Enjoy Arkwings’ free art yard. (Photo: Courtesy
We Are Memphis)
“I didn’t call myself an artist until I was 52 years old,” says Jana Wilson, executive director of Arkwings. She’d always been creative, even sold her assemblage art from time to time, but since that wasn’t her full-time gig, she didn’t feel she fit the title of “artist.” That is, until someone at an art show pointed out that just making art meant she was an artist. “And all of a sudden I was like, ‘Whoa, I could have been doing this my entire life.’ It’s my identity.”
Now that Wilson is executive director of Arkwings, she says, “I don’t want people going through life the way I did, and not identifying as whatever creative type of being they are.” After all, for her and for many like her, creativity through the arts is healing. “Nine times out of 10, when you ask an artist why they make art, it always go back to, ‘It makes me feel good,’ or ‘It makes me feel like a whole person.’ And there’s so many people out here who are craving arts engagement, and that’s really the heart and soul of why the arts became part of [Arkwings’] mission statement, which is ‘mind, body, and spirit wellness through the healing power of arts and nature.’”
For its part, Arkwings offers free access, seven days a week, to its Art Yard where guests of all ages can take part in different outdoor creativity stations, such as painting on a mini mural, building fairy houses, adding to the poetry tree, picking seeds or herbs from the community garden, and making music at the “Rhythms of Nature Circle.” Plus, every Wednesday, from 2-5 p.m., guests can tour all of Arkwings’ galleries during their Open Gallery Day.
Currently, Arkwings boasts the “Boys 2 Men: If You Don’t See Black, You Don’t See Me” exhibition, curated by Lurlynn Franklin. The exhibit features art solely by local Black men, ranging in age and style: Earle Augustus, Toonky Berry, Eric Echols, Clyde Johnson Jr., Montrail Johnson, Devin Kirkland-XXIV(k), Hakim Malik, Lester Merriweather, Carl E. Moore, Frankd Robinson, Najee Strickland, Andrew Travis, Larry Walker, Steven Williams, and Shamek Weddle.
In curating the exhibition, Franklin says she wanted to highlight each artist’s individuality. “My dad was a real kind gentleman, and he was profiled. You know, you can just snuff out a person’s life, and that’s it, because somebody decided to attach a label, a stereotype, to it,” she adds. “So the major requirement I’m having for the African-American men who are going to be in the show is, I want you to demonstrate your style. It doesn’t have to be political. You ain’t gotta speak to what the title implies. I just want people to see your skill level and artistry.”
“Boys 2 Men” will be on display at Arkwings through July 22nd and will travel to University of Memphis’ Fogelman Gallery in September. For more information on Arkwings and all its upcoming events, follow the nonprofit on Facebook.
Open Gallery Day, Arkwings, Wednesday, July 5, 2-5 p.m., Free.
“Boys 2 Men: If You Don’t See Black, You Don’t See Me,” Arkwings, on display through July 22.
LueElla Marshall was driving home from her job at Kroger when she got a call from God. The streets in her neighborhood of Orange Mound were filled with litter — a sight that weighed heavy on Marshall’s heart. “It used to be a beautiful community,” she says, having lived in Orange Mound since 1966. “But for a long time, this community has been going down. Every day I came home, it looked like the city was getting dirtier and dirtier. So I said, ‘Lord, when is the City of Memphis going to come out here and clean this trash up? It’s just been so long since they’ve done that.’ So God said to me while I’m there riding in the car, he said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’
“And I looked around and wasn’t nobody in the car but me. So I said, ‘Me?’ God said, ‘Yes, it’s you. Why don’t you do it?’ So, all right, I had to think about it. But,” Marshall continues, “when God tells you to do something, you do it all right.”
What came from this calling was Marshall’s 2016 “Art Cans” initiative, through which neighborhood artists and students painted large trash cans to be placed around the neighborhood. Marshall hadn’t really thought much of the arts, she says, until this project. “I got to learn that art is everything. I used to drive past them and think they were beautiful works of art, our receptacles,” Marshall says. “I wanted a place to show them.” And so she opened Orange Mound Gallery (OMG) that year through a grant from ArtUp. Though the gallery has hosted several exhibitions, Marshall had never shown her receptacles in the gallery setting — until now, that is, thanks to the help of artist and arts educator Lurlynn Franklin.
Franklin, Marshall says, brought a new energy to the project that had gone dormant a few years ago. Since the initial trash cans were placed around Orange Mound, many of them have been stolen or destroyed by cars crashing into them. “But I never gave up,” says Marshall, “even when I had to pay people outta my pocket to clean [up] and empty the trash every week. This is a spiritual thing. God told me to do it, but once I started, I still didn’t know what to do ’cause I didn’t get the proper support until Ms. Franklin came to me.”
“I was just moved to help her,” Franklin says. “She’s never had an exhibition of her cans because once they’re painted, they go out in the community. And I just told her this could be a good way to fundraise and it could be good exposure for artists.”
Earle Augustus, radio program director and personality, begins work on his trash receptacle which he will continue painting upon at the “Forms Meet Functions” live show. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
And so, with Marshall’s blessing, Franklin reached out to artists through word of mouth to paint on the receptacles. The receptacles will be displayed at the University of Memphis’ Fogelman Gallery in September, and later will be sold to fundraise for OMG, with 60 percent of the profits going to the artists. Before then, the artists Franklin has gathered will participate in a live painting art show, entitled “Forms Meet Functions,” this weekend at the gallery
“People can go and watch the project’s process, talk to the artists, look at the work that they’ve created, look at their sketches, and connect the dots,” Franklin says of the evening event. “Something happens for people when they can see that.”
From left to right: Walter “Sir Walt” Andrade, Zelitra “Madamn Z” Peterson-Traylor, Toonky Berry, Lurlynn Franklin, Andrew Travis, and Clyde Johnson Jr. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
For the project, Franklin wanted the artists to inject their own style into the cans. “Like form and function,” she says, “the can, it’s all ready to function, but you have to build the art around it. … We’re not going to have empty concepts on these cans. We’re not just slapping anything on them.” These, Franklin says, are meant to be accessible pieces of art that function as trash cans, and indeed, each can is distinct in its style, as evidenced as the artists begin their processes before the show. “It’s about people being able to truly engage with the work, the energy coming off the work.”
Madamn Z paints the basic shapes of her subject, which she will refine at the live painting show on Friday. (Photo: Abigail Morici)
For Madamn Z, the trash receptacle she’s working on harkens back to what she considers her most inspirational piece — a portrait of the model Winnie Harlow. “I use art to heal myself from Crohn’s disease,” she says. “So all of the works that I’ve done, I’ve been able to not only heal myself with, but I hope to inspire other people. … And I think [Harlow] stands out so much because our ideal of beauty has been distorted by mainstream media. And she’s like, ‘You don’t have to be perfect.’
“I remember watching her on Top Model and they called her Panda,” she continues, “and I remember how that hurt her. But she took that and she built a career, and look at what she’s doing now. So it just shows how you can go from thinking you’re on the low end of the spectrum and that you’re not worthy and that you’re trash, you feel like trash, but you’re not. You’re beautiful.”
In addition to painting the cans, Franklin also commissioned the artists to create a piece alluding to the subject of environmentalism for the show. “They were supposed to read these articles I provided and come up with a piece of art that was based on those articles,” she says. “So it’s layered. [As a viewer] it makes you curious, and you wanna dig. Like what the heck is this really about?”
One article, which was the source of a painting by Madamn Z, spoke to Dr. Martin Luther King’s environmentalism. Her piece is divided into two, with one image illustrating police brutality during the I Am a Man strike in Memphis, and the other rendering a child and parent watching that same scene on a television today. “I wanted to focus on how, although King’s dream has been realized somewhat, the reality of it is that our children are still exposed to the same dream he was trying to portray and unify everyone under,” she says. “As a mom raising two young children, that’s not a picture I want my children to be accustomed to watching, but today on the news, that’s all we see.”
Walter “Sir Walt” Andrade touches up his painting, which will be on display as he works on his trash can at the live show. The receptacle, he says, will feature symbols representing Tyre Nichols, Gangsta Boo, and Young Dolph. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
Put simply, King’s dream is a work in progress — a sentiment Marshall echoes. She says of the 55-gallon cans used for her initiative, “Those are the drums that we used to burn our trash in when the sanitation was stopped. I got taken back to when Dr. King was marching and when T.O. Jones and his followers sent for Dr. King to come to Memphis. … I didn’t know God was going to give me something to do that Dr. King was connected to. I always say this [work], it is the spirit of Dr. King and T.O. Jones. It has been a blessing for me.”
Marshall now also heads the Orange Mound Neighborhood and Veterans Association Inc., in addition to her work with OMG, which she hopes to grow as a community space and improve through grants and donations.
Andrew Travis paints his can in his distinct abstract style. Behind the table, as with each table at the show, are samples of the artist’s work. (Credit: Abigail Morici)
“I didn’t know all this was coming,” she says. “See, I’m 75. Faith had to get me here, and I’m still going. People don’t know this gallery here; we don’t have any signs outside — that’s how broke we’ve been. But you see, we still didn’t give up. You can feel the spirit. I can feel it when I’m talking about it and thinking about it. How God just put tears in my eyes. I wouldn’t have known this. I didn’t see it. I didn’t even see it coming. We are onto something that’s really cool.”
“Forms Meet Functions: From Trash to Treasure” will be on display at U of M’s Fogelman Gallery, September 1st-October 1st. The opening reception is September 1st, 6-9 p.m.
