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Impermanence of Fragile Things

Juan Rojo credits his mother for his interest in painting.

A native of Valladolid, Spain, Rojo says, “My mother wasn’t a professional or anything, but she liked to paint with oil. I remember the house smelling like oils. I associate that with my mother. And, I suppose, that was my first connection to art, in a way.”

Between February 11th and March 1st, Rojo will exhibit 17 works in “Vanitas” at Jay Etkin Gallery.

Just as he teaches his students, Rojo creates his art inside and outside. (Photo: Courtesy Juan Rojo)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

In addition to exhibiting his works in shows at Etkin, Rojo featured his art in numerous galleries, including the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, where he was included in “Memphis 2021,” and Galeria Rodrigo Juarranz in Burgos, Spain. His work was also in the Affordable Art Fair in London.

Closer to home, Rojo’s works are in the permanent collections of the City of Memphis and the Memphis International Airport. Showing his works in galleries in three countries didn’t happen overnight, though. “I’ve been painting 30 years nonstop this year,” says Rojo, who also teaches art at Southwind High School.

“Juan is one of the strongest figurative artists in town,” says Etkin, who has represented Rojo for many years. “He might be considered a realist, but his paintings are imbued with mystery and emotion and immersed in a surrealist sensibility.”

Rojo, who was more interested in playing “in the streets” as a child, didn’t start doing any type of artwork until he was 12 years old. “I was a very shy kid,” he says. “Very introverted. Drawing was kind of a nice excuse to be alone and do something I enjoy. I was not really good at it, but I really liked the solitude.”

His mother was a “hobbyist” artist. “She did portraits. Very surreal portraits,” Rojo remembers. “When she was young she was not ‘gothic’ — that probably wasn’t a word that was around — but she wore dark clothes.”

His mother liked painting her women in “dramatic” blues, Rojo says. “Like Picasso, in a way. Sad faces, sad women. It was kind of a naive painting. She wasn’t classically painting or trained. She did what she could.”

Rojo just began drawing one day. “I don’t remember the first thing I drew, but I liked to draw people. I started copying the masters. We had a book of art history at the house. When my mother saw that I spent all my days drawing — and my drawings were terrible — she took me to an academy where they paint and draw. I just started learning to draw there.”

Practice makes perfect, and following in the footsteps of the greats doesn’t hurt either. So he copied Michelangelo’s drawings from the Sistine Chapel. “I could draw some of those from memory.”

At the time, Rojo used pencil and charcoal. “I remember saying I didn’t want to paint because painting was boring.”

Drawing was “something I could control in my life. Drawing was very precise and a way to describe things. I got good at it.”

And, he adds, “The human figure has always been my interest. I did some landscapes, but I cannot look at a painting for more than a month if they don’t have eyes. If they don’t return the look, look back, I cannot keep painting that for a year like I do sometimes.”

One of his teachers kept pushing him to start painting, Rojo says. Finally, the teacher had him work on a big painting of one of Michelangelo’s drawings. “Instead of pencil, I did it in paint. I loved it so much. The process. The application of paint.

“I copied it on a canvas. I probably used oil because at that point acrylic was not really a thing [because] the quality was not that good. An ochre and something very toned down. White, brown, black, and ochre to create the shadows and light. The same way you do with pencil.”

Happy with the results, he thought, “Okay, we can try this painting thing.”

Rojo began copying the work of his inspirations: Alberto Giacometti, Frank Auerbach, and Lucian Freud.

He liked Giacometti, in particular, because his paintings are “the bridge between drawing and painting. His paintings are like drawings with a little bit of color. The moment I started mixing colors, I relaxed. That was what I wanted to do.”

Rojo loved the way Auerbach used so much paint in his work. “I started painting highly dense and full of paint.”

Rojo’s early paintings were very expressionistic. “I think I was a natural with painting, so it didn’t take me long. I think I was a better painter than a drawer at that point.”

But he doesn’t describe himself as a “natural artist,” Rojo says. “I tell my students I don’t believe in talent in that sense. My drawings at 14 were terrible, but I loved doing it. At some point I got better and I got good.”

“Vanitas” features 17 works, including paintings and drawings. (Photo: Juan Rojo)

Still Life with School Art

Rojo taught private art lessons to adults and children before he entered the University of Salamanca. “I’ve been teaching since I was very young,” he says, “even like being a counselor at summer camp.”

Salamanca was “very classical, so everything was working with models. We had five years of drawing nude models, five years of painting nude models. So, for me, it was like heaven.”

He met his wife, Clara, who was studying medievalist literature at Salamanca. “I think it was the theory of literature class. And she was there and we met and that was it.”

Juan and Clara married before moving to Washington, D.C., in 2004 so his wife could get her doctorate at Georgetown University.

They lived in Washington for six years. “I came on a spouse visa. You cannot do much on a spouse visa, so I was basically painting for a couple of years.”

Rojo, who got his masters of art at the University of Maryland, moved to Memphis about 10 years ago after his wife got a job teaching Spanish medieval literature and Spanish at Rhodes College.

They loved Memphis from the beginning. “We spent a year in Kentucky — Lexington — after Washington. It was good, but it was a small town. We came here and it was kind of an upgrade.”

Rojo quickly got into the Memphis art scene and began showing his work. “It’s not that hard, in Memphis, to meet the art community.”

While showing his work at the old Circuitous Succession Gallery, Rojo met Etkin. “When the gallery closed, I approached Jay and we started working together.”

Rojo taught for a couple of years at the University of Memphis until his wife got a fellowship at the University of Notre Dame. Rojo taught at Notre Dame as a visiting artist for a year. “I did a lot of photography there,” he says. “That really helped me in my work.”

Snowglobe II illustrates characters frozen in space and time as if entrapped in a snow globe with flowers and vines floating around them.

No Cookie-Cutter Compositions

After returning to Memphis, Rojo began teaching art at Southwind High School. It wasn’t easy at first. “When I started, it was just surviving,” he says.

It took him a while to learn the methods for managing a classroom, Rojo says. “The things you do and things you don’t need to do. You learn on the job. The first year was tough. The second year was tough. By the third year, I knew how to run a class and just really get the kids involved in art. Get them involved in what they want to do in art.”

He found his students responded when he told them, “Now I’ll teach you how to do this. What do you want to do with this?”

Rojo says, “They love that. They want to draw what they want. Design what they want. Within the margins of what they learn to do in class.”

And, he adds, “I realized soon if you give the kids choices and give them options to do what they want, they surprise you.”

Rojo knew what he did not want to do as an art teacher. “Sometimes art is like a cookie maker,” Rojo explains. “Kind of cookie-shaped things. You tell them everything and at the end you have 35 cookies that are the same. I hate that. I don’t do that.”

Eventually, he began having his students paint murals. “We paint some of them outside, some of them inside. We have seven murals in the high school.”

Rojo makes sure to keep his students involved in every step of the process, so the students come up with the subjects for the murals. “They choose, so some of them are weird and scary.”

The students vote on what subject they want to paint. “I take it to the principal and he approves them and they do them. I don’t have a part in the creative process of this and I don’t want to. I’m just helping them build up their ideas.”

Hidden is part of a triptych of paintings that prominently feature
the floral motif within Rojo’s “Vanitas” collection.

“Vanitas”

As for his own work, Rojo says his paintings have changed over the years. He switched to acrylics instead of thick oils after he moved to the United States. His paintings became flatter. But, he says, “The common thread is the human figure.”

“Vanitas” paintings are a type of still life. “You have flowers. You have a skull. You have things that die. They are passing. Future or life is like a dream, in a way, that goes so fast.”

“Vanitas” paintings are about “the mortality of people,” the artist explains. They capture the finite nature of all things — cut flowers, human lives — and highlight the importance of these fleeting moments.

Rojo’s paintings have elements of vanitas in them, but instead of focusing on death, the paintings in his “Vanitas” show are “more about enjoying life while it lasts.”

He places flowers and other objects on his models, photographs them, and then does a painting using the photograph as a reference. The artist can be found “literally tying down the flowers to their heads. I use flowers and things that are going to die. It’s not permanent, what I build there. That beautiful scene that I build is not made to be permanent. It’s ephemeral sculpture.”

The flowers and other objects “have expiration dates. Not the painting, but the object. Once they [the models] move, they fall. And then that image disappears. Like, literally, you cannot really hold the same pose for more than a minute before things start falling from your head. Delicately placed there, it wants to be permanent, but it can’t be.”

Rojo mostly uses women models. “If I feel confident enough, I can get some level of intimacy with the models, attaching things to their heads. They need to be comfortable with me doing that. Normally, I feel more females are going to be better with that. But I have male models, too. It’s not an exclusive thing. It’s just a matter of who I have confidence and trust in that this is going to be fun for both of us, the process is going to be comfortable for both of us and they will enjoy it,” the artist explains.

It took Rojo about two years to complete his show at Jay Etkin Gallery. “This one is purely all pandemic. During the pandemic I didn’t have models. I could have, I suppose, but I didn’t feel safe bringing models to the studio. So, I’ve been painting a lot of my daughter because she was there in the house. But also using old photographs, images of models I took over the years.”

Rojo had plenty of time to paint during the pandemic. “We taught from home. So, for almost a year, I did my class from my computer. And the rest of the day I painted. I didn’t have drive time, so I could work more on the paintings.”

Some of the works, which are in a round format, are based on snow globes. “A lot of the paintings in this show are like things frozen in time. That’s how I felt with the quarantine and the pandemic. Everything is kind of still. Frozen.”

Instead of snowflakes, Rojo has “things floating like they’re inside of snow globes.” Like leaves and birds.

Evoking Shakespeare’s tragic character, Ophelia (second from left) captures the ephemeral nature of mortality, with flowers that float in space and time.

What Comes After

Rojo plans to include soap bubbles in his paintings in his next show, he says. “Soap being something that goes fast. They’re beautiful and they explode. Like death, I suppose, in a way.”

Rojo also will be in some of his new paintings. “A friend of mine took photos of me with things on my head. I’m excited about that. They were pretty amazing. Flowers and stuff. Some classical. Saint Sebastian. The guy that’s got the arrows. Some funny stuff will see the light at some point.”

Rojo also includes drawings in his Etkin show. He did a series of drawings and watercolors of lilies and carnations from the time they are alive to the time they die. He recorded their life span by observing them. “I didn’t use photographs.”

In addition to his work for the “Vanitas” show, Rojo completed an UrbanArt Commission mural last December. He created and painted a mural for Porter-Leath & University of Memphis Early Childhood Academy at Orange Mound. The 9-by-18-foot mural features 23 figures.“It’s based on classical compositions from the Renaissance. I designed it with four layers of kids running around, going on bicycles. Some are blowing bubbles.”

One of his paintings was acquired for the soon-to-open new terminal of the Memphis International Airport. “A painting of my daughter under the tree in my backyard.”

Fellow Memphis artist Carl E. Moore is a Rojo fan. “Juan Rojo is a friend and one of the most consistent and productive artists I know because of his studio practice and his work ethic,” Moore says. “His art is full of playfulness, passion, and drama created with color and composition painted as a theatrical performance. His style is a playful use of wardrobe and props, allowing his muses to become the center of the creative artwork.”

Rojo is in a good place in his life. “In terms of art and producing art and selling art, I’m getting appreciated,” he says. “It’s been a really nice time. A horrible time to be living in, but I cannot complain. I’ve been very lucky in the last year and a half.”

“Vanitas” is on view at Jay Etkin Gallery from February 11th through March 1st. Jay Etkin Gallery is at 942 Cooper Street; (901) 550-0064.

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Art Art Feature

Art Exhibition: Pick a Card

Mason jars, alligators, pine cones, and black-eyed peas are just some of the images on the oracle cards in Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” deck. The cards, 45 in total, are all illustrated with acrylic paintings, representing different aspects of Southern culture and history. Around 20 of the original paintings are on display at Jay Etkin Gallery. 

Oracle cards are similar to tarot cards, Williams-Ng explains, “but they’re more open-ended.” While tarot cards typically have standard symbols in every deck that require prior knowledge to interpret the images, oracle decks can contain a myriad of images, usually appealing to a theme, and each card contains a clear, written affirmation or piece of advice, with no prior knowledge necessary.

For instance, in Williams-Ng’s deck, she says, “If you pull the copperhead card, it’s supposed to be warning against bad influences,” but it’s up to the user to interpret who or what those bad influences are. “Today, people who consume these kinds of cards are more likely to use tarot or oracle cards as their own self-help tool,” she adds. “They’ll draw cards and just read them and think about what it might mean to their own lives. People are seeing tarot [and oracle] cards as something that is for their own personal betterment, instead of ‘Oh, I’m gonna find out if my boyfriend is going to marry me or if I’m going to die this year.’”

Selections from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

Williams-Ng originated the images and interpretations of her oracle cards. She had been looking for a deck with a Southern theme but couldn’t find one; fortunately, she says, “I liked the idea of creating a card deck where I could define what the cards are.” So, at the end of last year, she began brainstorming and painting. 

“It was kind of a pandemic project for me,” she says. “I had just moved back to my hometown [Memphis from Milwaukee], and I was stuck in the house and started thinking about things that interest me on a personal level.” For the past decade, Williams-Ng says, she has been researching the different spiritual practices and belief systems throughout the South. 

We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems.

“I wanted my deck of cards to represent overlapping spiritual traditions,” she says. From Christianity to Hoodoo to Celtic and Appalachian beliefs, she explains, spiritual systems in the South often share a lot of regional traditions and beliefs. (Though, in this deck, she omitted belief systems from Louisiana because “Louisiana is a world unto itself.”) “Of the 45 cards, there’s only five to six cards of any one thing, and that way there’s a real diversity. We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems, and that way the user or reader gets presented with a democratic smattering of different ideas.” 

Stacey Williams-Ng (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

The title of the deck, as well as the Jay Etkin exhibition, was inspired by the Southern Gothic literary movement in the 19th century. “[The Southern Gothic writers] were trying to show the way the South was hiding beneath this veneer of civility, but beneath it there was all kinds of trauma,” Williams-Ng says. “Not everything in my deck is an affirmation; you know, these cards have some shadow things, like the copperhead card. … I wanted to give people a sense of another side of the South — the more grotesque or esoteric or metaphysical side of the South — the shadow side.” 

Even so, Williams-Ng hopes her cards provide joy and inspiration. “More and more people are trying to figure out how they can get in touch with their own local magic, if you will, or their own local traditions,” she says. “And as for people who are dabbling in witchcraft and the occult and even in just botanical healing practices and things like that, they are really trying to work with the authenticity of working with the land, meaning working with [the traditions and spiritual practices] where you’re from.”

One card that Williams-Ng thinks will enchant Memphians is the Crystal Grotto card, which is based on the Crystal Shrine Grotto at Memorial Park Cemetery in East Memphis. The image on the card is non-specific, labelled simply as a crystal grotto, but anyone who has seen the Crystal Shrine Grotto will recognize the inspiration. As for the card’s meaning, Williams-Ng says, “It represents the cosmos and getting in touch with the universe. It’s about ancient wisdom.” 

A selection from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

This unique attention to regional detail in Williams-Ng’s deck has attracted a great deal of interest in customers wanting their own, especially after she launched a successful Kickstarter campaign. “I never expected it to have any commercial success. I’ve sold a thousand decks, and I just can’t believe this. It’s clearly hitting a nerve with some people,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of people evoke their grandmothers. There’s a lot of ‘This reminds me of my Memaw, this reminds me of going to my grandma’s house.’”

The opening reception of “Southern Gothic Oracle” at Jay Etkin Gallery is Friday, September 3rd, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be card readings, and decks of cards accompanied by books for interpretations will be on sale. The exhibition will remain on display until October 2nd.  To purchase a deck of cards, visit Williams-Ng’s Etsy store.

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We Recommend We Recommend

“Revealed”: Jay Etkin’s Exhibition of Czech Artist’s Works

If you saw some guy pointing a cardboard toilet paper tube at you, you’d probably laugh, ham it up, and go along on your way. That’s what most of Czech outsider artist Miroslav Tichý’s subjects did.

Jay Etkin of the Jay Etkin Gallery has an exhibition of drawings and photographs on loan from the Cavin-Morris Gallery. The New York gallery is known for exhibiting artists from around the world, specializing in self-taught artists who make art independently of the art world.

“I feel very honored to have these drawings and photographs,” says Etkin. “Though I tried to get a homemade camera on loan, the Cavin-Morris Gallery turned me down. I don’t blame them.”

Courtesy of Jay Etkin Gallery

Miroslav Tichý’s camera

Once he discovered the works, Etkin wanted Memphis to know this voyeur photographer who took thousands of pictures of women in his hometown in the Czech Republic. His cameras were constructed using cardboard tubes, tin cans, and other at-hand materials. Most of his subjects were unaware that they were being photographed, striking poses when they sighted Tichý, not realizing that the camera he carried was real.

The brilliance of the photographs is that they are skewed, spotted, and badly printed. His primitive equipment and a series of deliberate processing mistakes were meant to add poetic imperfections.

Tichý has said, “If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world.”

Stop by Etkin’s gallery to bid the works farewell and revel in the perfectness of imperfection.

Closing reception for “Revealed,” Jay Etkin Gallery, 942 Cooper, Saturday, Jan. 2, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Resin Ability

Mathew Joseph Zachariah was told as a child that he had an allergy to plastic. As an adult, Zachariah learned his mom was allergic to plastic. Wanting to spare her son the adverse allergic reaction she experienced, an overabundance of caution was exercised. Zachariah is not allergic to plastic.

“How ironic that now I own a plastics recycling company and create art with post-industrial plastics,” he says.

Zachariah is a scientist who one day took notice of the colors in his product. After 28 years in the recycling business, for the first time, he saw the processed orange safety cones, red auto tail lights, green city trash bins, and clear blue water cooler bottles in the form of shavings, pellets, and re-grinds as a tool and not a product. Maybe it was the result of moving from Flint, Michigan, to Memphis and living among creatives in Crosstown Concourse for the past two years.

Courtesy of Mathew Joseph Zachariah

Mathew J. Zachariah’s plastics become art.

However it happened, Zachariah has been creating mosaics with his product. He talks about his art in industrial terms — HTPE and nylon 66. Then, he suddenly stops.

“I’ve realized that art is emotional,” concedes Zachariah, who says he’s learned to speak differently about his art. “And not just for the observer. It’s therapeutic for me. My hand has been on every piece, placed with love on the canvas giving my product a second life.”

Meet Zachariah online or in person for an artist talk on Friday. Be sure to ask about the hidden images in his art.

Artist talk for Mathew Joseph Zachariah, Jay Etkin Gallery, 942 Cooper, and online from Jay Etkin Gallery Facebook Live, Friday, November 6, 5-7 p.m.

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We Recommend We Saw You

Elvis 7s, Kevin Brooks, Cole O’Keeffe, Summer Cocktail Festival, Rooms & Relics

Michael Donahue

I’m getting a lot of mileage out of my ‘We Saw You’ business cards. This is the Nashville Rugby team at the Elvis 7s rugby tournament in Millington. This is not a new addition to the team’s uniform.

Instead of giving him the shirt – or the cape – off his back, Larry Magdovitz, dressed as The King, gave the patent leather belt that accessorized his white jumpsuit to John Elmore. That was after Elmore won first prize in the Mr. Sideburns contest at the Elvis 7s rugby tournament.

The rugby event, which has been called the unofficial start of Elvis Week, is when ruggers grow sideburns just for the tournament. They play rugby against a background of Elvis songs. This year’s tournament was held August 3rd at USA Stadium in Millington.

Players taking part in the Mr. Sideburns contest competed for the best sideburns and sang an Elvis song of their choice.

Elmore, a member of Memphis Blues Rugby Club, was the first place winner with his  burns and his rendition of “Stuck on You.”


Michael Donahue

John Elmore and Larry Magdovitz at Elvis 7s.

Michael Donahue

Justin Alden of the Memphis Blues Rugby Club came in second place in the Mr. Sideburns contest.

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Michael Donahue

My business card was a hit with Jay Etkin, but he didn’t hang it on the wall at his gallery, Jay Etkin Gallery. This was the night of the opening of Cole O’Keeffe’s art show.

Michael Donahue

Cole O’Keeffe

Jay Etkin Gallery at 942 South Cooper was packed for the August 7th opening of Cole O’Keeffe’s exhibition of works, which he titled “God is Real and Other Perceptions.”

About 120 people attended the event, where Cole also did a reading of some of his writings.

Jay says he told the audience, “What you have here in front of you is a youthful visionary.”

“What he’s doing,” Jay says, “is coming to the public – in this case – without any pretension, without any agenda. The work is raw – in a good way. It’s not fussy. It’s just what he’s in the moment of, whether written word or making a painting. There is no forethought of ‘I have to make this one way or the other.’ It’s just spontaneous and intuitive. But his value is the rawness of it.

“This is not commercial fine art. This is very raw fine art. And I’m saying this as a compliment because I’ve seen too many people who think about the market when they’re making art.”

Cole, Etkin says, puts his heart on his sleeve, which he also demonstrated in his readings. Cole “read very intimate things in front of all these people that night.”

Etklin describes Cole’s writing as “very open and very revealing and very honest.”

“God is Real and Other Perceptions” is on view through August 10th.


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Michael Donahue

Kevin Brooks on the eve of his big ‘Memphis Film Prize’ win.

So, how does Kevin Brooks feel about his second consecutive Memphis Film Prize win? A Night Out, which he co-directed with Abby Meyers, was the 2019 Memphis Film Prize winner. The $10,000 award was announced August 4th.

“I did not know it was going to come,” Brooks says. “I was surprised. I was ecstatic. I was very grateful.”

He wanted the exposure for the film. “It’s such a powerful story. And collaborating with Abby Meyers was such a beautiful thing.”

A Night Out, which stars Rosalyn R. Ross, is about a woman who goes to a nightclub to cheer herself up after a bad breakup. All the action takes place in one continuous 10-minute shot in and around Mollie Fontaine Lounge.

What’s next? “I have a feature film I’m hoping to get funding for next year. That’s my goal.

I really want to do a big film. My goal since I was six years old. Now is the time to take advantage of the resources I have in my life and the people who supported me to make this happen.”

What’s he going to do with his share of the prize money?  “Put it towards the feature, hopefully.”

And, Brooks says with a laugh, “Try not to party too hard.”

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Michael Donahue

Summer Cocktail Festival

The inaugural Summer Cocktail Festival, which was held August 2nd in Overton Square, was a success.

The event, hosted by the Memphis Flyer and Captain Morgan, was an advance sellout with 750 guests.

More than 30 spirit brands were featured along with a wide variety of custom cocktails.

Eats were provided by Second Line, Laura’s Kitchen, and Trap Fusion.

The danceable music was provided by DJ Jordan Rogers.


Michael Donahue

Patrick Kelly and Chloe Serca at Summer Cocktail Festival

Michael Donahue

Raen Browder and Jenn Tinnell at Summer Cocktails

Michael Donahue

Summer Cocktail Festival

Michael Donahue

Hotel Indigo grand opening

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“Rooms and Relics” was the theme of Hotel Indigo’s grand opening celebration, which was held August 1st. Visitors toured the hotel and its 3rd & Court diner. About 125 people, including Mayor Jim Strickland and other dignitaries, attended.

Guests dined on hors d’oeuvres from chef Ryan Trimm and listened to the music of the Stax Academy Ensemble.

Guests also took part in a “scavenger hunt;” they were asked to answer questions, including:

1. Jukebox: Name the musician on record /CD 07 on the jukebox.

2. Lobby: What year was the blue cement wall built, and what was it originally a wall for?

3. Which photographer is featured near the front desk, and what is significant about this photo gallery?

4. What is unique about rooms 834, 934, and 1034?

5. What style of restaurant is 3rd & Court?

6. What is the name of the meeting space at Hotel Indigo?

7. Which nonprofit will receive funds from this room’s reservation?

Here are the answers:

1. Otis Redding.

2. Original hotel lobby – 1963.

3. Jack Robinson. Photos from a benefit concert that took place after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.

4. Amazing view of AutoZone park.

5. American diner.

6. “Court Room” because it faces Court Avenue and the hotel is near law offices.

7. Stax. Room No. 813 is dedicated to Stax and is decorated in Stax decor and posters. If someone stays in this room, the hotel will give Stax 10 percent of the revenue. A check will be presented at the end of each year.

Michael Donahue

Kevin Kane and Peter Newton Hall at ‘Rooms and Relics’

Michael Donahue

Hotel Indigo grand opening.

Michael Donahue

‘Rooms and Relics’

Michael Donahue

Rooms & Relics

                                          WE SAW YOU AROUND TOWN

Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Brian Taylor from Austin, Texas tries his first Rendezvous ribs on his first trip to Memphis.

Michael Donahue

Allyson Blair and Paulette Regan at Global Cafe.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Cole O’Keeffe’s “God is Real and Other Perceptions” at Jay Etkin

Cole O’Keeffe, shirtless and barefoot, painted red streaks on his face and yelled, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”when he played the young savage, Jack, in a Lord of the Flies production his senior year at Christian Brothers High School.

A year later, he stopped acting and began painting on canvas. His one-man show, “God is Real and Other Perceptions,” is on view through August 10th at Jay Etkin Gallery.

Michael Donahue

Cole O’Keeffe (above) paints what he feels.

“I wanted to be a movie star ever since I can remember,” says O’Keeffe, 22.

His uncle, actor Miles O’Keeffe, appeared shirtless and barefoot in the title role in the 1981 movie, Tarzan the Ape Man. “I had coaches coming up to me in sixth grade being like, ‘You’re Tarzan’s nephew, right?'” He was proud of that. “I don’t know why that just inspired me so, but it did.”

O’Keeffe flunked out of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “My parents said, ‘Go become a movie star, please. Chase this thing.'”

He moved to California, got a job as a bartender in a strip club on Sunset Strip, and worked on a screenplay.

Six months later, he began working as an assistant at an art gallery in Echo Park. Living at the gallery and being around the owner, a painter, gave O’Keeffe the impetus to become a painter. He realized, “I have this in me — this voice that wants to express itself.”

O’Keeffe eventually decided to return to Memphis and go back to school. His first painting was of a woman he met. “I tried to write about her, and all the words were crap,” he says.

A friend told him to paint it instead. “I got a bunch of paint supplies, set up my space, and started painting what I was feeling, what I saw within her.”

That did it. “I jumped into a painting for the first time that night and came out of it four hours later crying. Like a guy who just discovered a new hand.”

O’Keeffe painted Mouth Ajar after a breakup. “I was super sad because, of course, I wanted to love her forever. But, also, I felt a cool relief of it all. Away from the chaos of love.” He then saw an Instagram photo of a woman with her mouth ajar. “And she was embodying that very energy,” he says.

O’Keeffe’s subjects aren’t always people. “Sometimes they’re moments,” he says. “Mountain-top moments when things click and then I paint that moment. But mostly it’s people.”

“Pop-punk simplistic” is how O’Keeffe defines his style. “It’s this confident use of loud color, but in a way that respects predominantly white, negative space,” he says. “I don’t have any piece that is painted corner to corner. It’s all moments within this canvas. It’s two lines coming together and then, suddenly, this explosion of paint starts to just come from this connectivity.”

His style is “not abstract and it’s not expressionism, and it’s not just contemporary, and it’s not minimalism. It’s combining all of these sensibilities and the respect of them into something that maybe has a little more narrative.”

O’Keeffe doesn’t paint every day. “I let life knock me around a little bit until a point where I have a whole painting knocking on every beam and fiber of my body,” he says. “And that night I go home and paint it.”

“God is Real and Other Perceptions” is on view through August 10th at Jay Etkin Gallery, 942 Cooper, 550-0064.

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Art Art Feature

Work by Pam Cobb

Pam Cobb’s husband gave her a table saw for Christmas one year. He gave her a miter saw another year.

“I have this arsenal of tools you would not believe,” Cobb says.

She goes to Home Depot and buys doors and drill bits, but she’s not making home repairs. She’s making art.

Work by Cobb, who is exhibiting her paintings and sculptures at Jay Etkin Gallery, is included in corporate commissions in offices, banks, and lobbies, including the Westin Memphis Beale Street, and in public art projects, including her UrbanArt Commission sculptures at Cordova Library.

A Memphis native, Cobb took art class in grade school. “All they did was give us a piece of manila paper, and we had some crumbly crayons. I mean, that was the extent of the art.”

But she says, “I guess I realized early on that my pictures looked better than other people’s.”

Art was “just something I did with zero training.”

Her father “was a carpenter. Not by trade. But he built a room on the back of our house. He built a carport, patio. And he didn’t have power tools. He cut the joists with a handsaw.”

Cobb helped. “I was handing him bricks when he was laying our patio. And I just figured that’s what you did. You grew up with your father building things. I have always felt extremely comfortable around tools.”

She met her husband when they were in college, where she was more interested in Alpha Gamma than acyclic oil. “I was sort of a proper sorority girl.”

Cobb majored in English, so she could teach school and put her husband through law school.

She began teaching in Fayette County after they were married. She taught art after her principal saw her do a giant frieze of a snow scene on butcher paper for her classroom. Her principal and some teachers also had her do portraits of their children. After school, she would “stay up at night and paint.”

Cobb began learning to paint from the owner of a Germantown art gallery after her husband graduated. She began showing and selling her work — and winning awards — at outdoor festivals around the country. “I was painting the obligatory wagon wheels and rustic things.”

Her work became more semi-abstract after she joined the Germantown Art League, where she remained until she went back to school at Memphis State University and got her master’s degree.

She sculpted and painted at MSU. “Most of it was fairly abstract, and most of it had to do with water.”

Over the years, Cobb taught at MSU, Shelby State Community College, and she founded the art department at Christian Brothers University.

Her first of many Jay Etkin shows was in 1991.

She likes wooden doors. “I liked being able to mutilate the surface and dig into it and carve into it and everything. To this day, I paint on hollow-core doors that I get over at Home Depot. It’s not like a solid wood door. The door is like $25, and you can get more than one painting out of a door.”

She also did huge botanicals — like a painting of a geranium over gold leaf — and giant fruit.

Among the works in her new show are carvings made from 100-year-old wood. Most of the show is about “random vegetation. The carvings are about trees and water. Trees reflecting in the water, but you don’t even really see that.”

The show is “about the bayou. Out in the shallow areas around our little place at Pickwick, there’s all this random vegetation, and it just pops up here and there and I love it.”

Cobb found her mantra on TV. “My kids were watching The Jeffersons one morning in their pajamas in our den. I was walking through the den and George Jefferson said something that has stayed with me most of my life. He said, ‘If you’re not going to leave your mark on the world, why show up in the first place?’ I have lived by that.”

Her legacy? “I want them to know that I want to wring out everything that is in me. I never want to stop.”

“Divisions” is on view through December 11th at Jay Etkin Gallery.

Categories
Art Exhibit M

Here is Your Weekend Art Itinerary

Tonight (It’s Friday!)  

6PM – Go to the Metal Museum for the opening of A Kind of Confession, work by 11 African American metalsmiths. This show is great. Four of the exhibiting artists will be on hand tonight to speak about their work. If you stick around, you can have a glass of wine and watch the sun set on the Mississippi River. Opening thru 8PM. 

David Clemons, ‘Senescopia’ (2007)

7PM – Go the opening of David Lusk Gallery’s Price is Right. There will be reasonably priced work by Tyler Hildebrand, Greely Myatt, Jared Small and Veda Reed, among others. For midtown folk, you don’t have to go out east anymore— Lusk has new digs on Flicker Street. Opening thru 8PM.  

8PM – Memphis-native and current Florida resident Nathan Yoakum has work at Jay Etkin Gallery on Cooper. Opening thru 9. 

9PM – Go home and read Ben Davis’ 9.5. Theses on Art and Class. I’m an evangelist for this book right now. Or you could go to sleep, you philistine. 

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Saturday

12PM – Go to Burke’s Books and browse their art book collection. Then go across the street and adopt a cat at House of Mews. All the better to read your nerdy art book with. 

All day – Stop by Crosstown Arts for Micheal Chewning’s Themeless (430 Cleveland) and, if you haven’t already seen it, Jay Crum and Kong Wee Pang’s Walking Eyes, in the main gallery.

8PM – Go to the Brooks Museum to see When Marnie Was There. The Brooks shows awesome films, new and old. Their team does a good job of filling Memphis’ art house cinema void.   

Sunday

…is the Lord’s day. So take an afternoon stroll through the Dixon’s gardens to see meditatively crafted ceramics by Jun Kaneko

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We Recommend We Recommend

“The Old Forest” at Jay Etkin Gallery

Photographer Peter Ceren has been walking the trails of Overton Park’s old growth forest since the 1970s. Over the past year, he’s walked it with an old, flawed, soft-focus lens, making the most of its shortcomings and pushing nature photography into deep abstraction.

“There’s this one particular leaf I’ve photographed because it worked well compositionally with some trees behind it,” says Ceren, who worked for years as a commercial photographer, snapping everything from brain surgery to cosmetics, before the emergence of digital photography made him feel like a stranger in a strange land. “I kept going back because I saw that leaf changing as insects started eating it, and it got torn by the wind, became increasingly ragged, and changed colors. It looks beat, but it’s still hanging on, and there’s still a little bit of green left, and it’s still working for the tree. Getting older, I really identify with stuff like that.”

A Peter Ceren photograph

In recent years, Ceren has written novels and dabbled in video, but he hasn’t exhibited in more than a decade, and he didn’t have a gallery show in mind when he started shooting “The Old Forest” series. He thought he was just spending some time with a lens given to him by his friend and fellow artist Perry Walker, who died unexpectedly six months ago. “I wanted to see what it could do,” says Ceren, admitting that his expectations for a lens he describes as “old,” “simple,” and “not very well made” were initially low. Surprised by the results, Ceren started sharing the images on Facebook, where they found an appreciative audience, including gallery owner Jay Etkin.

“I started this for nobody but me,” Ceren says. “It was just for the moment, and for therapy, and a kind of spiritual exercise. I’m finding myself feeling like I did in 1967, when I first picked up a camera.”

Categories
Art Art Feature

Just Desserts

To fully experience Delta Axis @ Marshall Art’s current exhibition “Activation,” you had to be there opening night eating cake and looking at brutal images of war.

Creatures flayed beyond recognition were strewn across a butcher block in Rob Canfield’s savage, beautiful oil Slaughterhouse, and the figure that screamed in Canfield’s Thin Red Line looked like the old woman undone by treachery in Bronzino’s 16th-century masterwork Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.

Jonathan Yablonski’s sleek, 21st-century image of war hung on the opposite wall. Slender lines soared skyward and narrowed at the top of a black skyscraper backdropped by a blood red sky. A human skeleton as large as the high-rise brought to mind the hordes of humanity whose toil and blood build economic and military empires.

In her mixed-media collage, Native, Leila Hamdan painted what it feels like to be hidden away, shamed, and treated like disposable property. A woman totally covered by a black burka, except for eyes that smoldered with rage and regret, shapeshifted into the thick neck, squat torso and stubby legs of a work-horse.

Conceptual artist Sanjit Sethi baked three large cakes for viewers, including one titled “Axis of Evil,” which was decorated with silhouettes of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. We ate the cake from paper plates that were imprinted with the American flag.

Colored pencils and John Morris’ sardonic color-it-yourself print Coloring Colonialism lay on a table against the far back wall. Some viewers added a line or a touch of color to bear witness to the horror depicted. Some viewers turned away. Others, intoxicated by this show’s heady mix of celebration, patriotism, and brutality, colored the scene in ways that further debased the men and women being burned alive by Spanish Conquistadors.

The cakes have been eaten, but the provocative, brutally honest paintings and prints are still on view.

At Delta Axis @ Marhall Arts through November 3rd

Rob Canfield’s Thin Red Line at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts

Emotional battles are fought in Memphis College of Arts’ exhibition, “Threads 11×1, Eleven Artists A Single Vision.”

We see the inner turmoil in Gwyneth Scally’s sienna-red painting Raven, in which a woman howls, tears at her flesh, and tries to crawl out of her skin as her left foot morphs into a bird of prey. We see foreboding in the stern, sad face of a little girl whose left arm is tied to a billowing black cloud in Emily Kalwaitis’ pencil and acrylic wash titled Held. Kristin Martincic’s ceramic sculptures are filled with unresolved longing. Two white legs in Waiting materialize out of an equally white wall, bend at the knees, and strain to touch the plot of real grass just beyond reach on the floor below.

Conceptual artist and writer Buzz Spector tops off these hauntingly noir works with Black Waterfall, a mixed-media sculpture in which tattered threads unravel and cascade down seven feet of black denim, bringing to mind torn curtains and pierced veils. Instead of white light, Spector and the other artists in this exhibition explore the shadows, the unresolved angers and fears, the dark clouds that gather inside and above us all.

At MCA through November 8th

Running in conjunction with this weekend’s RiverArtsFest in South Main is the “RiverArtsFest Invitational Exhibition” at Jay Etkin Gallery. Roger Cleaves’ robotic, cartoon-like characters skulk, stalk, strangle, and stab each other across every square inch of his paintings. In sharp contrast to Cleaves’ sly satire, Cynthia Thompson sculpts delicate understated paper works that tell us about the quiet, gentle wisdom of the body, and Ian Lemmonds’ images of plastic toys combined with evocative light create a tableau of possibility and joy. At Jay Etkin Gallery, October 26th-October 28th