Tag: Alex Paulus

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Gotta Catch ’Em All

A trading card by Alex Paulus (Photo: Artist Trading Cards Memphis)

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,” Paulus 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 and started the Artist Trading Cards Memphis group, with local artists creating their own tiny art to sell and trade. In March, the group hosted their first event and are now gearing up for their second, this time at Crosstown Art Bar. The goal, Paulus explains, is to “inspire others to make their own artist trading cards and become part of the performance, too.”

For the event, a few artists will sell their limited-edition 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 for the last hour from 8 to 9 p.m.

Participating artists, along with Paulus, include Mary Jo Karimnia, Sara Moseley, Nick Peña, Tad Lauritzen Wright, and Michelle Fair. “These are legit gallery-showing artists who are making these,” Paulus says of the artists. “It’s not just getting our friends who like to doodle on stuff.”

Keep up with the group on Instagram (@artisttradingcardsmemphis).

Artist Trading Card Event, Crosstown Art Bar, Sunday, July 16, 6-9 p.m.

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Artist Trading Cards Memphis Hosts Its Inaugural Event This Weekend

(Photo: Artist Trading Cards Memphis)

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)

Inspire it did, as this weekend seven other artists will join Paulus in the first-ever Artist Trading Cards Memphis event. They include Michelle Fair, Keiko Gonzalez, Mary Jo Karimnia, Tad Lauritzen Wright, Sara Moseley, Nick Pena, and Matias Paradela. “These are legit gallery-showing artists who are making these,” Paulus says. “It’s not just getting our friends who like to doodle on stuff.”

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 Karimnia
By Michelle Fair
By Nick Pena
The 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).

Artist Trading Cards Memphis (ATCM) Inaugural Event, Wiseacre Brewing Company, 2783 Broad Ave., Sunday, March 19, 2-5 p.m.

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Don’t Miss it: Dixon’s “Memphis 2021” Exhibition Closing This Weekend

Justin Bowles, Heirloom Friendship, 2018-2019; acrylic paint, screen printed and painted papers (poster, scrapbook, giftwrap, Stonehenge, Canson, craft, magazine, tissue), fabric (Photo: Courtesy of Dixon Gallery & Gardens)

There’s just something about Memphis that inspires creativity, making it a national center for innovative cultural production. Dixon’s outgoing exhibition, “Memphis 2021,” boasts more than 50 original works by 20 diverse artists.

In the exhibition, you’ll find examples of fiber art by Paula Kovarik, Sharon Havelka, Jennifer Sargent, and Johana Moscoso. Also featured are colorful paintings by some familiar artists, including Alex Paulus, Roger Allan Cleaves, Juan Rojo, Debbie Likley Pacheco, Katherine George, and Danny Broadway. Creative work incorporating ink by Meredith Olinger and Rick Nitsche, plus an unusual integration of charcoal by Frances Berry and Jonah Westbrook, add depth to varied mixed media pieces.

“The artists in ‘Memphis 2021’ are talented, hugely creative, sometimes hilarious, and always hard-working, but they are also some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet,” says Kevin Sharp, Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director at the Dixon. “Their show is amazing and I am very proud of them all.”

Sharp might be referring to exciting detours from traditional mediums when he touts the artists as “hugely creative.” Mae Aur works with hand-cut wood and incorporates sound. Nick Hewlett showcases digital illustrations. Mary Jo Karimnia incorporates seed beads into works highlighting feminine imagery. Justin Bowles utilizes the entire Crump gallery for a sculptural installation. And Carrol McTyre and Mary K VanGieson use found objects in sculpture.

All of the artists give an exciting look at what’s to come in Memphis in the 2020s. See the exhibition, a feast for the senses, before it leaves the gallery this weekend.

Closing weekend for “Memphis 2021,” Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 4339 Park, Friday-Sunday, July 9-11, free.

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Alex Paulus Gets Show in French Gallery

‘Just Enjoying Some Alone Time’ by Alex Paulus

Memphis artist Alex Paulus will show his paintings December 9th at Cohle Gallery in Paris.

“I just connected with them through Instagram,” says Paulus, 39. “They asked me to send some images of stuff I had available. I’m represented by three different galleries right now. A lot is promised to those galleries. I sent [Cohle] 10 images and they picked five that they liked.”

‘These Are My Best Friends’ by Alex Paulus

He researched the Paris gallery to make sure it wasn’t a vanity gallery. “I always check ‘cause I get emails from galleries who say they found my stuff on Instagram, and they’ll say I have to pay a yearly fee to have it stuck in a show or something. So, I’m really aware of galleries like that.”

Paulus, who usually contacts artists represented by the gallery to make sure everything is legitimate, says that the work by Cohle Gallery artists is usually “really brightly colored or slightly poppy. I think some of the other artists they represent are street artists. One of them is just called ‘Nasty.’ ‘Monkey Bird’ is another. But then a lot of the others are real names.”

Paulus messaged the gallery and introduced himself. “They said they loved it and would send me an email about a show.”

That was just three weeks ago. He sent them 10 paintings, ranging from one he did in 2015 to one he painted a month ago. “My style has kind of bounced around from the sort of poppy, kind of cartoonish stuff, to a little more surreal,” he says.

The five paintings Cohle Gallery chose “all happened to be similar. Like a color palette or style.”

‘Observing the Useless Collector’ by Alex Paulus

One of his paintings is the whimsical “Just Enjoying Some Alone Time” which — discreetly — shows a man on a toilet. “I just get inspiration from different people. Like my friends or family saying things to me that jump out at me and I’ll put a note on it on my phone. It makes me think of a painting title or some kind of imagery I’ll  be able to put into a painting. Other times I’ll get it from older movies or just weird lines in movies or TV shows that I’m watching.”

Asked where he got the idea for “Just Enjoying Some Alone Time,” Paulus says, “I think it was my brother. He’s got four kids and I think he likes to just go in there and read magazines and look at his phone for a while while to get a little alone time. I think a lot of people do that who have kids.”

 “Fantastic Shot,” which shows the Fantastic Four playing golf, is a new work he sent, Paulus says. “I recently got really obsessed with these Marvel Masterpiece cards, like trading cards, from when I was younger.”

‘Fantastic Shot’ by Alex Paulus

 When the pandemic hit, I thought, “Maybe I could make some goofy Marvel paintings and make my own set of these. I only made five or six. I got burned out pretty quickly.”

A native of Perryville, Missouri, Paulus got his masters in 2009 from Memphis College of Art. He’s recently been working on some new ideas for different series of paintings, but he’s also been doing paintings of houses through realtor Morgan Pippin. “She gives them to her clients as gifts when they close on their house,” he says.

Paulus also teaches classes online at Southwest Tennessee Community College, where he is an assistant professor of fine arts. “I’ve been teaching at home since March. I have three classes that meet Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.  And then I have two fully-online classes, where I email them and they work on stuff at home.”

Asked if he might use the name “Paulus Bunion — which he called himself when he performed as a one-man band 10 years ago — as his Cohle Gallery artist name, Paulus says, “I think I’ll leave that in the music scene.”

Jamie Harmon

Alex Paulus

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The work of Alex Paulus

Alex Paulus was 13 when he won his first art competition. He entered a Van Gogh-esque painting in a fair.

“I won the 14- to 18-year-old category, Paulus says. “I got first place. There were all these other older kids who had done really good stuff. They were kind of standing around, looking at me. I was just, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ It came with like a $25 prize, and I was like, ‘Oh, God. They’ll take it away from me.’ So, I didn’t say anything.”

Since then, Paulus, 36, now an assistant professor of fine arts at Southwest Tennessee Community College, has included his work in numerous shows. He will exhibit his works along with Natalie Hoffmann and Nick Peña in “Better Homes and Gardens,” which will open October 20th at Crosstown Arts.

A native of Perryville, Missouri, Paulus and his friend drew pictures of singer Rob Zombie and his White Zombie metal band — “devil everything” — because they thought the music was cool. But Paulus, who went to a Catholic grade school, says, “Our teachers were afraid we were worshiping the devil.”

He majored in graphic design at Southeastern Missouri State University, but he hated it. Except for a project in which he had to design and make a survival kit for a particular place. “I made a Catholic survival kit for hell. It was like a golden tabernacle. And I had a swinging door open on it and a bottle of water that was supposed to be holy water that you could throw on demons.”

He also included a wooden devil mask “to mask yourself from other devils so they wouldn’t find out that you’re not supposed to be there.” And a fan with images of the saints on it “to flip it out and fan evil.”

After changing his major to painting, Paulus began making “mostly figurative stuff. But it was more brightly colored abstract, which kind of stuck with me. It is exactly what I am doing now.”

In 2007, Paulus moved to Memphis to attend Memphis College of Art, where his early work dealt with his “questioning of evolution and creationism. It tied back to my Catholic background.”

His thesis paintings were white-on-white minimalist images based on “all these different instances when God was punishing humans.”

He showed how — using advanced technology — man is able to “counteract all God’s punishments” in Old Testament stories. A painting showed the Noah’s Ark flood, but one man has on scuba gear. Another depicts a locust plague but includes “the big truck that drives around and kills mosquitos or whatever bugs.”

Paulus liked the idea of making funny art. “After I got out of grad school, that’s when I started doing way more colorful things and incorporating funny, weird situations.”

One group was a “series of all these little dead people in weird situations.”

Look at Them Weird Birds shows a nude man standing in a Walmart parking lot near a body of a woman in a pool of blood. He’s pointing at some birds flying in a V formation as if to divert the viewer’s attention from the corpse.

Another shows dead people in a bowling alley. “It’s called Mass Suicide-o-rama. They’re all wearing little Nike shoes, and there’s little cups of Kool-Aid that spilled next to each one of them.”

In “Stopping in Memphis” at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, a work is entitled Living the Dream. It shows a man with a distorted-looking face wearing virtual reality glasses. “He’s got these beautiful braces. He’s got an awesome Coca-Cola tank top. He’s got a good hairdo. He’s living the dream. He’s trying to live the dream.”

The work in the new show “kind of piggybacks off of the show at U of M.”

The theme of the upcoming Crosstown Arts show will be “more about the American Dream and homes and owning things.”

Paulus says his works will be about people “trying to make their lives better. But it’s not working.”

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“Blind Navigator” at Crosstown Arts

If someone were to draw a Venn diagram that had, on one side, a circle that held within it “truly funny stuff” and, on the other side, a circle that contained “contemporary painting,” the realm of overlap would be next to nonexistent. If you don’t immediately think, “Wow, contemporary painting, LMAO,” that is because the kind of contemporary painting that makes it to museums and galleries is not usually very funny, and when it tries to be funny, it is often becomes even more un-funny. Your standard art jokes are up there with the worst forms of humor — self-referential, often elitist, dumb.

We need funny art. Not knee-slap funny, George-Carlin-as-a-painting funny. Not puns. (Never puns.) What we need is the kind of work that makes you feel like someone has opened a window to let air into the room. What contemporaneity demands of us is art that is heavy as a Rothko chapel but light as a Kanye meme.

The best local entrants in the category of “it makes you laugh, but you’d also frame it” are painters Alex Paulus and Clare Torina, whose exhibition, “Blind Navigator,” is currently on view at Crosstown Arts. Both Paulus and Torina have a talent for making work that is visually and conceptually depthy and feels drawn from some kind of long-lost iPhone scroll. We need paintings like Paulus’ Forever Dog, which features a panther-like canine harbinger of an unknown apocalypse, infinitely looped into his own black shadow. Or Torina’s outsized Wet Wipe in Paradise, an LP-shaped version of a wet wipe, which neatly draws a through-line between Jimmy Buffett, sterile Floridian resorts, and bottom-of-your-pocket paper refuse.

From Wet Wipe in Paradise to That Seems Not Right, Clare Torina and Alex Paulus create dreamlike art that is simultaneously funny, familiar, and surreal.

Torina, who lives and works in New York but got her bachelor’s degree in Memphis, makes paintings that feel digitally collaged but with none of the tautness and restraint of Photoshop. In Torina’s paintings, shadows appear without whatever or whoever cast them. Dreamlike elements — temples, pets, pants, bones, and flowers in Styrofoam — coexist in an unnaturally immediate space. There is a feeling of the surreal-in-the-sharable that lends the work a familiarity.

Paulus has been making and showing paintings around Memphis for years. The work in “Blind Navigator” is his best to date. Paulus’ style, which is plasticky, grotesque, and always a tinge nihilistic, really hits its stride in paintings like No more P bear (a polar bear with a red “X” painted over its face) and Rig King (a goony blond guy shouldering a missile.) As far as names go, both Torina and Paulus follow Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw, whose sardonically titled “Thrift Store Paintings” recently merited a retrospective in New York’s New Museum. Paulus’ work, like Shaw’s, feels down-to-earth, only in a universe that has flipped its shit. Paulus’ work exists in a world of internet tabloids and Reddit. To quote the title of a Paulus painting that shows a series of messily skewed celestial paths: That seems not right.

Paulus and Torina arranged “Blind Navigator” so that nothing feels quite to-scale: a toilet paper roll the size of a toddler holds a silk flower while hand-painted human bones lie in a pile nearby. Another work by Torina is a pair of checkered pants, Freudian in proportion, called For Grandpa’s Ghost. These details chock up to a subtle Wonderland effect.

“Blind Navigator” is an uncommonly good show. It takes risks. It joins a dry sense of humor with an “only in Vegas for the night, baby,” bring-it-on sensibility. It is critical without being cynical. Paulus and Torina meet the challenges of making paintings in an image-saturated age smartly, and with warmth.