Little Amal visits Folkestone, England. (Credit: The Walk Productions/Igor Emerich)
This Wednesday, Memphis is welcoming a very special 10-year-old Syrian refugee as she makes her way across the United States. Little Amal, as she is called, is a 12-foot-tall puppet, who has traveled over 6,000 miles to 15 countries since July 2021, searching for family and friends, as part of one of the world’s largest free public art engagements. And now, Amal is coming to Memphis for a parade around Downtown, stopping at the historic Clayborn Temple, the Orpheum Theatre, and Tom Lee Park, with Memphis youth joining along the way and carrying puppets made in their own image.
The goal of Amal’s journey is to spark conversations about who we are and where we come from, says Anasa Troutman, executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple, who organized Amal’s stint in Memphis. And to make her stay even more poignant, Troutman adds, “We brought in Jeghetto, a United States-based puppeteer, who also makes oversized puppets, and he is making a second puppet, so there’ll be the Syrian girl and a large-scale puppet of a little Black girl.”
Memphis Girl stands at eight feet tall and will join Amal in the parade, which kicks off at Clayborn Temple, where attendees will learn about the history of Clayborn Temple and walk around the I Am A Man Plaza. “Then they’ll proceed together with a whole bunch of kids from all over Memphis,” Troutman says. After Clayborn Temple, the parade will proceed to the Orpheum Theatre, chosen for its connection to storytelling, and students from the Refugee Empowerment Program will welcome her with personal messages.
Little Amal towers over the crowd in Manchester, England. (Credit: The Walk Productions)
For the final stop, the group will take the walking celebration to Tom Lee Park. “I would never have Amal come here and not take her to the river,” Troutman says. “The city is built on the river, the history of the city begins on that river. … Also because of all the work that’s been done there, it is the premier location of the city to be able to take people to experience that part of our culture and our infrastructure.”
At Tom Lee Park, Amal will receive a “Culture of Love” quilt as a parting gift. “Culture of Love,” Troutman says, has been the guiding theme for Amal’s stay in Memphis. In preparation for the big day, Clayborn Temple collaborated with a number of organizations — from BRIDGES USA, to Shelby County Schools, to Memphis Youth Arts Initiative — to facilitate workshops for kids to create the puppets that’ll be used in the parade.
“Our goal was to be able to reach 1,000 children,” Troutman says. “Instead of trying to go and recruit all these young people to our organization, it felt really juicy and exciting to go to places where children already were because we want to support organizations that are already supporting young people, and we want to become part of their community and have them become part of our community. So the message of our local work has amounted to building a culture of love. This project has really brought us closer to the Memphis community and I love that.”
Little Amal takes part in the Luminato Festival in Toronto. (Credit: The Walk Productions/Taku Kumabe)
In addition to love shared among community members, Troutman hopes to instill self-love into the individual youths participating. “We talk all the time about the future,” she says. “The young people of this city deserve an opportunity to become the possibility of the future. The story of Amal is that refugee children bring possibilities, not problems. We’re saying the same thing. In a time when there’s a lot of conversation about crime, about poverty, these children in Memphis bring possibilities, not problems. If they’re engaged in the creative process, it allows them to open their minds and imagine what their future could be, what the future of the city could be.”
She continues, “There’ll be 1,000 children from all over Memphis who are getting to make puppets in their own image to be able to say things like, ‘I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am the future, and I am going to show that by creating this puppet, that’s going to show everybody what who I am.’ That is a powerful exercise to be able to create something in your own image, to be able to then put it on display in such a public way is very empowering and very healing.”
Walk with Amal begins at 4 p.m., and all — those young and young at heart — are welcome to join in at any of the three stops. You can support this project by donating here.
Works by Alexandra Baker, including "When Doves Cry," opens August 18th at New Day Healing and Wellness (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Alexandra Baker’s art exhibit, “Healing Through Color,” opens August 18th at New Day Healing and Wellness. Which is appropriate …
“The pieces in this show are more focused on calming and relaxation,” says Baker, 32. “They have a ‘Relaxation Room,’ so the painting in there is ‘When Doves Cry.’ Very subdued colors.” She adds, “The other pieces in the show are all based around healing. All my work is based around healing.”
Since Baker and New Day have the same goal of healing, the owners thought her abstract paintings “would be great in the therapy rooms.”
Describing “Earth Shake,” as a “fun, funky” painting to honor Earth, Baker says, “Since Memphis is on the fault-line for an earthquake, I believe if you honor the weather, maybe it won’t come. So, that’s my intention in that piece.”
“Earth Shake” by Alexandra Baker (Credit: Michael Donahue)
The show features eight works, including prints as well as originals. “Some of them I painted when I was sad. When I paint when I’m sad, it’s a very soothing result. What I need to see in that moment,” Baker says.
Born in Boston, Baker moved to Memphis with her family when she was four. “As a child, I loved art class. I was blessed to study with a woman named Kay Spruill. She was so wonderful. And she taught me so much about art and the magic of creation.”
Baker painted a lot of still lifes and animals in Spruill’s class. “I did a portrait of a dog once. I’ve always loved animals. It was a just a picture of a dog out of a magazine. It was a small dog with brown spots and brown ears. And it actually won a contest at my school. They put it on some stationery for my school, St. Mary’s Episcopal School for Girls.”
But Baker says she never explored “what’s in your soul” in Spruill’s class, as she does now.
Baker says she always dreamed of being an artist, but her parents steered her away from that dream. They thought she’d be better off being a doctor or a lawyer, “to be more lucrative or be more successful, or what have you.” Her parents are supportive of her now, but, Baker says it was “a journey.”
After high school, Baker attended the University of Vermont. “I double majored in English and studio art for a while,” she says, “and then I ended up dropping the studio art at the behest of my parents. (They) preferred that I just study English and psychology at that point in time. I don’t know. I think they were just looking out for my best interests. And maybe believing art might not be able to sustain me.”
Ironically, Baker says her parents helped further her love of art when she was growing up. “They were always taking me to art galleries.”
They also took her to art museums when they traveled. “They were always teaching me about the greats. Rembrandt and Monet,” she says. “We even went to Versailles and saw the gardens. So, my parents valued art highly. I think they were just surprised to find their daughter was an artist.”
Baker never took a painting class in college. “I took some of the foundation classes, like two-dimensional work and just some basic creating classes. The last class I was going to take was painting. Then I chose to drop the major and didn’t get to take that painting class.”
Baker became a paralegal after graduating with a degree in English literature. “My parents are attorneys, so I grew up in the law firm, learning how it works.”
Her mother and father are “wonderful, wonderful parents,” and, at the time, Baker thought it was best to go along with what they wanted her to do. “I wanted to please them and I knew art wasn’t the way to do that. So, I tried to take other avenues. But God really had plans for me. I started feeling a pressure on me to paint. Like I’d better paint or else.
“Just that feeling, that inner knowledge, of knowing that I needed to paint. I need to paint to process trauma. To heal my grief. I lost some friends along the way in life. And family members. But losing friends hurt more because they’re so young. And I felt life was kind of softened by them. I had a lot of grief I needed to process. And God gave me painting in order to help me heal myself and, hopefully, heal the world by sharing through my art. I really did try to suppress my need to create, but it didn’t last for long.”
Baker began painting five years ago. “It was kind of a culmination of the universe speaking to me. I had a knowing I had to paint, but I didn’t know what that meant. I had never painted what was in my heart. Never painted my emotions. Never painted my soul before.”
Then, she says, “The universe lined up. An art store near my home had a big sale on canvases.” Baker thought, “Okay, this must be the time.”
She bought canvases and paint and went to work. “My first painting was just variations of white and yellow. It was a big 48-by-48 (inch) painting. I was so proud of it. Just the fact that I had painted was maybe the bravest thing I had ever done. I felt in my heart I had taken a step toward my destiny.
“I loved it. Other people weren’t too impressed, but I was just proud I had put paint to canvas.”
Baker kept painting, and painting helped with whatever she was going through at the time. It was “the medicine I needed at that moment. Abstract art gave me a language of color and texture to really express my soul in a way that landscapes just didn’t.”
She didn’t show her work to her parents until about a year after she began painting. Her father, in particular, was “moved by the work to the point where he became incredibly supportive of me painting. My parents could tell painting was healing me. They knew it was the right thing whether I ever sold a painting or not. This was something that was healing their child and they were supportive of that.”
Baker exhibited her work in group shows after she moved to San Diego, nine years ago. “I have many paintings that are dedicated to the water — the spirit of the water, the ocean. I have a painting called ‘MAMA’ that is dedicated to the great mother, the ocean.”
She was asked to exhibit “MAMA” in British Vogue. “I spoke with them on the phone to see if their values were in line with mine. I agreed to go ahead with it. I’m gay. I’m not as familiar with high fashion values. I wanted to make sure they’re trans friendly. Gay friendly. Pro Black. Things like that. I wanted to make sure our values lined up before I agreed to be published in their magazine.”
Since then, Baker’s art has appeared in two more issues of British Vogue and three issues of Vanity Fair London.
Darrell Baker Jr. and Deborah Whitt with “MAMA” at Medicine Factory show (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Baker moved back to Memphis seven years later. “Several people reached out to me though social media: ‘We saw your work. We love it.’ And wanted to learn more about me and as an artist.”
She held her first solo show at Stock & Belle. She also showed at The Gallery on Main, which still has some of her art on view. She’s also exhibited in New York, San Diego, and Dallas.
In June, she held a show at the Medicine Factory in Memphis. “I put it all together myself. I rented the venue. I picked the food. I picked the wines. I picked the mock-tail. I dedicated the drink to one of my friends who passed away. I picked the pieces myself. It was all me. And the energy there was so wonderful. Everyone was so loving. So receptive to the work.”
l”Squigglefish” by Alexandra Baker at the Medicine Factory show (Credit: Michael Donahue)
As for managing her art career, Baker says, “I’ve been doing it all by myself. My mom is very supportive. And she gives me business advice often. She studied business in school. But it’s all me. I don’t have an agent.”
Baker also teaches yoga, but, she says, “Currently, my art career is sustaining me. In between times, shows and stuff, I’ll still pick up a bit of legal work from my parents to help them out.”
Alexandra Baker and her mother, Deborah Whitt, at New Day Healing and Wellness (Credit: Michael Donahue)
She continues to paint abstract works, but, she adds, “My process has changed a bit. I like incorporating fabric in my work sometimes now. That’s a new development. My work can be a little looser now. I feel a little bit more free of self-judgments now that I’ve been painting for quite a while. It’s a wonderful feeling. It gives me freedom to express what’s in my heart.”
Painting is a panacea for Baker. “It heals my heart. It heals my life. And my hope is to make my own personal dent in helping to heal the world. I know the world really needs it.”
Baker also is utilizing that English literature degree. “I started my book. It’s based on my life experiences, but I’m going to publish it as fiction because it’s a bit whimsical.”
“Healing Through Color” is on view through October 12th at New Day Healing and Wellness, 5040 Sanderlin Avenue, Suite 111.
Alexandra Baker and Eden Hite of New Day Healing and Wellness with Baker’s painting, “Jungle Spirit Share” (Credit: Michael Donahue)
From left to right, Lili Nacht, Neena Wang, Yidan Zeng, and Thandi Cai (Photo: Jin Yang)
Although their respective parents didn’t exactly dream they would one day become artists, Thandi Cai, Lili Nacht, Neena Wang, and Yidan Zeng did just that. “Our parents all chose to come here to achieve some dream that they had, the American dream,” says Wang, “and that transformed into something different for each of our parents. And then they also had dreams for us. And then we took those dreams and made them into our own.”
The four have known one another since childhood, having grown up together in the same circles within the Chinese-American community in Memphis. Over the years, though, as so often happens with childhood friends embracing the next stages of their lives, they lost contact, outside of following each other on Instagram. By 2022, Cai was splitting their time between Chicago and Memphis, while Nacht, Wang, and Zeng resided in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, respectively. They hadn’t seen each other in years, but that summer, Nacht reached out via email to see if they would be interested in Zooming.
What followed were months of Zoom calls, wherein they formed the MengCheng Collective — the name finding its origin in the Chinese phonetic name for Memphis, which also happens to loosely translate to “City of Dreams.”
The Crosstown Arts residency this summer was the perfect opportunity for an in-person reunion, they decided. From the outset, the four knew that their residency would not be about sequestering themselves away to create the art that would be featured in their capstone exhibition. Instead, they would engage the community that they grew up around. “The intention [has been to create] an archive that is not just static, but can also be interacted with, participated in,” says Zeng. “It felt like a lot of our histories in the Mid-South were very invisible or suppressed, so how can we create a way for people to see their histories be displayed in a very public way, in an institution, and also for that to be a moment of celebration and collective witnessing?”
To accomplish this, the group hosted weekly potlucks throughout the duration of their residency, harkening back to their childhood days of attending potlucks at Chinese-American households throughout Memphis. That first potluck was open to the public and had 100 or so in attendance — a turnout they did not expect. In the weeks following, they hosted potlucks with other Asian-American creatives in Memphis, with students from the Memphis Chinese Language School, and with their own families.
With each potluck, the collective says they’ve found themselves in awe of the support they’ve garnered. “I feel like I’ve been on the verge of tears since I got here,” Wang says. “People have been so open and willing to listen to you. People are not just looking for what you can do for them. They really want to connect with you on a human level, and that is just so, so special and not something I’ve found almost anywhere else in the world that I’ve been. It’s made me realize how much Memphis has made me who I am.”
Yet the four agree that being away from Memphis has also solidified their identities. With distance, they were able to look from the outside in, able to question their experiences and to process them. “Living in Berlin,” says Nacht, “I felt a freeness that I never felt growing up, but that was also to do with me having not come to terms or not having not processed the traumas yet, like bullying that I had when I was growing up and the pressures from these generational conflicts. I didn’t even know until I left that it was not a great environment.
“I processed through the traumas [since then], and I’ve grown and matured and reconnected with my sense of self, and after having done all that — it took, like, 11 years — I can come back now as a person with my own agency, from a place of awareness of my culture and my own boundaries.”
Like Nacht, Cai, Wang, and Zeng express similar sentiments — that they feel more sure of themselves, especially in their identities as artists, since leaving and returning to Memphis. “My parents have been really amazing to me,” says Wang. “They’ve never heard me really talk about my artwork, but after my artist talk [at Crosstown Arts], they told me how proud they were of me, that they want me to actually really focus on my art, which is not something that they would’ve said, like, a year ago.”
The potlucks, she says, have also been instrumental in this sense of generational healing, with Cai referring to the potlucks as forms of participatory art.
“It’s helpful, at least speaking for my parents, to witness art in a way that is very much in the communities, that they themselves can also be part of that artistic practice,” Zeng adds. “I feel like, oftentimes, it’s easy for people to just kind of see art as a distant thing, like a sculpture or painting in a museum. But we are all very much interested in using art as a tool for change in relationship building.”
“[Art] is like a language,” Cai says, “especially in places where you have people, different cultures coming together. You may not understand the words or the context of what their sentiments are, but you can feel what they might be feeling. Even just the humility of watching someone create art and being there to receive it is really, I think, an important listening skill for human connection.”
Through their potlucks and artistic practices during their residency, Cai says, “Our community came together in a way that hasn’t happened before. I think that it’s just really important for us to be in the same room affirming one another. I think that is the core of everything that we’re doing. Healing is big on all levels — like within ourselves, within our community, with our presence in the city, between the generations, all of it.
“Art is not just a tool for communicating with people in the present, but it’s a tool for communicating with people in the past and the future. As a time traveling tool, I think it can be really powerful to create the futures that we want to see.”
And the future they want to see, Nacht says, highlights diversity. “We need more representation, first of all,” she says, “as well as a different way of interacting with each other to promote this sort of care for each other in a community that comes from this place of understanding.”
“I don’t know if it is too ambitious to try to strive for,” Wang adds, “but the healing that we’ve experienced and that we’ve seen and that our parents and other people have shared with us [during this residency], I really wish that for other communities in Memphis that have experienced intergenerational trauma and just really anyone who needs to heal their relationship with themselves or their creativity or their family. Yeah, if we could just be an example of that.”
This Saturday, July 22, 6-9 p.m., the MengCheng Collective kicks off its week-long exhibition, “Kai Pa Ti,” with a night of food and fun. RSVP to the free event at Crosstown Arts here.
“Kai Pa Ti” will be on display July 22-29, 3-7 p.m., or by appointment. Appointments can be made by emailing mengcheng.tn@gmail.com.
Art by Hi Tone Cafe owner Brian "Skinny" McCabe will be featured in a one night show at his club. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Get ready.
Artwork by Brian “Skinny” McCabe (and artist Michael Roy) will be featured in a new one-night exhibit on Saturday, June 10th, at his club, the Hi Tone Cafe.
Those who were at McCabe’s one-night show (“di-ART-rrhea”) last July at the old Seraphim gallery probably haven’t forgotten some of those art works — like the one of a bird relieving itself while perched on a teacup.
This new show features more birds doing the same thing. And at least one or two throwing up.
McCabe creates his art by making additions to pictures done by others. “A lot of what I do is find other works of art and then kind of desecrate them,” McCabe says.
His work could be referred to as “Poop Art” as opposed to “Pop Art.” Whatever. McCabe says his paintings were a hit in that last show. “People were buying them left and right.”
Works in his new show are going to follow along the same lines. “This one is pretty much focused around birds,” he says. “I don’t really have a title for it. I kind of let it speak for itself.”
The idea began with that bird/teacups painting in his last show. “I found this painting: A bird sitting on a teacup. It was really pretty. but the way it was positioned it was perfect to have it taking a shit down the handle of the teacup.
“I had four people try to buy that one right off the top. And it got into kind of a small bidding war. And I was like, ‘What?’”
For his new show, McCabe says, “I’ve been collecting stuff here and there. I just find funny stuff when I got to City Thrift or Goodwill or something.”
He found a print of two birds sitting on a branch when he was at a Cooper-Young shop. “I just thought to myself, ‘Man, it would be hilarious if one or the other ripped the other’s one eye ball out and it was bleeding and stuff.” So, he doctored the print and wrote, “Fuck Around and Find Out.”
Brian “Skinny” McCabe will feature his art work at his club, Hi Tone Cafe (Credit: Michael Donahue)
“The eyeball is my favorite one,” McCabe says. But, he adds, “They’re all kind of equally weird and gross. Not gross to the point where you have to look away or anything, but just funny.”
McCabe says he uses acrylic paint, and sometimes a Sharpie. “I’ll fill in here and there,” he says. “It’s kind of whatever’s around.”
In a Memphis Flyer story last year, McCabe said he was in Honors Art 1, 2, and 3 in high school. But, he said, “my conduct kept me out of Art 4.”
McCabe often makes attention-grabbing posters for bands playing at the Hi Tone. When there was downtime at the club during the pandemic, his wife suggested he get back into art.
He ran across a black-and-white painting of John Mayer at a thrift shop. “And I was like, ‘It would be hilarious to make him shitting his pants.’ I don’t know why it struck me that day. So, I just started buying paintings at thrift stores and stuff and painting poop on them.”
A Brian “Skinny” McCabe art work (Credit: Michael Donahue)
McCabe decided to do his current show at the Hi Tone. “I’m just a dingy bar dude,” he says. “A gallery just felt too bright and open.”
He wasn’t really planning to do another show, but then the artist Birdcap dropped by the bar. “We were just chilling” says McCabe, “and I was like, ‘Dude, what if we do an art show?’ He said, ‘Pick a date. I’m down.’ It was that easy.”
McCabe compares his art shows to the music shows he features at the Hi Tone. “I don’t know anything about producing art shows. I don’t know the first thing about it. But I do know how to book bands and have concerts. And that’s one night. Very rarely it’s a two-night thing. Bands play one night and hit the road.”
Just like McCabe’s paintings.
Art by Brian “Skinny” McCabe and Michael “Birdcap” Roy will be featured from 6 to 11 p.m. June 10th at Hi Tone Cafe at 282-284 North Cleveland Street
Ernest Withers’
photographs illustrating
Memphis in 1968. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Last month, to honor the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the National Civil Rights Museum unveiled “Waddell, Withers, & Smith: A Requiem for King,” an exhibition highlighting three Memphis-based artists whose work responded to King’s assassination and the Civil Rights Movement: self-taught sculptor James Waddell Jr., photojournalist Ernest Withers, and multimedia artist Dolph Smith.
“It goes to show the levels of Dr. King and how many people he impacted,” NCRM associate curator Ryan Jones says of the exhibit. “He didn’t just impact people who were civil rights leaders and human rights activists; he impacted people who were artists. And so this goes to show what he meant as a man and that people here in this great community of Memphis have channeled and responded to something that has been a dark cloud over the city in the past 55 years. Dr. King impacted the hearts and minds of so many citizens.”
Each of the three artists were born and raised in Memphis, Jones says, and all served in the military, with their respective services being turning points in their artistic careers. Withers, a World War II veteran, learned his craft at the Army School of Photography. He would then go on to photograph some of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement, including King’s fateful visit to Memphis, the priceless images for which line the exhibition’s walls.
“We can’t tell the story of the modern Civil Rights Movement without the role of photography,” Jones says, and truly, Withers played one of the most significant roles in documenting that history, capturing approximately 1.8 million photographs before his death at 85 years old in 2007.
At the same time Withers was documenting King’s Memphis visit and the aftermath of his assassination, James Waddell (who happened to later be photographed by Withers) was serving in the Vietnam War and didn’t learn what had happened in Memphis until weeks later. For Waddell and his family, King’s death marked a period of pain and grief — “His relatives compared the assassination to a death in the family,” reads the exhibit’s wall text.
“[Sculpture] was his way of reacting to the tragedy that had happened,” Jones says. “He said that living in Memphis and being a native Memphian and not doing the work would be something he would never be able to get over.” So when he returned home, Waddell channeled this grief in the work now on display — an aluminum-cast bust of King and Mountaintop Vision, a bronze statue of King kneeling on a mountaintop with an open Bible. “It shows he’s humbling himself to God,” Waddell said of the sculpture in a 1986 interview in The Commercial Appeal with Anthony Hicks.
James Waddell’s Mountaintop Vision (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Initially, as the 1986 article reveals, Waddell planned to create an eight-foot version of Mountaintop Vision as “the city’s first statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” “The time is right, because Memphis is beginning to voice an opinion that there is a need for a statue,” Waddell told The CommercialAppeal. “This will be a tool for understanding.”
Waddell, who has since passed, said he hoped “to see the finished piece placed at the proposed Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum, Clayborn Temple, or in Martin Luther King Jr. Riverside Park.” Though that eight-foot version never came to fruition, at long last, the smaller version of Waddell’s Mountaintop Vision can be seen not only in a public display for the first time, but also at the National Civil Rights Museum as he once had envisioned.
Dolph Smith’s The Veil of the Temple Was Rent in Two (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Meanwhile, Dolph Smith, who had long since returned home from the Vietnam War, was in Memphis the night of King’s assassination. As Memphis was set ablaze that night, he and his family stood on the roof of their home, watching the smoke rise around them. He vowed to never forget that date — April 4, 1968. In his personal calendar for that day, he wrote, “If this has happened in Memphis, then now I know it can happen anywhere. It is so hard to believe a man’s basic instinct is to be good.”
In response to what he called “an unspeakable tragedy” and the public uprising that arose from it, Smith took to the canvas. For one piece on display at the museum, titled The Veil of the Temple Was Rent in Two, the artist ripped an American flag, placing photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in between its tears, as Jones says, “to show the extreme divisiveness that the assassination caused.”
In all, Jones hopes the exhibit will show the reach of King’s legacy extending beyond April 4, 1968, all the way to the present day. In one of the videos projected on the exhibition’s walls, Smith, now at 89 years old, speaks on the importance of witnessing artwork like the pieces on display. “If you make something and it just sits there, it’s unfinished,” Smith says. To him — a painter, bookmaker, and educator — in order for a work of art to be “finished,” it has to be shared, for the mission of the artist is not simply to create but to spark conversation, to encourage self-reflection, and in cases like that of Withers, Waddell, and Smith, to activate progress.
“Waddell, Withers, & Smith: A Requiem for King” is on display at the National Civil Rights Museum through August 28th.
Some collect baseball cards; others collect Pokemon cards. For Alex Paulus, a kid in the ’90s, it was Marvel trading cards. “That was my favorite thing when I was a kid,” he says. “They were like these fully rendered oil paintings of Marvel characters.” Little did he know that his childhood hobby would inspire him to start a new kind of trading card in Memphis, almost three decades later.
In 2020, when lockdown rolled around and boredom took over, the artist explains, he had an itch to return to those Marvel cards that had once excited him, so he purchased a box of them. “I found out that in one of the packs in the box, you could get an original hand-drawn piece of art on a trading card,” he says. “And I got one of those cards. I was like, ‘Oh man, this is really cool.’ … So that kind of gave me the idea of what if I could buy a pack and it was just filled with all of these handmade cards and how cool that would be.”
Paulus, as it turns out, wasn’t the first to think of creating trading cards with original art. That honor belongs to a Swiss artist, M. Vänçi Stirnemann, who in 1996 initiated an ongoing and now worldwide performance whereby artists of all backgrounds create, collect, sell, and trade self-made unique works, 2.5-by-3.5 inches in size.
Inspired by this, Paulus became determined to bring the phenomenon to Memphis. In 2021, thanks to a grant from UrbanArt Commission, he created 50 packs of his own artist trading cards, with three little paintings in each, and he sold all of them at his 2021 show at Off the Walls Arts. Some of these packs even had golden tickets — Willy Wonka style — that granted the recipient a full-sized painting hanging at the show. The goal, Paulus explained in his grant application, was to “inspire others to make their own artist trading cards and become part of the performance, too.”
Three of Paulus’ cards that will be for sale this Sunday at Wiseacre. (Photo: Alex Paulus)
For the day, these artists will sell their 2.5-by-3.5 inch works at affordable prices, some as low as $10. Some will sell them individually, and others will sell them in packs. Some cards you’ll be able to see before purchasing, and others will be a surprise. Some packs will even have golden tickets for full-sized artwork if you’re lucky. Of course, you’ll be able to trade cards with other collectors at the event, and you can even bring in your own 2.5-by-3.5 inch works to trade if you so please.
By Mary Jo KarimniaBy Michelle FairBy Nick PenaThe artist trading cards range in their subjects and styles. (Photos: Mary Jo Karimnia, Michelle Fair, Nick Pena)
“There’ll be tiny abstract paintings, really detailed pencil portraits, Ninja Turtle porn, altered baseball cards,” Mary Jo Karimnia, one of the participating artists, explains when asked what type of images collectors should expect. Clearly, there’s a range in subject and even medium. For her cards, Karimnia explores motifs of eyes and rainbows, and some incorporate symbols inspired by old Icelandic magical staves, with spells “to get protection from witches,” “to destroy all weapons,” “to nurture humbleness,” and so on.
Karimnia, who “caught the [tiny-art] bug” after Paulus’ Off the Walls Arts show, says that the small form allows for more experimentation. “It’s a different challenge [than my usual work],” she says, “Plus if I don’t like one, I can throw it in the bin.”
Paulus adds that working on a small canvas has influenced his “normal” work (in addition to giving him carpal tunnel in his wrist). “I’m incorporating some of the style that I’ve been doing [on the cards] back into my larger scale canvas paintings,” he says. “I thought this was just gonna be like a fun little side project, but it’s just altering what I’m doing.”
Overall, the artists hope that the trading cards will connect the arts community with the Memphis community at large. Anyone can attend, and everyone who does will walk away with original art. “It’s making art accessible,” Karimnia says, “and the cards are great to display, frame, or trade.”
The group hopes to host more trading events in the future and add more artists to its roster. Keep up with the group on Instagram (@artisttradingcardsmemphis).
LueElla Marshall was driving home from her job at Kroger when she got a call from God. The streets in her neighborhood of Orange Mound were filled with litter — a sight that weighed heavy on Marshall’s heart. “It used to be a beautiful community,” she says, having lived in Orange Mound since 1966. “But for a long time, this community has been going down. Every day I came home, it looked like the city was getting dirtier and dirtier. So I said, ‘Lord, when is the City of Memphis going to come out here and clean this trash up? It’s just been so long since they’ve done that.’ So God said to me while I’m there riding in the car, he said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’
“And I looked around and wasn’t nobody in the car but me. So I said, ‘Me?’ God said, ‘Yes, it’s you. Why don’t you do it?’ So, all right, I had to think about it. But,” Marshall continues, “when God tells you to do something, you do it all right.”
What came from this calling was Marshall’s 2016 “Art Cans” initiative, through which neighborhood artists and students painted large trash cans to be placed around the neighborhood. Marshall hadn’t really thought much of the arts, she says, until this project. “I got to learn that art is everything. I used to drive past them and think they were beautiful works of art, our receptacles,” Marshall says. “I wanted a place to show them.” And so she opened Orange Mound Gallery (OMG) that year through a grant from ArtUp. Though the gallery has hosted several exhibitions, Marshall had never shown her receptacles in the gallery setting — until now, that is, thanks to the help of artist and arts educator Lurlynn Franklin.
Franklin, Marshall says, brought a new energy to the project that had gone dormant a few years ago. Since the initial trash cans were placed around Orange Mound, many of them have been stolen or destroyed by cars crashing into them. “But I never gave up,” says Marshall, “even when I had to pay people outta my pocket to clean [up] and empty the trash every week. This is a spiritual thing. God told me to do it, but once I started, I still didn’t know what to do ’cause I didn’t get the proper support until Ms. Franklin came to me.”
“I was just moved to help her,” Franklin says. “She’s never had an exhibition of her cans because once they’re painted, they go out in the community. And I just told her this could be a good way to fundraise and it could be good exposure for artists.”
Earle Augustus, radio program director and personality, begins work on his trash receptacle which he will continue painting upon at the “Forms Meet Functions” live show. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
And so, with Marshall’s blessing, Franklin reached out to artists through word of mouth to paint on the receptacles. The receptacles will be displayed at the University of Memphis’ Fogelman Gallery in September, and later will be sold to fundraise for OMG, with 60 percent of the profits going to the artists. Before then, the artists Franklin has gathered will participate in a live painting art show, entitled “Forms Meet Functions,” this weekend at the gallery
“People can go and watch the project’s process, talk to the artists, look at the work that they’ve created, look at their sketches, and connect the dots,” Franklin says of the evening event. “Something happens for people when they can see that.”
From left to right: Walter “Sir Walt” Andrade, Zelitra “Madamn Z” Peterson-Traylor, Toonky Berry, Lurlynn Franklin, Andrew Travis, and Clyde Johnson Jr. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
For the project, Franklin wanted the artists to inject their own style into the cans. “Like form and function,” she says, “the can, it’s all ready to function, but you have to build the art around it. … We’re not going to have empty concepts on these cans. We’re not just slapping anything on them.” These, Franklin says, are meant to be accessible pieces of art that function as trash cans, and indeed, each can is distinct in its style, as evidenced as the artists begin their processes before the show. “It’s about people being able to truly engage with the work, the energy coming off the work.”
Madamn Z paints the basic shapes of her subject, which she will refine at the live painting show on Friday. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
For Madamn Z, the trash receptacle she’s working on harkens back to what she considers her most inspirational piece — a portrait of the model Winnie Harlow. “I use art to heal myself from Crohn’s disease,” she says. “So all of the works that I’ve done, I’ve been able to not only heal myself with, but I hope to inspire other people. … And I think [Harlow] stands out so much because our ideal of beauty has been distorted by mainstream media. And she’s like, ‘You don’t have to be perfect.’
“I remember watching her on Top Model and they called her Panda,” she continues, “and I remember how that hurt her. But she took that and she built a career, and look at what she’s doing now. So it just shows how you can go from thinking you’re on the low end of the spectrum and that you’re not worthy and that you’re trash, you feel like trash, but you’re not. You’re beautiful.”
In addition to painting the cans, Franklin also commissioned the artists to create a piece alluding to the subject of environmentalism for the show. “They were supposed to read these articles I provided and come up with a piece of art that was based on those articles,” she says. “So it’s layered. [As a viewer] it makes you curious, and you wanna dig. Like what the heck is this really about?”
One article, which was the source of a painting by Madamn Z, spoke to Dr. Martin Luther King’s environmentalism. Her piece is divided into two, with one image illustrating police brutality during the I Am a Man strike in Memphis, and the other rendering a child and parent watching that same scene on a television today. “I wanted to focus on how, although King’s dream has been realized somewhat, the reality of it is that our children are still exposed to the same dream he was trying to portray and unify everyone under,” she says. “As a mom raising two young children, that’s not a picture I want my children to be accustomed to watching, but today on the news, that’s all we see.”
Walter “Sir Walt” Andrade touches up his painting, which will be on display as he works on his trash can at the live show. The receptacle, he says, will feature symbols representing Tyre Nichols, Gangsta Boo, and Young Dolph. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
Put simply, King’s dream is a work in progress — a sentiment Marshall echoes. She says of the 55-gallon cans used for her initiative, “Those are the drums that we used to burn our trash in when the sanitation was stopped. I got taken back to when Dr. King was marching and when T.O. Jones and his followers sent for Dr. King to come to Memphis. … I didn’t know God was going to give me something to do that Dr. King was connected to. I always say this [work], it is the spirit of Dr. King and T.O. Jones. It has been a blessing for me.”
Marshall now also heads the Orange Mound Neighborhood and Veterans Association Inc., in addition to her work with OMG, which she hopes to grow as a community space and improve through grants and donations.
Andrew Travis paints his can in his distinct abstract style. Behind the table, as with each table at the show, are samples of the artist’s work. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
“I didn’t know all this was coming,” she says. “See, I’m 75. Faith had to get me here, and I’m still going. People don’t know this gallery here; we don’t have any signs outside — that’s how broke we’ve been. But you see, we still didn’t give up. You can feel the spirit. I can feel it when I’m talking about it and thinking about it. How God just put tears in my eyes. I wouldn’t have known this. I didn’t see it. I didn’t even see it coming. We are onto something that’s really cool.”
“Forms Meet Functions: From Trash to Treasure” will be on display at U of M’s Fogelman Gallery, September 1st-October 1st. The opening reception is September 1st, 6-9 p.m.
A wasp nest sits on Sharon Havelka’s studio desk between a box of thread and a strip of red embroidered fabric. She lights a tea candle and hands me a slip of paper.
“Write something you really want or wish for, or something you just want to get rid of,” she tells me. I do as she says, and she rolls up my wish before wrapping it tightly in purple thread and putting a bit of melted candle wax on the end.
“Where do you want it to be?” she asks, gesturing to the wasp nest. A few of the nest’s holes are already filled with bundles of colorful thread, so I point to an empty pocket, into which she slides the rolled-up paper. All that’s left to the eye is a tiny bubble of purple thread, nestled among wishes of strangers at home in the holes of a wasp nest.
A similar wasp nest sits in Havelka’s show, “Salmon Skin Fried … and Other Delicacies,” on display at the Beverly + Sam Ross Gallery at Christian Brothers University. That nest used to reside above Havelka’s front door until it fell and all the wasps left it behind as if it were a hostess gift. “It reminded me of how a mailman leaves you a package,” she says. “It was just perfect, and I brought it inside.”
Instead of wasps, Hatch contains notes of Havelka’s friends and family’s greatest dreams and/or fears, bundled in the holes of the wasp nest. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
As an artist, Havelka knew she had to make use of the nest, but she says, “With anything that I find you can’t make it be something that it’s not. You have to listen to it. What does this want to be? It wants to fill up the holes with something. So then, what are your larvae? It’s gotta be something that can grow, something that can fly out and go out into the world.” And that’s where the written wishes came in. “The process has to be meaningful.”
That approach carries throughout her work, letting the materials dictate her process, even letting the materials come to her. For most of her recent work, Havelka gravitates towards quilting, a passion that blossomed while her three children were young. Before then, the graduate of the Memphis College of Art would draw and paint — “I was really into realism,” she says. That is, before she stumbled into woodworking and fell in love with the patterns she could make by cutting triangles or rearranging strips of wood.
With little kids around, though, woodworking wasn’t ideal, but Havelka needed to make something, anything, just as she always had ever since she herself was little and would get straight to drawing her hands and feet after coming home from school. Luckily, her sister-in-law passed down the family sewing machine to her, and although she hadn’t sewn before, she took to quilting, converting the patterns she loved in woodworking into fabric. Without much disposable income, she pulled from the materials she already had — scraps from the scrap bin, her children’s red velvet pants that they’d outgrown, her husband’s old shirts. Eventually, people started giving her their old clothes or unused fabric.
Rice incorporates fabric from an old cotton rice bag gifted by the artist’s mother as well as fabric from an old Chinese dress the artist and her sister played dress-up in. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
Around this time, Havelka also enrolled in nursing school, hoping to gain a bit more financial stability. “I had no idea what nursing was like,” she says, “but my midwife was also an artist. And I saw her life, and when you’re young — 27, 28, 30 years old — you just don’t know what you’re doing, and I liked how she was doing her life, how she could nurse and be an artist. So I was like, ‘I’ll give it a try.’ I had no idea what I was getting into, but I really liked going back to school.”
Havelka even found inspiration in her nursing classes, especially anatomy and physiology, as she learned more about the body beyond what a model in a life-drawing class would offer. “It just goes deeper. You get into the fluid electrolytes or the cardiopulmonary system; you’re going in and seeing the process of what creates the muscles — the stuff underneath the painting, I guess.”
Immediately, she started designing quilts with linear patterns inspired by the vertebral system. Then the idea of skin, with its wear and tear, came into play. “Skin is the largest organism of the body,” she says. “It’s your first line of defense, and of course you can get into like the whole underlays of skin and skin color and race.” From there, Havelka started staining her fabrics with coffee, tea, wood shavings, rust, and walnuts. She experiments with the fabric’s stains, wears it down, lets it sit out in the sun or rain. “I’ve tortured it, dumped it in water, but I’m giving it some kind of history rather than just picking it from a store. I like the idea of maybe, there’s some kind of struggle. … Each material has its own experience.”
As Havelka “tortured” her piece Skin with staining, fire, and ironing, the recycled cloth began to tear and show wear like skin that is bruised, sunned, and damaged, so the artist “grafted” and “tattooed” the piece with her signature quilting. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
As she delved into her nursing career, she continued making her art, even when her job took her to Germany for five years. While there, she found inspiration in the landscape. Much unlike the flatness surrounding her in Memphis, in Europe, she says, “Everything is up and down and around. … So I got my first vision of what I wanted to do: a quilt basically rolling off the wall.”
Indeed, Havelka wanted to challenge the idea of what a quilt could be; she wanted to break away from the flatness, giving the quilt a structure that curves and bumps on its own. She doesn’t use metal in these quilt sculptures and instead relies on stuffing and the weight of the folds of the fabric itself to function as the bones and muscles. “They’re not permanent; they can still bend,” she says. “So it’s only as large as they can be before they fall on the gravity of themselves.”
Havelka found inspiration for Salmon Skin Fried, the titular piece that hangs in her show, while frying salmon skin and watching it puff up. “I thought, oh, that’s gotta be a quilt,” she says.
In making these sculptures, Havelka doesn’t intend to abandon the tradition of quilting. “I want to do something new with the quilts,” she says, “but I want to maintain the family connection, the history, And so using the clothes, whether it’s from my family and friends, that just keeps with the tradition.” Of course, the sentimental weight these pieces carry has not been lost on her, as she savors each piece, waiting for just the right moment to repurpose it in her art. “Sometimes it’s really hard to cut up,” she says. “But it makes that cut very valuable.”
Through it all, the artist blends the old with the new, letting each material’s experience and history dictate how and when she incorporates it. Even in her show, Havelka has mixed in her earlier work with her newer pieces. In Understory, for instance, she has rested her quilt sculpture on a table she made in college that has since lost its leg. “It’s bridging my past with the present and so what’s buried underneath the Understory is a little bit of my past.”
Understory (Photo: Abigail Morici)
A quilt, by nature, asks you to think about its layers — what’s on top, what’s in between, and what’s underneath; how each piece of fabric works with another as part of a pattern. “It’s an analogy, I think, to human beings,” Havelka says.
And though her work is quite personal with materials taken directly from her life and her loved ones, she hopes viewers will find a meaning of their own. “It makes me happy to have people see what I’m making,” Havelka adds. “Sharing part of yourself is starting a conversation. If you’re always just stuck in your studio and no one ever sees, maybe it goes to that saying, ‘If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one hears it’ — you have to get it out there. You have to have people see it, and maybe they’ll see something they wouldn’t normally have seen, which makes them think of something they might not have normally thought about, which art is all about.”
As a whole, you could say that Havelka’s work is about facilitating connection — from her work as an ICU nurse to the sharing of personal notes tucked away in a wasp nest to the sewing of sentimental materials gifted from relatives. She invites the viewer to consider the whole picture, the entire pattern, and to find new purpose and beauty in the vulnerable, overlooked, or discarded. As Havelka’s first solo show comes to a close, she looks forward to sharing her work in more galleries and hopes to continue building these connections.
When asked why he became an artist, Nick Canterucci laughs. “Well, about that,” he says, “I wanted to meet girls. When I was a young guy, up in [Detroit,] Michigan, there was this beatnik artist who lived next door to us and he always seemed to have some kind of bitching babe on his arm. He smoked unfiltered Camels, wore a beret, and had a cool little sports car. I thought, man, this is right up my alley.”
Despite his ambitions, Canterucci never had any formal art training, going to school for mathematics and later moving from Detroit to Memphis to work at Channel 5 and with FedEx. Yet, throughout his career, he stuck with his art, finding that his passion for creating drove him more than wooing the ladies ever did. “My wife would say, ‘You’re a good boy now,’” he says, before quipping, “But I’m wilder and busier than I’ve ever been. I just haven’t gotten the email that I’m old. My brain is 25 and my body’s 70.” And the amount of work he has produced over the past few years since retirement would agree. In fact, even though his 18th show is currently on display at the Medicine Factory, he is already halfway through creating his next show, slated for 2024.
Sunday in Detroit
For now, Canterucci speaks of his current exhibition “When Arrows Meet,” which consists of paintings done in his “outsider art” style. With bold colors and collage elements, the 20 abstract pieces demand the viewer examine every inch of the canvas, with the eye drawn to each individual element — from a set of numbers floating in the background to a tiny British flag pasted on a breast. The compositions are purposely chaotic, with one piece even titled Cacophony, leaving observers to decipher patterns for themselves, as if Canterucci has left behind a code without a key — and that’s not far from Canterucci’s method.
He says, “There’s a lot of secret information in my paintings. If you know how to translate my visual parameters, I’m telling you exactly everything that’s going on in my life or my friend’s life or my wife’s life.” For some of his pieces, Canterucci cites the exact moment of inspiration — a friend expressing feelings of isolation, a friend’s break-up, or the opening credits of a movie he fell asleep while watching. Painting, he explains, allows him to process his experiences, mundane and extraordinary alike.
As he created the pieces for this show, Covid was at the forefront of his mind. “I feel sensitive, and there was a lot of weird energy in the air sometimes, and I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but sometimes, it kind of makes your hand stand up, and so I’ll work through it by painting.” That sense of urgency to get his thoughts onto the canvas, in turn, reveals itself in enthusiastic, stark brush strokes and self-assured outlines of figures, with little need for perfection.
If This Is It
Canterucci embraces abstraction, finding solace in the “offbeat” German and Russian artists of the 1920s and 1930s who existed outside the mainstream. He himself has often felt like an outsider, understanding the world differently than those around him. “I see the world in ones and zeros. Kind of like the Matrix,” he says. “I just have a stream of numbers. I see everything in mathematical sequences and stuff.”
Abstraction, the artist continues, “appeals to the mathematical thing in my brain, and it allows me to work through issues. … Art can be very therapeutic at times. It can really help you get over some issues. Same thing with music. I can’t tell you how many cool records got me out of Pity City. So it goes both directions [between the artist and the consumer].”
As such, Canterucci hopes his paintings can stir something within his audience. “Maybe it helps them take stock of where they’re at in their life, or maybe I can bring a smile to their face, or maybe, they can go, ‘Oh God, this is terrible,’ and give them something to talk about.”
No matter the response, Canterucci thrives on feedback and often seeks knowledge and inspiration from other artists to improve his craft. “Each show seems to be a little bit better. You could obviously see an evolution of progress from my early shows up to this one, which is my 18th,” he says. “And then again, for every successful painting I’ve had multiple failures. Sometimes what you see in your head and what ends up in the canvas are two different things. And then you have those rare occurrences where you’re firing on all cylinders. And then boom, bingo, you nailed it.”
Cacophony
In the meantime, between being in his punk band The Underwear Heads and making his fanzine, Canterucci shows no sign of stopping painting. And when he’s painting, nothing can stop him. “ I don’t care if the house is on fire,” he says. “I don’t care if giant bat spiders from Jupiter are coming down the street grabbing people. Don’t bother me.”
The last day to see “When Arrows Meet” at the Medicine Factory is Saturday, February 18th.
"Arbor Day," circa 1945, by Doris Lee. (Credit: Estate of Doris Lee, Courtesy of D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York)
I made my first pronouncement on the art scene around age 18. It was during my first formal sit-down dinner in the late ’60s or early ’70s at the home of the late philanthropist Clarence Day. I actually had to ask a young woman next to me which spoon to use for something or other during dinner. Just like in the movies.
As I recall, we moved to a room with expensive oil paintings and lots of books following dinner and we were sipping Grand Marnier out of snifters when the question was asked, “Who is your favorite artist?”
I said, “Doris Lee. She’s a contemporary artist.” Emphasis on “contemporary” as if to prove I knew what I was talking about. I told them her painting “Arbor Day” was my favorite painting. I didn’t notice any rolling eyes, but “Doris Lee” probably wasn’t up there with Cezanne or Monet or whoever was on their lists.
Decades later, “Arbor Day” is still my all-time favorite painting. I first saw it in a book we had at home when I was little. Looking at it again I notice how a lot of the subjects in that painting came true in my life. It’s set in the country. It reflects my love of gardening. Even the two horses are the same colors as mine.
So when I noticed a listing in the Memphis Flyer announcing a Lee exhibit, “Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee,” at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to see it. I’d only seen maybe two other paintings by Lee over the years.
On a beautiful 70-degree day after the holidays I made a visit to Dixon to see the show.
It’s fabulous.
The exhibit, closing January 15th, is a delight. With the temperatures on the mild side and the throng of daffodils sprouting in the the Dixon garden, now is a great time to take in this show.
Sadly, “Arbor Day” isn’t in the show because it couldn’t be loaned, says Melissa Wolfe, who, along with Barbara Jones, curated “Simple Pleasures.” But there is a depiction of the painting in a Maxwell House coffee ad in the exhibit.
Wolfe, who is curator of American Art at the St. Louis Art Museum, sums up Lee’s work with one word. “I really connect it with joy,” she says.
And Lee’s work is accessible, Wolfe says, “You relate to what she’s doing. But that can sometimes be easily dismissed.”
Lee had her detractors. But, Wolfe says, “She always had major representation. She was one of the most successful artists of her era. We tend to think of it as more serious if painting deals with trauma and doubt and it’s big and turbulent and dramatic. If art speaks to tragedy or something we think of those things as big and serious. You think of the New York School — Pollock and Rothko — and big gestures. But why not think of joy as this incredibly profound experience that ties us together?”
Lee’s works in the ’40s, which are more on the folk art side, are what draw me in. The subjects include people celebrating a family reunion around a long dining room table, building a new house in the country, and people conducting an outdoor dance rehearsal.
“Dance Rehearsal” by Doris Lee. (Credit: Estate of Doris Lee, Courtesy of D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York)
“We inevitably relate to it,” Wolfe says. “You think of things in our own wide world. You think of a beautiful spring day or a horseback ride we had. It pulls us into our own memory and our own experiences. It’s important enough to us that they’re still in our memories.”
Wolfe was always attracted to Lee’s work and she wanted to do a show on her. She feels Lee was one of the “American scene artists” from the 1940s and ’50s who “was one of the most successful and still maintained an artist vision and coherence.”
Lee’s work was “not just pretty and lovely — all the things it got called even in her own day.”
Her paintings are figurative and she “simplified things,” but she also does “profound things” in her work, Wolfe says. She was a “colorist” and her paintings are “incredibly designed.” “I just think it’s very sophisticated in a way we sometimes too readily overlook.”
Lee’s paintings in the ’40s and into the early to mid-’50s were “simplified narrative” works. Her painting style evolved to works with “often very little action, sometimes abstract.”
She wanted her later paintings to be “calming and meditative,” Wolfe says. “She felt that an artist has one subject. And they might change how they get to that subject. But the subject is always the same.”
Lee was actively involved in the art world, jurying art shows and exhibits. She also was “very engaging,” Wolfe says. “She knew Gottlieb, Rothko, Grant Wood. So, she was well aware of what was going on. And like any other artist, she was looking and thinking about ways to get at her subjects.”
But it boiled down to one thing, according to Wolfe. “Lee said, ‘My subject is life and the world around us.’”
Lee, who had a home in the Florida Keys and in Woodstock, New York, relied on her memory and “what comes to mind” when she painted. She considered memories as “good at distilling down the most important factors” of what she wanted to paint, Wolfe says. “She changed her style to get better at that.”
“Garden in Moonlight” shows Lee’s work evolving from the strictly narrative. It’s a view from a porch, but it’s not like her 1945 painting, “Harvest Time.” That one depicts a woman standing on a porch watching people drink beer as they sit at a long table in the countryside. “Garden in Moonlight” leans toward abstract. “She wants to get at what it’s like to be alive — the experiences we have. That’s a perfect example. It’s one of my favorite paintings. It’s based very specifically on her back porch. You have to get rid of the world around us and enter the painting. I heard sounds and smells. It’s very serious and it’s very absorbing. That painting, I feel like you hear the sounds of a country night. And the flitting of light through those trees.”
Wolfe says, “Her paintings sort of ask us to slow down and connect to what’s inside of our life and our memories and our own experiences. And it’s very sensory. I think that’s the magic of it.”
“Garden in Moonlight” by Doris Lee. (Credit: Estate of Doris Lee, Courtesy of D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York)“Harvest Time ” by Doris Lee. (Credit: Estate of Doris Lee, Courtesy of D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York)
Lee gets earthy on another level, too. In her 1935 painting, “Noon,” which is featured in the catalog, a shirtless, barefooted farmhand with his hat and shoes nearby is on top of a clothed also barefooted reclining woman behind a hay stack. A lot of sexual innuendo is included in the painting.
“Noon” by Doris Lee (Credit: Estate of Doris Lee, Courtesy of D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York )
“That painting is lost. It’s been lost for decades. We only know it from reproductions. That’s an early painting. And I think, again, that shows this perspective of the world from a woman who is comfortable being a woman.”
And, Wolfe says, “I also think one of things that ties her work together is this female experience.”
Lee, who was so prominent, was “almost always the only female on a teaching faculty,” Wolfe says. “She gave a talk on women in the arts. And she said women need to embrace their sex. They need to embrace being female and who they are. She felt femininity was as powerful as masculinity.”
Julie Pierotti, the Martha R. Robinson Curator at the Dixon, worked with the “Simple Pleasures” curators to bring the show to Memphis. Lee’s painting, “The View at Woodstock,” which is on the cover of the hardback catalog, belongs to Dixon trustees Susan and John Horseman, who live in St. Louis. “They heard we were working on a show and said, ‘We want to be a part of it,’” Pierotti says.
In addition to the Horseman’s painting, Dixon added other paintings, including one of the paintings about the Broadway show Oklahoma! that Lee did for Life magazine. That painting is on loan from a Memphis couple.
Pierotti also is a fan of Lee’s paintings. Her paintings from the ’40s are “like a warm hug,” she says.
But they’re more than that. “They’re so approachable and so inviting and non-intimidating, but spend time with them and they’re pretty complex. There’s more than meets the eye.”
Talking about Lee’s 1945 painting, “Prospector’s Home,” Pierotti says, “It looks like a folk art painting, but if you look at it again, you feel ghost forms in it. Where there’s an outline of a duck, an outline of a water pond. And the mountains in the background are kind of these zig-zag lines. What seems, originally, like this naïve picture, really shows her awareness and embrace of modern art. Early twentieth century art. It looks in some ways like folk art, but when you look at it again, it’s got a lot of depth to it. As Melissa says in the catalog, they (the paintings) are about depicting joy in the format of serious painting.”About Lee’s detractors, Pierotti says. “Some people saw her work as maybe not serious because it’s about happy things. But that made her so popular as an artist in her time. She was very well known in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.”
She did paintings for Lucky Strike cigarettes and Maxwell House coffee. She also got work from magazines. “That’s the part of the story that’s really interesting to me,” Pierotti says. “These paintings that are so American and so sentimental — kind of in the best way — many of them were done for ads for major corporations.”
And, she says, “On top of that, Doris Lee is the main woman getting these commissions.”
“Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee,” Pierotti says, “is just a happy show that feels right in 2022 and 2023 to remind us of why we love art. I think it’s kind of the emotions that her paintings evoke and theories they evoke in us.”
And, she adds, “The feeling you get stays with you.”
“Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee” runs through Sunday, January 15th at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 4339 Park Avenue. Free admission.
