Kicking off this Tuesday, August 12th, the inaugural Memphis Urban Fashion Week (MUFW) will spotlight creatives shaping style in the South.
Curated by designer Prep Curry, the week of events, sponsored by We Are Memphis, lasts through Saturday, August 16th, and culminates in a fashion show with 13 local and regional designers working in a range of attire — from streetwear to high fashion. Among those to be seen include The Grizzlies, South of Mane, Ashton Hall, Peer Pressure, Immoral Ink, and FUBU, whose co-founder Jay Alexander also is co-founder of MUFW.
“I wanted to create a lane for Memphis and people that don’t have exposure, as well as the people that do have exposure, [with a focus on people of color],” Curry says of MUFW.
Prep Curry (Photo: Courtesy MUFW)
Curry himself has been in fashion his entire life, he says. “You know, my name speaks for itself. They used to just call me the little preppy guy. So I was always into fashion. Starting next month, it’ll be 15 years since I started my brand, and I realized that I have a voice and people listen to me, and I’m very good with putting events on as well. So I just wanted to keep pushing and keep inspiring other people.”
With his Memphis Urban Fashion Week, he hopes Memphis can one day compete with LA Fashion, New York Fashion Week, and the like. “[Memphis] is definitely starting to come into its own, and there are more people that are learning how to make clothing and wanting to have fashion events,” he says. “Memphis, we got swag; we got style.”
On Tuesday at 7 p.m., the Fitness & Wellness Bootcamp & Pop-Up will start the week with movement sessions, wellness vendors, and athleisure drops at Wayne Fitness. Wednesday will see the Fashion Entrepreneurs’ Panel at the New Daisy Theatre, where Memphis-based designers, stylists, and brand builders will speak on the business of fashion from 7 to 9 p.m.
The Fashion Jookin’ Battle will pair local designers with Memphis jookers in a dance battle that blends style and street dance on Thursday, 7 p.m., at the New Daisy, and the Adult Prom on Friday at 7 p.m. will have guests celebrating on the dance floor of Grindhouse Dance Studio. “They can dress up; they can dress down — however they want to come in whatever way that shows off their fashion sense,” Curry says. “We’re gonna just be there having a good time.”
Wrapping up with the MUFW X FUBU Fashion Show on Saturday at 7 p.m. at LeMoyne-Owen College, these events, Curry says, “each show a different side of me. … I wanted it to be something that literally everybody can come to.”
A percentage of the proceeds from MUFW will go towards St. Jude Children’s Hospital, the National Civil Rights Museum, and LeMoyne-Owen College.
For more information and to purchase tickets to Memphis Urban Fashion Week’s events, visit here.
Jeff Hulett and Alex Smythe have been friends for years — “old school friends,” Hulett calls them. They play soccer together, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. Smythe helps Hulett with home projects on occasion, and Hulett, a musician and songwriter, is there for Smythe’s photography shows. At one of these shows — at Otherlands Coffee Bar — the two decided to do something they hadn’t done together before: collaborate artistically. The result has been their dual show, “Emotions Without People,” on display in Church Health’s Estes Ruleman Gallery of Art through August 29th.
In the show, Smythe’s photos are paired with a song written by Hulett and accessed via QR code. (Visitors are encouraged to bring headphones, though some will be available to borrow.) Handwritten lyrics are framed on the wall.
“We’ve used the catchphrase, ‘a photographic call and response,’” Smythe says. “That was kind of the original thought of the project, where we could interpret each other’s work through song and photograph.”
Hulett (who plays with Snowglobe or his latest combo, Jeff Hulett & the Hand Me Downs) already had a few partially written songs, ideas for melodies. Over the course of two years or so, the two would drive around together, Smythe stopping to take photos, Hulett playing rough mixes of his songs, both offering feedback. “From one of Alex’s images, I would kind of flesh it out by using his image,” Hulett says. “We’re trying to figure out, like, could that work with this?”
Thus, a symbiotic relationship between photographer and musician was formed, both finding inspiration in the other and in each other’s chosen medium. “I think there was definitely a vulnerability there and in never working on an artistic project like this with Alex,” Hulett says. “It was interesting, and I learned a lot throughout the process, just about his process, what it takes.”
For Smythe, he’s found Hulett’s songwriting process has changed the way he looks at his own work. “When photographers are talking, they immediately jump into some buzz words, like more technical photographic terms when speaking on each other’s work; whereas, having a musician talk about your work, I thought about melody. We are looking at a still image, in which generally a person’s not thinking about the melody or cadence or rhythm of a piece as much as they would when they’re talking to a musician. And that was something that I got to dive into with some of those photographs, which I’m definitely going to continue to do. We just asked, ‘If this photograph had a chorus, what would it be?’”
Typically, Smythe shoots landscapes, he says. “This sounds kind of cheesy, but somewhere where emotions are not necessarily shooting people.”
“We kind of came up with the name first because we noticed all of his pictures don’t have people in them,” Hulett adds, “but they evoke such great emotions and feelings.”
By putting a song with a photograph, Hulett and Smythe do not intend to dictate a viewer’s interpretation of these emotions but rather to enhance the experience, they say. The songs might make you look at a photo differently, or a photo might make you listen to a lyric differently — “In some ways, they’re together, but they’re separate, you know,” Hulett says.
No matter the emotion or interpretation gained, they both hope viewers take their time, a break from their day, their thoughts, to stand with the photos and with the music, to look and listen — “for at least the length of a song,” Smythe says.
“Emotions Without People” is on display through August 29th in the Estes Ruleman Gallery of Art at Church Health, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Twenty percent of the proceeds of art sold will go to Church Health. Hulett’s songs from the show have been compiled into an album, Emotions Without People, available for streaming.
Jay Etkin describes this photo as one of Nichols’ most sophisticated. ”It was the way he captured it,” he says. (Photo: Tyré Nichols)
As anyone in her position would, Keyana Dixon never imagined her brother, Tyré Nichols, would be a victim of police brutality. With a background in criminal justice, she knew her family would have not only overwhelming grief of it all to wade through but also the justice system, the federal trials, the state trials, the civil lawsuit, the press. “My family and I, we kept saying, ‘Once this is over, once this is over, once this is over, we’ll be able to do X, Y, Z, like, we’ll be able to grieve.’”
Even now, two years later, it’s not “over.” Two of the former officers pleaded guilty in both state and federal court, while three were acquitted by a state jury earlier this year and await federal sentencing. The civil trial date has been set for 2026.
Yet today, Dixon’s focus has been able to shift to happier memories of her brother, away from his final, tragic moments. She’s been able to fulfill his dream of having a gallery show, though posthumously.
A self-portrait (Photo: Tyré Nichols)
On drives, walks, bike rides through Memphis, Tyré Nichols brought his camera. “Photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way,” he wrote on his website. “It expresses me in ways I cannot write down for people.”
He had described Memphis as beautiful to his older sister Keyana Dixon — from the bridges over the Mississippi River to the trails in Shelby Farms Park. He had moved here for a FedEx job before the pandemic, and something about Memphis made him pick up his camera again, a hobby he’d started when he was a young skateboarder, wanting to document his tricks. “He was like one day I’m [going to be] in a gallery or something,” Dixon says.
“This was the perfect time,” she says. “I didn’t want to have this beautiful moment overshadowed by court dates and ugly and sick images and videos of my brother.”
Since June 24th, Nichols has several of his photographs on display in the Cooper-Young Jay Etkin Gallery in what’s being called “Tyré Nichols: Photographic Legacy.” Etkin is a friend of Nichols’ and Dixon’s stepfather.
“This exhibition isn’t just a tribute to Tyré’s life — it’s a platform for his voice as an artist, for his vision,” Etkin says. “We want people to experience what he saw, to witness his sensitivity, his humor, his eye for beauty. It’s a chance to know Tyré not through tragedy or headlines — but through his own lens, through Tyré’s eyes.”
In this show are photographs seen on his website and ones that have been pulled from Nichols’ camera, yet unseen by the public and by even his family. In the weeks immediately following his death, Dixon recalls, sites like The New York Times and even our own Memphis Flyer publicized her brother’s photography, pulling from the internet — “which is fine,” she says. But seeing his work in the gallery, “it was different. … It’s something that makes me feel like his life meant something.”
Etkin compares Nichols’ work to that of William Eggleston. “There’s that same instinct to elevate the overlooked, to find meaning in the everyday. But Tyre’s point of view was all his own. His images carry a rhythm that feels deeply personal,” he says. (Photo: Tyré Nichols)
Dixon doesn’t want to be the only one who remembers Nichols, to see him in the fabric of the city, and so she started the Tyré Nichols Foundation to share his bright legacy for future generations. Two goals she hopes to achieve include offering creative arts scholarships and photography workshops for youths.
“Things like this happen way too often — that there’s someone killed by the police,” Dixon says. “And then five years later, nobody cares to remember them, so I hope that this will give him a lasting presence here in Memphis long after I’m gone, long after everything.”
“Tyré Nichols: Photographic Legacy” will be on display at Jay Etkin Gallery through August 2025. Please contact Jay Etkin about purchasing work at 901-550-0064, available framed or unframed.
Noah Thomas Miller’s pieces in “Home Is a Dream I Keep
Having” take inspiration from Finnish landscapes.(Photo: Abigail Morici)
The houses in Fiskars, Finland, look the way houses are supposed to look, Noah Thomas Miller says. He was there earlier this year for an artist residency. “I would go on hikes and look at these country houses, and I feel like this is the way you thought the world was going to be when you were a little kid.”
The houses had matching red roofs, as if they’d been plucked out of an illustrated storybook. So he brought back those little buildings, engraving them into Baltic birch wood and painting them with those signature red roofs. “I made my own town in that same sort of way that’s very picturesque, just making these dreamy homes,” Miller says.
He even titled one of the pieces “Home Is a Dream I Keep Having,” and the dual UrbanArt Commission show he’s presenting with Sarah Moseley has taken on the same name. The two are friends and found inspiration in each other for the show. “Sarah is the first person outside of my sister that I’ve worked on pieces with,” Miller says.
For Miller, visual art is somewhat of a new bullet point for his resume. He’s been a filmmaker for most of his creative career; that’s what he studied at the Memphis College of Art. But after working behind a computer screen for so long at his day job, not even counting his hours spent editing film and looking at footage, he wanted to do something with his hands, to take a break from the all-consuming screens. So he signed up for a membership in Crosstown Arts’ woodshop only a few years ago.
He started with furniture. It was practical. Until it wasn’t. “We can only have so many tables, so many chairs.” But he learned the machines, the tools; he learned that he could carve grooves for coasters to stay put on tables and record cabinets. His skills evolved, and so did his ideas. “It was like, ‘Oh, I can use this to draw.’”
Soon, he was making paintings of sorts on wood. He would get his paint — house paint — mixed at Lowe’s. “I’m not a traditional painter. I’ve never studied painting. I just started doing this,” Miller says. For the past few years, he has had a set of five or so colors he turns to for his color palette. “They feel like my colors,” he says. In this show, he introduced a pale blue and brown, yet there’s comfort in this palette, a familiarity that’s not unlike home to the artist.
Likewise, it was natural that Miller turned to wood when in a creative need, for its familiarity. He’d always been working with the material, helping his dad renovate their homes. “I feel like every place we lived, my family renovated themselves,” he says. “We bought really cheap, and then our house was always just a construction site in a way. And growing up in that, this became familiar. And the last few series and shows I’ve had have all been kind of about houses and the idea of home because I do have the biggest attachment to all of these houses and my family members. … And then in a different way now, I paint houses and build houses.”
Miller hasn’t forgotten his love for film, though. “I know some people have described my pieces … like storyboards in a way,” he says, but for this show, he tried to marry the forms more overtly. In one piece, he inserted film strips from his time in Finland among carvings of his red-roofed houses — something he hopes to do more of for future pieces. In another piece, he has included a film photograph by Moseley, situated in the skies above another red-roofed home.
Moseley, for her part, turned to film for its unfamiliarity. She’s the art director at Goner Records and is used to working in digital design, creating posters, flyers, and props. It’s been years since her last solo art show in 2017, and back then she was showing collage and illustration mostly. “Making physical work unique to me is kind of a new exploration,” she says.
Photography was a break from the art she’d make for work, and a break from life around her. “A really good friend of mine died,” she says, “and he gave me a bunch of cameras when he was alive, and I put my cameras down for, like, seven years. I didn’t touch him for a long time. His death was traumatic. And then I was cleaning and I came across these vintage cameras that I’ve had forever, and I was like, ‘Well, I need to take these out and use them.’”
She began taking pictures of nature around her home, on her walking path along the Vollintine-Evergreen Greenline. “These flowers and trees, I feel like they are part of the house, my home. … It’s my mental chill pill,” she says. “I have a lot of anxious energies sometimes. I give it to the trees; they can handle it.”
Film, too, can handle her anxious energies, subverting her perfectionist tendencies, Moseley would learn. She began making double exposures, where two images layer in one photograph. “You just kind of let go and just see what happens. It’s so experimental and you really have no idea what you’re doing.”
These photographs, in turn, are centered in her pieces, framed in wood that had been stored in her house’s attic for years. The frames themselves are hand-painted in bright colors with symbols of life and death, new beginnings — candles, lit and extinguished; a sun and moon.
“I bought my first house in 2022,” Moseley says, “and it’s just something that I never thought I’d be able to do, and I got really lucky. And it’s a really old house with really old house problems. And I feel like the house is alive in a way, and I’ve been getting to know it.
“For this show, I contacted the lady that I bought the house from. She was like, ‘I’ll tell you my story about my life, how I ended up with the house, and what I did when I lived there.’ She sent me this, like, novel about the beautiful Sunday dinners she would have with her queer friends in the ’80s and moon nights and music nights. … It was just really beautiful to get to hear about the life that was lived before me in my house, like my studio.”
To Moseley, the house is active; its history matters, as do the people that come and go in search of home, of that dream. Perhaps it’s the dream of familiar red-roofed homes, consistent, filled with memories. Perhaps it’s something else, a longing that can’t be described or met until change comes around.
“Home Is a Dream I Keep Having” will be on view through July 18th.
Being known as “The Hoochie Historian” is much more than internet virality for Zorine Truly.
The North Memphis native — known for her bite-sized lessons on “Hoochie History” — has gained a dedicated following of more than 150,000 people on TikTok. And while educating viewers about a unique subculture has allowed her to give Black women their well-deserved flowers, it’s also been an opportunity for her to reclaim the narrative for the community.
“I talk a lot about the influence of Black women across generations and how hoochie culture plays a role in storytelling, legacy, and beauty practices,” Truly explains.
Truly refers to a community of Black women known for owning their sexuality and identity unapologetically, making beauty and style practices synonymous with their personas. Notable figures include Chrystale Wilson, rap artist Trina, and, of course, Memphis legend Gangsta Boo.
Influencer Zorine Truly owns her hoochieness. (Photo: Courtesy Zorine Truly)
“They are pioneers in whatever genre they touch,” Truly says. “Whether that’s music or style, it’s their influence.”
As the creative began to educate her audiences, solidarity formed, and there was a groundswell of support for hoochie culture to be recognized. This turned into the first HoochieCon celebration in 2023 in Glendale, California.
Now, Truly will bring her cultural touchstone back home with Hoochie Homecoming on June 20th through 21st. The event will be held at the Artifacts Gallery on 980 East Brooks Road and will be the ultimate celebration of Black culture featuring a Hoochie art gallery, a Black-owned vendor market, and “Thee Hoochiecon Biggest Hoochie Contest.”
“The festival came about from the community,” Truly says. “There was a need and a want for hoochie culture to be celebrated, but not in the typical way that most people think of.”
She goes on to explain that many people associate hoochies solely with ’90s Freaknik culture, stemming from an annual spring break festival centered on historically Black colleges and universities, which has recently re-entered the zeitgeist. Rather than minimize the contributions of these women, Truly and her community wanted to emphasize what it really meant to be a part of the movement, which she says means blending history and the present.
“What being a hoochie means is being a founder,” Truly says. “It’s like being the foundation of memory. Somebody who preserves culture. The earrings, the nails, the clothing — all of this is a cultural reference to our aunties, our cousins, and our moms. Somebody who is a hoochie is an ‘it girl’ but also somebody who preserves all the influence from our direct ancestors.”
Growing up, Truly saw the women in her family and community in North Memphis positively impact her identity. She found this refreshing, as she says she never strove towards a Eurocentric beauty standard.
“I always wanted to look like the girl who lived up the street from me,” she says. “I was always influenced by the clothes, the music, and the style of the people I went to school with or my big cousins. My neighborhood has always been a direct reflection of what I find beautiful.”
Truly says that Hoochies are the ultimate arbiters of style and notes that many modern-day trends stem from their innovations. While blinged-out acrylics and grills may be the latest on the rotating trend cycle, these are everyday aesthetics for the women who pioneered them.
With the reemergence of these fashions, it can also be easy for those outside of the community to appropriate the culture. As a result, these women go uncredited for their contributions.
“It’s an opportunity to reclaim a lot of what has trickled down into popular culture without being named and credited [to Black women],” Truly says. “When we don’t point out and credit these types of cultures and subgroups, once they become mainstream, they’re credited to people who didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Celebrating hoochie culture also shows that Black women are not monolithic, Truly says, and the celebration serves as an opportunity to applaud “all walks of Black womanhood.”
“Just like other cultures have subcultures and subgroups from their primary culture, so do Black women,” Truly says. “A lot of times we don’t get to discuss or celebrate the different branches of what it takes to be a Black woman.”
Truly says she’s excited to show respect to where she’s from and who she’s been inspired by, and invites the community to do the same.
Get ready to unwind this Saturday — unwind your skeins of yarn, that is. June 14th is Worldwide Knit in Public Day, and Memphis will be a part of it this year, thanks to fiber arts store Stitching Supply in Chickasaw Oaks.
“We’re going to just have a place for a whole bunch of people to sit and knit or crochet or whatever other kind of stitching they want to do with us,” says Erica Carpenter, Stitching Supply’s owner. “We’re making it almost like a little festival, where we’re going to spill out into the little mall that we’re in, and we’re going to have demonstrations and raffles and games and giveaways and special merchandise.”
Worldwide Knit in Public Day began in 2005 and has since become the largest knitter-run event in the world, spreading across continents and bridging communities. “I’ve only been open since September, and when I realized that this was an event that was coming up, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun?’” Carpenter. “We’re big on community here at this yarn store. We do a community table all of the time, and we do social events frequently — at least off-site every month. The Knit in Public Day matches our community vibe.”
After all, community is what initially drew Carpenter to knit and crochet, and later to opening a store. She had done the craft as a kid or a teenager, really, but didn’t get back into it until the boredom of the pandemic. Once the lockdown lifted, she found something she hadn’t had before.
“I used to do a lot of sewing, and with a sewing machine and embroidery machine and all that kind of stuff, that’s fun and all, but it’s solitary,” she says. “You have to pay attention to the needle and the machine and the direction that your fabric is going in, so if you have somebody there with you, you’re not really talking to each other very much. And I found with knitting and crocheting everybody’s talking about their project, about their lives.”
And so, community will be at the center of Knit in Public Day for aficionados and newcomers alike. Instructors will be on-hand demonstrating knitting and crochet. “I’m hoping they can get people interested in joining in,” Carpenter says.
For the day, Stitching Supply will introduce limited-edition achievement patches and will sell exclusive yarn from independent dyers, one of whom is Forbidden Fiber from Covington, Tennessee. Pile of Threads (featured in this week’s cover story) will be on-site offering custom embroidery, and MemPops will be there with popsicles.
“I can tell you that there are other stores here in Chickasaw Oaks that are also planning a little extra special event within their stores as well,” Carpenter says.
Worldwide Knit in Public Day, Stitching Supply, Chickasaw Oaks, 3092 Poplar, Saturday, June 14, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Hank Smith is a terrible hunter and awful at fishing, he says. “Usually, by the end of the day, I just end up bringing back ideas for paintings.”
Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from climbing into boats and blinds, for what could be more productive than finding inspiration?
Most recently, for the past year or so, he’s found himself on the Ghost River and Wapanocca, called to the wetlands of Memphis. He’s paddled, kayaked, hiked, sat, listened, and watched. He’s sometimes whipped out the camera to capture an image, but he’s not there to capture a specific moment, but a feeling — something intangible but undoubtedly recognizable. This would make for the foundation of his latest series of paintings, set to be displayed in “SWAMP: A Meditation on Self and Silt” at Ugly Art Co.
For the show, Smith tried to get out to the wetlands in the area every other week for a while there. He read up on the area and on swamps, picking up an old favorite of his, Contentious Terrains: Boglands, Ireland, Postcolonial Gothic by Derek Gladwin. Learning about the land and and its history is integral to his art, he says — to gleaning out that feeling among the flora and the fauna.
“I don’t really think of [myself as] being a landscape painter,” Smith says, though his show will feature landscapes and close-up visuals of what makes it. “I’m more so thinking about the people and interconnectedness between nature and myself or humanity in general. It’s more like a portraiture thing.”
The wetlands, or the swamps — whatever you want to call them — are “an alternative place,” Smith says, “where time doesn’t necessarily cease to exist, but time becomes more fluid. You can … kind of take things out of the moment. It’s like a way to meditate on where your place is in the interconnectedness between humanity, nature, our culture, our history, the past and future, just by the just the sheer physical reality of swamp, which blew my mind, because it’s kind of a place that’s constantly living and dying. It’s consuming itself but also rebirthing itself. It takes things and it cleans them, and then it gives it back to the world and gives it back to us.”
It’s also a place of refuge, historically. “I’m from Virginia originally, and I was obsessed with the Great Dismal Swamp which always served as a place for the lost, the desperadoes,” Smith says. “I kind of saw that repeated in different places through the South, where the swamps were this place of escape from political, racial, financial, all these other troubles. The swamp kind of serves as a place of protection and also a place of danger.”
In turn, with all these tensions, the swamp becomes a place rife for introspection, a place to look out and to look in. “To me,” Smith says, “it is a very interesting landscape that very quickly breaks that wall between us as humans and nature because you have to interact with it. Once you step in, you gotta be looking where you’re stepping. It’s changing every time you’re there. It’s a place of active growth and thinking. … As an artist, and also in my personal life, I felt that progression kind of reflected in the art.”
Smith had never really painted water before, for instance, so that was something he had to learn with this project. For the most part, he’s a self-taught artist, having taken a few classes here and there and not accepting his fate as a professional artist until his return to Memphis post-pandemic when Ugly Art Co. accepted him as a member of its collective. (Smith had gone to Rhodes College and left the city after he graduated.) “Those previous days, I was not really showing anybody [my art] but my wife, some family members, and whoever was interested,” he says. “Now I am no longer just painting in a basement for myself but am able to go out there and show other people. I think having Ugly grounded and joining that has been like a massive motivator. … In general, I think that Memphis is such an inspiring place.”
And, Smith says, Memphis has been a supportive place. “My favorite thing is when people look at a piece and it means something to them,” he says. “I guess my hope when someone looks at one of my paintings is not that they get what I’m thinking but that they did something out of it.”
Always, though, even when he didn’t have an audience, he’s been painting, drawing, and doodling, and always, he’s been called to the land. “Growing up in the mountains with a strong familial connection to Appalachia produced a strong emphasis on place and connection to the land,” he says. “How we mark it and how it marks us, and how it serves as a convergence of time, memory, and history, both personal and cultural.”
With that in mind, for this show, Smith has partnered with the Wolf River Conservancy. “We wanted to highlight that connection between art and conservation,” he says. “There’s nothing sadder than when you try to paint something and it goes away.”
The conservancy’s executive director Erik Houston will be a part of the artist’s talk with Smith at the “SWAMP”’s opening reception on Friday, May 30th, 5:30 p.m. Bar Liminia will provide cocktails, and there will be live music by Too Small.
Opera Memphis performs La Calisto at Playhouse on the Square last year. The production's return will be one of the conference's capstone events. (Photo: Ziggy Mack)
Opera America’s annual Opera Conference kicked off in Memphis on Tuesday, May 20th, welcoming hundreds of opera professionals from across the nation to the city for discussions, networking, and performances. Opera Memphis is serving as the host company, making it the smallest company ever to host.
Yet the company’s size is just why Ned Canty, Opera Memphis’ general director, has been advocating for the conference to be held in Memphis for years, he says. “Historically, the conferences have been in larger cities with larger companies, but larger companies can learn something from smaller companies. There’s a benefit to everyone in seeing how we do things in different parts of the country.”
And being in Memphis, Canty says, has its added benefits. “With our history as a city in terms of music and influence on American music and our city as a hub for civil rights, I just think there were a lot of reasons why it made sense for the conference to be here.”
The conference’s agenda is packed through Friday, May 23rd, and Opera Memphis will have the chance to showcase its community-focused approach to opera. “We have been part of a movement over the past decade where companies have been looking at what their value to their cities is,” Canty says. “It’s termed civic practice. [It’s] the idea that what we do needs to go beyond just putting on shows, just what we do in the opera house.”
As an example, Canty points to the company’s 14-year-old 30 Days of Opera program, which brings free opera performances throughout the city. “It’s been something that fits in very well with Memphis and fits in with the Memphis mentality and with the conference,” Canty says.
Thirty Days also stemmed from conferences from years ago. “There was lots of inspiration from other companies,” Canty admits. “But we took it, we made it very Memphis, we made it very grit and grind, and we really put it at the heart of our mission and our activities, and what we learned from that, we’ve been able to share at other conferences.”
Now, Canty hopes to share even more from what Opera Memphis has learned — and what other Memphians in the arts have learned. Indeed, Memphis-based speakers will sit on various panels: Mayor Paul Young, Ekundayo Bandele of Hattiloo Theatre, Samson Mobashar of the Soulsville Foundation, Darel Snodgrass of WKNO-FM, Christopher Reyes of BVO, Director of Creative and Cultural Economy DeMarcus Suggs, Rachel Knox of the Hyde Family Foundation, Anasa Troutman of the Big We, and panelists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Scheidt School of Music, and the University of Memphis.
Photo: Courtesy Opera America | Jc Olivera
Many of the panelists represent organizations, with which Opera Memphis collaborates. “One of the great things about Memphis is that it is a Goldilocks-sized city. It’s not too big and it’s not too small,” Canty says. “And while there are challenges to that size, it does mean that it’s big enough to have resources and audiences and lots of different arts organizations, and we support each other. … I think this is hopefully going to inspire some folks to seek out new partners and collaborators in their cities.”
“And you know that is, for me, the most important part of it: The conference is a place to share things,” Canty says. “My hope is that some of the stuff that Memphis has to teach folks can be taught during the conference this time around, and then next year, we’ll be in another city, and the folks there will have their special things that they’ve learned, and they can inspire us and other opera companies in return — especially at a time like this, when there’s a pretty concerted effort to zero out the National Endowment for the Arts. This is more important than ever that we’re all talking to each other about how we can ensure that this does not that this does not bring us to our knees. How can we work together to ensure that we still fulfill our missions, that we still tell stories, that we still make music together?”
In the name of making music, Opera Memphis will put on La Calisto on Wednesday and Friday, with both performances open to the public, not just those attending the conference. Described as a “great Baroque opera,” La Calisto blends several Roman myths, traversing themes of love, lust, responsibility, and desire. The opera will feature local singers, company artists, and a few traveling artists. “We purposefully looked for a show where the creativity and the talent, the human talent, was the most important part of it,” Canty says.
Capturing the human talent, Canty says, is one of the things an Opera Memphis show does best. “People always think of operas as this very big art form, an excessive art form. And that is sometimes true, but if you look back to the roots of it, a lot of pieces that were written in the earliest years of opera were written for very, very small theaters, theaters that are much closer in size to Playhouse on the Square than a 4,000-seat theater like you might find in a bigger city. And so by doing it this way, we’re able to really just kind of hone in on doing the show as well as it can be done.”
Opera Memphis performs La Calisto at Playhouse on the Square last year. The production’s return will be one of the conference’s capstone events. (Photo: Ziggy Mack)
Opera Memphis’ production of La Calisto will also take on a bit of a Memphis flavor, Canty says. In one scene, the troupe has replaced a battle outfitted with spears and swords with a dance battle bringing in multiple styles of dance, including, of course, Memphis jookin’.
In addition, to La Calisto, Opera Memphis will perform arias of select commissioned works, some a few years old, some still in progress, some yet to be debuted. These performances will only be accessible to conference attendees, but the hope is that another company may want to co-produce a piece in progress or do their own production of one that’s already shown. And don’t worry, Canty says, Memphis will one day see these in-progress and yet-to-be-debuted works.
To find out more about or to register for the Opera Conference, visit operaamerica.org. To purchase tickets to La Calisto on Friday, May 23rd, 7:30 p.m., visit operamemphis.org. Tickets cost $10 to $75. The production will include heavy haze and some strobe light effects. Tickets for Wednesday night’s performance have sold out.
Photo: Courtesy Joel Parsons
“Club Rapture” leads to “Ecstasy Afters,” where the party is over
and the confetti has fallen.
Joel Parsons’ show at Sheet Cake Gallery wasn’t supposed to be this relevant. When he started creating his pieces for “Club Rapture and the Ecstasy Afters,” he wanted to recall the memories of queer protests and movements, of queer dance spaces, and the connections between them. From the beginning, he knew he’d incorporate protest signs to talk about the intersection of politics and pleasure, but he thought the signs would look “quaint,” maybe “out of step.” At least, he hoped.
“I didn’t know that it would also be showing up in the streets,” he says. “I thought it would kind of feel historical. … I really didn’t think that this would be the current political situation.”
As his process deepened and the new presidential administration took over, Parsons, absorbed in the history through which he planned to view queer pleasure and politics — from Stonewall in 1969 to the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 to Memphis’ own queer dance scene — saw, unflinchingly, past and present colliding in a mirroring timeline. He saw how pleasure and joy always existed even in the most dire of circumstances. “Part of what the show became for me as I was working on it, and what I hope people get out of it, is that even though the world is sort of on fire, it’s still okay to find pleasure and to love other people, and to have all of the goodness in the world, even as so much of the world is hurting and there’s so much that needs to change.”
Parsons thought back to queer activists in the ’90s. “They would say, ‘We would go to a funeral in the morning to bury our friends who had died of AIDS. We’d go to a protest in the afternoon, and then we’d go out dancing at night, and that was a typical Saturday.’”
With that in mind, the artist created a fictitious “Club Rapture” in the gallery space for such a scene — or, really, any club experience — to take place. Tucked away in the corner are those protest signs the club-goers have put aside to party — these with lyrics from the unofficial AIDS anthem “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston. With messages like “Set Me Free” and “I Can’t Exist,” Parsons says, “The idea is that the signs could be directed at the country or a lover … conflating the political and the intimate.”
For another moment of conflating the intimate with the political, Parsons created State of Union, a clouded restroom mirror with “for a good time call” scrawled on with bright red lipstick or marker. A phone number when dialled leads to a voice message that could be left for the state or a lover: “I don’t think we want the same things. … I revolt. It’s still love.” Meanwhile, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” plays in the background as if the voice on the phone is lost at Club Rapture, the music blaring.
The name Club Rapture, Parson says, is a nod to the “rapturous experience of being with people on the dance floor and being in community and finding pleasure.” It’s also tied to the religious symbolism and language he employs throughout the show. “I was thinking about those clubs as a kind of sacred space,” he says. “I’m thinking about how these clubs are almost like cathedrals. It’s a place where people find communion.”
Some of his works are direct references to religious works, like Rubens’ Descent from the Cross and da Vinci’s Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. “I started to see these sort of visual rhymes between these religious images that were often about these moments of intensity, like grief or death or rebirth, and then seeing those shapes or forms or ideas duplicated in these dance floor photos, so it made a lot of sense to kind of bring those in an explicit way.”
Stained glass, too, with all its religious connotations, appears in the show, making it Parsons’ first show in Memphis to contain the form. “I just started combining [enamel] with stained glass [about a year ago],” Parsons says. “I’m slowly working my way through different glass techniques and seeing what I can do. And I always like to do it wrong, like I do it all incorrectly. I teach myself. I watch all these videos and people say, ‘Oh, you can’t do this.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, let me try it.’ There’s all kinds of stuff in the show that shouldn’t really work, that I just didn’t know better than to not try it, which is also, to me, a way of being queer in the process. …
“And I like how it’s so beautiful, but it’s also really fragile. It’s super archival; it will last pretty much forever. But then one wrong move, and it could shatter on the floor. I like all those tensions.”
These tensions, Parsons adds, also carry in a motif of roses — a symbol of love and affection, but also of memorials. In Parsons’ work, the rose often takes the place of the figure, and in this show, a line of glass roses wait under a “no cover” banner to get into Club Rapture. “It’s also like a memorial that reminds you of images of Pulse nightclub after the shooting. And so I’m trying to combine those images of love and affection and exuberance with grief and mourning, trying to layer those things together as much as I can because that’s my experience with the world right now.”
As these tensions and more are revealed, what’s left is what Parsons calls the “Ecstasy Afters” — “the idea of what happens when you leave the club, that kind of cold blue light of morning coming in as you stumble out [and] head back out into the world.”
“We all feel, on some level, tired and defeated and scared, but then, what we have is each other, and we have a moment where we can dance and look each other in the eyes and experience joy in a communal way. Maybe that’ll get us through, and maybe that’s worth fighting for. But yeah, there’s a lot of ambivalence.”
“Club Rapture and the Ecstasy Afters” is on display at Sheet Cake Gallery through May 17th.
Kicking off on Friday, May 2nd, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will host its Memphis Art and Fashion Week, complete with a runway, immersive experiences, and conversations.
“It’s about culture. It’s about art. It’s about music, community, and inclusivity,” says Ramona Sonin, director of Memphis Art and Fashion Week and associate professor at the University of Memphis. “It’s a celebration of art, fashion, and the creatives in Memphis.”
In that vein, interior designers Carmeon Hamilton and Colin Chapman will host a Met Gala Watch Party on Monday, May 5th, and Wednesday’s Culinary Couture event will celebrate chef Karen Carrier as she prepares a menu inspired by the artistry and boldness of high fashion. DJs will take over the runway’s after-party. “Having these wonderful creatives all come together to celebrate art and fashion, it’s just really wonderful,” Sonin says. “I’m so grateful to the Brooks for listening to my ideas.”
Last year was the Brooks’ inaugural Art and Fashion: Runway at the Museum, then a one-night event. “It sold out,” Sonin says. “And then we found ways to make a few more spots again, and then we opened tickets up again and it sold out again in seven minutes. So Memphis has been so supportive of it, and clearly it’s something that they love seeing. Knowing that, we came back this year officially with a Memphis Art and Fashion Week — and not just necessarily the traditional runway but also celebrating art.”
The Friday, May 9th, runway show with nearly 50 designers, local and national, will feature several categories including mini collection, micro collection, wearable art, and more, with headliner Korto Momolu, acclaimed Project Runway designer. “She is an amazing talent I can’t wait for Memphis to see on the runway,” Sonin says. “From watching her on Project Runway, the way she works with fabric and her structure, I’ve always adored that, and her use of fabrics as well.”
At the start of the runway will be works by U of M students in the school’s fashion program. Students will also be backstage helping with models get dressed and undressed and so forth. “It gets super chaotic in a wonderful way,” Sonin says. “It’s something you could never teach in the classroom. You can talk about backstage all day long in the classroom, but until they’re back and they’re experiencing it, they’ll never understand it fully. So I’m so happy that we’re able to do that.”
Almost nine years ago, when Sonin first moved here, opportunities like this didn’t exist for students. U of M’s fashion program didn’t exist. “We already had a fashion merchandising program, which I was hired to come in and revamp. In doing that, I pitched the idea of design, and it was approved. And so the design program has just been growing and growing.
“There wasn’t anything really here, the love for it was here, but there was not an outlet for celebrating it.”
Of course, there was the now-closed Arrow Creative’s Memphis Fashion Week, last celebrated in 2023, but as Sonin says, “They had their own mission, and our mission is certainly different.”
Already, the Brooks and Sonin are looking to 2026’s Memphis Art and Fashion Week. “We had so many applications that we are now in the process of considering that the runway may need to be a two-night event,” Sonin says.
“The Brooks has really embraced the idea of fashion as part of art,” Sonin adds, pointing out the museum’s Couture Collective, whose members can attend exclusive events and have access to opportunities in selecting works of art related to the fashion community. “Fashion is an art, and there’s some very artful things that are done in the creation process of making anything, even for a traditional runway. So I think it’s the celebration of that, and people are starting to realize that as well.”
For more information about Memphis Art and Fashion Week and for tickets, visit brooksmuseum.org/program/fashion. A schedule of events is below. (All events take place at the Brooks unless otherwise noted.)
Memphis Art and Fashion Week Schedule
(Photo: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art)
Blue Suede Vintage After Hours: Shop local, get your unique vintage look, and stand out at Memphis’ week of fashion and fun. | Blue Suede Vintage, 486 North Hollywood Street, Memphis, TN 38112, Friday, May 2nd, 5 p.m., free
Met Gala Watch Party: Kick off Memphis Art & Fashion Week and watch the red carpet arrivals of the Met Gala in style. | Monday, May 5, 6 p.m., free/Couture Collective, $20/museum member, $35/general admission
Culinary Couture: This exclusive dinner features a menu by chef Karen Carrier that celebrates creativity across the senses. | Wednesday, May 7, 6 p.m., $175/Couture Collective, $175/museum member, $195/general admission
Backstage with Korto Momolu: A dynamic conversation with the acclaimed Project Runway designer on creativity and cultural influence. | Thursday, May 8, 6 p.m, free/Couture Collective, $10/museum member, $18/general admission, $7/student
Runway at the Museum + After Party: A showcase of more than 50 visionary designers from across the country followed by a party in the Summer Art Garden. | Friday, May 9, 6 p.m., free/Couture Collective, $35/general admission, $25/U of M student, $110/VIP, $15/after-party only
Cocktails with the Curator: Black Dandyism: An exploration of fashion, identity, and resistance with the assistant curator of photography C. Rose Smith. | Saturday, May 10, 3 p.m., free/museum member, $18/general admission
