Starry, Starry at the Brooks (Photo: Abigail Morici)
You don’t need to look too far in the sky to see the stars, not at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. That’s where Greely Myatt has installed his Starry, Starry starscape for the museum’s inaugural Winter Art Garden. Consisting of four sculptural elements — Big Star, Star Fall, Star Sprays, and Sirius (Dog Star and Pup) — the starscape, which opened at the end of November, is a constellation of Myatt’s own creation, stemming from the artist’s recent obsession with stars.
It all started with a show last year for Eagle Gallery at Murray State in Kentucky. For each show, as with the Winter Garden, Myatt notes that “space is crucial,” meaning that he curates his pieces to suit the space they’re shown in, often creating pieces if he’s so inspired. And for “tool,” as the show was called, Myatt was inspired by the reflective black floor of Eagle Gallery. “I wanted to do something with neon,” he says.
What exactly, he didn’t know yet. Myatt toyed with the idea of ripples in water, but after playing with a metric folding rule and shaping into a five-point star, he found his subject. “It was a form that wasn’t just erratic. It was fun, and relatively easy to make,” he says. “And so that happened.” And he happened to have an extra five pieces of traffic sign post leftover from another project, so he made a “massive” star and “put neon under it to reflect light and bounce it back up.”
Now that massive star — aptly titled Big Star, with a nod to the Memphis-based band — sits against the Brooks Museum. To the side of it, on the pedestals where statues Spring and Summer once stood, another star is propped up, this one made of charred wood.
“It’s a fragmented star,” Myatt says of Star Fall as it’s called. “When I was making the other stars [for previous shows], I kind of became interested in, instead of the completeness of it, letting the mind mentally finish it. And I kind of like the incompleteness.”
Star Fall
The wood of this fragmented star comes from a pine tree Myatt grew himself, starting in the third grade. “It was kind of a common tradition that teachers would give students, or at least in Mississippi, a sapling that you would plant and nurture if you were a reasonably good student,” he says. “So I did that, and I planted it behind my mom’s house. And 55 years later, my twin sister called me and said, ‘Hey, I cut your tree. Do you want any of it?’ I said, ‘You did what!’ But my sister was nervous about the storms blowing through and the trees coming down. This was about eight years ago.”
Meanwhile, Sirius (Dog Star and Pup), which is suspended between two trees near the plaza, is made of broom handles, and Star Sprays, which spring up from the umbrella holes in the plaza’s tables like bouquets of sparklers, are made of traffic signs. “I like to have all these materials around because I will use them eventually,” Myatt says. “My mom was like that — some people would call us hoarders. I remember as a kid she taught us how to pull old nails out and straighten them because we had plenty of wood, but we didn’t have any nails and we didn’t have any money. It’s always stuck with me, you know, that kind of idea of reusing material and seeing the good in something old.”
Star Sprays
All in all, though, as he reflects on the use of stars in his work, Myatt says, “They’re abstract, but they’re real. It’s kind of like Dave Hickey once said, ‘A Pollock doesn’t mean anything, but it has meaning.’”
The installation was made possible through the work of Kristin Pedrozo, Jon Hart, Chris Little, Jennifer Draffen, and more, Myatt adds.
Starry, Starry, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through January 2025
“Thomas Dambo’s Trolls: Save the Humans” (Photo: Courtesy Atlanta Botanical Garden)
This year, to save you from tears, we’ve made you something special: the Winter Arts Guide. As with every Flyer Arts Guide, we’ve compiled a list of all the exhibitions, plays, musicals, and more that ought to be on your radar. We also got a chance to speak with DeMarcus Suggs, Memphis’ director of creative and cultural economy; Greely Myatt, the man behind the Brooks’ latest installation; and Preston Jackson, the Metal Museum’s Master Metalsmith. Oh, and right now is ARTSmemphis’ ARTSweek.
On Display
“Healing Through Color”
Exhibition by Alexandra Baker.
Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s School, through Dec. 16
“A River I Loved”
New works by Maysey Craddock.
David Lusk Gallery, through Dec. 21
“ANA•LOG, Size Matters, Still”
Work by Lester Merriweather, Alex Paulus, and Michelle Fair.
Crosstown Arts, through Jan. 19
“Green Fountain”
Justin Bowles’ fanciful garden installation.
Tops at Madison Avenue Park, through Feb. 16
“Beyond the Surface: The Art of Handmade Paper”
Explore paper’s shape-shifting quality.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through Apr. 6
“Loose Ends”
Work by Brittney Boyd Bullock.
Sheet Cake Gallery, Dec. 14
“Back for Seconds”
Work by Roger Allan Cleaves, Melissa Dunn, Stephanie Howard, and Clare Torina.
Sheet Cake Gallery, Dec. 14
“Small Spaces”
Jennifer Watson’s bright and kaleidoscopic art.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Jan. 26-Apr. 13
“Thomas Dambo’s Trolls: Save the Humans”
Thomas Dambo’s folklore-inspired troll sculptures.
Memphis Botanic Garden, Feb. 1-May 21
“An Occasional Craving”
Chris Antemann’s porcelain figures.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Feb. 9-Apr. 6
“House of Grace”
Floyd Newsum will have the first major exhibition of his art in Memphis, despite his untimely death on August 14, 2024.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Feb. 9-Apr. 6
On Stage
Clara & the Nutcracker
Tennessee Ballet Theater’s rendition of the beloved holiday tale.
Cannon Center For The Performing Arts, Dec. 8, 2-4 p.m.
Nutcracker: Land of Enchanted Sweets (Photo: Courtesy Buckman Performing Arts)
The Nutcracker
Ballet Memphis’ stunning new production is both familiar and unexpected.
Orpheum Theatre, Dec. 13-15
The Nutcracker
Singleton’s Esprit de Corps Dance Company performs this holiday classic.
Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center, Dec. 20-Dec. 22
Wurlitzer Wonderland
Orpheum House Organist Tony Thomas plays a special one-night concert featuring the historic Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.
Orpheum Theatre, Dec. 21, 7 p.m.
Magic of Memphis
Featuring the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus — and Dancing Santas.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts,Dec. 21, 2:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin
Follow two actors as they prepare for their most significant role yet: Joseph Stalin.
The Circuit Playhouse, Jan. 10-Jan. 26
Say It Loud: The Overlook Quartet
An eclectic program of music by underrepresented composers.
Green Room at Crosstown Arts, Jan. 16, 7:30 p.m.
Inherit the Wind
Two great legal giants of the century battle over state law banning the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Theatre Memphis, Jan. 17-Feb. 2
Parade
In 1913, Leo Frank is caught in a grueling trial after the murder of his factory worker.
Playhouse on the Square, Jan. 17-Feb. 16
American Maestro, with Bernstein’s West Side Story
The MSO will also perform Bernstein’s Slava! and works by other composers. With Carl St. Clair, conductor.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, Jan. 18, 7:30 p.m. | Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, Jan. 19, 2:30 p.m.
Cirque Kalabanté
Afrique en Cirque shares the beauty, youth, and artistry of African culture.
Germantown Performing Arts Center, Jan. 24, 8 p.m.
Black Odyssey
This vibrant reimagining of the Odysseus saga is set in modern-day Harlem.
Hattiloo Theatre, Jan. 24-Feb. 16
Carmen
Bizet’s sizzling epic.
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, Jan. 24-25
Steve Martin & Martin Short: The Dukes of Funnytown!
Two of our funniest, most influential and acclaimed talents come to Memphis.
Orpheum Theatre, Jan. 25, 8 p.m.
Skeleton Crew
As the Great Recession looms over a Detroit auto stamping plant, workers confront tough choices.
The Circuit Playhouse, Jan. 31-Feb. 16
Alison Cook Beatty Dance
World-class dancers enmesh classically-based modern technique with elements of contemporary movement.
Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s School, Jan. 31, 7 p.m.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Collage Dance’s reimagining of Zora Neale Hurston’s iconic 1937 novel as a ballet.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, Feb. 1-2
The Minutes
A scathing new comedy about small-town politics and real-world power.
New Moon Theatre, Feb. 7-23
Dance Theatre of Harlem
A dynamic force in the ballet world, captivating audiences both nationally and internationally.
Orpheum Theatre, Feb. 7-8
Valentine’s Day with Kortland Whalum
A night of music and romance with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, Feb. 14, 8 p.m.
Hamilton
Follow the rise of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
Orpheum Theatre, Feb. 18-Mar. 2
Variations on a Theme: Love, Longing, and Lederhosen
A curated evening of music and one-act operas.
Opera Memphis, Feb. 15-16
Winter Mix
Ballet Memphis presents two new commissions and the reprise of an audience favorite, Trey McIntyre’s The Barramundi.
Playhouse on the Square, Feb. 21-23
Yo-Yo Ma
The renowned cellist appears with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m.
…
In 2020, the city of Memphis and Shelby County declared ARTSweek as an official holiday. A brainchild of ARTSmemphis, the week’s purpose is to drive awareness of local arts’ impact, demonstrate the creativity of Memphis’ artistic contributions, and grow community engagement with the arts. This year’s ARTSweek has already begun, starting on December 1st with its end date on Sunday, December 8th.
Music
Moon Taxi
The five-piece band hails from Nashville.
Minglewood Hall, Dec. 6
Kortland Whalum
Kortland Whalum is a singer-songwriter and actor whose talents span from music to the stage.
Green Room at Crosstown Arts, Dec. 6
Handel’s Messiah
Featuring the MSO’s Memphis Symphony Chamber Chorus.
Germantown United Methodist Church, Dec. 5
Jolly Jam Sessions
Young musicians celebrate the start of the Christmas season with classic holiday jazz favorites.
Pink Palace, Dec. 6
Memphis Black Arts Alliance Presents an Evening of Ellington
A star-studded cabaret of jazz.
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, Dec. 7
Jonathan McReynolds: Red & Green
A new sound for the holiday season.
Minglewood Hall, Dec. 8
Theater & Dance
Annie Jr. the Musical
Everyone’s favorite little redhead on stage.
Germantown Community Theatre, Dec. 6-22
A Motown Christmas
Celebrate the most wonderful time of the year with this Christmas musical.
Hattiloo Theatre, through Dec. 22
A Christmas Carol
A classic holiday ghost story.
Theatre Memphis, Dec. 6-23
Nutcracker: Land of Enchanted Sweets
Buckman Dance Conservatory’s interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece.
Buckman Performing Arts Center, Dec. 6-8
Tía Pancha: A Christmas Story
The classic Christmas story of Scrooge with a Latin twist.
TheatreWorks at The Evergreen, Dec. 7-8
Who’s Holiday!
Cindy Lou Who takes center stage.
The Circuit Playhouse – The Memphian Room, through Dec. 22
Junie B. Jones: Toothless Wonder (Photo: Megan Christoferson)
Junie B. Jones: Toothless Wonder
Junie B. Jones is facing a challenging week.
The Circuit Playhouse, through Dec. 22
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star
A story of love and redemption.
Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center, Dec. 6-8
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live On Stage
Everyone’s favorite holiday classic.
Orpheum Theatre, Dec. 7
Cabaret Noel 9: A Kaleidoscopic Christmas
An evening of holiday songs and hilarious slapstick humor.
TheatreWorks @ The Square, Dec. 6-8
The Wizard of Oz
Dorothy Gale gets her Oz on.
Playhouse on the Square, through Dec. 22
Twelfth Night
Shakespeare’s most charming comedy.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company, Dec. 6-22
Visual Arts
Artist Meet & Greet
A free evening of conversations and connections at The Memphis Art Salon.
Minglewood Hall, Dec. 4
“All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840 – 1955”
Examine the relationship between painters in the United States and the passenger and freight trains.
Natural Histories: 400 Years of Scientific Illustration
Hidden gems and unique masterworks from the American Museum of Natural History’s rare book collection.
Dixon Gallery and Gardens, though Jan. 26
“Intertwine”
MadameFraankie’s new media works.
Beverly + Sam Ross Gallery, through Dec. 13
Gallery Talk with Elle Perry
Arts and culture journalist Elle Perry delivers a gallery talk about Andrea Morales’ show.
Brooks Museum of Art, Dec. 7, 2 p.m.
Holiday Bazaar
Join Arrow Creative for a monthlong shopping event.
Arrow Creative, through December 22
“Roll Down Like Water”
Andrea Morales presents 65 photographs spanning a decade of work.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through Jan. 31
“Pissarro to Picasso: Masterworks from the Kirkland Family Collection”
Enjoy 18 art treasures from the Kirkland family’s collection.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through Jan. 26
MidSouth Toy Fest 2024
Your gateway to a treasure trove of collectibles.
The Great Hall & Conference Center, Dec. 7
…
Reframe Culture
In October, the city of Memphis hired its first ever director of creative and cultural economy — DeMarcus Suggs — as part of the newly established Office of Arts and Culture.
DeMarcus Suggs (Photo: Amber N. Ford)
Suggs describes his position as one of a centralized collaborator and convener, supporting artists and cultural organizations while boosting their economic impact. It’s about making sure the city’s ecosystem — businesses, restaurants, hotels, sports, and cultural policy — complements, welcomes, and retains the arts on a citywide scale.
“Memphis has a lot of really talented artists. We also have some really grit and grind entrepreneurs that have a vision. They have a dream, and they’re willing to build it,” Suggs points out.
With this in mind, Suggs is ready to listen. So far, he’s been in conversation with arts organizations and philanthropists, and now he’s ready to talk to individual artists in a town hall listening event on December 9th, with more to come. He wants to hear the strengths and weaknesses of Memphis. “I’m an optimist that loves to have the full picture, and so I don’t ignore the challenges,” Suggs says.
This first year, he says, will be themed “reframe culture.” “That’s really us being able to use [and collect] data,” Suggs says. “We’re going to be framing what success looks like for us as a city.”
Artist Listening Session, Madison Tavern, Monday, December 9, 5-7 p.m.
…
Starry, Starry
You don’t need to look too far in the sky to see the stars, not at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. That’s where Greely Myatt has installed his Starry, Starry starscape for the museum’s inaugural Winter Art Garden — an installation which opened at the end of November and stemmed from the artist’s recent obsession with stars.
Greely Myatt’s Star Fall (Photo: Abigail Morici)
A massive star — aptly titled Big Star, with a nod to the Memphis-based band — sits against the Brooks Museum near its entrance; at night, neon lights the star’s five edges made of scrap signposts. To the side of it, on the pedestals where statues Spring and Summer once stood, another star is propped up, this one made of charred wood. “It’s a fragmented star,” Myatt describes. “When I was making the other stars [for previous shows], I kind of became interested in, instead of the completeness of it, letting the mind mentally finish it.”
The wood of this fragmented star — Star Fall — comes from a pine tree Myatt grew himself. Meanwhile, Sirius (Dog Star and Pup), which is suspended between two trees, is made of broom handles, and Star Sprays, which fill up spring up from the plaza’s tables like bouquets of sparklers, are made of traffic signs.
Reflecting on the use of stars in his work, Myatt says, “They’re abstract, but they’re real. It’s kind of like Dave Hickey once said, ‘A Pollock doesn’t mean anything, but it has meaning. [We can find meanings for it, if we care to.]’”
Starry, Starry, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through January 2025
…
Q&A: Preston Jackson
Earlier this year, the Metal Museum named Preston Jackson as its 38th Master Metalsmith. “A Hidden Culture,” the exhibition now on display in honor of Jackson’s achievement, features 16 freestanding sculptures and four paintings by the artist, who describes the show as revealing “history that has been buried, forgotten, or deemed unimportant by society.” The Flyer had a chance to speak with Jackson about the show.
Preston Jackson (Photo: Courtesy of the Artist/metal Museum)
Memphis Flyer: What was your reaction to being named the Metal Museum’s Master Metalsmith?
Preston Jackson: When I got the call to get involved in this, especially being in Memphis, you know, where my ancestors are from that area, I jumped at that opportunity, and I took it on, even preparing new works for the show. So it was an uplift to do what you’re supposed to.
I didn’t realize it had inspired new works.
Some of the pieces, maybe two or three, are in the show, and the one at the [Memphis] Botanic Garden, there’s a very large relief piece there [Tales of the River Cities].
Your work goes into history and wants to uncover hidden histories, right?
Yeah, things that people feel uncomfortable talking about. … I find that looking back and re-understanding, rethinking about things that were only a hint in your past because you didn’t have the facilities to understand them or express them, it’s almost like admitting it’s good to be human.
Did you always know that you wanted to tell stories of other people, or was this kind of like something that you developed?
A lot of these traits that I have today were discovered, as my parents tell the story of my growing up, many years ago, right at the beginning of my little life as a young kid. Growing up in Decatur, Illinois, a product of the great migration that happened, my life is so much a part of that history. My exhibit gave me a chance to express my feelings about that.
And when you’re looking at these stories, are you doing a lot of research?
Yeah, you don’t want to be wild in your thinking, because of how important it is to tell the truth. Just look at our politics today. Truth is sought after, and it’s valuable. If we live a lie or believe in lies, we’re going to sort of destroy the entire civilization.
“A Hidden Culture,” Metal Museum, through January 26
Watermelon and Knife by Wayne Thiebaud (Photo: Artist Rights Society)
The Dixon Gallery & Gardens teases your sweet tooth with its most recent exhibitions: “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” and “Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt.”
The former features 100 works by Wayne Thiebaud in honor of his 100th birthday, which he celebrated in November 2020. The exhibition looks at the entirety of the artist’s career, starting with his earliest works right after World War II and ending with his latest series from 2016 to 2020.
Thiebaud’s subjects vary from landscapes to figure paintings, but he is most known for his 1960s paintings of cakes, pies, and other sweet treats. “A lot of times his paintings are inspired by the food displays you might’ve seen at a typical American diner in the middle of the 20th century,” says Julie Pierotti, the Martha R. Robinson curator at the Dixon. “So they have this kind of nostalgia to them for us looking at them today — nostalgia for the diner culture of decades ago.” Critics of the time referred to Thiebaud as the “Walt Whitman of the Delicatessen.”
“You don’t have to have any art history knowledge to come in and look at his work, appreciate it, enjoy it, and learn something,” Pierotti adds. “These are subjects like two ice cream cones that are so a part of our life and our culture that anyone can look at them and smile.
“The humor in them is so deadpan, yet it’s quietly dramatic,” she continues. “They speak to something inside of us that is like a guilty pleasure; you have this bodily reaction to it, in your heart and in your gut.” Thiebaud painted in the same manner a baker would frost a cake, with thick coats of paint that make the viewer want to scrape off a bit with their fingers.
Greely Myatt wanted to capture this kind of bodily reaction in his sculptures for the “Piece of Cake” exhibition, also at the Dixon. Just as Thiebaud applied thick layers of paint, Myatt applied layers of brown caulking as the chocolate icing on top of cakes made of wood. The caulking oozes between the layers and drips down the sides. “It’s really gooey and rich,” he says. “You wanna make it look lush, so people wanna lick it rather than just look at it.”
Myatt made his first cake sculpture with 54 layers to celebrate his 54th birthday in 2006. After that, he began making cakes and other sweet treats as gifts to celebrate his friends’ milestones and birthdays — gifts that friends like gallery-owner David Lusk and Metal Museum executive director Carissa Hussong have loaned to the Dixon for this exhibition. “I never thought I’d put these pieces in a show,” he says. “I made them because it was my birthday or David’s birthday, and I thought it was funny to make these things you couldn’t eat.”
When asked if Thiebaud inspired his confectious sculptures, Myatt says that, as an art professor at University of Memphis for 30 years, he was aware of Thiebaud, but Thiebaud was not why he made these pieces. Rather, the connection between the two occurred serendipitously. “A lot of my work references other art,” he says. “I grew up in Mississippi, where there weren’t a whole lot of art museums or galleries. So my connection with art was not with the high art — modernism — until I went to school. It was sort of a collision between the vernacular art that I grew up with and the art with historical references.”
But for one cake in this exhibition, the connection between the two artists was intentional. In honor of the Thiebaud exhibit and his 100th birthday, Myatt sculpted a 100-layer cake that towers 8 feet and sits right next to Myatt’s 54-layer cake — “Wayne and I,” he titles it.
The two exhibitions are playful and clever. But as Myatt says, “Humor is a serious form of art. It’s a skill.” And it’s a skill that both Wayne Thiebaud and Greely Myatt possess.
“Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt” is on view at the Dixon until September 26th. “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” is on view until October 3rd.
‘Tell all the people you see. Follow me. Follow me down’
Some visual artists might have slowed down and not been productive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not Robert Fairchild.
Fairchild, 22, graduated with his second degree from the University of Memphis, found his first art studio, and began focusing on new subject matter in his artwork.
And to make things sweeter, one of his paintings was accepted in the prestigious “62nd Annual Delta Exhibition” art show at Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock.
“The painting was ‘Tell All the people you see. Follow me. Follow me down,’” Fairchild says. ”It’s a beginning of a Doors songs. I did that painting in undergrad, so, I guess, that was fall of 2019. And I just had it in my house since I finished it.”
The three-by-six-foot oil painting of people on a subway platform was based on a photo he took on a trip to New York in spring of 2018. He found the photo along with some other old pictures and “just made a piece about it.”
It’s not a direct copy of the photo. “This one is fairly altered. I took out a lot of excess information, like some of the patterns in the tiles and the text you would find in the subway. Stuff on the walls usually has a lot of words on it. I took that out. I thought it was kind of distracting. And I altered the colors to make it more compelling in certain areas.”
What drew him to that scene? “First of all, that was the cleanest subway platform I’d seen in New York when I was there. Also, there was no one there. There were, I mean, three people fairly close to me, and then a few people in the distance. Most of the time it’s completely full of people and over-crowded.”
“What in the world is going on? he thought — and took a picture. “It was a memorable moment because it was kind of eerie. I didn’t even think about painting at that time. I took a picture because I thought it was a good composition.”
Fairchild says he was “focused on social interaction of these figures in a public space and how everybody is on their phones. It’s also really big, so the viewers can place themselves in the painting.”
He submitted it to the show last February. In March, Fairchild found out his painting was accepted.
Usually, the show is a held at the Arkansas Arts Center. “They changed it, once all the quarantine stuff started happening. And they just decided to have a virtual show.”
It would have been nice to actually get to attend the exhibition if they had had one, he says. “Usually, they have a reception at the Arkansas Arts Center. And it’s fancy with cheese and wine, so I was looking forward to it.”
Also included in the show are works by Memphis artists Greely Myatt and Jed Jackson.
Since finishing school, Fairchild has been working — in a mask — 40 hours a week at Whole Foods Market. But, thanks to his job, he found his studio. “My co-worker has a shed in his backyard. I was talking to him about needing a studio and he was listing off places. And then he just mentioned, ‘I have a shed in the backyard. You can check that out.’ Now I’ve been painting there the last several weeks and it’s perfect. It has AC in it, so that’s all I need.”
Fairchild says he’s moved to a different subject matter in his paintings. “I’ve shifted away from the figure and now I’m focused on painting landscapes, for the first time. A natural landscape. I’m really only focused on the light and the moment.
“I’m working from a photograph with very beautiful light that’s from dusk or right before the sun goes down. I’m really slowing down my process and really focusing on color, the transition of light, then creating something that’s not 100 percent one photograph. I’m using multiple references in this one to create something that is not reality but is based on reality.”
The painting, he says, is “a view from my porch. I want to share something from my experience. Something I encounter very often. I happened to be sitting on my porch. One of the days I’m not working.”
Robert Fairchild
Work io progress
Fairchild, who took the photo about 7:00 p.m. “I took the picture ‘cause I liked the lighting. Now everybody will be able to see the view from my porch.”
He was inspired by Edward Hopper to get into landscapes. “When I was in school I was looking at books on his paintings. I’d seen his work in New York. He’d paint a store front and it would be absolutely gorgeous. Really moving. It was just a painting of nothing. So, I’m thinking I want to focus on how well I can paint a very minimal thing and make it moving to the viewer because of Edward Hopper’s work.”
Thanks to another artist, Neo Rauch, Fairchild isn’t going to abandon figurative work. “He’s a German painter and does these bizarre scenes. They’re beautiful paintings. I honestly want to start copying him next and apply my own style.
“Rauch does really strange work. His compositions have so much depth in them. And they’re all from his head. It’s a unique style. And the pieces are huge. I just got into him. My professor gave me a book on him after I had my thesis show.”
He completed school during the quarantine, which was great, he says. “I honestly hated getting up and going to class. So, I’d just wake up, join the Zoom meeting in my underwear, and get coffee and do homework at my desk at home.”
Fairchild graduated last May with a degree in journalism with a focus in creative mass media. “I got my degree in studio art with a focus on painting last fall. So, I just finished my second degree and, hopefully, I can get a job. That’s one of the things. The job hunting is not fast right now ‘cause everything is frozen. But Whole Foods treated me well, so, I’m going to take a break and get into it. Then, we’ll see.
“It’s, honestly, been wonderful spending time alone to paint. Finish school and work. That’s really all I’ve been doing.”
And, he says, “Ride my bike. Find something else to do besides be alone.”
Artist Greely Myatt doesn’t let his past life events go to waste.
Take the pine tree he planted decades ago in his mother’s yard.
“When I was in the third grade, my teacher — Mrs. Davis — gave all the kids in the class a little pine sapling, and we were supposed to take it home and plant it,” says Myatt, who is 65 and a professor of art at the University of Memphis. “Well, I was a reasonably good student, and I did. Fifty-five years later, my sister called me up and said, ‘Hey, I cut your tree. Do you want any of it?'”
Their mother had the pine tree cut down because she was afraid it would fall on her house. Myatt said he wanted all 60 feet of it.
Part of that tree is included in some of Myatt’s works in “Making Marks,” his new show at David Lusk Gallery. Indicating his giant Saul Steinberg-looking steel piece depicting a man contemplating a question mark, Myatt said the man’s cuff links, the block he’s sitting on, and the question mark as well as the ball on his exclamation mark sculpture and the shelf holding building blocks are “all wood I grew.”
The aluminum quilts in Tablecloths are another story. “I guess some of that’s kind of trying to purge a guilt. When I went to college, my grandmother gave me this beautiful quilt. And I was a kid. I didn’t have respect for anything. Not that I didn’t like the quilt. I was appreciative.”
But he used the quilt to wrap up some sharp plaster pieces he had made. “These worthless things. To protect them. And tore the quilt up.”
Cartoon or speaking balloons, which show up in his piece, Remarks, made of colorful steel gas cylinder caps, often reappear in his work. “The balloons started when I was making this piece for the old Memphis Center for Contemporary Art years and years ago.”
Greely Myatt’s “Making Marks” is on display at David Lusk Gallery.
Gathering wood in a dump, Myatt found “this title page of a little novel. And it was called The Lady. On the other side was a handwritten note that said, ‘Grandpa’s sick. I’ll see you at the hospital.’ I thought, ‘Wow. This is really powerful. What do you do with it?'”
He made a steel speaking balloon and stuck the page sideways into it, so the viewer could read both sides of the page.
Later, he placed wooden quilt-pattern speaking balloons next to some old box spring mattresses. “It was kind of like trying to give inanimate objects a voice, in a way.”
Myatt currently is using speaking balloons in his UrbanArts project, “Everybody’s Talking,” a series of five steel sculptures that “increasingly get larger” in Audubon Park.
The first segment is an empty speaking balloon and a platform, the second is two balloons and two chairs, and so on. The final segment has a small 15-foot stage with five balloons. “It was an opportunity to give the viewer the chance to say something.”
A native of Aberdeen, Mississippi, Myatt read Beetle Bailey and other comic strips. “I tried to draw a few cartoons for our little school paper, and I wasn’t very good at it.”‘
He grew up “in the South away from art, but in a big visual culture. We put stuff in our yards, and we’ll call it art because if you don’t, you get beat up or something.”
He remembered the tree stump made to look like a bear in a yard down the street from him when he was a kid. “It’s got two branches coming up that are his arms. And he’s holding two mailboxes. That’s the kind of thing I grew up around. Not only was it art, I knew what it was. It did something.”
So, later when he was shown a box made out of steel in art class at Delta State and told, “This is art,” he was confused. But not for long.
Myatt, who wants viewers to come up with their own take on his art work, considers his pieces to be “about talking, which is not communication necessarily. It’s more about confusion and misleading and double reads and all those things than it is about clarity. My job is to confuse.”
“Making Marks” is on view through September 30th at David Lusk Gallery.
“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.
“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.
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.
“Creating a world just for us” by Pixy Yijun Liao
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. Miller, who curated his first exhibit in the grand, non-traditional space a year ago, says that part of his aim was to create a resonance between the curated artworks and the temple.
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.”
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.
Showing at L Ross Gallery are works by painter David Comstock and sculptor Bin Gippo, both masters of the fluid line and forms that feel weightless.
Circles loop across Comstock’s large canvases in Positive/Negative, and in Paradox, Gippo’s translucent alabaster sculptures appear to waft in midair. Like the mature work of Isamu Noguchi (the Japanese-American master sculptor with whom Gippo studied in New York), Gippo and Comstock go beyond seamless flow and integrate imperfection and duality into works expressive and complex enough to come alive on canvas and in stone.
A slender polished slab of steatite twists like a sea creature then fills out and arcs back like a graceful torso in Gippo’s From the Sea. The creature’s body is planted in raw stone. In Gippo’s most obviously figurative work, Getting Her Wings, a garden of crystals grows in the arm socket of a delicate and translucent body. Gippo’s torsos are not Venus de Milos forever armless and frozen in time. Her works express, instead, eons of evolution, the urge to expand to grow from sea creatures to humankind to angels-in-training.
Like Gippo, Comstock blurs the boundary between profane and sublime. The edges of Comstock’s circles are frayed; his loops are irregular. He gessoes and sews torn strips of canvas onto his paintings, and soft shades of taupe and beige, which look like earth dissolved in water, wash over many of his works.
A thick black line thrusts up in Positive/Negative 0401 and arcs into a series of irregular ovals that tangle at the top of the painting. A slender thread falls from the tangle to the bottom of the work. From the first rush to the last thread, Comstock is more interested in cycles of life than in idealized flow.
Cloudy Thoughts, by Greely Myatt, near the corner of Madison and Belvedere in Midtown
At L Ross Gallery through April 26th
To see one of the largest and most unusual artworks currently on view in Memphis, go to the corner of Madison and Belvedere and look up. You’ll see 14-by-48 feet of saturate blues (turquoises, thalos, and cadmiums) and wisps of white clouds covering the surface of Greely Myatt’s mixed-media billboard Cloudy Thoughts, one of the temporary projects commemorating the UrbanArt Commission’s 10th year. Metal outlines of speech and thought balloons throw shadows across the work.
Midtowners will tell you how they waited for days for workmen to spell out the idea or product being promoted on the billboard before they began thinking of things to fill the balloons for themselves. Immersed in Myatt’s deep-blue Rorschach, punctuated with clouds and phantom shadows, you can write your own script. Or, better yet, like Myatt, let the words go.
At Madison and Belvedere through the end of May
The Bloom of Your Words Touched Me, by Maysey Craddock
You’ll find several more of Myatt’s unique syntheses of speech balloons, wit, and wisdom at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens’ “2008 Memphis Flower Show: M3D On the Edge.” The exhibition features artworks paired with exquisite, interpretive floral arrangements by masters from around the country.
In addition to Myatt, the show includes works by some of the most original, sassy, accomplished 3D artists, including Maysey Craddock, Wayne Edge, Joyce Gingold, Terri Jones, Brian Russell, Allison Smith, Carroll Todd, and Ted Faiers.
Craddock’s typewriter keyboard, twisted back and painted deep red in The Bloom of Your Words Touched Me, evokes not only the power of words to endear, incite, or cut to the quick. Surrounded by beautiful floral arrangements, the work begins to resemble a wide-open exotic flower ready to soak up the sun or to snap shut like a Venus flytrap.
Leafless and branchless saplings crowd together in Carroll Todd’s constructed bronze sculpture, Lost in the Woods. An ebony ball is trapped between the slender stakes in a work that points to some starkly beautiful, fierce future in which forests are reduced to toothpicks and the earth reduced to a burned-out orb.
Terri Jones, best known for her elegant and minimal graphite drawings on vellum, contributes several works of conceptual art to “M3D.” In what could be an installation highlighting art as object, Jones shines a single light bulb above an unpadded wooden desk chair. One word, etched into a mirror and reflected on the wall above the chair, brings to mind One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth’s 1970 exploration of the distinctions between reality and representation and between representation and language. Jones’ letters spell out the word “Move” in a work of art that takes us beyond duality to a Zen-like experience that oscillates our point of view between noun and verb, particle and wave, object and idea.
Nine accomplished artists and 52 of their most original, thought-provoking works, together at the same time in the same venue, make “M3D” a must-see show.
At the Dixon: “Memphis Flower Show” April 26th and 27th; “M3D” artworks up through June 1st
Large clusters of burned-out lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling are the first and the last things you’ll see in “Lapses To Kill,” the current exhibition at the David Lusk Gallery. In between these unusual chandeliers you’ll find two tiny figures from a wedding cake enlarged a thousand fold, a large beach ball made out of plaster, and a delicious-looking wooden birthday cake, with 54 tiers and slathered with creamy chocolate frosting.
This is the work of Greely Myatt, an artist who combines skilled craftsmanship with the whimsy of folk art, the irony of pop, and the storytelling of postmodernism. In homage to Jasper Johns’ Three Flags, for example, Myatt sculpts walnut, heart pine, and broom handles into 3 Scrub Boards, beautifully crafted icons of domesticity that, like the flag, speak of sacrifice and hard work.
I Gotta Learn How To Talk ups the artistic ante. This collage/painting/bulletin board/Post-it Note from the subconscious looks into the mind of Myatt. The tops of 156 sheets of paper are attached to a stretched canvas. On each sheet, loose brush strokes of acrylic gesso cover up most of a single cartoon frame, leaving behind only the words of a speech balloon. This billowing gray-white collage looks like layers of gray matter spewing out some of those half-conscious “I gotta” criticisms that Myatt and the rest of us play and replay in our minds. A steel rod in the shape of a thought balloon is attached to the work, framing portions of nine of the sheets of paper. With this viewfinder, Myatt takes a good look at the attitudes that drive us. He spends much of the rest of the exhibition turning these expectations on their heads.
In the zany sculpture, Formal Arrangement, Myatt enlarges two tiny figures used to decorate wedding cakes. Out of 12 feet of polystyrene he sculpts an upside-down woman in a mauve taffeta gown balancing on the head of tall, dark man dressed in a tux. Here is relationship as balancing act, the woman air-headed and heels-over-head in love and her partner grounded, supportive, and proud.
Myatt is playing with stereotypes with the Styrofoam man and wife of Formal Arrangement, and he doesn’t stop there. The couple stares at the back gallery wall. The objects of their contemplation are two empty steel-edged speech balloons (Echo). One of the speech balloons is turned upside-down and balanced on top of the other. Like an upside-down couple contemplating upside-down thoughts, like one idea leading to another, like the pure potential of a wide-open mind, Myatt asks us to see things anew.
For Myatt, the possibilities seem endless. In Mitote, baseball bats are grafted onto pool cues onto broom handles onto shovels. These seamless, shape-shifting objects appear to somersault across the gallery floor. A Beach Ball that is not a beach ball brings to mind the wordplay and illusion of René Magritte and Barnett Newman’s “zips” that edged the sublime. The heavy plaster sections that make up this large white globe can be taken apart and rearranged by unzipping the colorful zippers that hold it together. In Myatt’s world, everything that has gone before, or that exists now, can be mixed and matched into juxtapositions that challenge and enlarge our points of view.
So, what about those big clusters of burned-out bulbs hanging in the front gallery and in the viewing room behind the back gallery? Did too many bright ideas come together too quickly and burn each other up? Not with this artist. There’s a method to the mischief. As a sort of scorecard, Myatt added spent bulbs to the chandeliers as he finished works for the show.
On opening night, the cluster of bulbs in the viewing area, Shades, contained one live and 44 dead light bulbs. Shades and Shamrocks, the chandelier hanging in the main gallery, consisted of 144 burned-out bulbs. The four live bulbs in the piece created just enough light to let us see the show and to look into its shadows.
Only one caveat for “Lapses To Kill”: The title’s allusions to lapsing, fallowness, relative inactivity, and eradication won’t prepare you for this exhibit. Seeing this show, one senses that Myatt’s surrealist/folk/pop/conceptualist/postmodern mind never stills. This artist mines our psyches and messes with our presumptions, and rather than killing off or completing ideas, he spins them into ever sassier, richer configurations.
Robert Fairchild 
Robert Fairchild 
Robert Fairchild 
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Robert Fairchild 
Sculpture by Roy Tamboli 
Chris Davis 
