Editor’s note: the opening reception for “Bawlmer” has been changed to September 20th, 2 p.m.
It’s been a year since Memphis artist and Flyer contributor Dwayne Butcher traded the Bluff City and barbecue for the crab cakes of Baltimore. But Butcher didn’t leave his hometown fully behind when he moved into his new digs.
“I knew before I even left town, before I ever moved to Baltimore, that I was going to have a show at Crosstown Arts during this time period,” says Butcher, who says he used his planned “Bawlmer” show as a way to introduce himself to the art scene in Baltimore and set up a cultural exchange between two cities that he describes as being more alike than different.
“This was a way for me to force myself on people in Baltimore,” Butcher says. “This was a good way for me to meet all of the people I thought I needed to meet.”
A piece by Greely Myatt
“Bawlmer” features pieces by a half-dozen East Coast artists working in a variety of mediums.
“The humor in the work really stood out to me,” says Butcher.
Humor has always been a key component of Memphis artist Greely Myatt’s work, and so it is once again with “and,” his fall sculpture exhibit at David Lusk Gallery. This time around, he’s also playing with light and “visual closure,” the brain’s tendency to fill in the blanks so that we see complete images when only part of an image is shown.
Myatt wondered briefly if the talking balloons and thought bubbles that populated his work had become too ubiquitous, since they were everywhere from mobile phone messaging to the comic books that ate Hollywood. With “and,” he finds new ways to revisit old visual themes. He also begins to consider punctuation marks as abstract design.