Tag: brooks

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Art Art Feature

Escape For the Homebound Just a Click Away

Thanks to the Great Quarantine of 2020, we don’t get to visit galleries, hang out at juke joints, or take in a play. But creative people are relentlessly creative, so you don’t need to go without, you can just go online.

Here’s a sampling of who is doing creative programming that you can enjoy from home:

  • Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s Decameron Project on its Facebook page presents literary readings and speeches by the Bard. Goes live at 10:15 a.m. Mondays-Fridays.

    Peter Pan

  • The Facebook page of Playhouse on the Square (POTS) is featuring “Story Time in Neverland” with Peter Pan reading the classic story and teaching some choreography to boot. The POTS page also has scads of videos of many of its productions with interviews and performance excerpts.
  • New Moon Theatre Company has been posting a Shakespeare blowout, full performances of past shows on its Facebook page, from Hamlet to Titus Andronicus (adults only!) to 12th Night and more.
  • The Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s FB page has plenty to hear, such as the Lockdown Sessions — check out the “Horns in Time of Plague” duet with Caroline Kinsey and Robert Patterson.
  • Hit up the FB page of the Art Museum of the University of Memphis and you’ll find plenty to see. Artworks, of course (photos by Lawrence Jasud, for example), and interviews (Carl Moore), and an opportunity to be part of the “In 7, 6, 5…” exhibition.

  • Find our more about the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art’s Virtual ChalkFest at its Facebook page.
  • The Dixon Gallery and Gardens virtually continues its weekly Tours at Two with curator Julie Pierotti talking about various works in the museum’s collection. And there are pictures of flowers. So many pictures of flowers. 

  • Art Village Gallery’s Online Viewing Room has the new exhibit “‘Twas Her Undoing,” provocative works by several local women artists.
  • The Pink Palace is offering its Museum To-Go experience with activities, movies, planetarium shows, and more.

More things are going on as well, from at-home jookin’ lessons (New Ballet Ensemble), to the Digital Aria Jukebox from Opera Memphis.

Just look and listen around you — art is everywhere.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Coming soon to Collierville: Brooks Pharm 2 Fork and 148 North.

Mac Edwards is an inside-the-freeways kind of guy, so the thought of an enterprise in Collierville never crossed his mind.

Until he got a phone call.

“The center-cut, filet-mignon spot on the square opened up and fell into my lap,” Edwards, who owns the Farmer on Highland, says.

Cafe Grill owner Andy Chow had retired, leaving the space at 120 Mulberry on the historic square in Collierville up for grabs, and common denominator/commercial real estate agent Steven Levy put the owner of the building, Watty Brooks Hall, and Edwards in touch.

“[Watty Brooks] is terrific, and the rent was right, so it was meant to be, I guess,” Edwards says.

By early July, Edwards will bring his special brand of farm-to-table dining to downtown Collierville in the form of Brooks Pharm2Fork.

The cuisine will be similar to the Farmer — elevated comfort food — but with a few twists to correspond to the bar Edwards will be adding.

“I mean, I’m going to dance with the one who brung me. The food I make is the food I make. I will have a lot of the same items, but having a bar changes the way I approach things, so burger-at-dinner kind of thing,” he says.

He plans on serving lunch seven days a week, dinner at least five nights a week, and he is toying with the idea of serving a take-away breakfast.

He’s almost more excited about the decor than the dishes.

“It’s going to be funky and eclectic. We left the old plaster and some exposed brick. We have this great old receiving desk for the hostess station. My partner [in the Jackson, TN, restaurant Chandelier], Jennifer Dickerson, is doing the interior. It’s going to have this great funky, repurposed feel,” Edwards says.

The name celebrates what else has been housed by those brick and plaster walls over the years, particularly the old pharmacy, Brooks Pharmacy, that the building’s owner grew up in.

“The people of Collierville have really welcomed us and are really excited. It’s exciting what’s going on in Collierville right now with other restaurants opening up on the square. It’s beyond serendipitous,” he says.

Brian Thurmond also never imagined himself enterpris-ing in Collierville.

He never imagined himself making a living doing something as fun as playing with food to begin with.

“I always paid attention to the Food Network and Alton Brown and would tell my mom, ‘Let’s go to the store and grab some stuff and try out some recipes,’ but I never realized the culinary field could be a career,” Thurmond says.

Until he stumbled through the doors of Restaurant Iris a month after it opened and began washing dishes under the tutelage of Kelly English.

“Kelly instilled in me the thought process and the love for food that I didn’t know I had,” Thurmond says.

Thurmond worked his way up through the brigade at Iris, first as garde manger and eventually to chef de cuisine, with some added duties at McEwen’s and Interim and a degree from L’Ecole Culinaire while he was at it.

There was always an agreement between English and Thurmond.

Thurmond would one day be pushed out of the nest to make it on his own as a restaurateur, he just had to let English know when he was ready.

That day came in January 2015, when a place in Collierville, where Thurmond lives with his wife and now-14-month-old daughter, “jumped into their laps.”

“It made perfect sense. I live in Collierville, and my wife was pregnant at the time, so I could get to work in three minutes and have my home life,” Thurmond says.

Edwards and Thurmond will be neighbors come July, when Thurmond will open his French-Southern restaurant, 148 North on the Collierville square.

“The address is 148 N. Main, and the building has a bunch of history. The post office of Collierville was there. The building and its history has so much value to the city, I wanted to continue to build on that,” Thurmond says.

Thurmond’s 148 North

His style of cuisine will build on his roots and his experience, using old family recipes from his grandmother and aunts while preparing them in a traditional French style.

“It’s grits and greens, but also duck confit and pork belly,” he says.

Having Edwards nearby and with talk of other restaurants opening this year, including a Scottish pub-style restaurant late summer/early fall, just creates more momentum for all.

“To be down the street from somebody like Mac, who has been successful for so long, that’s not a rival, that’s a mentor. There will be places I can go to and take a break for lunch. It’s great,” Thurmond says.

Categories
Art Exhibit M

Vid-O-belisk, I Never Knew You

CREDIT: Brooks Museum of Art

When news broke this week that Nam Jun Paik’s massive “Vid-O-belisk” is in the process of coming down, no longer to hold its traditional place in the center of the Brooks Museum of Art’s rotunda, I felt a mix of emotions. The first of these was relief, because I have long held a grudge against the “Vid-O-belisk” for being, IMHO, not a very good work of art from an otherwise great artist. The second emotion I felt was nostalgia for my stint working as a caterer at the Museum, because “Vid-O-belisk,” with its squiggly neon and antique video art, was a functional compass for us servers. “Go to the table nearest the red owl thinger,” we would instruct each other. 

With that in mind, I Facebook chatted local painter and my old catering co-worker, Dimitri Stevens, and we remembered the “Vid-O-belisk” in all its clunky glory. Here is what we recalled:

Brooks Museum of Art

Nam Jun Paik’s ‘Vid-O-belisk’ (2002)

Eileen: Hi, Dimitri! How are you on this day? A day when the “Vid-O-belisk” is no longer the first thing you see in Memphis’ biggest art Museum?

Dimitri: I’m doing fine Eileen. It’s a little hollow inside the Brooks now-a-days.

Eileen: Well, we’ll always have our memories of working catering events at the Brooks, trying to dodge the massive tower of antique TVs in the middle of the rotunda.

Dimitri: The neon will be remembered as well.

Eileen: You’re right. The best thing about the ol’ “Vid-O-belisk” were those little neon squigglies attached to the side of the TVS like a case of viral worms, which the catering staff affectionately named things like “Pineapple Parrot.” Can you remember any of the names?

Dimitri: No, I’m not too savvy on the names, but the squiggles seemed to range from stick figures to simplified architecture.

Eileen: There were definitely some music notes on there. And a weird eye. I’m partial to the Pi symbol and the lil neon buddha. What message do you think Nam Jun Paik was trying to send with this tower of junk TVs and random symbols?

Dimitri: I was thinking it’s about accumulated cultures through technology.

Eileen: That’s probably it. We used to cater a lot of weddings that happened around this monument to accumulated cultures through technology. In your honest opinion, would you invite the “Vid-O-belisk” to your wedding?

Dimitri: Definitely. I don’t have any big wedding plans yet, but it was an overall beautiful piece.

Eileen: It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I know it brought joy to many. Thank you for taking this moment to remember the “Vid-O-belisk” with me. And cheers to whatever comes next.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Captured the Magic

Some of the people portrayed in “American Music,” the exhibition of Annie Leibovitz photographs that opens at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art on Friday, June 2nd, are thin. Some of them are fat. They are white, black, or brown, with hair that’s blond, brunette, red, or silver, shorn off or coiffed in pompadours, processes, braids, or shimmering, loose cascades.

To quote Susan Orlean, in her essay “All Mixed Up,” “these musicians play piano, guitar, drums, or bass. Some are captured on street corners, microphone in hand. Others sit in front of recording studio control boards, or pose backstage, onstage, or, in the case of former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, poolside. They face towards the camera, or lean away from the camera, caught mid-puff or mid-note.”

Leibovitz’s iconic photographs, taken for Vanity Fair magazine and the Experience Museum Project, were shot between 1999 and 2002.

She found her subjects in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, California, New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. Rappers Nelly, Missy Elliott, and Run D.M.C. were photographed in New York City, while soul singer Irma Thomas was shot in New Orleans.

In north Mississippi, Leibovitz photographed blues veterans like R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Othar Turner, as well as the next generation of talent, including Cedric Burnside, Garry Burnside, Kinney Kimbrough, and the North Mississippi Allstars. In Memphis, she wandered through a deserted Graceland, shot Aretha Franklin’s childhood home, and captured a reunion of Stax Records employees at the intersection of College Street and McLemore Avenue.

“I was honored,” North Mississippi Allstars guitarist Luther Dickinson says of the camera’s scrutiny, “although I had to overcome my pimple!”

Looking back at the portrait, shot in 2000, when the Allstars were just beginning their career, Dickinson notes that “me, Chris [Chew, the group’s bassist], and Cody [Dickinson, the drummer] were just trying to do something with our lives. It’s strange to think that we’ll never have that perspective again.”

For Deanie Parker, CEO of Soulsville U.S.A., the nonprofit behind the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Leibovitz’ decision to shoot the Stax alumni in 2002 was both timely and fortuitous:

“When Vanity Fair first contacted us, we were attempting to complete both the museum and the Stax Music Academy, and [the photo] helped create an exciting crescendo for the entire project. I’m glad we were fortunate enough to do it while Estelle [Axton, co-founder of Stax Records] was still living.

“The fact that they had Ms. Leibovitz as the photographer was the ultimate compliment,” Parker adds. “I’d heard about her, and I’d seen her work, but I’d never seen her work.”

The wide-angle portrait, which Parker calls “the most phenomenal photograph I’ve seen in my life,” shows a family of graying musicians, black and white. Mavis Staples leans in to hug her sister, Yvonne. Nearby, a regal Carla Thomas stands arm-in-arm with Eddie Floyd. Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Booker T. Jones hover at one edge of the image, while the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter anchor the other. A steadfast Axton is the planet that everyone orbits around, including the curious neighborhood kids who rode up on bicycles to witness the spectacle.

“[Leibovitz] studied it for I don’t know how long,” remembers Parker. “She dwelled on it, and then she created the picture. She selectively chose and strategically placed everyone so that the viewer could really live vicariously through her eyes. She must’ve taken tons and tons of photographs that day, but she knew what she was looking for.

“Annie Leibovitz created a mood,” Parker says, “and via a very spiritual experience, she shared with us how she truly felt about Stax Records.”

Then, with a giggle, Parker explains that she woke up early the day of the shoot and wound hot rollers in her hair. After arriving at the site, she removed the rollers and carefully patted her curls into place, despite the humidity.

“Lo and behold,” she says, “after the woman got us all positioned, she turned on a two-ton fan. Talk about a windblown look — it was the funniest thing I think I’ve ever experienced!

“Still, I want her to know that she’s always welcome here. She has earned her place in this Soulsville family. Her love for the subject that she photographed says wonders about her love for the music that came from the corner of College and McLemore, as well as her love for the people. She captured the magic.”