Category: Exhibit M

This Friday is Trolley Tour, and if you venture down Huling and upstairs from Jack Robinson Gallery, you’ll find a particularly good reason to head to South Main: Meet Your Maker, a celebration of Etsy artisans and a sale of local art and crafts.

The event poster says fourteen, but with the addition of Rock Paper Scissors, there will be fifteen vendors in total. Come ready to buy locally made items, from photographs, paintings, pottery, and hand-spun yarn to handcrafted lamps, jewelry, and stationery. Goodnight Gracie Specialty Foods is catering the event.

Meet Your Maker, Friday, September 24, 5:30 to 9 p.m.

Jack Robinson Gallery, 44 Huling Avenue, 521-0400

Opening this evening at Levy Gallery at the Buckman is An Open Book, a joint show featuring paintings by Richard L. Harper and the sculptures of Meg Zachry.

Harper’s paintings are on shaped canvas, cut to look like books or abstract shapes reminiscent of books. He is particularly interested in the role art books play in our relationship with art. “Not many people acknowledge how much people rely on reproduction in books and prints of famous artwork,” says Harper. “In fact a lot of artists know paintings but they’ve never seen the original. It’s kind of a look at art history and how we perceive art.”

Some of his work moves towards the abstract, some of it is cleverly representative. “I had a painting with a gutter in it — a gutter is the place where the book is bound, the trough in the center — and lots of art books will put paintings across the gutter and that kind of bothered me. So my first painting was of an El Greco painting. It goes across the gutter and Jesus is right in the middle of the gutter. It’s kind of humorous in that regard.”

Meg’s pieces focus more on the human condition as an open book, using bodies and faces to show the way we express our inner state. Working in bronze, plaster, and mosaic, Meg’s pieces add human curves to Harper’s sharp, colorful pieces.

The opening reception is this evening from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and the show will run until October 29. Levy Gallery is free and open to the public, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or by appointment.

Levy Gallery at the Buckman Arts Center, 60 Perkins Ext., 537-1483, www.stmarysschool.org/thebuckman

Each year students from Memphis College of Art take a trip to Horn Island off the Gulf Coast, following in the personal tradition of Walter Anderson. There they isolate themselves, become immersed in the island life, and, ideally, produce work to bring back and put on display. Tomorrow is the reception for the Horn Island 26 show— featuring work from the 26th annual trip. (Read more about the trip in John Branston’s cover feature, Endangered.)

• James Carey

• James Carey

• James Carey

Tonight marks the first installment in the series Curious Pictures, put on by the Urban Art Commission and funded by the First Tennessee Award for Innovation in the Arts. Each Friday night from now until October 8 will feature a different artist. All shows begin at 8 p.m. and end at 11:30 p.m.

“It is intentionally different things,” says John Weeden of the Urban Art Commission. “It’s meant to be a variety to show the breadth of types of video and digital work being produced locally. Some of it is more narrative, more traditionally cinematic. Some of it is more abstract and rooted in pattern and design.”

All of the shows involve projecting work onto a screen or wall, and will take place in different locations each time. Jill Wissmiller’s show, Magic Meaning Making Machine, is the first of five shows and will take place outside the Orpheum.

“Her show is intentionally interactive,” says Weeden. “It’s built as a participatory experience with the audience.”

Jill will set up a projection station with a classroom overhead projector. Viewers will walk up and Jill will teach them how to use the machine to project different images. “What it does,” says Weeden, “is translate the drawings and abstract markings of whoever wishes to different colors and patterns [projected] onto the wall of the Orpheum.”

Future shows include:
September 17, Erik Jambor screens Godfrey Reggio’s KOYAANISQATSI outside of Jolly Royal Furniture Store
September 24, Sarah Fleming and Christopher Reyes display their work at Center Lane near the Madison Hotel
October 1, Alex Harrison and his band, The Warble, combine music and light display at the Waterford Building at Front and Beale
October 8, Work from Brian Dixon,Matt Ducklo, Chris Miner, Matthias Mueller and Christoph Giradet on the Main Street Mall behind 1 Commerce Square

The 15th annual Art on Tap at the Dixon happens next Friday, September 10, from 6 to 9 p.m.

In addition to the open galleries and gardens, there will be live entertainment from the Mean Green Music Machine and plenty of food from L’École Culinaire, Bardog, Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q, McAlister’s, and Pa Pa Pia’s.

And of course, there will be beer: Bluff City Brewers and Connoisseurs, Boscos, Budweiser, Coors Light, Dos Equis, Ghost River Brewing, Heineken, Miller Lite and more will be represented. Plus, new to this year’s event is a Biere de Garde(n), a Boscos special brew for the Dixon.

Tickets in advance cost $40 for Dixon members and $50 non-members. Members of Young at Art get in free. On the day of the event all tickets will cost $50.

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 4339 Park Avenue, 761-5250, dixon.org

Now on display at Askew Nixon Ferguson is New Work by Ann Fitzgerald Bailey and Kathy Williams. Combining Fitzgerald’s watercolors and mixed media and Williams’ acrylic dyes on silk and bamboo, the exhibition makes an elegant addition to the gallery.

• Ann Fitzgerald Bailey
• Survival of the Fittest

• Kathy Williams
• Gray Blocks #7

• Kathy Williams
• Textured Swirls Orange

• Ann Fitzgerald Bailey
• The Road Less Traveled

The show will be up until September 24. Askew Nixon Ferguson Gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects, 1500 Union Ave, 278-6868, www.anfa.com/gallery.aspx

Now on exhibition at L Ross Gallery is the third annual “Works on Paper” show, featuring a mix of figurative and abstract work from artists like Bobby Spillman, Jeri Ledbetter, Ryan VanderLey, David Comstock, Chuck Johnson, and Carl Moore.

• Bobby Spillman
• The Hotel Sweets, graphite on paper, 8″ x 10″

“In the month of August, I like to have a group show with all the works on paper,” says gallery owner, Linda Ross. “For me, as hot as Memphis is, there’s something crisp and wonderful about works on paper. It’s a lighter feel as well as being not as expensive as the bigger canvases. It’s a nice time to show this work.”

• Ryan VanderLey
• Untitled #14, oil bar/pastel/graphite on paper, 30″ x 44″

The exhibit will be on display until the end of the month. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

L Ross Gallery, 5040 Sanderlin Ave, Suite 104, 767-2200, lrossgallery.com

August 31st marks the last day to see Gallery Fifty Six’s “Turnmaloose,” an exhibition on Elvis and the fans who adored him.

The exhibit includes photographs of Elvis fans by Michael Whitaker:

• Michael Whitaker
• Elvis Kelly

Pastels of the king himself by Jeanne Reynolds:

• Jeanne Reynolds
• One Night With You

Graceland graffiti collages on tile by MJ Reeves, and other musically-inspired paintings and photographs.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Gallery Fifty Six, 2256 Central Ave, 276-1251, thepalladiogroup.com/galleryfiftysix

An opening reception for In Love with Color, Friday evening from 5:30 to 7 p.m., marks the beginning of the 2010-2011 season at Levy Gallery at the Buckman Arts Center. Paintings by Jeanne Seagle and glasswork by Lisa Allen will be on display there until September 10th.

• Lisa Allen
• Fortuna

• Jeanne Seagle
• Sunset at Dacus Lake

Seagle and Allen have never worked together. “In fact, I did not know her and did not know her work, until we delivered our pieces to the show,” says Seagle. But it turns out the two have very complementary styles. That is, according to Allen, “We share that desire to explode with color in our work.”