Andrea Morales, Southern Heritage, 2017 (Photo: Courtesy Andrea Morales)
Andrea Morales has been making photographs since she was a child, and yes, “making photographs” is the right phrase here. Not taking photographs, capturing, or shooting. For Morales, these words are too aggressive to describe a process that is about building trust and intimacy between the photographer and the photographed individuals, or, as Morales calls them, her collaborators.
She’s been working in Memphis as a photojournalist for a decade now, making photographs of the community. You probably recognize her name from her work as the visuals director at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, but she’s also been featured in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and TIME Magazine, among many others. Now, to add to her impressive resume, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has opened an exhibit of 65 of her photographs of Memphis and the surrounding region, titled “Roll Down Like Water.”
Taking its name from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech in Memphis, in which he said, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” the exhibit, says its curator Rosamund Garrett, is “a portrait of America through Memphis.”
“There are some tremendously famous photographers from this area,” Garrett says, “but I really feel that Andrea looks at things through a very fresh lens, and she looks at this region very directly, very earnestly, in a way that still allows the magic of this place to come through.”
Morales engages in what’s called movement journalism, an approach to journalism that emphasizes community over objectivity. This, in turn, makes the Brooks the first museum to showcase movement journalism, and the first to publish a catalogue on it.
It’s also the first time Morales will have her photography in a major museum exhibition. Of course, she’s used to her photographs being seen publicly on a large scale, with them being in publications and such, but this, she says, is different. She even shrugs when asked if she sees her work as art. “What’s art?” she ponders. “It’s hard to answer that.”
But in this exhibit, not in a publication with someone else’s byline, a headline she didn’t she choose, or quotes she didn’t pull, the photos can stand alone. “It does feel like something’s being restored, I guess,” Morales says. “I’m struggling with identifying exactly what, but it feels like something’s restored. It’s like back to that feeling of the moment [of making the photo] because you have that moment and then you kind of have to tuck it away because this photo has to exist in this one context [of an article]. But this is all existing in the context of me and Memphis right now. That’s been crazy. It feels very special to be honored this way, to be able to hold this much space.”
“Roll Down Like Water,” Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1934 Poplar Avenue, on display through January 2025.
At Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the Metal Museum’s transition to its new home at the former Memphis College of Art building, Carissa Hussong showed off her decked-out hardhat, complete with diamonds and black flames sprawling across the cap. “Yes, the diamonds are real,” she said. “’Cause who doesn’t need a hardhat with their name and diamonds on it?”
The hardhat, she revealed, was gifted to her on her first day on the job 17 years ago by James Wallace, the museum’s founding director who preceded her. It was always destined that the museum would expand in some way, though it wasn’t always known that it would take over the Memphis College of Art’s campus. That suggestion wouldn’t come until 2018, and even then it was met with some hesitation, until eventually that hesitation subsided as the move became more and more logical.
“The museum has been called a hidden gem. This has a lot to do with our current location,” said Richard Aycock, the museum’s board president, at the ceremony. “Our programs have changed lives, and I can’t tell you how excited we are about the possibilities this expansion gives us to expand our educational opportunities. It will increase our educational offerings sixfold in a place that’s easily accessible by foot, by bike, by car, or by public transportation. The expansion gives us room and space to teach advanced metalworking techniques to more students.
“In addition to addressing the needs of our community, we are very excited and honored to become a part of the Overton Park family and to continue the Memphis College of Art’s legacy of art and education.”
Part of honoring the college’s legacy also means honoring its original architecture and architects Roy Harrover and Bill Mann, so the museum engaged the help of Los Angeles-based wHY Architects and Memphis-based LRK.
“This project is a true example of how you can work with the existing fabric to highlight its unique features, and then thoughtfully add on to it to serve future generations,” said Krissy Buck Flickinger, senior associate architect with LRK.
Quoting from the original National Register nomination for Overton Park, she continued, “‘The building is an outstanding example of contemporary architectural design, distinguished by its freestanding concrete sunbreak, folded plate roof structure and generous roof terraces, and balconies, all of which will be preserved and will live on.’
“The historic materials will be used, restored, and retained. I already talked about the folded plate roof. We have terrazzo floors. We have steel windows that are all original and in beautiful condition. We’re restoring the 350-seat auditorium. We’re reimagining the library and the cafe space. … And we’re letting the once art studio spaces live on as art gallery spaces. … And the second vital piece to this project is the addition of the innovative metalworking facility with its own expressive design that draws inspiration from and complements Rust Hall.”
The designs are complete, and construction is ready to begin, with a projected completion date of 2026.
The museum’s current site at 374 Metal Museum Drive will eventually be converted into a space to host an artist-in-residence program, as well as an events space.
As Aycock reminded guests at Thursday’s event, “The Metal Museum is the only institute in the United States dedicated to the art and craft of fine metalwork. There is nowhere else in the world where you can go and look at a beautiful exhibition of exquisite metalwork, then go to the shop and watch that metalwork being made, and even take a class and make some with your own hands. It is a special place. It is a place that metalsmiths from all over the world come and that many here in this country call home.”
If you’re even the most casual reader of the Memphis Flyer, you’ve seen Jeanne Seagle’s work. Just turn to the weekly “News of the Weird” column every now and then, and you’ll see one of her quirky illustrations. But this week, if you head to the Medicine Factory, you’ll find the work she’s proudest of — her drawings and her watercolors of Dacus Lake, across the Mississippi River in Arkansas.
Seagle has been fascinated by this area for years now. After all, it’s where she started to get to know her husband Fletcher Golden, who lived at a fishing camp in the area at the time. “We would just wander all over that land while we were dating,” she says. “It was so much fun.”
Often, she returns there — to hike, to paint with watercolors, and to let her surroundings wash over her as she takes photographs to reference later in her drawings. She thrives in nature, she knows.
“I just love going over there. I love these scenes. I love these landscapes. That’s my spot,” Seagle said in an interview with Memphis Magazinelast year.
Jeanne Seagle (Photo: Courtesy Jeanne Seagle)
Today when we speak about the Medicine Factory show, “Of This Moment,” which features new works, she notes how she hasn’t tired of the subject, especially with its ever-changing qualities. “In this show, I have a picture called Fallen Tree, and I have drawn that tree several times in other pictures when it was still standing,” she says. “That’s the thing about drawing landscapes, you can just focus on one spot and nature takes over and changes things constantly. … I find it endlessly fascinating.”
For three or four hours a day, she draws scenes of nature from photographs she’s taken at Dacus Lake, just a drive across the river from her Midtown studio. Sometimes, she’ll play blues CDs to fill the space with the rhythms of the Delta as she stills her focus on rendering the smallest of details — grooves in tree bark and wisps of grass — with careful marks in charcoal and pencil.
These black-and-white drawings take weeks to complete, sometimes up to two months. She’ll fold over the Xerox copies of photos she’s taken in some places, making entirely new compositions, adjusting the wilderness to her aesthetic liking. From these gritty images printed on copy paper, Seagle gleans details that an untrained eye would not recognize. She knows this art, inside and out, just like she knows these woods, harvesting their most innate qualities from her memories.
Unlike her illustrations that favor stylization, Seagle renders these images realistically, leaving no detail spared. The scenes are still, out of time. A sense of wonder remains in her drawings, inviting the viewer to slip into nature’s serenity, only a few miles from the grit and grind of Memphis.
After decades of working as an artist, Seagle has slipped into a serenity of her own, as if all her prior artistic endeavors have led to this moment. She’s experimented with styles and challenged herself many times over, she says, and now she’s found a subject that is uniquely hers — one that she’s emotionally attached to, that she’s excited to render in a style and medium that feels right, not like one she’s trying on.
“I have always liked to draw more than paint, and I just feel so much more comfortable doing that,” she says. “When I was a little girl, I was not exposed to paint media. When I was a little kid, I just colored with crayons, and I kind of just kept on doing that.”
Even as she continues in this phase of her life and art with these landscapes, Seagle can’t help but think of her childhood. “Just thinking how ironic it is that my parents were all about trees, too. My father worked with trees at his job as a forest ranger and my mother loved to take photographs of trees. It’s just kind of natural that I’ve just kind of slipped unintentionally into this little niche here.”
But it’s a niche Seagle plans to stay in, perhaps one that’s been in her genes all along. “I have spent most of my career doing color pictures for illustrations magazine and book illustrations,” she adds. “And now I’m doing what I want to do.”
“Of This Moment” is on display at the Medicine Factory. It features drawings and watercolors by Jeanne Seagle and paintings by Annabelle Meacham, plus works by Matthew Hasty, Jimpsie Ayres, Alisa Free, Claudia Tullos-Leonard, Anton Weiss, and others. Hours are Thursday, June 6th, noon to 6 p.m.; Friday, June 7th, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturday, June 8th, noon to 4 p.m.; and Sunday, June 9th, by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, email art@sylvanfinearts.com. Seagle will give an artist talk on Saturday, June 8th, at 1 p.m.
Guitar, 18” x 24” acrylic (Photos courtesy Ron Jewell)
It’s hard out there for an impresario.
For years, Ron Jewell has been all in on the performing arts. In the 1980s and 1990s he was director of marketing for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and after that he joined the city of Bartlett to put together and run the Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center. As director of the facility, he booked the programming and turned it into a venue that drew healthy attendance. After 21 years there, he went over to the Orpheum Theatre Group where he was director of operations for the Halloran Centre for eight years.
But he wasn’t just behind the scenes in the performing arena — he’s had a yearslong run with his one-man show “Mark Twain At-Large” that he’s performed all over the country. He could run a show on either side of the curtain.
As happens with people of a certain age, however, he sensed change was afoot. “I began to prepare myself for retirement,” he said. “The whole concept of leaving a long career in the performing arts seemed like giving in somehow.”
Combustion, 11” x 14” acrylic
He had the finances to retire, but he just wasn’t sure what he’d do. “I just didn’t have any direction for what to look forward to. I wasn’t ready.”
And yet, something was already bubbling up. “About 10 years ago, I asked my daughter, on a lark, to get me a starter painting kit,” he said. “I began to push paint around a canvas without any instruction, playing all over the palette with great folly, while watching a variety of video demonstrations and tutorials on techniques and style.”
Wetland, 18” x 24” acrylic
He finally found his direction. And he’s well aware of how an artist’s initial explorations can go off in any number of ways. “As I discovered new paths for expression, the exhibit may seem, at times, a little tangential,” he said. “But the randomness in styles reflects the search for my own voice. I’ve found a new sense of purpose and rely on my creative energies to navigate what I call the ‘Second Winds.’”
Jewell’s explorations go far and wide, and that suits him just fine.
“I paint for myself, but I’m ready to include my circle of friends. You will excuse my amateurish attempts, but I hope you will also celebrate the never-ending power of an inspired imagination.”
Ron Jewell’s exhibition “Second Winds” is at Gallery Ten Ninety-One at WKNO, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova. The show runs from June 3rd to June 29th, with an opening reception Monday, June 3rd, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Flying Tigers by John Lee (Photo: Courtesy John Lee)
When SunAh Laybourn founded Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month Memphis in 2023, she knew an art show would always be a part of the annual activities. After all, the 2022 removal, and eventual reinstallation, of photographer Tommy Kha’s Elvis-inspired portrait in the Memphis International Airport was just one of the events that got the University of Memphis professor thinking about Asian-American representation, and, sadly, anti-Asian hate, in Memphis.
For that first AAPI Heritage Month art show, Laybourn chose the title “Asian American in the South.” “That approach for me last year,” she says, “was really just making the statement that Asian Americans are in the shadows, but we’re part of the South, and so I love to be able to see all of the creativity from all the artists. It was really a lot about identity-making.”
This year’s show — “Between Heaven and Earth, We Build Our Home” — is an expansion of that. “The theme of the exhibition is about family and home and ancestry, kind of like how we communicate and pass down knowledge and wisdom and lessons from generation to generation,” says Neena Wang, the show’s curator. “The theme really just came out of the pieces that I [was sent]. Everybody was sending in work about family, about their relatives, about ancestry.”
Participating are Thandi Cai, Sai Clayton, Sharon Havelka, Vivian Havelka, John Lee, Christine Yerie Lee, Huifu Ma, Susan Mah, Lili Nacht, Yangbin Park, Neena Wang, and Yidan Zeng. All are AAPI individuals from Memphis or living in the South, whose art showcases a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, textile, photography, video, and performance.
Wang and Laybourn also point out that “Between Heaven and Earth” marks UrbanArt Commission’s first show by an outside organization. “I think what’s great about having this partnership with UrbanArt is that the show will be on view for a few weeks [through June 19th],” Laybourn says. “Last year was just one night only.”
“Between Heaven and Earth” opens on Saturday, May 25th, with a reception featuring a special performance by the MengCheng Collective (Cai, Nacht, Wang, and Zeng). Nacht and Zeng will also lead a free Raise Your Flag workshop on Sunday, May 26th, 2 to 5 p.m. “They’re going to do a cyanotype flag-making workshop,” Wang says. “The idea is making a flag as a representation of place because the theme of the show is very much about building your own place as an immigrant or as an outsider.” Participants can register in advance at bit.ly/mcraiseflag.
Brantley Ellzey and Alicja Trout (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Alicja Trout’s explored the rock-and-roll scene. She’s taken the risks that come with that, toured, worked the merch tables, designed her album covers and band T-shirts — and she’s not done with music, that much needs to be said — but Trout has found a new passion, or rather reignited an old one: visual art. And, this Sunday, she’ll introduce her new artform to Memphis in her solo art show, “Understory,” at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio.
Ellzey, who helped curate the show, says he didn’t know Trout painted until this year, and he expects most Memphians also know Trout solely for her music. Even so, when he first saw her paintings, he knew he wanted to show them in his studio. “I had a show for Lee Chase for his photography, and then I had a show for Moth Moth Moth,” Ellzey says. “So I’m kind of focusing on artists that are multidisciplinary but maybe people don’t necessarily know that they are visual artists, and they might be familiar to people in Memphis in other ways.”
For Trout, who’s been known as Alicja-Pop around Memphis for the better part of her life, art has taken a backseat to her music after earning her master’s in fine arts from the Memphis College of Art. “One of the main reasons I chose to do music is I do enjoy being alone a lot, and I found that I would just not ever socialize [if I were a visual artist, working alone in a studio],” she says. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to live my twenties and my thirties alone,’ so I chose music as a thing to do with people.”
As the years went by, she would make things here and there — dresses for her daughters, a small painting for a room. “Maintenance art,” her friend called it. “I love art,” Trout says. “And every time I go to a museum, I just love it. And I just got inspired by that again, and music started to weigh on me as, ‘Oh, it’s work. I have to record and sit in my dark space in front of a screen or computer and play over and over again to get it right.’ I just felt like I needed a break.”
That break would come in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic. She started small with simple graphic linework on a small canvas, but eventually she graduated to large landscapes. She experimented with styles and forwent realism.
(Photo: Abigail Morici)
“Because I came from doing music for so long and then went back into painting, I think a lot of it, I had fun doing it because I was experimenting again,” Trout says. “When I left art school and I went into music, I would do more like posters and flyers and record covers and things that were done with a purpose with words on them and stuff. It was kind of like graphic design, rock-and-roll posters.”
But this return to painting allowed her to “get more simple.” “I also took on this nature and interest in trees,” she adds, “because I think it’s part of getting older as a person, especially when you come from rock music and rock-and-roll and you’re used to the aesthetic of nighttime clubs and all that stuff. But then I have children and I just got a lot more into taking peace outside and animals and nature and creatures in my yard and growing things. So it’s just like a natural progression of time.”
Music, it turns out, had allowed her to work out “a lot of issues in my brain and anger and frustration, just angst and all that stuff. And I think I’ve processed that at this point.”
So, her paintings lean into the fantastical, portraying a sense of peace in storybook landscapes. “As with a diorama in a natural history museum, the viewer is transported into a scene both natural and artificial,” reads Trout’s artist statement. “Sheltering tree limbs comfort and calm like a protective parent.”
(Photo: Abigail Morici)
Often in Trout’s landscapes viewers can find a lone creature, at ease in its environment varied in color, often not found in nature. A winding path or river, or sometimes a single light source, will bring the eye to the a focal point on the canvas, offering a familiar image though it represents the unknown.
“For some reason, it’s cozy and comfortable [in the fantastical],” Trout says. “ I am kind of a loner, and that stuff, like Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and fairy tales, has always been a cozy space for me, and maybe having daughters, I went through that again with them and watched a lot of Disney and I read at a lot of beautiful illustration books with them. It was such a cozy space.”
But even in this coziness, Trout hopes to challenge the viewer to reflect on the environment and their place in it. “This body of work displays my love and fascination for the natural world and my fear that we will lose it to inharmonious human development,” she writes in her statement.
In all, though, the works are a personal triumph for the artist. “I was super happy to come back to painting,” she says. “It’s normally in my house and shut in closets and to see it all up, I just want people to come and be part of the experience.”
Join Alicja Trout for the opening reception of “Understory” at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio (3086 Summer Avenue) on Sunday, May 19th, 2 to 6 p.m. The show will be on display through June 2nd.
“The blue color, which dominates my art collection,” the artist says, “is a symbol of the oceanic beauty and serenity, but it also has secrets, which like our oceans, are never completely revealed and discovered.” (Photo: Courtesy Iwona Rhodes)
In literature and art, water holds many symbolic meanings — rejuvenation, renewal, sorrow, purification, to name a few. But for artist Iwona Rhodes water represents home — her seaside home in Gdynia, Poland, and the home “where we come from and eventually we all will return to one day.”
The ocean, Rhodes writes in her artist statement for her upcoming “Seaside and Beyond” show at ANF Architects, is “a place of creation.” It’s “like a God-Father figure who serves us, forms us, and through his beautiful nature is also comforting us.”
It’s only natural for Rhodes to see water this way. She grew up close to the beach. She worked on a cruise line. She now lives in a river city. Water, despite its versatility, has been the most constant theme in her life.
“I’ve always been obsessed,” she says of the organic form that inspired the more than a dozen paintings in “Seaside and Beyond.” “My paintings are a reflection of the majestic nature of oceans with their endless forms and capabilities.”
“When I was creating this collection, I felt like it was coming to me, so this is something I’m just enjoying,” Rhodes says. “I had a sudden desire to paint blue abstraction and experiment with media.”
Part of that desire stemmed from her dad’s passing three year’s ago. “I was just missing him, and the ocean always. Why I’m so far from the ocean? When I came back home [from Poland to Memphis], I felt this coldness.”
Photos: Courtesy Iwona Rhodes
So she painted her own oceans — 14 times over on canvas using acrylic and mixed media, opting for impressionist and expressionist styles over realism. “I’m good at realistic painting, but this is more honest,” she says, adding that the paintings tap into her own emotions — her nostalgia for the shores that raised her, her longing for the depths of the oceans and the mysteries they contain.
Though she initially agreed to 20 new paintings for this ANF exhibit, Rhodes was satisfied with her 14. “I said, ‘I’m done.’ This is pure.”
But then she started her new job teaching art at Compass Community School to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Since she immigrated to America, she’s worked in the corporate world, and teaching, as one can imagine, has been a completely different experience.
“I love this job,” she says. “Literally when I’m leaving school, I’m physically exhausted, but I’m so happy. I’m coming back home and I cannot stop talking about my schooling, showing artwork to my husband. And it’s just amazing. It’s also very inspiring for me. … Teaching only for 10 months inspired me so much, I’m doing an extra six [pieces] inspired by my students. Now I have an idea for another collection.”
In February, Rhodes explains, she taught her students about Alma Thomas, an African-American artist who taught in Washington, D.C. in the 20th century. “She was so successful. Like, every second kid in Washington, D.C., could say that there was a point in his life she was teaching him art. But for me, she’s an inspiration because she was so well educated and she wanted to give back to society by educating tons and tons of kids, and at the end of her life she was rewarded by becoming a true artist. And I love her art. It’s very inspiring.”
For her classes, Rhodes asked her students to create sunrises and sunsets by using pieces of construction paper. “I was in shock when I saw [the results,” she says. As Rhodes scrolls through photos of her students of her work, she praises each one genuinely: “Mind-blowing,” “The creation of this, how she came with this? I have never seen anything like that,” “This is mesmerizing. I love this,” “Okay, this is my inspiration.”
These works inspired by Rhodes’ students will be revealed at the ANF show. “There’s a lot of things altogether, but it’s very honest,” she says, adding that she’ll also display a few line drawings, some of which have been published in her book Heart Traces.
These graphics are linear profiles, witty, ambiguous, and self-reflective in nature. It’s a kind of visual poetry, in a way, which is fitting for Rhodes as she grew up loving to write. “My Polish language and literature professor hated me when she discovered I was going to study fine arts, not literature,” she laughs.
Always the creative, Rhodes says these linear graphics came during a drought of creativity while working in advertising. “I was craving ‘true art,’” she says. “Advertising is like compilation; you use somebody else’s ideas. I was so depressed. I was really unhappy with myself. I wasn’t painting. I knew so much about art, and I wasn’t using it.”
So she turned to a divine intervention of sorts and waited for inspiration to come to her in a dream, and it did — at least, the vision for her Angelic did, a simple line drawing of an otherworldly profile with angel wings capping off the ends of the lines at the neck.
While her other drawings didn’t come from a dream, Rhodes says, they are “a treat for the intellect.” They’ll make you think; some may make you laugh.
In all, for “Seaside and Beyond,” Rhodes hopes viewers will feel a range of emotions. The ocean-inspired paintings might offer profound feelings of serenity or a bit of wonder. The Alma Thomas-inspired works might provide a bit of light or inspiration, and the line drawings may extend a sense of reprieve as they once did for the artist herself.
Join Iwona Rhodes for the opening of “Seaside and Beyond” on Friday, May 10th, from 5 to 7 p.m., at ANF Architects, 1500 Union. Admission is free, and refreshments will be provided. “Seaside and Beyond” will be on display through June 5th, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Almost a third of U.S. adults have at least one tattoo, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. That’s up by about 10 percent from 2012 and 17 percent from 2006. And while the popularity of tattoos certainly seems to be on the rise, their stigma declining, it’s more than a trend. It’s a visual art form, it’s a medium for storytelling, it’s an innately human activity, say the curators of the exhibit “Becoming More Myself: Reclamation Through Tattoo Art,” on display at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis (AMUM).
Vanessa Waites, a local tattoo artist who earned her master’s in applied anthropology in 2023 from U of M, and current anthropology graduate student Caroline Warner collaborated on this exhibition with the hope to give the practice of tattooing “some institutional respect by putting it in an art museum,” Warner says, but more importantly to connect with the community, those tattooed and not.
For the show, 18 volunteer, mostly local participants shared their tattoo stories with the curators — their stories often exploring themes of gender, body image, and trauma; their tattoos offering a sense of bodily autonomy, a sense of “physical, psychological, and social transformation and self-acceptance.” “Tattoos,” says one participant, “are a reclamation of how I choose to show up in the world unapologetically.”
In a way, Waites says, “tattoos straddle this really interesting place between being intensely personal, but also for public consumption.” It can be a reminder for the individual of what they’ve overcome — like tattoos covering self-harm scars — or a visual act of resistance — like one participant whose thigh tattoos have given her the confidence to wear shorts after years of insecurity. “My thighs are beautiful,” she says. “Tattoos are beautiful. Look at it or don’t look at it. I don’t care anymore because I want to see it.”
And, in “Becoming More Myself,” that’s what all these participants want — to be seen — for their tattoos to be seen and for their stories to be seen, the two intrinsically linked. The gallery space, in turn, becomes a space for vulnerability, bodies and personal truths laid bare. “As we had people come through the exhibition,” Warner says, “afterwards, I heard a lot of feedback of like, ‘Yeah, I got it. I connected with that person, this has changed my perspective, I understand, I’m glad I saw that.’”
That was the point all along, Warner says. “These are your lawyers and your bartenders and your library clerks. These are the people directly in your community as you’re walking through here. We’re hoping that people would be feeling more connected and feeling more aware of what it means to be Memphis.”
AMUM is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
“Becoming More Myself: Reclamation Through Tattoo Art,” The Art Museum of the University of Memphis, 3750 Norriswood, on display through June 29.
Anderson Goin has made some ugly art. It’s okay, though. He knows this to be true himself. For Goin, “ugly” isn’t some big, off-putting word. If it were, the contemporary abstract painter wouldn’t have named his gallery, opening this Saturday, the Ugly Art Company.
And, hey, “ugly” is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? That’s what Goin discovered for himself at one of his first shows. “My friend and her mother — I was standing behind them and they did not know that — the mom looked to my friend and she goes, ‘His work is just so ugly,’” he says of what he now describes as a funny moment. “I heard that obviously, and thankfully that piece ended up selling. Naturally, it hurt my feelings a little bit, but … that’s kind of how I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the word ‘ugly’ and how people use it. I just decided to embrace it and make it something beautiful.”
If anything, Goin reflects now, sometimes artists need to first create something “ugly” to unearth artistic beauty. It’s part of the artistic process. “Looking back on a lot of my younger, my older stuff, there’s a special place that I keep for some of my older work, but,” he says, “a lot of times like, oh gosh, that was not great. And those critiques are the ones that hopefully have helped me along the way. But, yeah, that probably was a little ugly, but hey, we love that.”
“If you’re not getting good feedback,” Goin adds, “you’re gonna keep making the same mistakes.”
That innate need for feedback, it turns out, drove Goin to start Ugly in 2021, not as a gallery space but as a collective. He’d recently graduated from the Memphis College of Art, and without the structure of critiques built into his classes, he was lost. “My ultimate goal was to create a group of like-minded artists so that we could share our work, have critiques together, and then also I would share their work through our social media channels,” Goin says. “At the time, I was trying to build a website for us, so people could just have another way to promote their work and to sell their work. And it kind of just grew from there.”
The collective, which now consists of some 14 artists of many disciplines, has worked without a physical hub for the past few years, exhibiting in shows at places like the Medicine Factory, having virtual critiques with the very issues you’d expect from any virtual meeting. But this new gallery space, designed by cnct. design, will allow for consistent shows and critiques, much more conducive to the group’s needs. “We can do everything that we had wanted to.”
(Photo: Courtesy Ugly Art Company)
Ugly has taken over the old Spectrum night club downstairs space in the Edge District, and Goin aims to make it “refined and sophisticated.” But, he adds, “one of our whole tenets is that we want people to have fun, and we want our space to be welcoming to everybody, whether you have an MFA and you’ve studied art your whole life or if you’ve really never looked at a piece of art critically ever. We want people to have fun.”
Goin and his fellow Ugly artists want to break down any anxieties people may have about coming into a gallery space. Part of that will be through education — “talking to them about our art and the artists in our group,” Goin says. “The people in Ugly are super approachable, super friendly. And that was a big deal for us: We wanted to create a group of people that are hungry to not only get better themselves, but to help people along the way.
“That’s kind of our common ground — that we care deeply about the arts. We care deeply about Memphis and so that’s kind of what has threaded us together — that love of art and of community.”
The collective also plans to “open the doors up to as many possibilities as we can get to as many different kids of people as we can get in the doors.” Movie nights, ballet performances, open critiques, and workshops are just some of the ideas that have been floated.
“We want to cultivate a space that encourages all art forms, whether it be dance or music or cooking,” Goin adds. “We hope to incorporate all of that into meaningful experiences that people can walk away from feeling really good about whenever they leave our space. We want to give love and have people feeling full when they leave our space.
Etowah Hunt Club hosted a dinner at the gallery in February. (Photo: Courtesy Ugly Art Company)
“We’re really hopeful that this is going to be super beneficial not only for the patrons and the Edge District and everyone that comes to see the space and enjoy it, but for us to grow together and to help each other, get to the next stages of our careers.”
For Goin, he never could’ve imagined opening a space like this before he founded Ugly. “I think most artists will probably tell you, it’s harder to sell your own work sometimes, but I really enjoy talking about the artists in Ugly. I enjoy talking about their work. And because I believe in them, and I believe in how talented they are, it kind of came naturally and fell into place.”
As such, Goin says, Ugly as a gallery will always be artist-friendly and artist-first. “We have really cut our commission down really low,” he says. “We don’t have any kind of exclusivity things going on. We want to create opportunities and not take away opportunities. And so, hopefully the more ugly grows, this gives people opportunities to meet other people, meet other collectors — if somebody can take a big step, then we feel like we’ve done our job.”
For the gallery’s Saturday opening, all of Ugly’s artists will be on display. Amy LaVere will be playing, and Ballet Memphis will pay homage to all art forms with a short dance performance.
The members of the Ugly Art Company are Anderson Goin, Genevieve Farr, Zack Orsborn, Hank Smith, Jojo Brame, Heather Howle, Ivy-Jade Edwards, Will Ferguson, Olivia Malone, Sarah Schulman, Sam Reeves Hill, Plastik Olives (Paige Ellens), Rodney Ellis, and Logan Daws.
Follow the Ugly Art Company on Instagram (@theuglyartco). Visit their website here.
Ugly Art Company Grand Opening, 635 Madison Avenue, April 27, 6 p.m.
The clothing on display showcases Siriano’s evolution in design. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Taylor Swift, Celine Dion, Oprah, Michelle Obama, Janelle Monáe, Billy Porter, Leslie Jones — these are just a few of the well-known figures who have donned the clothing now housed temporarily in the Memphis Brooks Museum of Arts’ latest exhibition, “People Are People.” On display are dresses and suits worn to award shows, galas, and speeches, milestone moments in their wearers’ lives — moments when everyone wants to feel their best, their most confident, and, yes, their most beautiful. It’s a kind of transformation, says Christian Siriano, the designer of these 36 pieces.
“My sister and I, we were ballet dancers when I was little, and I really loved the idea of transformation,” he says. “Like when you see a ballet dancer in her warm-ups but then they transform into a Sugar Plum Fairy, I always thought that was really special.
“I guess that’s what drew me to [fashion]. I love seeing people transform when they put on a certain thing — heels or a dress or a jacket — you hold yourself a different way.”
When Siriano first broke into public consciousness at 21 after winning Project Runway in 2007, the fashion scene really only catered to one body: thin, very thin, and young. Even today, one could argue the same, but Siriano, from the get-go, embraced all bodies, genders, and ages. “It’s important to celebrate beauty and whatever that is for the person,” Siriano says.
If anything, “People Are People” demonstrates just that. Siriano says, “It’s really cool to see all these shapes and sizes of women or men or whoever they are on mannequins in clothes next to one another. It’s kind of never been done actually, probably ever, in a museum, because for so long fashion retrospectives didn’t have different-sized mannequins.”
Photo: Abigail Morici
“Just being able to see different body shapes, sizes, heights even, it’s really a different experience for people experiencing fashion,” says Patricia Daigle, the Brooks’ curator of modern and contemporary art. “… This message of inclusivity is something that really [will] resonate with our community here. This is something that we really also want to champion as an institution as well.”
“People Are People,” Siriano’s first-ever solo exhibit, debuted at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Museum of Art in 2021, before its run at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film shortly after. This is the first time the exhibit has traveled outside of SCAD, and it’s the first time the exhibit will be shown at an institution whose primary focus isn’t fashion but art in general, Daigle points out.
“I love that art museums are really starting to embrace fashion in this way and kind of pull down some of those barriers which are, at this point, quite antiquated of thinking about fashion as something else,” Daigle says. “I think we all love to see beautiful things; whether it’s a painting or a dress, these are all works of art.”
But a barrier Siriano and the Brooks are more concerned in breaking is that of access — and not just in the name of body inclusivity. “We want people that don’t always get to see things like this to get access to it,” Siriano says of the show’s choice to travel to Memphis. “That’s kind of the whole point. That’s why it’s kind of special and unique. There’s a million shows in New York every day. They don’t need another one.”
For the show’s stay in Memphis, Siriano insisted on adding one of his most recent pieces worn by Lily Gladstone at the Critics’ Choice Awards this year. (Gladstone received a slew of awards and nominations for her role in Killers of the Flower Moons, even becoming the first Native-American woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.)
“I took her dress back literally a week ago,” Siriano says. “I was like, ‘No, I need it back. I want to put it in this exhibition.’”
Ever involved in the making of the show, Siriano himself helped with the finishing touches before the Brooks’ opening, positioning mannequins’ precise poses, draping the fabrics exactly right, and wrapping the tulle that covers the models’ faces. The effect of that tulle, Siriano says, blurs their identities, distancing the dress from the celebrity wearer and creating an anonymity that any viewer can assume. “In a way they kind of actually feel more, I think, dreamlike,” Siriano says. “They all mean different things in a way. They all have different voices in a way, you know.”
“People Are People” is on display at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through August 4th. Visit brooksmuseum.org for a schedule of complementary programming like workshops and gallery talks.
