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To Each His Own

I adored Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven when it came out three years ago and love it even more now that its cable-TV ubiquity has made it a constant channel-surfing Christmas present. Despite the great cast, it could have easily been unwatchable in the hands of a typical Hollywood director-for-hire, but Soderbergh’s exquisite editing and subtle direction found the in-the-creases energy and small comic moments others would have missed, resulting in the kind of stylish, witty, and exciting popcorn movie Hollywood tries to make all the time and almost never does.

Soderbergh reunites each and every key player from the original movie for Ocean’s Twelve, yet another go at the heist-movie-as-movie-star-vehicle strategy. More European in setting, tone, and visual style than the first movie, Ocean’s Twelve manages to both match and challenge the charms of Soderbergh’s earlier triumph.

Where Ocean’s Eleven sunk its teeth into the procedural charms of the heist film, the follow-up takes the air out of the genre in a way some viewers might find dissatisfying. The heist details are not as thoroughly or lovingly explained, and the movie’s plot twist hinges on a satirically low-tech gambit (not to mention a Red Sox-Yankees rivalry).

In its agreeable slackness, Ocean’s Twelve is more similar than its predecessor to the Rat Pack original especially since the Rat Pack’s Ocean’s Eleven was also generally accepted as incidental to the stars’ off-screen shenanigans. The difference is that Soderbergh is simply too good to make something quite so pointless.

Rather, the way Ocean’s Twelve is ostensibly a straight narrative yet makes its plot a secondary concern reminds me of an older Hollywood tradition. Rio Bravo wasn’t really about an Old West jailbreak; it was about Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin’s jailhouse duet, Angie Dickinson’s feather boa, and John Wayne’s line readings. The Big Sleep wasn’t really about, well, whatever it was supposed to be about. Instead, it was about the way Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall looked at each other. Likewise, Ocean’s Twelve isn’t really about a heist; it’s about deadpan George Clooney reaction shots, Catherine Zeta-Jones’ raven hair and red lipstick, and Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts.

In this way, Ocean’s Twelve also endorses an older, still common but now less respected mode of movie acting. This is not the Brando/De Niro/Streep method school of character immersion or of tapping into an actor’s emotional history. It’s movie acting as the tweaking of a persona.

In this regard, Clooney is more the new Cary Grant than any other contemporary actor (especially in his suave mugging in Intolerable Cruelty), and Julia Roberts rivals the grand dames of the past Garbo, Davis, Stanwyck, Crawford, etc. Since hitting her stride with My Best Friend’s Wedding, still her most meta role ever, Roberts has had a string of great performances in a mixed bag of movies all united by a sublime sense of self-awareness: Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, Erin Brockovich (her first collaboration with Soderbergh and the movie that finally won her an Oscar), Full Frontal, Mona Lisa Smile.

Roberts doesn’t get much screen time in Ocean’s Twelve, but her one set-piece, which I’ll not give away here, is the movie’s most giddily spontaneous moment.

And that is perhaps one of Ocean’s Twelve‘s biggest flaws: With the original film’s 11 crooks plus Roberts’ Tess bolstered by a large groups of add-ons and cameos Zeta-Jones, Eddie Izzard, Albert Finney, Cherry Jones, Topher Grace, and many more and with Soderbergh’s direction intentionally more lackadaisical, some players are short on screen time and threaten to fall through the cracks. But despite straining to make everyone matter again, it’s a credit to Soderbergh’s democratic, communal impulse (and, yes, that’s what these Ocean’s movies and Rio Bravo are really about) that he finds at least one comic grace note for each and every character, even the ones most in danger of slipping into inconsequentiality: Don Cheadle’s munitions master gently deflecting Clooney’s age inquiries; Peking acrobat Shaobo Qin’s “grease man” bouncing on a hotel bed with a chocolate high; Bernie Mac’s casino con-man failing to hide a faint smile.

In the end, that’s what matters. Ocean’s Twelve won’t be as endlessly durable an entertainment as its predecessor, won’t be a channel-surfing stopper par excellence. But it triumphs in the same way: This movie isn’t about the mechanics of the heist film or a paid vacation for stars who don’t need one. It’s about movie-making itself and the notion that everyone has value and deserves their time to shine.

Chris Herrington

I sleepwalk. It’s a strange, disorienting, and sometimes embarrassing phenomenon that leaves me exhausted in the morning and anxious during the day. It only seems to occur during times of high stress, but I’m always stressed out, so it happens fairly often. I never just wake up somewhere; there is always some half-lucid dream that leads to finally waking myself up and realizing that yes, yet again, I have taken an unnecessary stroll. Usually it involves me thinking that I am late for work or at work and having missed a deadline, so there are some nights when I have dressed myself and put in a full day’s “work” before I finally wake up. This can happen several times in one night. Once, while staying in a hotel in London, I walked out of my room, down the hall, and knocked on somebody’s door, waking them up. Once, I woke up outside my house and down the street in my underwear at 3 a.m. Sometimes I rearrange the room. It’s always a little different and always a little bit the same. Someday I will get this checked out.

In The Machinist, Trevor Reznick (Christian Bale) hasn’t slept in a year. Or so he says. In another variation on sleepwalking, he dutifully clocks in for his dreary, dangerous factory job, clocks out, pays nightly visits to an out-of-the-way airport diner to chat pleasantly with friendly waitress Marie (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), and sometimes engages the services and company of friendly, snarky prostitute Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) before doing it all again the next morning. Day in, day out: work, coffee, sex, work, coffee, sex. In that year since he’s slept, Trevor’s also lost a lot of weight. He is told, with regularity, “If you were any thinner, you wouldn’t exist.”

The arrival of creepy new worker, Ivan (John Sharian), at the factory sets into motion a chain of events that leads Trevor to question the motives of everyone around him even when a machine accident tears off the arm of co-worker Miller (Michael Ironside). Trevor had stumbled into the machine’s ON button but was distracted by Ivan. And yet, nobody’s heard of Ivan. Why is this strange man haunting Trevor’s workplace? Is Trevor being plotted against? Somebody is leaving cryptic Post-Its on his refrigerator door with the “Hangman” scribbled on them. The more letters he fills in, the closer the little cartoon man is to being hanged. First, the word appears as “- – – – ER,” then “- – LLER,” then “- ILLER.” What’s next? Trevor’s only solace the alternating comforts of good girl Marie and bad girl Stevie soon crumbles as he gets dangerously intimate with both women and as Ivan’s identity becomes clearer. And Trevor is so very, very tired.

I mentioned the sleepwalking earlier because that is the personal basis by which I was most immediately able to relate to Trevor and understand his dilemmas. It’s not easy to sympathize with him. Nice enough guy as he is, there is a guilty pall that hangs over him and a dreariness to his existence that isolates him from almost everyone around him. When things heat up with the two women in his life, he finally seems to wake up a little but not for long. His lucidity soon gives way to nightmarish paranoia and terror. But it isn’t paranoia if they really are out to get you, is it? And doesn’t everyone have somebody out to get them? I know I’ve got people out for me, and there’s one or two people that I’m out to get. That’s normal, right?

The Machinist is one of the most solid, creepy movies to come out in a long time, so thoroughly combining psychological suspense and atmosphere in Trevor’s cold, dripping, steely surroundings that it becomes hard to differentiate the two. Emerging director Brad Anderson unblinkingly sets a tone and sticks by it to the bitter end, with a vintage-quality film noir score and a color scheme so washed out and drained of life that the sight of blood dripping from a refrigerator is almost comforting because we finally get to see a real red.

Bale, always a fine and committed (if humorless) actor, has gone above and beyond any call with The Machinist by famously losing 63 pounds and withering down to a skeletal 120-something. It’s alarming to see the adorable Empire of the Sun boy all grown up and then wasted away. And yet this admirable (if maybe foolish) transformation is only a component of his equally impressive performance: starvingly committed, haunted, hollowed. The cinematographer seems equally dedicated to unflattering him with strange shots of Bale’s depleted frame.

Spooky, unnerving, The Machinist proves that the only thing scarier than nightmares is not being able to sleep at all. • Bo List

Categories
Cover Feature News

Dying to Fit In

The scene was right out of a mentoring organization’s handbook: six black professional men conferring with six black inner-city boys. All of the boys, leaned forward in their seats, listening attentively as the men discussed the boys’ school lives, their friends, and their futures.

But the men were not mentors, they were lawyers. And the boys — ages 13 to 15 — were not mentees, they were clients, on trial for the September 14th murder of their Westside High School classmate, Tarus Williams.

During their two-day trial, more than 20 witnesses testified, detailing the final day of Williams’ life and the defendants’ newly formed “G-Unit,” named after rapper 50 Cent’s group. The court also heard about Williams’ alleged initiation into the group, which involved a timed fight with another member. During the fight, Williams was tossed into a bathroom stall. Medical examiners said Williams’ heart ruptured, causing the 15-year-old’s death.

Tyrus Strong, Antonio Taylor, Damien Farmer, Jeremy Henderson, Artavius Branch, and Mack Lewis are now in the custody of the State of Tennessee Youth Services Bureau. Convicted of reckless homicide, they could remain in state custody until age 19.

Almost overnight, concerns about gangs in the schools moved from the streets to the front page. Parent organizations, community outreach programs, and law enforcement groups were jumpstarted into action. Memphis City Schools superintendent Carol Johnson spoke to ministers about helping students in the district. The Memphis Police Department held crime prevention forums. Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons visited middle schools, speaking about the dangers of joining gangs.

Yet, despite these reactions, many questions remain: Does the school system have a gang problem? Were other initiation activities occurring in the schools? But more importantly, what could be done about it?

Gang, Group, or Social Club?

Defense attorneys in the Westside case say the G-Unit was not a gang. “None of the boys involved used the word ‘gang.’ It came from the media and police,” says attorney Coleman Garrett. “If any group of people that comes together not for illegal purposes [is a gang], then every organization is a gang, even churches. These boys wanted to be popular, but they didn’t make themselves into a gang. We did.”

Not so, countered the prosecution. “These boys knew what G-Unit was and that what they did was wrong,” says attorney Terre Fratesi.

Memphis/Shelby County Metro Gang Unit detective Robert Elliott says the pattern of denial that exists in Memphis and in the school system contributes to the gang problem. “You’re just playing with words,” he says. “Gang, organization, misunderstood brothers — it’s still a gang if it exists to do criminal activities. Just because you don’t know that it’s a gang doesn’t excuse the fact that you are committing illegal acts.”

Part of the work of the 37-member Metro Gang Unit involves looking into school incidents that are thought to be gang-related. The unit also presents educational forums to parents and other groups on how to identify gang behavior. Although gang activity has recently become news, Elliott says gangs have long been a problem in the city and county schools. But county school administrators want their schools to be perceived as safe havens, and city school administrators worry about negative stereotypes, so gang-related incidents are often not reported as such, Elliott says.

So, does the school system have a gang problem? School board member Wanda Halbert says she never received a report from the school system about a gang problem prior to the Westside incident. And Memphis Police Department juvenile arrest records show that since the beginning of the school year, only four students with a gang affiliation have been arrested in schools. Those students, from Ridgeway, Fairley, and Kirby high schools, were charged with assault. Of the 480 serious offenses reported, including robbery and drug seizures, there is no reported gang affiliation.

But law enforcement officials insist that gangs do exist in schools and are actively recruiting members. One police incident report tells of a Westwood student on his way home from school who was punched in the eye for not representing a gang and voicing his noninterest in joining.

“We are a product of our community. There are gangs in the city of Memphis and whatever is in the city can be found in schools,” says MCS security coordinator Sam Moses. His 30-member team monitors and responds to school alarms and crime calls 24 hours a day. “Many times, the schools, because of how they are zoned, wind up with kids in rival gangs in the same place. But everything you see is not a gang,” Moses says.

Reppin’ Your ‘Hood

One reason gang-related incidents are difficult to track is because the number of gangs and gang members is difficult to determine.

The adult gang database maintained by the district attorney’s office includes roughly 9,000 names but does not list juvenile members. To identify juveniles, police must rely on visible clues such as clothing or tattoos or an admission of gang involvement.

The four most well-known gangs nationally are the Bloods, the Vice Lords, the Crips, and the Gangster Disciples. (The Bloods and the Vice Lords are affiliated, as are the Crips and the Gangster Disciples.) These gangs, predominantly African-American, began emerging during the 1970s in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. Offshoots of the original four gangs include the Latin Kings, 4 Corner Hustlers, and Krazy Ass Latinos (KALs).

According to Elliott, these gangs have thousands of members and are established and well-organized. While each of the major gangs has a number of “sets,” or divisions, in Memphis local gangs are less structured and more vigilante.

“They are making up their own rules, wearing colors that are not consistent with traditional gangs, and making up their own cliques,” Elliott says. “A lot of these kids have no structure, and the gangs just walk around beating kids up for no reason. You’d be surprised at what happens in Memphis and Shelby County.”

For instance, membership in these nontraditional gangs — the MS Posse, the Dirty Dozen, and the Pink Street Gang — is largely based on where members live. “The kids here don’t really know what gangs are all about,” says Elliott. “Here you’ll have a Crip and a Blood playing basketball together, whereas in places like Chicago and L.A., members say, ‘We live it. We drink it. We breathe it.’ Here, kids see their friends in a gang, and they want to be in it too.”

That rationale leads to organizations like G-Unit at Westside and “false-flagging” (claiming allegiance to a gang without joining). Another Memphis variant is the short lifespan of the nontraditional gangs and the young ages of their leaders. In many instances, the O.G. (original gangster) with seniority in Memphis gangs may be as young as 16 or 17 years old, says Elliott.

Although many Memphis gangs are nontraditional, some of the tenets of gang life still apply. Members are identified by hand symbols and clothing. There is usually some type of rival gang tension. And crimes are committed.

Even though the opposing sides in the Westside case couldn’t agree on the G-Unit’s identity, they did agree that the members were looking to belong. Anti-gang literature distributed by the MCS Division of Parental Involvement and Family Support lists acceptance from peers as one of the six major reasons for youth to join gangs.

Acceptance was the key reason former gang member Melvin Turnage joined the Vice Lords. He became a member while in jail but was attracted to the gang lifestyle from the age of 10, when he and his drug-addicted mother moved to Memphis from California. “With my mom being on drugs, gangsters would be around all the time, and I became impressed with that lifestyle,” he says. “I was attracted to the unity because I was lacking the bonding from my mom.”

Turnage spent his youth commiting crimes such as robbery and drug sales. “By the time I got to jail my reputation had preceded me,” says Turnage. “I had members from all the camps coming to me and asking me to join their gang. They knew I was down for anything. I was just ruthless.”

Instead of the usual initiation technique of a “jump in,” or timed fight with existing gang members, Turnage was placed on “bed rest” by Vice Lords in the jail. He spent those five days memorizing the history and rituals of the gang and then demonstrating his knowledge during an oral test.

“It’s sad because kids don’t know what will really happen once they get into a gang,” he says. “All they look at is how cool it is to have 30 other people ready to have your back when you fight.”

Paying the Time

As the saying goes, crime doesn’t pay. And Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons is trying to get that message across by taking his version of the anti-gang message to the schools. Unlike the school district’s message, which promotes positive supplemental activities and community participation for students, Gibbons’ message is more about putting fear into the heart of any potential gang member.

Since last spring, Gibbons has spoken to 25 city and county middle schools as part of an anti-gang initiative aimed at sixth- through eighth-graders. The 25-minute presentation is a lesson in shock therapy. Along with gang statistics and information, Gibbons presents a slide-show of juveniles prosecuted for gang-related activities by the attorney general’s office. During a recent visit to Hamilton Middle School, students buzzed as images of a former student at the school flashed on the screen. The student had been involved in an aggravated robbery and is currently in state custody.

“Most of our problems occur before or after school and sometimes as far as 10 miles away,” says Hamilton Middle School principal Willie Rhodes. “But when authorities find out that the kid involved is a student here, then you hear ‘Hamilton has a gang problem.’ Our parental support is sporadic, and a better showing would really help with the discipline. Despite all that, we are making progress. Our school was the only middle school in the state that was successfully removed from the state’s low-performing list.”

Perhaps Gibbons’ most important message is telling the youngsters that committing juvenile offenses will not result in lighter juvenile court sentences. Gibbons tells students: “If you choose to join a gang it is very likely that you will end up in jail for a very long time or, worse, end up killed at a very early age.”

Each year, the district attorney’s office prosecutes around 100 juvenile offenders as adults. Most of the offenses involve gangs. Gibbons hopes these prosecutions will become a deterrent for middle-schoolers as well as for older gang members who use juveniles for illegal activities. Tennessee law requires juveniles to be at least 16 years old before being tried as an adult, unless charged with serious offenses such as first- and second-degree murder, aggravated rape, or aggravated robbery. Juveniles tried in adult court in Tennessee may not receive a death sentence.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to hold violent juveniles accountable for their actions. We want to change behavior,” says Gibbons. “I don’t get any pleasure from sending a 14-year-old to jail for 30 years, but that’s the nature of my job.”

Gibbons says that a gang problem definitely exists in city and county schools. “A few years ago, there was an understanding even among gang members that the schools were like mutual territory. They handled their business outside of school,” says Gibbons. “I’m beginning to see a disturbing change in that. There have been several trends in gangs, including a lower recruitment age, recruiting across economic lines, and the fastest-growing membership is within middle-class families.”

This blurring of economic lines has led to gang growth in suburban areas, says Elliott. And instead of committing the usual cash crimes like robbery and vandalism for gang initiations, these youngsters get money from their unsuspecting parents.

A Mother’s Nightmare

Despite recent trends, the gang epidemic still disproportionately affects poor African Americans. During an outreach session presented by the Alcohol and Chemical Abuse Rehabilitation Center (ACAR) at the county’s juvenile detention center, representative Ernest Townes notes that eight of the 11 girls in custody are African-American. Similarly, 25 of the 28 boys are black, and gang involvement is prevalent in both groups. Gang activities have landed several of the youths in the detention facility more than five times on charges including drug possession, assault, and gun crimes.

“Don’t let your child become me. I was my mother’s nightmare,” the 52-year-old Townes tells a group of parents at a Kirby High School gang-violence seminar. Townes details his life, from drug dealing to the eight years spent in prison as an accessory to murder. “We have a problem and that problem is going to grow,” he says. “Life has no rewind, and as parents we have to ask ourselves, Do we dictate, communicate, or vacate the job of raising these kids?”

Since his release from prison, Townes has dedicated his life to helping young people avoid the mistakes he made. In addition to his position at ACAR, Townes also operates a nonprofit outreach organization that targets youth in the juvenile court system. “These kids don’t know what gangs are. I can tell them about grown men being shanked, or stabbed, and killed for simply associating with a rival gang member,” he says. “I just hope they never get to the point that you get to in prison where your only thought is ‘Better him than me.'”

At the detention center, Townes asks the offenders to complete a survey on their home life, gang activity, and drug usage. “The answers [to the survey questions] tell the story,” he says. “You can tell that most of these students just need one person to take just a little interest in them. Unfortunately, most of these kids will end up incarcerated as adults.”

No Deals

Gibbons says the “no deals” approach is working and that his nine-member Gang Prosecuting Unit has made a notable impact in decreasing the city’s armed robberies, homicides, and gun-related homicides. “We estimate that there are about 5,000 hard-core gang members in Shelby County right now,” he says. “Another 5,000 are active but may be juveniles. And another 5,000 are wannabes. If we could somehow rid ourselves of the gang problem, our violent crime rates would plummet.”

According to Metro Gang Unit sergeant Andy Boyd, the problems are far-reaching, and the unit’s hands are tied in their work within the schools. “We have no jurisdiction within the schools. We are only allowed in when invited by the principal and accompanied by a school administrator,” he says. When invited in, the unit can examine backpacks and lockers for gang paraphernalia such as handbooks or drugs that bankroll gang activities. Much of the gang unit’s information is provided by campus police. The Officers In Schools program puts 42 veteran Memphis police officers in middle and high schools. Middle school officers each patrol two schools. High school officers patrol one school, but may have as many as 1,500 students to monitor. Gang unit officers also park near schools and monitor students before and after school for signs of gang activity.

In addition to these law enforcement efforts, many groups across the city are preaching the message to parents that involvement is key and encouraging students to search for non-gang-related outlets for their time and energy. Are all these efforts working? It’s probably too early to tell. But there’s little doubt the Tarus Williams incident at Westside High School helped bring the issue into focus.

It seems a sad legacy for a 15-year-old boy to leave. •

Categories
News The Fly-By

Printing Problems

Five new charges have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board against the Covington and Olive Branch plants of Quebecor World, a commercial printing company with facilities through North America. The charges were filed by supporters of the Graphic Communications International Union (GCIU), who claim they are facing harassment while trying to organize unions at both plants.

The charges filed last month were added to 22 existing charges filed earlier in the year.

In addition to legal action, the GCIU has organized a campaign to help workers fight for representation. Numerous pro-union rallies have been held at the two plants over the past few months, and another is scheduled for Saturday, December 11th. Matt Brown, an organizer for GCIU, said the Memphis Quebecor plant has a union, and its employees often join Covington and Olive Branch workers at pro-union rallies.

In response to charges filed by Mid-South plants, as well as other non-union Quebecor plants across the country, several authors are encouraging their publishers to boycott Quebecor. Novelist Barbara Ehrenreich is leading a “Writer’s Call to Justice” campaign encouraging other authors to join the boycott.

“Quebecor has had a pretty ugly history in the South when it comes to organizing drives,” said Brown. “With that in mind, the union decided the best strategy is to launch a campaign taking the workers’ struggles and their issues outside of the plant. We’re taking them to the community and to elected officials.”

One way they’re doing this is by encouraging workers to file charges against the plant when they feel they are being harassed about their union activity. Lamarcus Hicks, a former worker at the Covington plant, filed a charge claiming unjust termination. He believes he was fired for his union activity.

“They said I missed a cracked [printing] plate. I was a stacker at the plant, and I checked for damaged plates, but the particular plate they said was cracked wasn’t mine,” said Hicks. “It was another stacker, a new hire, who had the cracked plate. But they knew I supported the union.”

The other new charges relate to management at both plants creating “an air of futility” around the topic of union organizing. Workers claim union supporters are constantly harassed and put under workplace surveillance.

Company representatives from both the Covington and Olive Branch plants did not return phone calls by press time.

Larry Johnson, a maintenance mechanic who has worked at the Olive Branch plant for 16 years, said work conditions deteriorated after a new management team arrived last year. He said tenured employees were demoted and given pay cuts, prompting employees to look at forming a union.

“We’ve been here so many years, and people have given half their lives to this plant, and now with the management team that’s come in, they don’t want to recognize us as human,” said Johnson. “They demoted about 25 to 30 people and gave them $6 to $8 an hour pay cuts.”

Johnson wears purple T-shirts to show his union support, and he said management has been telling him they don’t like the shirts. He said he and other GCIU supporters are called into the office regularly and intimidated by management.

“They have these roundtable discussions where they call me and several others into the office with about 15 non-union supporters, and then they try to belittle us and put pressure on us to stop our union activity,” said Johnson.

Mary Halliburton said she was one of the employees who was demoted at the Covington plant. After working as a counter feeder (employees who feed sections of a book into a binding machine) for two years, she was promoted to bind operator and given a pay raise. But after working in that position for four years, she says management told her she “did not know how to do her job” and demoted her back to a counter feeder with a pay cut.

Workers also complained that while many of the plant’s employees are African-American, very few African Americans are in management positions. According to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge, African-American women comprise 34 percent of the staff at the Olive Branch plant, yet there are no African-American women in management positions. Ninety-six percent of the African-American workers at that plant hold the lowest job categories in the plant, yet many say they’re scared to leave for fear of not being able to find other jobs.

“Once you’ve been here for so long, you can’t just walk away and try to start over again,” said Johnson.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

[City Beat] Fire and Ice at East

Watch out, White Station High School and Central High School. An old rival is out to “humble” you and regain its long-lost place as one of the best schools in Memphis.

The school is East High School, and the twin driving forces behind a new push to improve it are Principal Barbara King and Class of 1961 alumnus Charles McVean, a commodities trader who’s as colorful as he is wealthy. This week, they launched the Greater East High Foundation with a pep rally. Their hope is that a $14 million renovation of the school funded by the Memphis Board of Education combined with an eventual $3 million in pledges from graduates and businesses will turn East around.

This is one of those fire-and-ice pairings that should be interesting to watch. King grew up in Memphis and attended city elementary schools before moving to Illinois for high school and college. She was lured back to Memphis from Texas in 2003 by new superintendent Carol Johnson to bring some stability to East, which had run through five principals in six years. King radiates clear-eyed calmness and toughness and won’t let McVean or anyone else take up all the oxygen in a room.

McVean, known as “Chas” to his classmates, is a gambler/philosopher/economist/trader who made news in the 1980s when he nearly brought legalized horseracing with parimutuel betting to Memphis. During a visit to his high school alma mater last week, he readily admitted that he spent more than his share of time in the principal’s office for being a bad boy. When he’s determined to do something, watch out.

“Chas is on a tear,” says Gene Carlisle, East High Class of 1960, who will lend his own considerable wealth and know-how as CEO of a company that owns more than 100 Wendy’s franchises in the South.

“Barbara and I are 50-50 partners,” says McVean. “My part of the deal is I’m always adamant but never dogmatic.”

Replies King, “I think I’ve met my match.”

He hopes the foundation will “shame Central High School into following suit.” She wants to “move White Station down to second place.”

That could be even harder than building FedExForum or AutoZone Park. East boasts a central location between Poplar and Walnut Grove just east of the Central Library, strong boys and girls athletic teams, an award-winning vocational-technical program, and a smattering of excellent students who earn full scholarships to four-year colleges. Overall, however, only about 25 percent of East graduates go to either a two-year or four-year college, and 80 percent of the student body is on free or reduced-price lunch. The optional program for college-bound kids has taken a hit, and the main building has fallen into such disrepair that the auditorium has been unusable for three years.

That would have been unthinkable back in McVean’s day. As an all-white school drawing students from nearby Chickasaw Gardens and East Memphis, East routinely sent as many or more grads to Vanderbilt and Ivy League colleges as any school in Memphis. By 1970, East was often the focus of the busing-for-integration debate, and its student population rapidly changed over the next decade. The bottom fell out in the mid-1990s with a rash of shootings and principal turnovers.

There has been talk for years among alumni such as McVean and Spence Wilson, CEO of Kemmons Wilson Companies, about doing something, but it took the arrival of Johnson and King to get it going. The big picture includes new housing and retail along the north flank on Walnut Grove, a new feeder elementary school near Sam Cooper Boulevard, a refurbished building, and a unique operating agreement with the school board that will allow King and the foundation to cut red tape to fix the auditorium, wire the library for computers, and install a security system in the parking lot.

In addition to underwriting spirit-building dinners for students and teachers, McVean will pay student tutors $10 an hour and up to $400 a month to work with younger and underperforming students. He said the foundation will target median-level students and prepare them for jobs in, say, health care, distribution, or food service.

“Our target is to make the median graduate a person who, with one or two additional years of training, St. Jude and FedEx will fight to get their hands on,” McVean says.

Carlisle, who grew up poor in Mississippi and Memphis, said annual turnover in the fast-food industry is nearly 100 percent. On the bright side, though, most of his managers are promoted from within and wind up running a $1.5 million-a-year store.

“I hire 4,000 people a year in my company,” he says. “Over the 28 years I have been in business, I have watched the quality of education of these kids drop like a rock. The only way to make a difference is to put your arms around them and show them somebody cares enough to keep them in school.” •

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Runoff Rundown

As this edition of the Flyer was getting ready for press, voters were heading to the polls to determine whether incumbent school board member Hubon “Dutch” Sandridge or his runoff opponent, Tomeka Hart, would represent District 7 on the Memphis school board for the next four years. Hart came within a hair of winning outright on November 2nd, polling 12,691 votes or 47 percent. Sandridge lagged behind, with only 8,807 votes or 33 percent, and qualified for the runoff round only because a third candidate, Terry Becton, managed 5,578 for a 21 percent showing — enough to deprive Hart of an absolute majority and force a Sandridge-Hart runoff.

In some quarters, this circumstance has caused a good deal of hand-wringing and tut-tutting about the unfairness of it all. Though Sandridge clearly garnered something less than a vote of confidence from his constituents last month, and Hart, just as clearly, tapped a wellspring of genuine support, the challenger was in danger of losing to the incumbent because of the special circumstances of a runoff election — in which, without another major race to help drive a large turnout, Sandridge’s long-established connections might outweigh Hart’s demonstrated grass-roots appeal.

So went the theory, and it was buttressed by the appearance, late in the runoff campaign, of a controversial Sandridge flyer emphasizing his party credentials in a district heavy with Democratic voters. Dirty pool, said Hart’s supporters, on the grounds that A) the school board election was formally nonpartisan; and B) the local Democratic Party itself had taken no position on the candidates.

The fact remained that it was up to Hart’s team, in the runoff as on Election Day, to get her voters out and to win at least a modicum of the votes that went originally for Becton. If she did (and her popularity on November 2nd certainly indicated her capacity to do so), she had little to worry about. If she couldn’t, then that fact would suggest that her initial edge over the somewhat tarnished Sandridge had been ephemeral.

The idea of a runoff remains controversial. The original objections to it locally were based on its onetime usefulness to a white political establishment as a means of keeping prominent black candidates from getting into office via the achievement of a mere plurality in a crowded field. The way things now stand in local elections — runoffs mandatory in district elections but impermissible in at-large races — is the result of the late federal judge Jerome Turner‘s Solomonic way of halving the baby when faced with plaintiffs charging racial bias a decade ago.

Now that demographics have shifted locally, the racial argument aganst runoffs is either moot or it works the other way. Some of those who are boosting City Council member Carol Chumney for city mayor in 2007, for example, are frank about their hopes that she, as a white female, could win a plurality in a field that is likely to draw several male African-American candidates.

And sometimes other factors clearly outweigh race in the debate over runoffs. Take a situation from 1992: Local Republicans were revving up to change the way county elections were held, instituting a local party primary for the first time and using the election for General Sessions Court clerk to put the hammer on local office-holders. The genial long-term incumbent in that race was Gene Goldsby, who had been urged to run as the GOP’s candidate but preferred to run, as he always had, as a political independent. There were two other candidates — state senator John Ford, a Democrat, though running without party label as such, and Republican party activist Shirley Stone, who owned her party’s nomination. Stone, though a virtual unknown to the population at large, drew enough party-line votes from Goldsby to give Ford a plurality.

The lesson took: Immediately thereafter the remaining white county office-holders climbed off the fence and discovered that they were, in fact, “Republicans” and would henceforth run as such. When Democrats later followed suit with their own local primaries, black office-holders and office-seekers decided they were “Democrats.” The argument could be made, in fact, that the absence of a runoff in that three-way 1992 race actually worked to exacerbate racial polarities rather than to relieve them. (There is, however, one conspicuous exception to the party-line/racial-line rule: Rita Clark, a white suburbanite who has now won three consecutive races as a Democrat for county assessor.)

I leave it to the partisans for and against John Ford to fight it out as to whether his 1992 victory was an argument for or against runoff elections. In any case, Ford was defeated by current General Sessions clerk Chris Turner in 1996, when both ran as party nominees. Republican Turner barely survived his general election contest this year, winning over the Democratic nominee, state senator Roscoe Dixon, by a hair as Harvey Branch, an independent African American, garnered 1,738 votes — somewhat more than the 1,461-vote differential between Turner and Dixon. It is generally believed that Dixon, now an administrative assistant to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, could have prevailed in a runoff.

• The Shelby County Commission, which on Monday made the latest of several past and pending decisions about appointments — naming Steve Summerall, an assistant administrator, to the position of chief administrator — faces another potentially vexing choice in January as commissioners contemplate the question of who should succeed Dixon as state senator from District 33.

Commissioner Michael Hooks, now serving as commission chairman, wants the seat and would be a sure thing to get the appointment from his commission mates. But Hooks knows that if he’s in office as of January, when Dixon will be taking leave of his seat, he’ll be subject to legislative rules against doing any fund-raising while the General Assembly is in session. That would put Hooks at a disadvantage in next year’s special election for the seat, and so he is believed to favor the appointment of a strictly interim appointee — former state representative Alvin King being the most probable candidate.

That solution would enable Hooks to run on even terms against likely opponent Kathryn Bowers, a state representative and the current chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

• The selection of Summerall came after a bit of bartering that resulted in two other new appointees: Floria Todd, who takes Summerall’s old job as deputy administrator, and Frances Elkins, executive secretary. Clay Perry continues in his role as a second deputy administrator. Though the general public remained largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the outcome, there had been a good deal of partisan maneuvering in the several weeks since former chief administrator Grace Hutchinson announced her resignation to serve Mayor Wharton as his chief budget officer for the schools, a job bearing the title of deputy director of the division of administration and finance.

Summerall wanted to move up and had the support, it appeared, of six of the commission’s seven GOP members — all save maverick Republican John Willingham, who favored Winslow “Buddy” Chapman, a city police director three decades ago. Chapman had been an applicant for the job when Hutchinson first got it in 2003. She had succeeded Calvin Williams, who resigned under pressure and was later indicted an accessory in the case of misconduct charges against former Juvenile Court clerk Shep Wilbun.

Besides Chapman, another former applicant seeking the chief administrator’s job was City Council staff administrator Lisa Geater, who started out with solid support from the commission’s six Democrats. There things stood for the last few weeks: six for Summerall; six for Geater; and one for Chapman. The logjam began to break when Democrat Cleo Kirk expressed interest in giving an assistant’s position to Todd, who had a background in budgetary matters. Additional pressure was put on newly appointed commissioner George Flinn, who had been weighing all contenders, not to break ranks with his fellow Republicans. The long and the short of it: Summerall got his majority, Todd got her job, and two commissioners — Democrat Julian Bolton and Republican Willingham — ended up going along with the arrangement after first complaining.

Chief broker in the deal was first-term Republican David Lillard, who played a somewhat similar role in lining up votes last month for Flinn as the replacement for departed commissioner Linda Rendtorff, now Wharton’s director of community affairs.

• Flinn, by the way, took his first major political step on Monday as a commissioner, announcing during a debate that he would vote against a zoning proposal by Wayman “Jackie” Welch, a developer with more than usual political clout, out of sensitivity to neighborhood residents’ concerns. (A vote on the proposal was deferred, pending further negotiations between Welch and opponents of the proposal, which would add a car-wash to an existing project in Cordova.) Coupled with his deliberative course of action on the Summerall appointment, Flinn demonstrated something of an ability to tread the line between independence and collegiality.

• State senator Steve Cohen, who waged a 16-year legislative struggle on behalf of legalizing a state lottery, may be in for another long-odds, long-term battle. Cohen plans to introduce legislation in the coming session on behalf of legalizing medical marijuana for patients whose doctors recommend it. •

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Short Cuts :: Record Reviews

How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

U2

(Interscope)

What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding, U2 want to know. On their 11th album, the Irish quartet play unabashedly anthemic crowd-pleasers full of lofty ideas and romantic notions. They’ve been alternately dismissed as naive and praised as peacekeepers, and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb has been released to heraldic claims that U2 are the most popular band in the world. Whether of not that’s true, they apparently feel no creative pressure in this enviable position but rather thrive as their audience grows and diversifies. On top of the world, they’re on top of their game. Atomic Bomb is one of the best albums of their long career.

That long title comes from the riddle “How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? Don’t build one,” which reveals U2’s grand intentions for the album: From its bilingual opener “Vertigo” to its grandiose closer “Yahweh,” Atomic Bomb is a piece of unifying foreign policy. Of course, that’s an enormous undertaking, and the album doesn’t always succeed. For one thing, the lyrics, while unfailingly sincere, are often goofy: “Freedom has a scent,” Bono sings on “Miracle Drug,” “like the top of a newborn baby’s head.”

On the other hand, the songs are open-ended and subtly ambiguous, in such a way that a track like “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own” could be about romantic support, grieving for a loved one or a lost election, or American isolationism. To an extent, Bono writes about large issues while leaving precise meaning for the listeners to determine, which may account for U2’s enduring global popularity: Their songs are exactingly calibrated to reach a very large, very diverse audience.

What truly electrifies Atomic Bomb and gives the album its distinctive dynamic is Bono’s relationship with the Edge, who plays id to the singer’s ego. Bono writes and sings like he still believes a good rock song can change the world and unite humanity, while the guitarist punches up the underlying meanings and implies some ulterior motives. When Bono sings about peace and love on “Peace and Love or Else,” the Edge fills in a sinister guitar riff that sounds incredulous. The cumulative effect is a measured hopefulness, a throwback to ’90s-era global-village politics, which nowadays, the band acknowledges, sounds both excitingly revolutionary and tragically impractical.

— Stephen Deusner

Grade: A-

The New Danger

Mos Def

(Geffen)

This Week

Jean Grae

(Babygrande)

Hip-hop now looks a lot like rock did in the late ’70s and early ’80s: It’s the most popular music on the planet, but its success has fed an indulgence and vacancy that have spurred an awful lot of acolytes to head underground. Given the success and/or press of Brits such as Dizzee Rascal and the Streets and paleface indie darlings such as Atmosphere and Northern State, you might think that the music’s African-American core was still all on-board. But there are plenty of essential black artists expressing their alienation from hip-hop proper.

For Mos Def, this manifests itself as much in sonics as in words. There’s plenty of lyrical dissent on The New Danger. The Kanye West-produced, Hair-sampling “Sunshine” opens with the prickly statement of purpose “I don’t hate players/I don’t love the game” while the sarcastic anti-anthem “The Rape Over” directly lifts the West production from Jay-Z’s “The Takeover” only to flip the script on Hova’s lyrical exhortations: “Jay-Z is running this rap shit” becomes “Old white man is running this rap shit.” Best of all is “Close Edge,” which combines a Grandmaster Flash reference and a stark beat into an irresistible blast of hip-hop basics.

But Mos Def’s rejection of hip-hop’s commercial present is primarily musical. In turning the bulk of The New Danger over to his blues-metal rock band Black Jack Johnson, Mos Def declares as much affinity with hip-hop-inspired bluesman Corey Harris as any competing MC. On “Rock N Roll” from his last album, Black on Both Sides, Mos Def delivered one of the most wrong-headed bits of rock criticism ever. Here he decides to show instead of tell and that makes all the difference.

By contrast, female indie MC Jean Grae’s otherness in relation to mainstream hip-hop is far less willful. It starts with her gender and ends with her uninterest in selling herself sexually. In another era, she might have been a mainstream star à la MC Lyte, which is something you sense she would welcome: “You can still call me conscious/Call me regardless,” she pleads over a track smooth enough for BET heavy rotation.

But if all that hip-hop wants right now is another video ho, Grae’s here to let the music know just what it’s missing. On “Not Like Me,” she might be addressing the genre as much as an unnamed guy, starting with the spoken intro “Oh, who’s that? Oh, that’s your girl? You’re with her? She looks like everyone else in here.” Then she proceedes to present a dream girl for the thinking hip-hop head: She’ll go dutch on the first date and keep the conversation going. She’s willing to hang out at the club but would just as soon chill on the stoop arguing the relative merits of Reasonable Doubt and Illmatic. And with “confidence courtesy of mimosas,” she might even make the first move.

She prefers to leave something to the imagination when she dresses, but that doesn’t mean she never lets lust get the better of her. On “Super Luv,” she starts to invite one guy to a party in her pants before catching herself. She begins the song by telling her mom that this might be the one. It’s the most swoon-worthy slice of female hip-hop since Eve’s “Gotta Man,” and if mainstream hip-hop has no room for a woman this real, then it’s the genre’s loss. •

— Chris Herrington

Grade (both records): A-

Categories
Music Music Features

Sound Advice

Apparently, reports of the Lost Sounds‘ demise were somewhat exaggerated. The Memphis band that just released its biggest and very nearly best album, an eponymously titled platter for Los Angeles’ In the Red label, was expected to call it quits at the end of its last tour, but it looks like they’re holding out at least a little while longer. They play Wednesday, December 15th, at the Buccaneer. With the band’s future in some doubt, local rock fans would be well advised to catch what may be the city’s finest rock band while they still can. (On a related note, the band’s Alicja Trout has an art show currently up at Cooper-Young’s Goner Records.)

The Lost Sounds will be opening for Toronto garage-rockers and In the Red labelmates The Deadly Snakes, who return to Memphis after appearing on the bill of the Hives show at the New Daisy last month. The Snakes, who recruited the Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright as a member on 2001’s I’m Not Your Soldier Anymore, released one of the most acclaimed garage-rock records of recent years with 2003’s Ode to Joy.

The Nashville-bred quartet Scatter the Ashes meld hardcore aggression with moody melodies on Devotion/The Modern Hymn, their debut for Epitaph records. The band sounds like an underground equivalent to the style that bands such as AFI and Thursday have taken mainstream, where punk and metal mix with goth and prog. The band plays the Complex Saturday, December 11th, with Salem and Classic Case.

Locals Retrospect, which finished second-runner-up behind Free Sol and Valencia Robinson at the Mid-South Grammy Showcase a year ago, are having a CD-release party Friday, December 10th, at Newby’s. The band’s full-length debut is an eponymous set recorded at Ardent Records with John Hampton and Ross Rice at the helm and will be released on the studio’s sister label, Ardent Records. Songs included on an advance sampler suggest a strongly recorded, radio-friendly set of straightforward guitar-rock with echoes of Southern rock, R.E.M.-style modern-rock melodicism, and strong-voiced AOR radio sounds. The release party is set to kick off at 7 p.m.

Also on tap this week: Over at the Hi-Tone, a couple of regional regulars return to town, with Jerry Joseph performing Thursday, December 9th, and New Orleans’ The Iguanas playing the next night. On Sunday, December 12th, locals The Central Standards perform at the club alongside Crash Into June’s Dave Norris and Knoxville’s Senryu. At Huey’s Midtown, Sunday, December 12th, recent International Blues Challenge solo contest winner Watermelon Slim performs. And at the Full Moon Club Friday, December 10th, Michael Glabicki, lead singer of the Pittsburgh jam band Rusted Root, performs a solo set. •

— Chris Herrington

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Point-Counterpoint

With a disappointing 6-12 record heading into Tuesday night’s game with the New York Knicks, the Memphis Grizzlies have a lot of decisions to make about their future. And those decisions start at point-guard, where backup Earl Watson is looking ahead to free-agency and is sure to demand a starting role (and commensurate contract). Do the Grizzlies risk losing Watson next offseason, or do they make a decision now between their two point-guards and make a trade? If you believe all the trade rumors swirling around Jason Williams, that decision may have already been made.

Most Grizzlies fans seem to perceive Williams as a feast-or-famine wild card, while Watson is viewed as a steady hand. But in reality, each player’s game is incomplete in a completely opposite way.

Williams forces too many shots from beyond the arc; Watson forces too many shots around the basket. Williams is brilliant in the open court but is a poor defender. Watson is an excellent defender but turns every fastbreak into an uphill struggle.

If you want a primer on the negative peculiarities of Watson’s game, all you had to do was watch his play Saturday night in a 91-96 loss to the Orlando Magic, where Watson started as Williams sat out with a sore foot.

In the first half against Orlando, the Grizzlies were outscored on the break 20-4. The Grizzlies had five break opportunities in the half, and none of them ran smoothly:

On the first one, Watson finished a 1-on-2 break, attacking the rim despite being outnumbered. The next break was a 4-on-2 in which Watson scooped the ball to Pau Gasol just inside the free-throw line with a Magic defender planted right in front of him. Gasol was forced to stop and back the ball out to avoid picking up an offensive foul. On another 4-on-2 break, Watson passed the ball to Gasol on the wing with no lane to the basket and Gasol sent a touch pass back to Watson, who drove into the defense and left the ball for a trailing Stromile Swift to lay in. The game of hot potato resulted in a made basket, but it sure wasn’t pretty. It went that way for most of the game. Most transition opportunities were botched.

The same tendencies were evident in Watson’s other start this season, a November 30th loss to the Sacramento Kings. Watson’s taken 49 percent of his shots around the basket, an extraordinarily high percentage for a point-guard, and has had 17 percent of those attempts blocked, also too high. Williams, by contrast, has gotten into the paint for only 16 percent of his shots, which is certainly too low for a lead guard with so much quickness.

Watson’s insistence on going to the basket could be seen as cojones or stubbornness, but I think it’s in large part attributable to a lack of court vision. Last season at The Pyramid, media seating was behind the basket, so I could look into Williams’ and Watson’s eyes as they came up court. On the break, Williams’ eyes are electric, buzzing and flashing around. By contrast, Watson seems to be looking straight ahead or at the floor. And the difference is apparent in what they create. Williams doesn’t just see all the angles and passing lanes, he often creates them by altering his tempo in relation to his teammates. When he’s on his game — which hasn’t been often this season — it’s akin to watching Picasso paint: hoops as high art.

And maybe that’s why point-guard play is the one area of Grizzlies basketball where my eyes and head are at odds. Statistically speaking, the Grizzlies have been more effective offensively and defensively with Watson at the helm this season, and on defense it isn’t even close. Watson leads the team in plus/minus statistics, a measure of how effective a team is with specific players on the floor. Against the Kings and the Magic, Watson made his share of mistakes, but he also held all-star-caliber opponents Mike Bibby and Steve Francis below their season averages. And as a shooter, Watson has improved considerably this season.

Of course, there are other differences between Williams and Watson. Watson is four years younger and hasn’t had any public shouting matches with assistant coaches. He also hasn’t been accused of taking plays off, quitting on games, faking injuries, or causing problems behind the scenes, all charges — true or not — that have been levied at Williams.

It’s too bad the Grizzlies can’t have the best of both worlds — Williams’ open-court creativity with Watson’s defense and toughness. The only available player who fits that description is New Jersey Nets point-guard Jason Kidd, whose name has begun to pop up in connection with the Grizzlies. But that scenario is a long shot at best. •

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We Recommend We Recommend

Material Man

Artists Melissa Dunn and Hamlett Dobbins are trying something a little new and a little crazy. Dobbins is working to convert the front room of his home and studio — a space that he shares with his expectant wife and 2-year-old daughter — into an art gallery. Dunn, the first artist to exhibit at Material, the tiny art space at 2553 Broad, is ditching her old narrative painting style and plunging headlong into abstraction.

Dunn isn’t a folk artist. “I used to get ‘You remind me of a folk artist’ from people all the time,” she says, sounding a little disappointed. “And to tell you the truth, it always drove me a little crazy, because I wasn’t even looking at folk artists. I was looking at artists like Willem De Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat and people like that. I did stick all of this imagery in my paintings that was sort of 27-year-old rock-and-roll angst imagery, and maybe that’s where the folk-art thing came from. Maybe all of that imagery came off as this naive thing.”

For the past 10 years, Dunn has painted interior spaces with warped perspectives, heavy childlike lines, and a palate of raw, unmixed colors, leaning heavily toward sickly green and cautionary orange. She’s been an occasionally cynical but always emotional storyteller, with each painting functioning as a new paragraph in a grimy epic of enduring isolation. Her work from the late 1990s, influenced heavily by German expressionism and by Watching, the disquieting last novel from Memphis author John Fergus Ryan, was domestic and humane. It could also be perverse without being the least bit pornographic.

“As I’ve always understood it, folk art and regional art implied uninformed, uneducated, and ignorant,” Dunn says. “So I guess I just stood up one day and said, ‘If this is what people are getting from this, then I’m obviously feeding them the wrong things.'”

Dunn’s exhibit of new work, “38 N. McLean,” features small, colorful abstract works that might easily be mistaken for landscape painting or figure studies.

“I haven’t been able to get my paintings flat,” she says. “I’m not working in a narrative style, but I still like paintings that I can get inside of and walk around.”

Dobbins says the paintings complement the space he purchased in June and has been steadily renovating since. “To me, this is the perfect-sized space to showcase the work of an artist working in a typical apartment studio,” he says.

“Artists are always asking me where they can find a good, small space [to exhibit their work],” Dobbins explains. “All the [rental] spaces in town where an artist can get a show are big spaces. Marshall Arts, for example, is huge, and unless you have a bunch of friends or a bunch of people that can team up to put together these shows, you just can’t fill the space.”

Dobbins is, by his own description, “definitely not a dealer,” and he prefers to call Material an “art space” rather than a gallery.

“I’m not actively going out and saying to people, ‘Hey, you’ve really got to come out and see Melissa Dunn’s paintings, and you’ve got to buy 80 paintings, and blah, blah, blah.’ It’s not a gallery. And I’m not charging any kind of commission on anything Melissa sells either. A lot of places in town, like the David Lusk Gallery, do charge a commission. But David’s got four full-time employees calling people, bringing people into the gallery, and selling paintings. If you aren’t doing that sort of thing, why would you charge commission?”

Dobbins teaches and manages the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College. He serves on the advisory board for Delta Axis and has previously worked with Number, and the Powerhouse. Dobbins wants his new art space to showcase one artist a month but says he doesn’t have time to manage two galleries and be a working artist, family man, and art dealer.

“A lot [of the artists] we’ll be showing are friends and people we know and trust,” Dobbins says, explaining the hazards of turning his home into a public space. “It’s tricky.” he says. “We live upstairs, so I can’t just let some grad student or some kid who’s scraped up $200 [to rent the space] have the key to my house.”

Dunn and Dobbins have known one another since they shared studio space at Marshall Arts Gallery. “Hamlett is one of the first people I showed any of the new work to,” Dunn says. “I’d been working on this body of work for two and a half years and nobody had seen it. And he came over for a studio visit, and he just said, ‘Let’s show it.'”

“38 N. McLean” opens at Material on Friday, December 10th at 6 p.m. It will also be open to the public on Saturday, December 11th, from 1-5 p.m. and by appointment throughout December.