage. The show is life. Fashion are the costumes we wear on stage, backstage, or in the audience. The play, music, dance, comedy, tragedy. We laugh; we cry. It’s good; it’s bad. We clap; we boo. We leave. The show goes on. My name is Babbie. Fashion is my passion. The one thing we all have in common is we’re born naked and we cover up.”
Walter says that she always brings a notebook with her for moments like this and many others when Lovett says something that catches her ear. For that reason, Walter has also set up a multisensory exhibit to accompany the show featuring old phones that, when picked up, will answer with recordings of Lovett telling stories from her life, moments not included in the show and moments that, Walter says, “she says in a much better way than I was able to write [for the show’s monologues between the dances].”
Profits from The ICON will go to TBT’s Frayser Dance Project, which offers free dance classes to students in the Frayser neighborhood. The program is in its fourth year and is sponsored by Nike and Alliance Healthcare.
“That’s why I’m so excited about being a part of all of this because the funds that are raised when you do shows, even if it’s just the beginning, if you can get people interested, then you can get the contributions that you need to preserve the arts or give people an opportunity that they didn’t have before,” Lovett says.
In the meantime, Lovett looks forward to experiencing the ballet. “My talent has always been able to feel an audience and to be able to see that audience was wonderful. But to be able to feel that audience now is also a gift, so I’m looking forward to feeling and hearing the show.”
Purchase tickets to The ICON: Babbie Lovett, Fashion Legend, sponsored by Alliance Healthcare Services,here. Performances are at the McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College on Friday, April 4th, and Saturday, April 5th, at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday, April 6th, matinee at 2:30 p.m., and Friday, April 11th, and Saturday, April 12th, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 and include a wine reception immediately following the performance, where you will have a chance to meet Lovett, and models and dancers showing Lovett’s collection and Sue Ambrose’s couture designs constructed from bicycle tires.
April showers bring April festivals, and then there are May festivals, and June ones, and July and August. And we don’t even have time to get to September. That’s right, friends (may we call you that?): It’s time for the Spring Fairs & Festivals Guide.
April
Month of Jazz at Crosstown Arts A monthlong celebration of jazz. Crosstown Arts, various dates through April 30
Memphis Tattoo Festival (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Tattoo Festival)
Memphis Tattoo Festival If you can dream it, you can tat it. Renasant Convention Center, April 4-6
TrollFest Don’t be a troll; instead, learn how to take better care of the environment at this festival. Memphis Botanic Garden, April 5
Wine, Food and Music Spring Festival Wine all you want. Notice I said “wine,” not “whine.” Beale Street Landing, April 5
Foodees Food and Culture Festival Does it bother me that it’s not spelled “Foodies”? A little. Do I care? Not when the festival is bringing 70 food trucks and 100 crafters and makers. Riverside Drive, April 11-13
TrollFest (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Brewfest You’re cruising for a brewski. Mississippi Ale House, Olive Branch, MS, April 12
Cooper-Young Porchfest Get out of my head and onto my lawn (for free porch concerts, obviously). Cooper-Young Historic District, April 12
Juke Joint Festival No need to be a juke box hero when you can go to the Juke Joint Festival. Clarksdale, MS, April 12
Orbit Fest You’ll want this fest in your orbit: seltzers, vendors, music. It’ll be a blast. Crosstown Brewing Company, April 12
Cooper-Young Porch Fest (Photo: Brandon Dill)
Shelby Forest Spring Fest A Mardi Gras-themed fest with wildlife and cultural exhibits, plus music, food, arts and crafts, and more. Meeman Shelby Forest State Park, April 12
Shop Black Fest Black businesses for the win. Bass Pro Drive + Riverside Drive, April 12
The Mid-South Korean BBQ Festival A backyard cooking competition of traditional American barbecue and Korean barbecue. Grind City Brewing Company, April 12
Juke Joint Festival (Photo: Courtesy Juke Joint Festival)
Black Arts & Wine Festival Shop visual art by Black creatives and sample wines and liquors from Black brands. Pink Palace Museum & Mansion, April 13
Concerts in the Grove Enjoy an outdoor concert or two. Germantown Performing Arts Center, select Thursdays, April 17-June 26
Africa in April Salute the Republic of South Africa. Robert R. Church Park, April 18-20
Good Vibes Comedy Festival LOL IRL. Hi Tone, April 18-20
Earth Day Festival (Photo: Courtesy Shelby Farms Park)
Earth Day Festival Where fun meets sustainability, and sustainability meets you. Shelby Farms Park, April 19
Shell Daze Dazed and confused, more like dazed and I don’t know where I was going with this … so I guess I am confused. But this festival is not confusing! It’s all about music: Lettuce, Daniel Dato’s Cosmic Country, Grace Bowers & the Hodge Podge, and The Velvet Dog. Overton Park Shell, April 19
Art in the Loop Let me loop you in: It’s the art festival in East Memphis. Ridgeway Loop Road, April 25-27
Double Decker Arts Festival A two-day (a double-day?) celebration of food, music, and the arts. Oxford Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS, April 25-26
Trolley Night Explore galleries, restaurants, bars, and shops open late with activities on the street every month. South Main, last Friday of the month
23rd Annual World Championship Hot Wing Contest and Festival Wing, wing, wing, this festival is calling for you. River Garden Park on Riverside Drive, April 26
Spring Craft Fair Find crafts and one-of-a-kind treasures. Meddlesome Brewery, April 26
Taste the Rarity Get weird with beer. Wiseacre Brewing Company, April 26
Mimosa Festival (Photo: Courtesy Mimosa Festival)
Mimosa Festival Mimosa is a fun word to say, and this festival is even funner (and that’s a fun word). Autozone Park, April 27
32nd Rajun Cajun Crawfish Festival Heads, you suck. Tails, you pinch. Riverside Drive, April 27
May
Experience Memphis Gardens Roses are red; violets are blue. I’d love to walk Memphis’ gardens with you. Various locations, May 1-June 15
Memphis in May International Festival Salute South Korea at this festival. Memphis, May 1-31
Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Festival Go wild with food, art, games, expos, contests, crawfish, and more. Downtown Leland, May 2-3
RiverBeat Music Festival This year’s headliners are Missy Elliot, The Killers, and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals. Tom Lee Park, May 2-4
Cigar & Whiskey BBQ Festival Cigars, whiskeys, barbecue — it’s in the name. Agricenter International, May 3
Bookstock This fest is for the books. Literally. Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, May 3
Café du Memphis Beign-yay! (And shrimp and grits and café au lait. Yay for all!) Overton Park Shell, May 3
Overton Square Crawfish Festival Go cray for the crayfish. Overton Square, May 3
The Big Squeeze Food Truck Festival When life gives you lemonade, wash it down with food truck fare and music. Germantown Performing Arts Center, May 3
Memphis Greek Festival Say: Opa! And bring three cans of nonperishable food for free admission.
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, May 9-10
World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest Mind your Ps and ’cues — mostly your ’cues because I’m not sure how helpful those Ps will be. Liberty Park, May 14-17
SmokeSlam Talk about a smoke show. Tom Lee Park, May 15-17
DreamFest Weekend Sweet dreams are made of this: a weekend of Memphis music. Overton Park Shell, May 16-18
Ruby Bridges Reading Festival Enjoy book giveaways, children’s activities, and storytelling. National Civil Rights Museum, May 17
Trans-Fest A celebration of the trans community. Wiseacre Brewery, May 17
Uptown Arts Festival Expect art, music, beer, and a good time. Grind City Brewing Company, May 17
Bluff City Fair This fair isn’t bluffing when it comes to fair foods, carnival rides, and attractions. Tiger Lane at Liberty Park, May 23-June 1
Memphis Dragon Boat Festival Dragons will race. Well, dragon boats. Hyde Lake at Shelby Farms Park, May 31
Memphis Italian Festival Where everyone’s Italian. Marquette Park, May 29-31
Memphis Margarita Festival Some people claim there’s a festival to blame, and it’s this one. Wastin’ away again at the Memphis Margarita Festival … Overton Square, May 31
Memphis Vegan Festival No animals were harmed in the making of this festival. Fourth Bluff Park, May 31
June
Juneteenth Shop Black Festival Shop from 100 Black businesses. Fourth Bluff Park, June 1
Tupelo Elvis Festival Get ready to rock and roll. Downtown Tupelo, June 4-7
Memphis Pride Fest Weekend (Photo: Courtesy Mid-South Pride)
Memphis Pride Fest Weekend A four-day celebration embodying the spirit of the LGBTQ community. Various locations, June 5-8
Memphis Crafts & Drafts Festival Summer Market This event is no rough draft. It was perfectly crafted to fit all your summer market needs. It’s also put on by the Memphis Flyer, which I’ve heard is pretty awesome. Crosstown Concourse, June 7
Fried Chicken Fest Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the Fried Chicken Fest? That doesn’t sound right. The fest is fun for humans though! It’s got fried chicken (with apologies to the chickens that crossed the road), music, and lawn games. Germantown Performing Arts Center, June 7
Craft Food & Wine Festival Delicious food, exquisite wines, and live music, all while supporting Church Health. The Columns, June 8
Betonia Blues Festival With a lineup with the likes of Nick Wade, Jimmy Duck Holmes, Chris Gill & Sole Shakers, and Bobby Rush featuring Mizz Loew, you know you’re in for a good time. Blue Front Cafe, Bentonia, MS
Memphis Brewfest Just brew it. Shelby Farms Park, June 21
Record Fair Girl, put your records on. Tell me your favorite songs from Goner Records, River City Records, and Shangri-La Records ’cause this is the place to buy all your music. Soul & Spirits, June 21
July
Delta Soule Picnic Festival Expect R&B and Southern soul music. Warfield Point Park, Greenville, MS, July 5
Memphis Summer Cocktail Festival Get your drink on. The Kent, July 12
August
Planted Rock Vegan Festival We will … we will … rock you (as long as you’re a plant). This fest promotes vegan foods and will give healthy living tips. Collage Dance Center, August 5
FedEx St. Jude Championship Here’s where I’d insert a golf pun, if I knew any. If you know about golf, I assume you know about this championship. TPC Southwind, August 6-10
Elvis Week (Photo: Courtesy Elvis Presley’s Graceland)
Elvis Week The Elvii are coming! The Elvii are coming! And they’re showing up for music, panels, contests, movies, fan meet-ups, tours, and more. Graceland, August 8-16
Skol-astic Book Fair Ah, book it. Book it real good. Soul & Spirits, August 9
Memphis Chicken & Beer Festival People like chicken; people like beer. Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium Field, August 16
Floyd Newsum, Soul of Blue (Photo: Courtesy Dixon/Estate of the Artist)
As Ellen Daughtery, the Dixon Gallery & Gardens’ assistant curator, prepared the current exhibition on display — “Floyd Newsum: House of Grace” — Newsum, who was based in Houston, told her the show felt like a homecoming. He grew up here, went to Hamilton Elementary and Hamilton Junior and Senior High Schools, and graduated from the Memphis Academy of Arts (later Memphis College of Art) in 1973. “He thought of Memphis as his foundation, his home, where his family was, one of the most important things for him,” Daughtery says. “He believed in Memphis, even though he hadn’t lived here in a long time.”
Unfortunately, Newsum died in August 2024, unable to see the first major exhibition of his art in Memphis, yet his joy remains, radiating through his work in “House of Grace.”
Resembling almost a child’s sketchbook, full of scribbled shapes and drawings etched into spare space, Newsum’s works on paper captivate viewers’ attention, as their eyes travel from one image to the next, taking in each inch of the paper. The viewer is “engulfed,” Daughtery says, noting the works’ large size.
“It forces you to look up, which for him was important — the idea of ascendance.” Or you can get up close. “It’s really different from different perspectives.”
“They have an overpowering sense to them for sure,” Daughtery adds. “And one of the things that’s fun about them — I think they’re intended to be fun — is that you look at them for a while and you see things emerging out of them.”
This almost seek-and-find style took decades for Newsum to develop, for it wasn’t until the 2000s that he moved away from realism and toward abstraction. He had learned of women in the Sirigu Village in Ghana who paint and repaint abstract patterns on the walls of their homes each year. “That was the spark,” Daughtery says. “He said that was the permission: He had to become abstract.”
He wasn’t imitating the Sirigu women, but he saw them as long-distance teachers he wanted to honor in his practice. He even titled a few paintings after their village. After all, they were the ones who set him free in abstraction.
“And we should take free at its word,” Daughtery says. “He was a civil rights activist. He believed in the idea of freedom in many different contexts, so he thought that abstraction was a freeing thing. It allowed him to get rid of his worries and have a direct emotional response to art.”
And he wanted the same for his viewers — to have a direct emotional response. From simple drawings of animals and houses to cut-out photographs of his grandmother to pasted-on used pastels, Newsum “developed a kind of imagery that he used over and over again,” Daughtery says. “He liked the idea that it was childlike, that he was able to communicate on this level that he thought was universal, like little houses that look like a child’s drawing.”
The houses, a universal symbol of community, also harken to one of Newsum’s projects in Houston, where he spent the majority of his life as a beloved professor at the University of Houston and as co-founder of Project Row Houses, a social art organization that restored shotgun houses into studios in one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. With its arts-focused mission, Project Row Houses supports artists, young mothers, small businesses, and community members.
Looking back, this passion for community was ingrained in Newsum’s youth. His father was one of the Memphis Fire Department’s first Black firefighters and a civil rights activist. “He took Floyd with him when he was in high school to rallies,” Daughtery says. “Floyd marched in 1968. He found a great inspiration in his father.”
In turn, ladders appear in Floyd’s works, in homage to his father’s job but also as a symbol of hope. Sometimes, his ladders turn and twist on the paper. “Help isn’t always straightforward, but it’s there,” Daughtery says. “It’s coming.”
It’s just another one of Newsum’s positive ways of looking at life. In life, he was known for saying: “You can delay my success, but you cannot determine it.” In terms of his art, “I would say wider success eluded him until later in life,” Daughtery says, but now he has his “House of Grace.”
“House of Grace” closes April 6th at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens. Admission is free.
Sir Meatball and Milkshake at the most recent Dogchella (Photo: Mary Lauren Stewart)
Memphis dogfluencer Sir Meatball is turning 7, and all (including leashed pups) are invited to his birthday party this Saturday at Grind City Brewing Co. The theme: Dogchella.
“It’s a play on Coachella,” says bulldog Meatball’s mom Mary Lauren Stewart. Saturday’s event will be their third, after last year’s hiatus while their family got ready for their new addition: a baby.
Fortunately, Meatball hasn’t had too much trouble sharing the attention with his new human brother Rush, nor has his bulldog brother Lord Milkshake. “Milkshake and the baby have really bonded,” Stewart says. “But they both are really great with kids.”
Milkshake (left) and Sir Meatball (right) are ready to party. (Photo: Mary Lauren Stewart)
Both Meatball and Milkshake will be in attendance for Dogchella, the two having gained Instagram fame for a post of them in costume. “Milkshake’s the sidekick, and I think that’s where he likes to be,” Stewart says. “Meatball is always the one, when we’re out on a patio, who’s trying to wander up to people to get pets and scratches. He loves lying in the middle of a walkway so people have to acknowledge him. And Milkshake is very much a mama’s boy.”
For Saturday, Meatball, ever the star, will judge a dog costume contest that will kick off at 4 p.m. “He’ll whisper into one of the Grind City’s employee’s ears who the winner is.”
The day will also have birthday treats for the pups (while supplies last), adoptable dogs, $5 beers, local vendors (including a dog caricature artist!), and a food truck. Admission is free, and the party will happen rain or shine.
Dogchella, Grind City Brewing Company, Saturday, March 29, noon-6 p.m.
Danielle Sierra’s father used to look at her through his “supernatural telescope.” He would be back home in California, while she was in Memphis, sharing her artwork with him over the phone and the internet. “He would always tell me, ‘I’m looking through my supernatural telescope at all the marvels of you,’” Sierra says. He died this past May, but Sierra remains comforted, knowing that “he’s in heaven, with his supernatural telescope.”
With that in mind, her exhibit, now on display at Crosstown Arts, is titled “Supernatural Telescope” in his honor, her father Ernie being one of her greatest supporters in life and art. Even when she was little he taught her how to shade spheres and cubes; he later encouraged her to paint on wood instead of canvas, which would become a trademark of her style. “The funny thing is, he never told me he was an art major,” Danielle says. “He went to [California State University,] Northridge in California, but he had to leave to provide for his family. He only told me when I told him I was an art major.”
Even though he was talented in his own right, Danielle says, “He would never say he was like a capital-A artist.” Yet she’s found inspiration in his work, exhibiting it alongside her own as part of her thesis exhibition for University of Memphis’ MFA program in 2022. “It’s crazy that it was in this very gallery [at Crosstown Arts].”
For “Supernatural Telescope,” too, Ernie’s sketches and woodworking pieces are displayed. Danielle, for her part, has created responses to some of them. For one, Ernie had drawn a surrealist, Dali-inspired landscape of the Crucifixion, and Danielle has drawn her own in her own style, the two shown side by side, father like daughter. She’s also created pieces representing her memories of her father, with nods to quotes he’d say, to the hours they spent watching the Blue Angels in the sky, to the stories he’d tell about running away from home with only two peanut butter sandwiches.
Though these memories are personal, Danielle has included universal imagery of flowers, angels, and stars throughout to capture a message of hope for all. In one piece, I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends, she’s asked her artist friends to paint wooden flowers she’s cut, the idea being to create “this little garden as a representation of my art community,” she says. “None of us gets here alone.
“Everybody should have a supernatural telescope,” Danielle continues, “and be able to look back through all the times that we’ve experienced love and memories that uplift us. … I hope that [viewers] feel loved in a way that the work speaks to them. A lot of my inspiration comes from the Bible and my love for God, and I just always try to translate that through maybe the shading of a color or a line, and just love being the dominant force behind my work in one way or another.”
“Supernatural Telescope:” Danielle Sierra, Crosstown Arts, 1350 Concourse, through May 11th.
Friends For All headquarters (Photo: Courtesy Friends For All)
This Saturday, the nonprofit Friends For All will celebrate its 40th Birthday Bash at its headquarters. The family-friendly event will include free community resources, CEO panel with Q&A, activities, food from Memphis-based food trucks, and a birthday cake.
“It’ll be an opportunity for us to not only show off our new building [completed in October 2023], but also show off the activities that we do inside this building,” says Friends For All CEO Diane Duke. That means cooking demonstrations with a registered dietitian, dance classes, art classes, and more. “We’ll have tours of the building, talking about what we do here, so kind of an open house, get to know us, celebrate 40 years.”
Friends For All started as Friends for Life in 1985 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in Memphis. “It was literally a group of friends who came together to help their friends and their family members die with dignity,” Duke says, “because it was a death sentence back then. Now, because of medical advances that we’ve had, it’s not a death sentence anymore, and people can live long, happy, and healthy lives and be HIV-positive.”
Even with all these advances, Friends For All’s work continues to be relevant as ever, especially since Memphis is second in the nation for new transmissions of HIV. For that reason, the nonprofit works “at the outlying factors that keep HIV high,” Duke says, “and that’s the social drivers of health: poverty, housing insecurity, food insecurity, and stigma.”
So now, Friends For All has evolved to offer early intervention services, medical case management, rental and mortgage assistance, emergency financial assistance, group and individual mental health counseling services, rapid HIV and STI testing and treatment services, digital health literacy courses, and food pantry, and food delivery, and nutrition services — all at a low or no cost. The nonprofit also has a full service mobile care unit and a dedicated outreach team, which was able to conduct more than 3,500 HIV tests throughout the region this past year.
“Friends For All’s now a one-stop shop to really help those outlying issues and keep people from contracting it, or if you have it, getting that viral load down,” Duke says.
These days, though, as the Trump administration threatens cuts to funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which includes the HIV prevention budget, Friends For All’s future could be bleak. “Within the administration, we’re facing some real challenges that would devastate us and the community,” Duke says. “So we would see HIV rates soar, and we would again see people die. We don’t want that. We’re really hoping that the administration rethinks their stance on where it looks like they’re going on funding for this.”
But, with this weekend being a celebration, Duke doesn’t want to lose sight of the 40 years of progress Friends For All has made. “Joy is important,” she says. “So that we don’t lose hope. We are celebrating how far we’ve come, and we’re also making sure that we’re determined to continue and encourage people to speak to their elected officials to make sure that this funding continues.”
Reserve a spot for the Friends For All 40th Birthday Bash here.
Darts Productions’ Puerto Rican Night will feature performances, food, and more. (Photo: ricardo dominguez | unsplash)
Get a taste of Puerto Rico this Saturday as Darts Productions puts on Memphis’ first-ever Puerto Rican Night, complete with music, dance, and authentic cuisine.
“We’re trying to bring awareness of all the communities in the area,” says Nilka Quiros with the event production company Darts Productions. “This is the second type of festival that we’ve done. The first one was a Colombian Night [in October 2024]. … The response was phenomenal in the Memphis area. We really weren’t exactly sure what to expect, but the community responded very well. It was just a great opportunity for everybody to get together and just have fun and educate.”
Quiros hopes Puerto Rican Night will bring the same response. Darts Productions also plans to put on more festivals like these in honor of other Spanish-speaking countries.
For Puerto Rican Night, Sari, a Memphis-based singer from Puerto Rico, will perform, as will the Richmond, Virginia-based Tradición Cultural Dance Company, who will present a traditional Puerto Rican dance. The theater collective Agua, Sol y Sereno is also traveling from Puerto Rico to bring an “unforgettable performance,” including a mask parade. Earlier this week, they hosted community workshops making vejigante masks, used during the island’s local festivities.
Plus, there will be food from Puerto Rican vendors and merchandise available for purchase. “For us Puerto Ricans, because I’m Puerto Rican, we don’t have really a whole lot of Puerto Rican restaurants here [in Memphis],” Quiros says, “and we don’t have a lot of Puerto Rican performances here, so to get somebody from Puerto Rico and food and things like that, that’s pretty cool.”
Puerto Rican Night is free to attend. “Anybody that wants to come can come,” Quiros says. “It’s just been a night to have fun.”
Puerto Rican Night, Overton Square Trimble Courtyard, 2092 Trimble Place, Saturday, March 22nd, 6-9 p.m., free.
Calida Rawles,
Hallowed Be Her Name, 2024 (Photo: Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London)
Water ripples throughout Memphis history. The flooding waters of the Mississippi River drove those first Memphians to settle atop the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff. Stagnant water from rain cisterns and shallow wells bred mosquitos that brought about the yellow fever epidemic, costing the city its charter in 1878. The epidemic, in turn, led Memphians, searching for a reliable water source in the name of sanitation and health, to discover the Memphis aquifer, the sole source of Memphis’ water today. In this century, residents in South Memphis have to fight to protect our aquifer — against the proposed construction of the Byhalia crude oil pipeline and against the continued threats of contamination from Tennessee Valley Authority’s Allen Fossil Plant.
With all its complexities, water is now at the forefront of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, “Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides,” on display March 19th through September 7th. Indeed, the California-based artist’s exhibit of 10 paintings and a three-channel video explores water’s dualities, specifically as a space for Black healing, resilience, and joy.
Water is a central motif in Rawles’ works. Through it, Rawles asks questions about Black people’s relationships with water. She probes the stereotype about Black people not knowing how to swim. “Where’d it come from? Oh, because you couldn’t have pools; there was segregation at the pool. This is a place you don’t see us, and I don’t see myself, and you think we don’t belong.”
This history and these stereotypes have rippling effects. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning death rates for Black people under 30 are 1.5 times higher than for white people, and 70 percent of Black Americans cannot swim, compared to 31 percent for white Americans, according to a study by USA Swimming and the University of Memphis.
“And so, I thought that could be like an undercurrent to all of the work,” Rawles says. “When you put a Black body in that water, you’re dispelling something — without even talking about a subject. And then if I paint the figures comfortably and with agency, if people think, ‘I could feel comfortable like that,’ ‘I don’t have to be afraid of the water,’ or maybe ‘I should learn to swim,’ I thought I could do that, too.”
In turn, her paintings allow Black bodies to take up space, her canvases large in size, but more importantly they allow them to take up space in water, as historically charged as it is. For this exhibit, Rawles focuses on the bodies of water of Overtown, Miami, a historically Black neighborhood, which Rawles says was once like “a second Harlem.”
Founded in 1896 for and by African Americans, the neighborhood thrived as an entertainment district during the early- to mid-20th century in the Jim Crow era. “It had a thriving community of 300 businesses, and everyone used to go there, and everyone used to do shows and go to all the stuff,” Rawles says.
But in the late 1950s, with the passage of Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act, the construction of two major freeways displaced thousands of Overtown residents, or “Towners,” through eminent domain. In the aftermath, Rawles says, “They lost their homes, and they lost their businesses, and they had no way to [recover]. The job market just fell.”
The highways essentially decimated the neighborhood, the population dropping and blight taking over what once was a desirable and vibrant community of Black Miami’s professional class in the name of “progress.” Today, though, many say Overtown is experiencing a renaissance, as advocates and community members try to rebuild and reinvigorate what once was, but its scars are not forgotten even as hope endures.
And so, Rawles dedicated her first solo museum exhibit to painting the people of Overtown in her signature way — in bodies of water. She’s taken her subjects, young and old, to Gibson Pool, a product of segregation, and Virginia Key Beach, once designated as a Black beach. In this way, she’s also able to probe the Transatlantic slave trade. Her subjects float, their bodies bending the will of the water, balanced and relaxed in waters haunted by the past.
“I wanted to make Overtown proud,” she says. “That’s not how I usually work; it’d be a subject or how I feel or a response to news or just what I want to paint. You want to paint from your heart and hope [viewers] get it because you don’t want the viewer to influence what you create.”
Through all her portraits of Overtowners, Rawles adds, “I’m really talking about various communities around. I want to inspire people to learn more about communities and not feel like if you look at them right now you know the whole history.”
While “Away with the Tides” is in Memphis, Rose Smith, the Brooks’ assistant curator of photography, hopes viewers can connect Miami’s Overtown with Memphis’ Orange Mound. “Miami’s Overtown community neighborhood mirrors Memphis’ Orange Mound community,” they say, pointing out how both neighborhoods were founded for and by African Americans in similar time periods. “We want to talk about the ways in which these communities reflect each other, although the Black community in Memphis didn’t experience a highway obstruction. But certainly, there are other things that we can glean and show parallels between these two communities.”
The exhibit will even lead into an interactive gallery wherein the Brooks will highlight Memphis’ own Black swim history, for which Smith dug into the archives, searching through photos and newspaper clippings at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
“We want this exhibition to engender joy, rest, meditation and healing within our Memphis community,” Smith says. “We also want to advocate for water accessibility, equity, and safety for our community.”
“Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides” is on display at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through September 7th. For more information, visit brooksmuseum.org/exhibitions/calida-rawles-away-with-the-tides.
Learn about recycling.(Photo: Nick Fewings | Unsplash)
At the height of the pandemic, Memphis did stop recycling. “Two months into it, the city of Memphis had manpower issues, just like everybody else. And there was a time that they announced that they did have to send everything [to the landfill] just to make sure that people’s trash got picked up,” says Jason West, general manager for Republic Services, which sorts and processes the city of Memphis’ recycling. That was five years ago, but Memphis has not stopped recycling since.
Even so, West says, some people still believe that their recycling goes to the landfill, in part because of this Covid-related decision. “That kind of damage to the public perception, we will never do that again,” he says. “Two years ago, we had a big issue out here on the floor. We were working with the city. If we hadn’t gotten it fixed within the next 12 hours, we were already in contact with our Dallas plant. We were going to send the recycling down there so they could process it, just because of that public perception from that two months.”
Currently, West estimates that “about 10 to 12 percent of what can be recycled is [recycled in Memphis]. … Twenty-five percent is the goal where you want to be, and then 50 percent would be considered world-class.”
Another issue is that some of the recycling that Republic Services receives is contaminated. “You’d be surprised to see the stuff people put in recycling,” says Josh Kirkpatrick, Republic Services supervisor. “Car batteries, knives, bowling balls. Stuff like that tears our systems up, and we have a front line set up with people presorting.”
“About 32 percent of what we’re getting here ends up at the landfill because it’s trash,” West adds.
“If we get the contamination down, I think that’ll help a lot, and then get more participation and let people know we actually do recycle, that’ll help, too,” says Kirkpatrick. “Memphis recycles. It doesn’t recycle well.”
To combat this, Republic Services has engaged in several educational initiatives, working with schools and presenting to organizations. Within the past year or so, Republic Services has also partnered with Clean Memphis to offer free tours of its recycling facility to the general public, complete with a presentation on recycling and waste management. “It’s a lot more complex than you would think,” West says. “Usually people leave with some kind of bewilderment.”
To sign up for one of these tours, offered monthly and sometimes twice-monthly, visit tinyurl.com/2rz6vx75.
