Performer from last year’s fest (Photo: Arkwings Foundation)
Whether you fancy yourself to be left-brained or right-brained — or you find the concept to be a myth — letting your creative juices flow is good for brain health. Ask the nonprofit Arkwings Foundation, and they’d agree. “Our primary mission is promoting mind, body, and spirit wellness,” says Jana Wilson, executive director. “Right now the way that’s manifesting itself is through integrating arts and nature — the healing power of arts and nature.”
For a taste of that healing, Arkwings is hosting its annual Frayser Local Arts Festival. “We want people to get a look at the different ways they can express themselves creatively,” Wilson says of the festival’s aim to encompass all forms of art.
Inside, exhibits will fill the grounds’ 1930s house with visual arts, available to view and purchase. Meanwhile, culinary artist Cardi Fuqua, owner of Naked, will demonstrate recipes made from the fresh produce and herbs from the art garden. Outside, poetry, spoken word, song, dance, and yoga will populate the performance schedule, and artisans will set up shop to sell handmade goods.
At outdoor creativity stations, festival-goers can paint mini murals on repurposed vinyl banners, write their thoughts on slips of paper and clip them onto strings that hang down from the Poetry Tree, and touch, feel, and smell the herbs in the garden before making herbal salts of their own.
“It’s a chance for people to get creative and enjoy themselves and nature,” Wilson says.
Frayser Local Arts Festival, 2034 James, Saturday, October 23rd, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free.
The Brooks partners with Cazateatro to celebrate Day of the Dead. (Photo: Angel Ortez/Courtesy Brooks Museum)
“Stay in your cars. No bikes. No motorcycles,” Monica Sanchez, co-founder of Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group, warns with a gentle wagging of her finger. That is really the only rule of the Dia de los Muertos Reverse Parade — other than not referring to the holiday as Mexico’s Halloween. “Don’t even get me started on that,” Sanchez says.
This year’s parade is set in reverse. Kathy Dumlao, director of education and interpretation at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, explains, “Because of Covid, we wanted it to be like Shelby Farms’ Starry Nights, where you see the sites from inside your car as you drive along.” There, you can watch performances by Cazateatro Catrinas, folklore groups, mariachi bands, and more, and stationary floats will be interspersed throughout the route in Overton Park. Decorated in bright colors and papel picado (perforated paper), the floats will hold marigolds for the dead to smell, candles for the dead to find their way, and other more personal items to encourage the dead to visit. “Sometimes, we mock the dead,” Sanchez says. “But in a loving way.”
Another symbol of the holiday: skulls and skeletons. “We all end up skeletons one way or another. There’s nothing scary about Dia de los Muertos,” Sanchez says. “That’s why when you’re a kid you eat sugar skulls to remind you that death is sweet.”
An audio tour will be available on SoundCloud to accompany your ride (or to listen at home), and guests can pick up craft kits for later. “Now, don’t stop and hold up the parade,” Sanchez reminds. “But feel free to circle around and come back if you’d like.”
Dia de los Muertos Reverse Parade, Overton Park, 1930 Poplar, Saturday, October 23rd, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., free.
Dancer adorning traditional calaveras, or sugar skull, makeup (Photo: Wendy Adams)
“Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of life,” says Dorimar Ferrer, executive director of Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group. “It’s not Mexico’s Halloween.”
Though Dia de los Muertos takes place on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico, Crosstown Concourse, in partnership with Cazateatro, is celebrating a little bit earlier with their own Day of the Dead celebration — with an emphasis on celebration.
“Dia de los Muertos has nothing to do with sadness or anything scary,” Ferrer says. “Knowing that, for two days, we have the opportunity to share and celebrate with our loved ones fills us with joy. Keeping them alive in our hearts and minds is part of this beautiful tradition that is passed from generation to generation.”
Cazateatro Catrinas, Ballet Meztli, and other dancers in traditional garments and Day of the Dead makeup will populate the first floor and invite you to join along to the music by Tropical Fusion Latin Band, DJ Alexis White, and more. Kids can have their face painted and create a few crafts as well — all for free. Themed specials will also be available to purchase at a few of Crosstown’s restaurants. “Pop-a-roo’s Popcorn is staying open late for the event. They’ve got Mexican street corn in a cup,” says Bianca Phillips, communications manager at Crosstown Arts.
But what will stand out the most for event-goers, Phillips says, are the intricately decorated altars lined up along the second floor for viewing, made by different community organizations in honor of loved ones who have passed on.
“For a person who doesn’t know about this tradition,” Ferrer says, “our recommendation is to ask. Never assume that you are right or wrong in making an altar. With Cazateatro, we’re always open to talk to anyone who wants to know more about El dia de los Muertos and how they can build an altar with respect.”
Day of the Dead at Crosstown Concourse, Saturday, October 16th, 5-8 p.m., free.
Brian Spiker and Terry Ryan of Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)
Thanks to Terry Ryan and Brian Spiker, Memphis now has its very own cantina, straight out of the Star Wars universe. If you aren’t familiar with cantinas, Wookieepedia (yes, Wookieepedia) defines cantinas as a sort of pub where drunk and disorderly galactic patrons could socialize and, of course, engage in some illicit, criminal activity. But unlike the cantinas in the Star Wars universe, Ryan and Spiker’s cantina — the Lost Cantina Toy Store — is far from being a hotbed of seedy pursuits.
Inside, action figures, lightsabers, character helmets, Millennium Falcon replicas, and other Star Wars memorabilia adorn every shelf and wall, with no space left untouched — even the bathroom has Star Wars-themed wallpaper. Most of the items for sale are 25 years or older, and all of the items come from Ryan’s and Spiker’s personal collections. “We didn’t have to spend anything on inventory,” says Ryan.
“The bulk of what you see is my collection, starting from ’95,” Spiker adds. “I’d say this is about a third of it. My wife did not like it all in the house, and it found its way to several storage units that I was tired of paying rent on.”
A stormtrooper, BB-8, and Greedo (who totally did not shoot first) (Credit: Abigail Morici)
Spiker’s love of Star Wars began when he was around 8 years old, when the first movies came out. “As a child, there were always these toys I wanted, but my parents only bought me what they thought I needed,” he says. “But when I had a job of my own and my own income, I just started collecting the stuff I always dreamed about collecting as a child. Then it just got out of control.
“I had a route that I could take down through Mississippi,” Spiker continues, “and I could hit 12 Walmarts in one day. I’d start at about 4 a.m. when they would start putting the toys out when I knew that new-release stuff was coming out. I would get done by about 8 at night.”
To toy collectors, Ryan explains, the fun is in finding the items. “Big collectors call it hunting — you got out hunting for the day,” he says. “It’s a chance to be a kid at heart, I guess. Reliving childhood — reliving that feeling you get when you see Star Wars stuff.”
After meeting through work, Ryan and Spiker realized that they shared the same passion in Star Wars and collecting — their friendship was natural. Years later, after attending a convention in Nashville together, Ryan proposed the idea of the toy store to Spiker, and eventually, Spiker, as he says, “gave in.”
“At least here, I can look at [my collection] as opposed to storing it in a storage unit and never seeing it,” Spiker says. “We’ve been enjoying talking to other collectors in town about their collections and having them come in to buy some of the stuff that we have. … It’s a hobby store for us; we’re hoping to make some money, but that’s not our primary objective.”
A small selection of the collection at the Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)
Items can cost anywhere from $4 to $2500, so there’s something for every budget and for Star Wars enthusiasts of any age, not just collectors. “These toys are meant to be played with,” Ryan says. “I had a kid bring in two tupperware canisters full of toys, and lay them all out on the table just to show me his collection. Guys like Brian and I, we’ll save them in a box.” But that doesn’t mean they expect everyone to do the same — especially kids.
Even Spiker, a self-proclaimed “avid do-not-open-it toy collector,” has been indulging in opening some of the boxes. “I’m like, oh wait, I’ve never opened that one before, so it’s been fun for me to finally open some of these toys that I’ve had for 25 years — that I forgot I even had.”
The co-owners agree that being able to enjoy and share their passion with other collectors and Star Wars fans has been the most rewarding part of opening their store. “It’s a way for me to kind of escape into a mindset of a kid when reality is bearing down on you,” Ryan says.
“I think that appreciating the original movies and understanding the difference between the dark side and the light side, the Force, the good and evil of it,” Spiker says, “I think it gives you some grounding in your morals and values, that good can win over evil, that there is hope. … We need more of that in the world.”
Open Saturdays and Sundays at 9 a.m.-5 p.m., the Lost Cantina Toy Store is located at 620 S. Bellevue, on the corner of Bellevue and Harbert, across from the Checkers.
Portrait of the Artist as a Sportsman, 2019 (Photo: Abigail Morici)
“Fire Danger Today! Prevent Wildfires,” alerts the sign at the entrance of the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College. In lieu of rating the day’s level of fire danger from low to extreme, this sign carries the message: “I don’t want to talk about it.” Alternative plaques say, “Gestures broadly at everything” or “Well, it’s been worse.”
Raina Belleau, a professor at Rhodes, considers this piece, entitled Fire Danger, to be a pillar of her exhibition, “Enchanted Forest Fire,” through which she reflects on her climate anxiety. The messages on the plaques, she says, “are directly pulled from everyday phrases when we want to tell other people what a situation is like without causing alarm. These signs are scattered throughout the gallery to show that we’ve gone through these phases of denial or false reassurance [about climate change and environmental issues], and we are now in a place where we no longer lack the knowledge to have the conversation that needs to happen.” Instead, she suggests, we are unable to cope with our fears and realizations; we feel static, stuck between the choice to take accountability for the impacts of climate change we have caused as humans or to ignore them.
“One of the ways that I approach that sense of anxiety in the exhibition is through humor,” Belleau says. “I think humor is a way to open up some of these heavier subjects for discussion to acknowledge that there are feelings shared among a lot of different people in a lot of different places.” As such, Belleau took notes from some of the most widely familiar interpretations of nature — cartoons and fairy tales. “Like Disney, the way they use animal characters in children’s movies to elicit emotional responses.”
But unlike the classic Disneyfied, fairy-tale Enchanted Forest, the animals who inhabit Belleau’s exhibition are under a severe distress that evinces itself physically, distorting their bodily forms. The polar bear wears jeans, cuffed above his human ankles and two left human feet; he has no eyes, only sockets through which a disco-ball interior reflects light. The raccoon stares at her hand with eyes that swirl hypnotically and glow under black light as if under a drug-induced trance. A life-sized bear sits in a lawn chair, with crumpled silver cans lying around his feet, as exaggerated tears well up in his strained, cartoonish eyes. “He’s having a moment where he doesn’t know how to feel the emotions he’s having,” Belleau says. “He may be indulging in some less-than-healthy coping mechanisms.”
To sculpt the forms of these animals, Belleau turned to her preferred medium of found objects, particularly ones that are difficult to recycle, like single-use styrofoam coolers or the air packets that come in online shipping orders. However, unlike her usual style where these objects are recognizable — where the viewer can recognize that leaves, for instance, are made out of recycled plastic bags — these animals hide their recycled interior. “It was important for them to have some of that artificiality, like a cartoon character would, and not show what they are made of,” she says. “It’s been important for the work to reflect some of my personal commitments. That doesn’t necessarily have to be seen by the viewer, but that act is embedded in their cores quite literally.”
“There’s an element of escapism in movies, stories,” Belleau continues. “I think that visiting an art exhibition is also a form of escapism, but letting you enter this realm of the unreal or the imagined will never let you fully let go of what’s happening in the real world.”
“Enchanted Forest Fire” is on display at the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College until October 16th. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Vaccines and masks are required.
Theo James and Nisa Williams (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
The Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis’ first racially integrated facility, once host to concerts, basketball games, graduations, and more, has been closed to the public since 2006. This summer, the Coliseum Coalition, which has been advocating for the Coliseum’s revitalization, commissioned Nisa Williams, a Crosstown High School senior, and her father, Theo James, a textile and graphic artist, to add visual appeal to the landmark’s exterior.
Within two months, Williams and James painted six 15-by-15-foot panels that illustrate Memphis values, with Otis Redding captioned as representing culture, Larry Finch as talent, Justice Constance Baker Motley as justice, a grad in cap and gown as community, Unapologetic as passion, and three children with a globe in their hand as imagination. The father-daughter duo finished the paintings in early August. I recently spoke with them about their project.
Memphis Flyer:How would y’all describe your process?
Nisa Williams: The words were given to us, like prompts, from the coalition. We had a little more freedom of who we wanted to portray. We were given a list of names, and we were also told we could do our own research on what provokes us.
Theo James: After we decided what we were going to do, Nisa and I bashed around the idea of sticking to a graphic style. We didn’t want to go for a photorealistic look because we wanted it to be punchy from a distance.
NW: We just got started doing stuff. I’d start painting in one area, and then he would do another, and it kinda just came together. I think I served the most in concept sketches and making sure that the framework of the murals, as soon as we started painting, was correct.
TJ: Yeah, she was the one that organized how we were going about doing it. I was impressed with what she was capable of doing. There’s some difficulty in translating a screen-size thumbnail into a 15-by-15-foot panel. I think I would’ve had a lot more difficulty without her. I felt that we had an eye-to-eye approach.
What was it like to work together as father and daughter?
TJ: For me, it’s probably the most flattering thing a parent can feel. I didn’t twist Nisa’s arm; she got into art on her own. She started doing little rudimentary things and then it went from there, like people discovering fire to the internet, with her. She has a style already. I know it’s her stuff when I see it, and I’m amazed by it. I’m self-taught. Nisa — she’s taught herself a lot — but she’s had the benefit of good high school art classes. I’ve actually learned a lot from her.
NW: I appreciate that a lot. You can ask him, I’m not really good at receiving compliments. He’s a really talented artist with a notable style. I learned a lot of techniques and more professional and streamlined ways to problem-solve and how to appeal to clients. I think a lot of people underestimate how influential he is in the city, and I think it’s cool that anybody can provoke you through art or make you think about something. That’s a hard thing to do.
What do you hope this project will provoke in onlookers?
NW: We wanted to get people to inquire about the space and what’s happening to it. A lot of the composition has references to the people embodied in the picture. It functions almost as a timeline of the Coliseum.
TJ: Every one of the people portrayed had a piece of history that happened at that location. You can’t live in Memphis without having a story about the Coliseum. You went there to see a show or you went there to graduate. This is a place that has history with a community already connected to it, a place that shouldn’t be demolished. It’s a large space where there’s so much potential. We have to have a place that people can bond over, a place that’s central.
NW: A place to have a collective experience.
TJ: Yeah, I think that’s how a city gets its identity.
Amid the gray, rainy city of London, fashion student and Memphis native Kris Keys found herself in an indescribable pain. A gallbladder attack, the doctors told her, triggered by hereditary elliptocytosis — a rare blood disorder that Keys was diagnosed with as a baby.
Searching for a way to heal, Keys turned to research. She contacted St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she was treated as a child, and got a hold of slides of her blood cells and the blood tests doctors performed on Keys’ older relatives.
Soon, those organic, elliptical blood cells that Keys observed spread across her illustrations as she replicated the deep reds and purples with watercolors. It was cathartic to see her disorder on paper and later on fabric in her 2019 womenswear collection, “Hematology.” “Using my pain as an artist was my way to heal,” she says. “One thing that shifted my mindset of having an illness was pushing it into an art space.”
Kris Keys uses watercolors to heal and understand her pain, passed down by the generations before her. (Photo: Brian Manning)
After returning to Memphis and releasing “Hematology,” Keys says, she started hearing from people around the world who shared the blood disorder, and she knew she hadn’t finished her research. The disorder is genetic, affects one in every 3,000 to 5,000 people in the U.S., and mostly affects people of African-American and Mediterranean descent. “I wondered, how can this be resolved?” Keys says. “How can we avoid continuing this pattern?” She wanted to find the genesis of her disorder, so she started tracing her lineage and listening to her older relatives’ stories.
“I still haven’t found the origins of the disorder,” she says, but the stories she did find have offered her insights into her identity. “There’re so many reasons why we act the way we act. A lot times it comes from our ancestry. There’re these streams of things that lead back to slavery. I never realized how much slavery affected DNA. I started seeing patterns in my relationships, my friendships that I really couldn’t get a grasp on until I started to sit down and think about where these patterns are coming from. Like, oh, this is coming from my grandfather or my great-grandfather.
“Sometimes,” Keys continues, “the patterns help us to be stronger, but sometimes they work against our purpose.” Her most recent collection, “Genealogy,” explores this connection between ancestral patterns and the opportunity for healing. Unlike the mysterious and dark violets and reds of her first collection, this collection features flowers in dusty yellows and earthy tones, light colors that reflect the enlightenment Keys has found in uncovering her family’s stories.
Photo: Brian Manning
“Flowers have these healing properties,” Keys says of the floral motif. “I thought, what natural resources do I have around me, and what did my ancestors have?” During her travels, Keys noticed wildflowers, daffodils, and elderberry and magnolia flowers growing around her relatives’ homes, and the inspiration took root and blossomed with the help of her choice medium of watercolors.
“Watercolors are one of the only mediums of painting that you have to completely surrender,” says Keys. “You can’t control where it goes. You put the paint down, and it kinda flows where it wants to even if you have an idea of where you want it to go. I relate that to life. You can have an idea of what you want your life to be, but you have to surrender to your story and make beauty out of what you have.” She adds, “To really live a life that’s magical and purposeful and that’s gonna make an impact, we have to learn where we’ve been and how we got there.”
Keys unveiled “Genealogy” with a virtual exhibition on September 7th. The exhibition, still accessible on her website, features watercolor paintings, accompanied by videos that explain the story behind each piece. Within a year or so, these paintings will be turned into a patterned fabric for womenswear that emphasizes comfort and style for the traveling woman.
To register for the exhibition and for more information, visit bykriskeys.com or @bykriskeys on Instagram.
Selections from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)
Mason jars, alligators, pine cones, and black-eyed peas are just some of the images on the oracle cards in Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” deck. The cards, 45 in total, are all illustrated with acrylic paintings, representing different aspects of Southern culture and history. Around 20 of the original paintings are on display at Jay Etkin Gallery.
Oracle cards are similar to tarot cards, Williams-Ng explains, “but they’re more open-ended.” While tarot cards typically have standard symbols in every deck that require prior knowledge to interpret the images, oracle decks can contain a myriad of images, usually appealing to a theme, and each card contains a clear, written affirmation or piece of advice, with no prior knowledge necessary.
For instance, in Williams-Ng’s deck, she says, “If you pull the copperhead card, it’s supposed to be warning against bad influences,” but it’s up to the user to interpret who or what those bad influences are. “Today, people who consume these kinds of cards are more likely to use tarot or oracle cards as their own self-help tool,” she adds. “They’ll draw cards and just read them and think about what it might mean to their own lives. People are seeing tarot [and oracle] cards as something that is for their own personal betterment, instead of ‘Oh, I’m gonna find out if my boyfriend is going to marry me or if I’m going to die this year.’”
Selections from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)
Williams-Ng originated the images and interpretations of her oracle cards. She had been looking for a deck with a Southern theme but couldn’t find one; fortunately, she says, “I liked the idea of creating a card deck where I could define what the cards are.” So, at the end of last year, she began brainstorming and painting.
“It was kind of a pandemic project for me,” she says. “I had just moved back to my hometown [Memphis from Milwaukee], and I was stuck in the house and started thinking about things that interest me on a personal level.” For the past decade, Williams-Ng says, she has been researching the different spiritual practices and belief systems throughout the South.
We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems.
“I wanted my deck of cards to represent overlapping spiritual traditions,” she says. From Christianity to Hoodoo to Celtic and Appalachian beliefs, she explains, spiritual systems in the South often share a lot of regional traditions and beliefs. (Though, in this deck, she omitted belief systems from Louisiana because “Louisiana is a world unto itself.”) “Of the 45 cards, there’s only five to six cards of any one thing, and that way there’s a real diversity. We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems, and that way the user or reader gets presented with a democratic smattering of different ideas.”
Stacey Williams-Ng (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)
The title of the deck, as well as the Jay Etkin exhibition, was inspired by the Southern Gothic literary movement in the 19th century. “[The Southern Gothic writers] were trying to show the way the South was hiding beneath this veneer of civility, but beneath it there was all kinds of trauma,” Williams-Ng says. “Not everything in my deck is an affirmation; you know, these cards have some shadow things, like the copperhead card. … I wanted to give people a sense of another side of the South — the more grotesque or esoteric or metaphysical side of the South — the shadow side.”
Even so, Williams-Ng hopes her cards provide joy and inspiration. “More and more people are trying to figure out how they can get in touch with their own local magic, if you will, or their own local traditions,” she says. “And as for people who are dabbling in witchcraft and the occult and even in just botanical healing practices and things like that, they are really trying to work with the authenticity of working with the land, meaning working with [the traditions and spiritual practices] where you’re from.”
One card that Williams-Ng thinks will enchant Memphians is the Crystal Grotto card, which is based on the Crystal Shrine Grotto at Memorial Park Cemetery in East Memphis. The image on the card is non-specific, labelled simply as a crystal grotto, but anyone who has seen the Crystal Shrine Grotto will recognize the inspiration. As for the card’s meaning, Williams-Ng says, “It represents the cosmos and getting in touch with the universe. It’s about ancient wisdom.”
A selection from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)
This unique attention to regional detail in Williams-Ng’s deck has attracted a great deal of interest in customers wanting their own, especially after she launched a successful Kickstarter campaign. “I never expected it to have any commercial success. I’ve sold a thousand decks, and I just can’t believe this. It’s clearly hitting a nerve with some people,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of people evoke their grandmothers. There’s a lot of ‘This reminds me of my Memaw, this reminds me of going to my grandma’s house.’”
The opening reception of “Southern Gothic Oracle” at Jay Etkin Gallery is Friday, September 3rd, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be card readings, and decks of cards accompanied by books for interpretations will be on sale. The exhibition will remain on display until October 2nd. To purchase a deck of cards, visit Williams-Ng’s Etsy store.
Zahra Chowdhury, a Pleasant View School senior on the Benjamin Hooks Branch Council (Courtesy Zahra Chowdhury)
This summer, Memphis Public Libraries (MPL) has partnered with BRIDGES to assemble the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils, as part of an initiative to boost teen engagement and expand libraries’ teen programming. The councils consist of middle and high school students, who represent five branches: Benjamin L. Hooks, North, Poplar-White Station, Raleigh, and South.
“We wanted to have a group of young people who could speak for themselves as to what they wanted to have in those [teen-specific] spaces,” says Terrice Thomas, manager of South Branch Library. “We looked for applicants with leadership experience or leadership potential, willingness to be engaged in their community, and willingness to be outspoken and talk to people.” With this goal in mind, MPL reached out to the BRIDGES Youth Action Center, an organization already creating authentic youth leadership opportunities in Memphis.
“BRIDGES believes that youth have the answers,” says Mahal Burr, BRIDGES Youth Action Center director. “When adults intentionally seek young people’s perspectives in efforts to shape the city’s future, we create a more inclusive community. Youth-adult equity in decision-making spaces like our public library system also ensures the decisions we make that directly affect the lives of youth are better informed and more effective.”
Burr continues, “We are currently in the process of supporting the piloting of the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils’ in five branches but will be supporting the expansion of these councils to all branches within the next three years. … Youth who are involved in the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils will benefit from stronger libraries that better serve them.”
(Credit: Terrice Thomas)
The pilot cohort of 22 students has met weekly since June to discuss how the libraries can better support young people. They facilitated their own meetings with minimal intervention from library and BRIDGES staff, collected data from their communities about community needs and perception of the library system, and each council member received a stipend for their work. All of this effort culminated on August 5th in a presentation to the library staff, board, and funders. The students recommended solutions to a range of priorities, including transportation access, mental health services, community violence education, and financial literacy and career planning programs. A summary report can be found here.
Zahra Chowdhury, a Pleasant View School senior on the Benjamin Hooks Branch Council, says that her branch looked to improve intergenerational engagement through social media, adult-equity training, and youth-centered programming and spaces. “The libraries already have a wide range of programming and resources, but most young people don’t know or have never heard of them because they aren’t being actively advertised on the platforms youth use,” she says. The council also suggested that MPL host library tours and scavenger hunts to show “how libraries are more than just books,” not to mention how all the library’s programming and resources are free.
The Ben Hooks council, Chowdhury continues, also recommended programming around mental health through meditation and yoga classes or self-care and mindfulness journals, as well as educational support through ACT/SAT prep courses, peer tutoring, and a teen book club with discussions led by youth on books recommended by youth.
“We are still waiting to hear back from [administration] about feedback and what requests they can fulfill,” she adds, “but it was an amazing opportunity just to present to them and get their ideas on what the library needs to better engage young people.”
Thomas says that the administration is looking forward to bringing to fruition as many of the councils’ ideas as possible. Already, MPL is helping the Raleigh council with their initiative to have a block party this fall. “It’s great to see that the library is the opposite of what [the students] thought it was,” Thomas says. “Before they might’ve been like, ‘Oh, I thought the library was a place that wasn’t really for me, that people would be shushing me.’ But no, we want you here and we want you to be heard and express yourself.”
“Too often are young people offered a seat at the table but their voices go unheard or completely ignored,” Chowdhury says. “That’s why I am so grateful and appreciative that the MPL staff working with the youth council has continuously upheld the principles of youth and adult equity and are truly listening to what young people have to say.”
The end of the month marks the end of the pilot group’s term. MPL will start recruiting and interviewing for the next group of council members in September. This group will meet twice a month and will serve for the duration of the school year. To apply, students can go to memphislibrary.org.
Watermelon and Knife by Wayne Thiebaud (Photo: Artist Rights Society)
The Dixon Gallery & Gardens teases your sweet tooth with its most recent exhibitions: “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” and “Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt.”
The former features 100 works by Wayne Thiebaud in honor of his 100th birthday, which he celebrated in November 2020. The exhibition looks at the entirety of the artist’s career, starting with his earliest works right after World War II and ending with his latest series from 2016 to 2020.
Thiebaud’s subjects vary from landscapes to figure paintings, but he is most known for his 1960s paintings of cakes, pies, and other sweet treats. “A lot of times his paintings are inspired by the food displays you might’ve seen at a typical American diner in the middle of the 20th century,” says Julie Pierotti, the Martha R. Robinson curator at the Dixon. “So they have this kind of nostalgia to them for us looking at them today — nostalgia for the diner culture of decades ago.” Critics of the time referred to Thiebaud as the “Walt Whitman of the Delicatessen.”
“You don’t have to have any art history knowledge to come in and look at his work, appreciate it, enjoy it, and learn something,” Pierotti adds. “These are subjects like two ice cream cones that are so a part of our life and our culture that anyone can look at them and smile.
“The humor in them is so deadpan, yet it’s quietly dramatic,” she continues. “They speak to something inside of us that is like a guilty pleasure; you have this bodily reaction to it, in your heart and in your gut.” Thiebaud painted in the same manner a baker would frost a cake, with thick coats of paint that make the viewer want to scrape off a bit with their fingers.
Greely Myatt wanted to capture this kind of bodily reaction in his sculptures for the “Piece of Cake” exhibition, also at the Dixon. Just as Thiebaud applied thick layers of paint, Myatt applied layers of brown caulking as the chocolate icing on top of cakes made of wood. The caulking oozes between the layers and drips down the sides. “It’s really gooey and rich,” he says. “You wanna make it look lush, so people wanna lick it rather than just look at it.”
Myatt made his first cake sculpture with 54 layers to celebrate his 54th birthday in 2006. After that, he began making cakes and other sweet treats as gifts to celebrate his friends’ milestones and birthdays — gifts that friends like gallery-owner David Lusk and Metal Museum executive director Carissa Hussong have loaned to the Dixon for this exhibition. “I never thought I’d put these pieces in a show,” he says. “I made them because it was my birthday or David’s birthday, and I thought it was funny to make these things you couldn’t eat.”
When asked if Thiebaud inspired his confectious sculptures, Myatt says that, as an art professor at University of Memphis for 30 years, he was aware of Thiebaud, but Thiebaud was not why he made these pieces. Rather, the connection between the two occurred serendipitously. “A lot of my work references other art,” he says. “I grew up in Mississippi, where there weren’t a whole lot of art museums or galleries. So my connection with art was not with the high art — modernism — until I went to school. It was sort of a collision between the vernacular art that I grew up with and the art with historical references.”
But for one cake in this exhibition, the connection between the two artists was intentional. In honor of the Thiebaud exhibit and his 100th birthday, Myatt sculpted a 100-layer cake that towers 8 feet and sits right next to Myatt’s 54-layer cake — “Wayne and I,” he titles it.
The two exhibitions are playful and clever. But as Myatt says, “Humor is a serious form of art. It’s a skill.” And it’s a skill that both Wayne Thiebaud and Greely Myatt possess.
“Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt” is on view at the Dixon until September 26th. “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” is on view until October 3rd.
