Tag: art

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Inside the Scottish Rite Temple: Circuitous Succession

The Double-Headed Eagle.

“The cause of human progress is our cause, the enfranchisement of human thought our supreme wish, the freedom of human conscience our mission, and the guarantee of equal rights to all peoples everywhere, the end of our contention.” So begins the Scottish Rite creed, a set of ideas evidenced in the Masonic order’s welcoming of ambitious works by nearly 50 local, national, and international artists into their grand temple at 825 Union Avenue, a building frozen in time, and already laden with symbols, murals, and decorative detail.

Curated by Jason Miller, “Circuitous Succession Epilogue” brings together a variety of artists working in mediums ranging from wood and steel to fragile ceramics and plastic Walmart grocery sacks. The artwork can also be heady, exploring a range of topics from economic disparity to corporate dominance to female exclusion. It may also be witty, as is the case with stairwell installations by sculptor Greely Myatt, and a tricky piece by multimedia artist Jay Etkin that has been used by Miller to create a kind of hide-and-seek game with visitors.

Inside the Scottish Rite Temple: Circuitous Succession

A partial video tour with Jason Miller

Sculpture by Roy Tamboli

The Scottish Rite building is three stories with a dining room and a grand theater that was expanded and refurbished when it was used to film performance scenes for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. It is already outfitted with ornamental work, masonic symbols, and portraits of past members. 

Inside the Scottish Rite Temple: Circuitous Succession (2)

A closer look inside the Scottish Rite theater with Jason Miller

Secrets inside

Miller, who curated his first exhibit in the grand, non-traditional space a year ago, is also a conceptual artist who believes that an artwork is completed by its surroundings. The Scottish Rite gives him a lot to work with. 

The rose cross.

Miller can’t stop talking about the depth of talent in his show and seems especially excited about four pieces created by Shara Rowley Plough. “It’s called Maids Work,” he says of the collection. “She wove maids’ garments out of Walmart shopping bags. They are so detailed; it must have taken her a year.”
Chris Davis

Jason Miller, behind the board. Backstage at the Scottish Rite Temple

Going up?

Door detail

A better look at the board.

Sculpture by Anna Maranise

Anna Maranise’s sculpture, installed in front of an allegorical Scottish Rite mural, provides one of the exhibitions best interactions between art and environment. Miller describes it as being like a “Cronenberg film.”

The old masters. Masons, that is.

Sculpture by Jay Etkin

No smoking signs are everywhere.

Installation by Greely Myatt.

More places to store your hat and coat.

It’s impossible to really capture how the above piece resonates in its space, below a Masonic ceiling mural. You really do have to see it to get it. 

A painting by Beth Edwards

Chair.

At times it’s impossible to tell where the exhibit ends and the Temple begins. Everywhere you turn there’s a William Eggleston photograph just waiting to be taken.

It’s an impressive organ. No other way to put it.

Theater detail.

More backstage stuff.

Costumes abound.

More costumes.

More places to store your hat and coat.

Buckets and a radiator.

Stairs

Art

Fire escape

More chairs

Rope hanging in a window

All that and a place to store your cloak. Members only.

Miller can’t stop talking about the depth of talent in his show and seems especially excited about four pieces created by Shara Rowley Plough not pictured in this post. “It’s called Maids Work,” he says of the collection. “She wove maids’ garments out of Walmart shopping bags. They are so detailed; it must have taken her a year.”

Circuitous Succession is an ambitious instillation in an impressive space that’s majestic in some corners, and bit frayed at the elbows. The art alone is compelling enough. In the temple, it’s downright irresistible. 

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Art Art Feature

Back to Basics

The art of “Water Works,” the current exhibition at On the Street Gallery, was created by three painting professors. The lessons imparted are fundamental: The American dream is manufactured, and nature, throughout its cycles and the seasons, can be both life-affirming and stark and lonely.

It’s University of Memphis’ Beth Edwards who pays haunting homage to the American dream. A gentrified frog drives a brand-new lavender Cadillac, a beautiful blond boy-toy shows off his sports car and home, and a young homemaker (a Minnie Mouse lookalike) stands proudly inside her immaculately clean, orange-and-avocado moderne living room.

Based on Looney Tunes and Walt Disney characters, Edwards’ rubber dolls look happy — perhaps a little too happy. Little Wanderer‘s glassy-eyed, disheveled-hair, clenched-fist joy borders on frantic. The bug-eyed, frozen-smiled happiness of many of Edwards’ toys looks as plastic as the blond hair of the beautiful boy in Noon.

As the American economy and the real estate market falter and religious freedom turns militaristic, Edwards laces her vision with irony, 21st-century angst, and garish, blindingly bright (celestial? nuclear?) light. Edwards’ humor is cosmic, and the joke is on us all.

Rhodes College professor Erin Harmon’s untitled watercolors take us closer to the source of things than the thick glazes, Popsicle colors, and coy Ruben-esque nudes of her signature oil paintings. Rotting tree stumps and pools of green-umber suggest the decaying plant life that nourish the watercolors’ lush fields of vines, ivy, and exotic flowers. In one work, a dark-green frond stands like a sentinel between flowers and water. Its leaves are cupped into a wide-open mouth to catch the rain. It’s nature’s cycle: first the saturate hues of spring and summer, then the long languid decay.

Memphis College of Art painting professor Susan Maakestad used as a source for her watercolors hundreds of images of Wisconsin interstates taken by video cameras this past winter. Maakestad’s scumbled washes and the soft rag of the watercolor paper replicate drifts of snow piled against guard rails, frozen fields tinted blue, and the gray grit of snow banks several months old.

Maakestad’s art seems to go on forever. Snow drifts and soft-gray swaths created by snow plows dissolve into overcast winter skies. Stark-white, swerving interstates sweep the point of view far beyond the edges of the 5-by-7-inch paintings. There are no cars, no buildings, no people. Depending on one’s mood and mindset, Maakestad’s spare abstractions evoke serenity, loneliness, and/or wide-open mind.

“Water Works,” through October 18th at On the Street Gallery

The quilts, sculpture, and paintings currently on view in the Dixon Gallery & Gardens exhibition “Ancestry & Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum” rival the originality and complexity of artwork by modern and postmodern masters.

The dazzling colors and patterns in Leola Pettway’s Star of Bethlehem with Satellite Stars Quilt pulsate like pop art and explode beyond the quilt’s edges like an abstract expressionist painting. Thornton Dial Sr.’s wall-filling primordial landscapes of oppression and racism in the pre- and post-Civil War South are as raw and layered with meaning as Anselm Kiefer’s mix-media explorations of lands and peoples ravished in pre- and post-WWII Germany.

In Bessie Harvey’s unsettling, ultimately empowering work Black Horse of Revelations, a woman is hoisted up and nearly impaled by a steed sculpted out of roots and branches that writhe in all directions. The woman is dressed in a sequined black sheath, her head is thrown back, and her right hand is tied to the throat of the horse by a silver chain.

Black Horse of Revelations is a revelation not just of end-times but of all of life — created by a woman who divorced an abusive husband, raised 11 children by herself, and, in spite of prejudice and poverty, became a nationally prominent artist who understood existence in all its altruistic, symbiotic, predatory glory.

“Ancestry & Innovation,” through October 12th at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens

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Art Art Feature

A Sense of Place

For the past 15 years, photographer Maude Schuyler Clay has been driving Mississippi’s back roads photographing the Delta. In the darkroom of her 100-year-old family homestead in Sumner, she has developed hundreds of images of eroding architecture, misty bayous, small stands of woods, endless rows of crops, and dogs eking out existences from this hardscrabble landscape.

Thirty-five of Clay’s black-and-white photographs make up Perry Nicole Fine Art’s current exhibition, “Delta Dogs.” Miniscule canines run beneath kudzu-choked cypresses and become characters in a play in which the drama of everyday life is dwarfed by what looks, at a distance, like majestically draped cathedrals.

A young muscular black lab standing in ankle-deep bayou water in Clay’s most famous work, Dog in the Fog, also graces the cover of Barry Hannah’s novel Yonder Stands Your Orphan, the title of which was appropriated from lyrics in Bob Dylan’s apocalyptic ballad, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”

As in Dog in the Fog, rich subtexts weave their way through all of Clay’s art. In Lilly Dog, Brazil, Mississippi, a large white dog lies on a lawn in front of the charred remains of a tenant house. Each time Clay drove this stretch of road, she saw the dog patiently waiting for owners who never returned. With her husband, photographer Langdon Clay, their three children, and several pets already at home, Clay usually enlists the help of friends and agencies rather than rescuing dogs herself. Not this time. Clay opened her car door and adopted a Delta orphan she described in an interview as a “Zen-like dog with an old soul.”

At Perry Nicole Fine Art through August 30th

The most riveting work in the Metal Museum’s Artist-in-Residence Show, being hosted by the Jack Robinson Gallery, is Jeannie Tomlinson Saltmarsh’s aluminum casting of baby doll faces, Escaping the Net. The cherubic cheeks, frozen smiles, and empty eye sockets of the dolls’ faces are cast in aluminum and squeezed through a frayed metal mesh to create a viscerally compelling image that suggests being chewed up and spit out.

The work’s title, however, invites a more positive reading — what Tomlinson Saltmarsh describes as “marshalling all of our mental/emotional/physical faculties to push through life’s biggest challenges.”

George Hunt’s Sojourner Truth

This endlessly evocative, unsparing, simultaneously demonic/cherubic image also brings to mind the Tibetan practice of “Bardo” and going beyond desire and delusion, going beyond the terrifying projections of our own minds, and getting off the karmic wheel of cause and effect altogether.

At Jack Robinson Gallery through August 29th

In its summer show, one of D’Edge’s most accomplished painters, George Hunt, fuses folk art with collage and cubism to capture the lined faces and fractured psyches of hard-living bluesmen, gamblers, and juke-joint revelers.

But Hunt’s most moving, iconic work is the 4-by-5-foot portrait Sojourner Truth, portraying the African-American orator who traveled the country in the early 20th century speaking out against the unjust treatment of women and blacks.

Reyna Castano’s The Face of Truth

A mosaic of purples, deep reds, and dark blues move across Sojourner’s proud, passionate face. These colors are repeated in the thick folds of her quilted dress. Around her neck, she wears a large medallion of Abraham Lincoln’s lined, chiseled face.

Monumental in size and theme, Hunt’s portrait of Sojourner and the portrait within the portrait of Lincoln are made more compelling when thoughts turn to our 21st-century leaders, who have become political zealots rather than seekers of the truth.

At D’Edge through September 21st

Joysmith/Sunsum Gallery’s current exhibition, “Driven to Abstraction,” includes 33 works by nine talented artists from Memphis, Denver, New York, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the Dominican Republic.

Noted Mexican artist Reyna Castano counterpoints the buoyant energy and colors that dominate the show with a mixed-media painting that brings to mind the raw concrete work of Swiss architect Le Corbusier and the crumbling facades of Spanish painter Tàpies — two artists whose sensibilities were forged by WWII.

The jagged red line that runs the length of Castano’s painting The Face of Truth, the dark portals that punctuate its crumbling walls and frayed metal grids, and the work’s title all suggest that clues for the destruction are deep within ourselves as well as in the ruins.

At Joysmith/Sunsum through August 31st

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News The Fly-By

Urban Canvas

CREDIT: by Christopher Parks

The University Neighborhoods Development Corporation has a special interest in the intersection of Highland and Southern, what it calls the heart of the University District.

“If you stand on the railroad tracks in the middle of Highland and turn 360 degrees, we’d like you to see something — a strong, visual statement about this community — in every direction,” executive director Steve Barlow says.

Not that Barlow actually wants anyone standing on the tracks. But he does want community participation for public art around the university.

The university-area development corporation has partnered with the U of M’s art department to create several community-driven public art installations. The project is being funded with an $18,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, the United Way, and the university.

The project will also include lighting improvements, signage, and neighborhood banners.

Currently in its infancy, the project already has included two billboards advertising the upcoming artwork. One was up very briefly. The other, in front of a newly painted mural on the wall of the Peddler Bike Shop on Highland, reads, “This temporary mural … will be replaced by one that YOU create.”

U of M art professor Cedar Nordbye says content for the Peddler mural came from preliminary meetings with neighborhood and business associations and open public meetings.

“The community’s goal is to give itself some sense of a cohesive identity,” Nordbye says.

Students in two of Nordbye’s classes this semester will be involved with generating ideas and art for the project.

“The classes will be dedicated to making artwork that interacts with or comes from the neighborhood,” Nordbye says.

As part of the 4th annual Highland Walker Festival in October, a second large mural will be installed on the wall of the Goodwill store. Other proposed sites for murals include the construction fence at the northeast corner of Highland and Central, an unused sign in the parking lot of Garibaldi’s on Walker, and a north-facing wall adjacent to the Easy Mart parking lot at the corner of Highland and Southern.

Though not providing any funding for the project, the UrbanArt Commission is acting in an advisory role.

“We’re providing insights into streetscape possibilities and best practices of public arts facilitation,” says UrbanArt executive director John Weeden.

Weeden says community-based art projects such as this one create a sense of place through shared storytelling and group art production.

“When you have that connectedness to each other, and to one’s home, you have a stronger, more vital community overall,” Weeden says.

To find out how you can participate in the University District Public Art Project, visit the public art forum at www.memphisundc.com.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Make It Snappy

CREDIT: Dole | dreamstime.com

On Saturday, August 16th, between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m., the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is asking this city’s citizens of all ages, creeds, and colors to pick up their cameras and start shooting. The goal of “Day in the Life of Memphis” is to capture images of Memphis 2008.

“Day in the Life of Memphis” is the first time the museum has made such a large call for entries. The pictures, divided by age group and amateur and professional photographers, will be judged by a jury, and the winning images will be displayed online and at the museum from September 20th through November 2nd in a show titled “Memphis 8.16.08.” The project was created by the museum’s education department to spark community involvement around the upcoming exhibit “Photographs from the Memphis World, 1949-1964,” which includes pictures from the archives of the late African-American community newspaper Memphis World.

“Day in the Life” begins in the wee hours of August 16th, just as folks at the Candlelight Vigil are making their way through the grounds of Graceland commemorating the anniversary of Elvis’ death. It’s coincidence, according to project assistant Gracie Wright, who says the date was chosen to give the Brooks enough time to get ready for the opening.

Obvious images come to mind: the Pyramid, the bridge. “That’s fantastic, because that is Memphis,” Wright says. “But we’re hoping to get a diverse group of pictures. We’re hoping to get a picture of somebody’s grandma sitting on the porch or of somebody’s dog catching a Frisbee in Overton Park — any or all of that.”

The opening of “Memphis 8.16.08” on September 20th is also Memphis World Community Day, a free event featuring photography-inspired activities for the kids, live entertainment, a panel discussion, and more.

“Day in the Life of Memphis,” Saturday, August 16th, 12:01 a.m.-11:59 p.m. Deadline for Entry is Wednesday, August 27th. For more information or to download an application, go to brooksmuseum.org.

Categories
Art Art Feature

What a Trip

CREDIT: Gadsby Creson's installation at the P&H Caf

It’s 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Too early for gallery-hopping? Not if you love to mix java with artwork. We’re at Republic Coffee, and the walls are lined with some of the best paintings and photographs of Eric Swartz’ career.

In Dash, Swartz records the part of a vehicle we see as we slide into the driver’s seat. The rudimentary control panel inside this antique truck or sedan has become a rusted metal hulk. The windshield is clouded with algae and age. At the right edge of the image, a surprisingly intact steering wheel takes us back to mid-century when we were crisscrossing America’s brand-new interstates in the vehicles of our youth. Most of them are junkers now, metaphors for time and memory and a good jumping-off point for our exploration of the accomplished, richly symbolic artwork found in a wide variety of Memphis venues.

Through August 31st at Republic Coffee

Our next stop is Material, the cutting-edge gallery that helped jump-start the now-burgeoning Broad Avenue Arts District. Niki Johnson’s and Melissa Farris’ exhibition “Moral Fiber” fills the small space with artworks charged with irony, intense emotion, and complex meaning. Nothing feels off-limits for these two sassy, savvy young artists who ask us to look into the face of power and sexuality, to question authority, and to challenge sexual taboos and the artificial distinctions between high and low art.

Johnson’s appliquéd portrait of a screaming Donald Trump, titled Old Yeller, asks us to consider whether we value cold corporate power more than the faithful companionship and courage typified by the stray dog in the American movie classic of the same title.

Viewers are encouraged to pull back curtains covering Farris’ shadow boxes. Inside are graceful, peach-and-pink watercolors of same-sex partners making love.

Many of Johnson’s and Farris’ artworks are charged with playful innuendo. Cupcakes, Johnson’s needlepointed studies of women’s breasts framed by fluted cupcake tins, are bite-sized and beautiful. Jonathan’s Quilt, Farris’ appliquéd portrait of a young man on an eight-pointed-star quilt with hand inside his jeans, transforms the “security blanket” into something we can hang onto from cradle to grave.

Through August 29th at Material

Gadsby Creson’s installation at the P&H Caf

Just off Main Street, the walls of Power House Memphis are montaged with iPhone photos that internationally renowned contemporary artist Rob Pruitt took of Memphis. His most evocative work records Graceland’s 1960s décor and fans’ floral tributes to the man who revolutionized music, swiveled his hips, and helped thousands of youngsters come of age in the sexually repressive 1950s.

Pruitt’s images of an empty wheelchair imprinted with the word “Graceland” and a large statute of Christ resurrected on Presley’s gravesite most poignantly tell the story of the love affair between Elvis and his fans.

Through August 9th at Power House Memphis

Several blocks farther north on South Main, we discover Micah Craven’s monotype Simple Food Simple Taste, one of the most powerful artworks currently on view anywhere in Memphis. It’s one of the prints in the group exhibition “Oh Lord, Won’t You Send Me a Sign!” at Memphis College of Art’s On the Street gallery. The show was curated by University of Mississippi chair and associate professor of art, Sheri Fleck Rieth.

Craven’s expressive linework and deep shadows depict a child’s cracked teeth, protruding ribs, emaciated arms, and what could be a belly bloated by starvation or a pregnant girl unable to feed herself or her fetus. An empty fishing pole in the child’s left hand and the work’s title make the figure a powerful poster child. Instead of raping the world for quick profit, Craven suggests that we leave enough natural resources intact to allow humanity to farm, fish, and fend for itself.

Through August 9th at On the Street

This has been a long, rich day, but we’re not done yet. We stop by the P&H Café for one last cup of coffee.

On the wall behind the bandstand, also known as P&H Artspace, is Gadsby Creson’s installation, “The Price Is Even More Right,” one of the smallest, most original shows in town.

Each of Creson’s mixed-media paperworks is mounted on two 4-by-4-inch squares of foam core. Some of the works are glued to the foam core like tiny abstract paintings. In others, the foam-core squares serve as backdrop and stage for minuscule paper sculptures.

Two of Creson’s most dramatic pieces suggest a line of narrative. In the first, a Matisse-like dancer moves with frenzied grace above a dark-red sea. In the second, another ebony figure folds her body onto the floor like a dancer taking her final bow.

Creson’s dancers are a good way to end our day. I’m headed home to begin writing this column. But stay as long as you like. The P&H crowd of music lovers, literati, and art enthusiasts keeps jamming way past midnight.

An opening reception for “The Price Is Even More Right” is Friday, August 8th, from 8 to 10 p.m.

Through September 8th at the P&H Café

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Special Sections

Arts

VISUAL ARTS AND EXHIBITIONS

Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art

119 S. Main, 523-2787

Housing one of the largest collections of artwork from the Q’ing dynasty, the Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art also contains such rare items as an imperial cinnabar throne, intricate jade sculptures, and ivory masks. Accompanying activities often include Chinese musical performances, martial arts demonstrations, and calligraphy demonstrations. The museum was founded in 1998 by Memphians Jack and Marilyn Belz, who have been collecting Chinese art since 1968.

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens

4339 Park, 761-5250

dixon.org

Boasting a permanent collection that includes works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cezanne, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens is continuing the lifelong devotion to the arts sparked by Margaret and Hugo Dixon, who left their home and 17-acre estate for Memphians and tourists to enjoy. The Georgian-style residence is surrounded by formal English gardens, open vistas, and woodland areas. Major exhibitions of paintings and sculpture are held throughout the year. Open-air concerts also are held periodically.

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

Overton Park, 544-6200

brooksmuseum.org

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art maintains a permanent collection that includes a print study room with more than 3,000 works of art on paper, as well as galleries filled with French Impressionism, Flemish and Italian Renaissance and Baroque, and 20th-century art, making Brooks the oldest and largest fine-arts museum in Tennessee. In addition to a series of exhibitions held throughout the year, Brooks also hosts First Wednesdays, social events including entertainment that take place on the first Wednesday evening of every month.

Memphis/Germantown Art League

382-2622

mgal.org

The Memphis/Germantown Art League was formed in 1976 by ten artists meeting in Germantown. Since then, the membership has grown to almost 250 and spans Tennessee and three neighboring states. The purpose of this non-profit organization is to aid its member artists in their professional growth and artistic skills by providing exhibitions, workshops, and demonstrations.

Memphis Jewish Community Center

6560 Poplar, 761-0810

jccmemphis.org

Formed in 1949, the Memphis Jewish Community Center is a multipurpose complex serving more than 6,000 members in the Memphis area. The Shainberg Gallery at the MJCC features several exhibits consisting of mostly paintings and drawings throughout the year.

National Ornamental Metal Museum

374 Metal Museum Drive, 774-6380

metalmuseum.org

Since its humble beginnings in a former military hospital, the National Ornamental Metal Museum’s exhibits have continued to grow in stature over the years. A non-profit organization, the museum relies on funding from donors as well as tuition received from classes and workshops. Exhibits change every two to three months.

College and University Galleries

Galleries throughout the Memphis area offer a wide-ranging schedule of changing exhibitions, usually dedicated to art created by their students and faculty, but often bringing in important traveling exhibitions as well. Major galleries include:

The Art Museum at the University of Memphis

678-2224

amum.org

The university’s art gallery houses two permanent collections, “Egyptian Antiquities” and “The Spirit of Africa,” as well as a wide range of temporary exhibits of contemporary art. Admission is free and guided tours are available for groups of up to 60.

Christian Brothers University Gallery and Museum

650 East Parkway South, 321-3432

cbu.edu/library/gallery

A venue for temporary exhibits which display the work of both students and a variety of guest artists throughout the year.

Jones Hall Gallery

Jones Hall, Room 109, The University of Memphis

678-2216

Lab gallery at the University of Memphis, featuring BFA exhibits, graphic-design shows, and more.

Memphis College of Art

Overton Park, 272-5100

mca.edu

An art and design institution that is committed to recognizing and cultivating the diverse abilities of each student — and to preparing them for a future that will utilize and appreciate their talents to the greatest extent. The gallery presents changing exhibitions — often showcasing the work of faculty and students — throughout the year.

Rhodes College Clough-Hanson Gallery

2000 North Parkway, 843-3442

rhodes.edu

Clough-Hanson shows contemporary works by students and guest artists.

MUSIC AND DANCE

Ballet Memphis

7950 Trinity, 737-7322

balletmemphis.org

Founded in 1985 by Dorothy Gunther Pugh as Memphis Concert Ballet, Ballet Memphis began with just two professional dancers and a $75,000 budget. Today, the company is the most successful ballet organization in the city’s history. Ballet Memphis puts on four shows a year at The Orpheum, while holding classes in classical ballet for all ages and levels.

Classical Ballet

3405 Summer, 323-1947

classicalballetmemphis.org

Classical Ballet was founded in 1989 and is now part of the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. Members of this pre-professional company have won the Craft and Choreography Scholarship from the Southeastern Regional Ballet Festival.

Concerts International

527-3067

home.midsouth.rr.com/webs/ConcertsInternational/

Concerts International has been bringing chamber music to Memphis for 35 years.

Memphis Symphony Orchestra

3100 Walnut Grove, 324-3627

memphissymphony.org

Founded in 1952 as the Memphis Sinfonietta, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra has grown over the years into one of this city’s most important cultural organizations. Today, more than 850 musicians, staff, and volunteers in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony Chorus, the four separate orchestras within the Memphis Youth Symphony, and the Memphis Symphony League operate with a $3.8 million budget to present music to radio, television, and live audiences of more than half a million people annually.

Opera Memphis

6745 Wolf River Blvd., 257-3100

operamemphis.org

One of the oldest continuously running opera companies in the nation, Opera Memphis often enjoys full houses at the historic Orpheum Theatre. Performances are often in Italian with English translations projected above the stage.

TRAVELING PERFORMANCES / LOCAL VENUES

Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center

3663 Appling, 385-6440

bpacc.org

The Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center (BPACC) is more than a venue for business meetings and commercial functions. It boasts a performance schedule that spans a diverse selection of disciplines in music and theatre. The BPACC will also be hosting an ongoing Family Series, a Sunday Jazz series, and a Dinnerstage series.

Buckman Performing and Fine Arts Center

60 Perkins Ext., St. Mary’s Episcopal School, 537-1486

stmarysschool.org/thebuckman

Named after the philanthropist Mertie W. Buckman, this center on the campus of St. Mary’s Episcopal School presents concert and dance series that continue throughout the year.

Cannon Center for the Performing Arts

255 N. Main, 726-0915

thecannoncenter.com

Located in downtown Memphis, the Cannon Center offers regular concerts by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and is a stop for touring children’s shows and popular comedians and musicians.

Germantown Performing Arts Centre

1801 Exeter, 757-7256

gpacweb.com

The Germantown Performing Arts Centre (GPAC) has been hosting excellent performances viewed by Mid-Southerners for 13 years, and this season will continue that tradition. In addition, the IRIS Chamber Orchestra, directed by Michael Stern, will continue a tradition of noteworthy performances.

The Orpheum Theater

Main and Beale, 525-3000

orpheum-memphis.com

The Orpheum proudly stands as one of the original downtown theaters of Memphis and one of the premier performing-arts centers in the Mid-South. In addition to bringing Broadway productions and a wide array of other entertainers to the area, The Orpheum also hosts local companies such as Ballet Memphis and Opera Memphis.

THEATER

Hattiloo Theatre

656 Marshall, 502-3486

hattilootheatre.org

Repertory theater in downtown Memphis presenting classical and original works with largely African-American themes.

Playhouse on the Square and Circuit Playhouse

51 S. Cooper (Playhouse), 1711 Poplar (Circuit), 726-4656

playhouseonthesquare.org

A company of professional actors who live in the Memphis area prepares and produces a variety of shows throughout the year at two primary venues, Playhouse on the Square and Circuit Playhouse.

Poplar Pike Playhouse

7653 Poplar Pike, 755-7775

ppp.org

The Poplar Pike Playhouse at Germantown High School has received wide acclaim for the level of dramatic performance and training it has achieved. Actors coming out of the program have appeared on Broadway and on television.

Rhodes College McCoy Theatre

2000 North Parkway, 843-3839

rhodes.edu

A student-composed cast and crew put on about four productions per year, inviting established actors from the Memphis community to act alongside them and share their acquired knowledge of both the business and craft of drama.

Theatre Memphis

630 Perkins Ext., 682-8323

theatrememphis.org

Theatre Memphis is the longest-running community theater company in the area, with a main stage and the intimate setting of Next Stage, formerly known as the Little Theatre.

TheatreWorks

2085 Monroe, 274-7139

theatreworks.org

TheatreWorks is made up of five organizations: Playwright’s Forum, Emerald Theatre Company, Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe, Memphis Black Repertory Theatre, and Voices of the South.

University of Memphis Theatre and Dance

678-2576 / 678-3184

memphis.edu

Annually puts on a full season of performances that includes plays and dance concerts, featuring both students and faculty.

Other Theatres

Bartlett Community Theatre — bartlettcommunitytheatre.org, 484-2646

Germantown Community Theatre — germantowncommunitytheatre.org, 3037 Forest Hill-Irene, 754-2680

ART GALLERIES

Artists on Central — 2256 Central, 726-0330.

David Lusk Gallery — davidluskgallery.com, 767-3800

DCI Gallery — dcigallery.net, 767-8617

Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts Studio — deltaaxis.org, 522-9483

Fountain Art Gallery — fountaingallery.com, 458-7100

Jack Kenner Photography — jackkenner.com, 722-8877

Java Cabana (coffeehouse with gallery) — javacabanacoffeehouse.com, 272-7210

L Ross Gallery — lrossgallery.com, 292-5559

Lisa Kurts Gallery — lisakurts.com, 683-6200

Lulalyn — lulalyn.com, 278-0111

Material — 2553 Broad,

MO’s Memphis Originals — mosedge.com, 413-1315

Montyshane Gallery — montyshane.com, 413-8865

Painted Planet — 2158 Young, 728-6278

Perry Nicole Fine Art — perrynicole.com, 405-6000

DANCE

Dance Works — danceworksinc.org, 333-5174

Now in its 21st year, Dance Works offers classes in classical ballet and modern dance and will add hip-hop in 2008. Performances, often featuring renown guest teachers, are presented four times a year.

New Ballet Ensemble — newballet.org, 726-9225

The New Ballet Ensemble goes one step beyond classical ballet training, embracing all forms of dance from hip-hop to modern. The troupe presents several shows a year, including its annual crowd-pleasing “Nut Re-Mix,” a twist on the classic Tchaikovsky ballet.

Project: Motion — projectmotiondance.org

Dance collective specializing in modern dance.

FILM

Indie Memphis — Focuses on Southern filmmaking and Southern films. Yearly festival. indiememphis.com, 246-7086.

MeDiA Co-op — Group devoted to digital filmmaking. MeDia Co-op hosts screenings, workshops, and a yearly festival. mediaco-op.org, 278-9077.

Memphis Film Forum — Hosts annual Memphis International Film Festival, bringing in actors and filmmakers. memphisfilmforum.org, 273-0014.

MUSIC

Beethoven Club Series — beethovenclub.org, 274-2504

Calvary and the Arts — calvaryjc.org, 525-6602

Germantown Symphony Orchestra, germantownsymphony.org, 755-8708

Lindenwood Concerts — lindenwoodcc.com, 458-1652

Memphis Chamber Music Society — 758-0150

Memphis Vocal Arts Ensemble — memphisvocalarts.org, 458-9766

READINGS AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Barnes & Noble — 794-9394 (Winchester), 386-2468 (Wolfchase)

Bookstar — 323-9332

Borders Books and Music — 754-0770

Brentano’s — 763-1945

Burke’s Book Store — 278-7484

David-Kidd Booksellers — 683-9801

Java Cabana — 272-7210

River City Writers Series — 678-4591

Waldenbooks — 373-5301 (Wolfchase), 360-8023 (Hickory Ridge)

Xanadu Book Store — 274-9885

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

Blues Foundation — Sponsors events that promote the blues. blues.org, 527-2583.

Center for Southern Folklore — Downtown venue offers live music, coffee and beer bar, retail shop, and a museum. southernfolklore.com, 525-3655.

Harrell Performing Arts Theatre — The town of Collierville’s concert hall and cultural center offers musical, theatrical, and dance performances as well as community classes. harrelltheatre.org, 853-3228.

Lantana Projects — Lantana Projects is an international artist residency program. Exhibits and arts-related events occur throughout the year. lantanaprojects.org, 491-3821

Memphis Black Arts Alliance, Inc. — The Alliance offers a wide selection of classes, as well as a venue for performers. memphisblackartsalliance.org, 948-9522.

Memphis Pink Palace Family of Museums — Includes Pink Palace and Museum, the IMAX Theatre, Sharpe Planetarium, and the Lichterman Nature Center, the Pink Palace Family hosts various arts programming all year long. One popular event is the annual Crafts Fair in October. www.memphismuseums.org, 320-6365.

ArtsMemphis

578-2787

artsmemphis.org

ArtsMemphis provides operating funding for more than 20 local arts groups, including Ballet Memphis, Opera Memphis, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Theatre Memphis, and Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

UrbanArt Commission

525-0880

urbanartcommission.org

This commission champions public art and urban design in Memphis and Shelby County. Projects include the Cooper-Young trestle, the walkway outside the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, and the aluminum sculptures of dancers at Ballet Memphis.

South Main Arts District

southmainmemphis.org

In recent years, old warehouses and stores in a once-neglected area of downtown Memphis have been refurbished into shops, restaurants, and galleries. On the last Friday of every month, visitors can hop aboard the Main Street trolleys for tours of the area’s many art galleries, which include:

Art Village Studio and Gallery — 410 South Main, 521-0782

D’Edge Art & Unique Treasures — 550 South Main, 521-0054

Delta Axis Power House —45 G.E. Patterson, 578-5545

Disciple Gallery — 390 South Main, 386-4299

Jack Robinson Gallery & Archive — 44 Huling, 576-0708

Jay Etkin Gallery — 409 South Main, 543-0035

Joysmith Studio — 46 Huling, 543-0505

Memphis College of Art On the Street Gallery — 338 S. Main, 272-5100

Rivertown Gallery — 125 South Main, 527-7573

Sue Layman Designs — 125 G.E. Patterson, 527-2872

Then and Again — 521 South Main, 521-9846

Related Stories…

The Magic 2008-Ball

Calendar 2008

Education Listings

Entertainment Listings

Government Listings

Health Listings

Media Listings

Recreation Listings

Shopping Listings

The Magic 2008-Ball

Calendar 2008

Education Listings

Entertainment Listings

Government Listings

Health Listings

Media Listings

Recreation Listings

Shopping Listings

Categories
Art Art Feature

Taking Stock

From rockabilly and Philip Glass to diamond mines in Africa, this year’s exhibitions ran the gamut of culture, art, and current events, and some of the most evocative artworks were created by already accomplished artists moving in new directions.

For “Perspectives,” the Brooks Museum’s juried exhibition this summer of regional artists, abstract painter Bo Rodda filled an entire wall with a computer-generated world, one with laws of physics different from our own. There were no horizon lines, no solid ground in this alternate universe. Instead, swerving lines, printed on metallic paper in endless shades of gray, read like infinitely complex galvanized interstates careening simultaneously toward and away from the viewer.

Warren Greene, an artist best known for saturate pigments oozing down large canvases, also went beyond color and form to infinite shades of gray in three of his strongest works in “Paleoscapes” at Perry Nicole Fine Art in December. Like a Phillip Glass symphony, the subtle rapid shifts in tone in “Searching for P. Glass” generated unexpected images as what looked like trails of electrons, interference patterns, jet streams, ectoplasm, and snippets of dreams slid our point of view across surfaces sanded as smooth as glass.

David Comstock’s exhibition “Flow” took black-and-white abstractions to new levels of raw power at L Ross Gallery in March. Rods pierced egg-like shapes on frayed and torn canvases in what looked like moments of procreation and checkmate in the well-worn board game of life.

Jonathan Postal’s Waitress, Roadside, TX

Also in March, in an otherwise empty David Lusk Gallery, Terri Jones drew delicate, nearly invisible lines on the wall and on large sheets of vellum that were bathed in the sunlight pouring through plate-glass windows. Those of us who stayed awhile in Jones’ spare luminous space experienced something akin to Buddhism’s Sky Mind.

Bob Riseling’s “Halcyon Days” premiered Memphis College of Art’s new gallery On the Street in November. Pale colors, deep shadows, and haunting monolithic shapes paid homage to the dead trees standing sentinel on Horn Island’s post-Katrina beaches, an ancient hulk of a barge stranded on one of its sandbars, and countless pieces of driftwood washed up on its shores.

Highlights of the year also included Hamlet Dobbins’ luminous textural abstractions at David Lusk in October and John McIntire’s summer show at Perry Nicole that transformed smooth, cool stone into sexual icons, fertility fetishes, and sacrificial gods. And at L Ross Gallery in November, in some of the best works of his career, Anton Weiss scattered scratched and gouged scraps of metal across large earth-toned paintings accented with thalo blue, scarlet, and cadmium yellow.

Last year’s most riveting works of art confronted brutality and oppression. Memphis College of Art’s March exhibition, “Reasons To Riot,” included Zoe Charlton’s searing mixed-media drawing Destiny, in which a man leaned back on his haunches. His face and upper body were whited-out, and the prow of a 17th-century slave ship was strapped around his waist like a dildo. Humanity’s unexpressed (repressed, denied, watered-down) passions were crammed into his phallus, which was as pointed as this artist’s insights, as unadorned as truth, as double-edged as our species’ capacity for cruelty and joy.

A work from David Comstock’s exhibition at L. Ross, ‘Flow’

In early fall, Clough-Hanson Gallery showcased 15 works from Eliot Perry’s collection of contemporary works by African artists, many of them internationally acclaimed. Among them was Wangechi Mutu’s sinuous, cinematic, horrific collage Buck Nose. The images depicted an antelope shot with a high-powered rifle, blood exploding around its head and horns and entrails coiling around a starving girl curled in a fetal position. Most chillingly there’s a manicured hand caressing a gemstone, reminding us that in today’s global market, African diamonds are prized, but life is still cheap.  

In “Two Years,” Jay Etkin Gallery’s December show, we saw Sandra Deacon Robinson’s paintings evolve from Klimt-like mosaics of glittering gemstones to abstractions of Louisiana wetlands. At the top of one of her most beautiful works, the 40-by-60-inch painting Protected, wisps of ochre almost brushed our foreheads, delicate tangles of lines at the bottom reached toward our torsos and legs, and muted golden light at top right suggested we were at the edge of a moist, dark cocoon with a clearing just ahead.

Also at Jay Etkin in December was photographer Jonathan Postal’s “On the Road.” In one of the show’s most disarming images, Waitress, Roadside, TX, a woman with jet-black hair dressed in a white apron and light-pink uniform stands at the side of a thoroughfare. Whether she waits tables in an upscale diner with a retro theme or is working in a smalltown café that looks pretty much like it did when it opened in the Fifties, this woman looks comfortable in her own skin. With a wry, sensual smile she leans back and sizes up Postal (and any gallery viewer who dared to look her in the face).

Postal is best-known for his black-and-white photographs of people living at the edge. While his images of burlesque queens scowling after a swig of hard liquor and wrestling fans howling for blood are fever-pitched and powerful, this body of work’s wide-open spaces and wry waitress boded well for a country at moral and political crossroads in need of citizens, whatever their lifestyles, who can step back and see things clearly.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

A Sketchy Past

While most of Irene Miller Rodkin’s art is unsigned, chances are, if you lived in Memphis in the 1970s and much of the ’80s, you know her work well. That’s when Rodkin was the main staff fashion artist for the Goldsmith’s in-house advertising department. Back then, Goldsmith’s used illustrations, rather than photographs, to show off their goods in advertisements, and Rodkin would, on average, create an illustration a day for that purpose. A collection of her illustrations, along with portraits and other work, will be on display in the exhibit “When Ads Were Art” at the Memphis Botanic Garden.

“Buyers within the store would be responsible for choosing the things they wanted featured in the ad,” Rodkin says. “They would bring [the clothes] up to my office, and I would first sketch them on hangers, and then I would put them on figures.” The figures were copied from tearsheets from other newspapers collected by the layout department and chosen to best highlight the clothes. “I liked high fashion the best,” Rodkin says. “A large volume of ads were sale ads, where they’d feature a really good sale price, and the illustrations would be of dresses or house garments or lingerie. They would be kind of generic. But once in a while, I would get really nice fashion ads.”

The illustrations featured in the exhibit are originals given to Rodkin over the years by the production department. “The production person would return some of the originals to me because they would store them, and they wouldn’t always have room,” she says. “Some things they thought were too nice to pitch.”

“When Ads Were Art” at the Memphis Botanic Garden from January 5th-31st. The opening reception is Sunday, January 6th,
from 2 to 4 p.m.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Brick By Brick

Muralist and sign painter James “Brick” Brigance sits with his head down, gripping the arms of his wheelchair in a small but comfortable room at the Willowbend convalescent center in Marion, Arkansas. “I miss them walls, man,” he laments. “I miss painting on them. I think about painting those walls every time before I go to sleep. I’m just like a football player, I tell you. I’m like a football player who’s been knocked down, but I’m gonna get back up. I am going to get back up.”

Brigance is 55 years old. That’s a good age for an artist, he says, because by the time a man’s 55, he’s done about everything there is to do. The wildness has worked its way out, and he can approach his work with skill and confidence.

“Maybe if I can get me some legs I can get back to painting before I’m too old,” he says, listing the indignities that have become a part of his daily routine.

“Fell off the commode two or three times,” he says, shaking his head in an un-self-conscious gesture of amusement and shame. “Busted my ass too.”

Two years ago, while riding his bicycle along Lamar Avenue, Brigance, whose ubiquitous signs and murals are woven into the fabric of life in Memphis, was struck by a car. Shortly thereafter his legs became infected and gangrenous, and they had to be removed.

“I ache a lot,” he says. “I’ve been through a lot of operations, but I’m going to be okay. I’ve been on a lot of pain medicine, but I’m going to get back up, you watch.”

Brick, one of seven children born and raised in a small house on Douglass Avenue near Airways in the Orange Mound community, earned his nickname on the job. “A lot of people can’t paint on brick walls, you see, because it’s really a challenge. But it just came natural to me, and I like doing it,” says Brigance, whose first artworks consisted of drawings he made in the dirt with a stick.

“I was drawing in the dirt before I went to paper, then I went from paper to watercolor painting, then oil paint, then chalks and pastels,” Brigance says. “My brother Charles taught me a lot too. He was good and went off to California and got work painting backgrounds for Disney.

“It was rough growing up on Douglass. But it was good too,” Brigance says, remembering the days when he and his friends would play football in the streets. “A lot of the guys in my neighborhood were smart, but they was into a lot of junk too — junk that got them in trouble. But all of us was like family on my street.”

As a teenager, Brigance joined a harmony-singing group called the Tennessee Playboys, which he compares to the Temptations. “We sang every week on WDIA, played at Bill’s Twilight Lounge and at the Rosewood over on Lauderdale,” he says. “Bubba, one of the guys who used to sing with us was 17 when he died in jail after an asthma attack. We broke up at about the time everybody started chasing girls. Like I said, it could be rough sometimes. And sometimes we didn’t get along, but the family stuck together when times got hard. We’d build our own bikes and go-carts. And we’d run. All the boys in my family was fast and could outrun anybody in the neighborhood. Sometimes we’d run around the block five times just for the hell of it. We’d wake up in the morning and run. Just run.”

Brigance studied art at Melrose High School. “I couldn’t read or write too good, but I could draw,” he says. “The teacher, Mr. Purvis, gave me a circle and a square to draw, but instead I drew him.”

His first professional work as an artist was to paint the exterior of Raiford’s Hollywood Disco, as well as a portrait of Robert Raiford who owned the storied dance club. “I used to paint Raiford’s name on the side of his cars too,” he says.

Although his hand-stenciled signs on businesses can be found all over Memphis, most of Brigance’s surviving murals are located in Orange Mound. “I didn’t have a car,” he explains. “And everywhere I went I was walking or riding my bike, so I’d just walk along until I saw a wall that didn’t have anything on it.

“I had my hangouts,” he says. “I used to stay on the street. I’d kick it with the winos, I didn’t care. I was having a good time.”

Eventually, Brigance made Pressure World, the Lamar Avenue club, garage, and car wash, his base of operations.

Works by James Brigance are commonplace in Orange Mound, including here at the Melrose Booster Club on Carnes, and a car wash on Spottswood (below).

“I stayed busy because people knew where to find me. They said, ‘We’ll catch him at the car wash.’ And I was good at detailing cars. People liked me because I could get on them cars and shine them up like nobody else. I had cars lined up waiting for me, because for $20, I’d paint your initials in the back window. I was making good money and reaching my peak, then all of a sudden — BOOM. I got messed up. But I’m going to come back. And when I come back, I’m going to come back strong because I’ve got a lot of stuff in me.

“I need to take a nap now,” Brigance eventually says, looking up at the large painting of an armed Japanese nobleman that he painted for his sister Doris 31 years ago. He shuffles through recent paper images of orange cats and yellow flowers, the first drawings he’s made in more than 15 years.

“I want to make a lot more drawings,” he says, getting ready for bed. “I just ain’t ready yet. I’ve been going through a process of healing and a lot of times I hurt. I hurt a lot. That kind of takes me away from wanting to draw. And I’m not about to do anything if I’m not good at it.

“I need to get some glasses so I can get all the details right,” Brigance says. “I need to get some legs. I need to get back on the walls before I get too old.”