Marshall Arts – Memphis Flyer

According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37 percent think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

Local artist Stephanie Albion falls in this 61 percent. Once the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked in May, she knew she had to do something to express her anger, frustration, and sadness, so she turned to collage, her mode of communication. She also turned to Danielle Sumler in hopes of reviving the Nasty Women of Memphis.

In 2017, Sumler, along with Chelle Ellis, founded the Nasty Women of Memphis, joining a movement of other Nasty Women chapters throughout the country who were putting on pop-up exhibitions in response to the 2016 election. “The whole thing is, one, giving artists a chance to just express themselves and have a conversation,” Sumler explains, “but also, making it a fundraiser, too. The artist, when they submit their work, price it themselves, but each piece needs to donate at least 50 percent to Planned Parenthood, with the rest going directly to the artist. Some choose to donate more.”

For that first exhibition, Ellis and Sumler had met only a month before opening. “It was very fast,” Sumler says. “I think I was kind of shocked by how well received it was under that timeline. We were packed that opening night. It was really exciting — all the positive responses, not only from the artists who submitted but also all the people who came.”

Nasty Women of Memphis’ opening reception in 2017. (Photo: Nasty Women of Memphis)

That year, Nasty Women art exhibitions spread globally, raising money on behalf of women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights, but now most of the chapters are seemingly defunct, including the original New York City chapter. Yet in Memphis, the Nasty Women have put on three exhibitions since that inaugural year.

The next exhibition opened in 2018 and addressed the Me Too Movement and Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation. The third opened virtually in 2020, responding to all that was 2020.

“We actually closed on the day the election results came in, so that was pretty cool,” Sumler adds. After that, Ellis and Sumler had agreed that the 2020 exhibit would be their last exhibit, feeling that they had said all they needed to say. “We were kind of like, ‘We’ve done this enough, we’ve had our time with it.’”

But then Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Stephanie Albion reached out to Sumler. “We were like, ‘Well, that’s a perfect reason to wanna do something.’” So on June 25th, the day after the Roe v. Wade reversal, they announced that another exhibition would happen — “another chance to express our rage through art and another chance to support Planned Parenthood.” The show would be titled “CHOICE.”

Angi Cooper’s *Objectification Board* (Photo: Courtesy the Artist)

The call for artists went out to women, people with uteruses, and all those who support reproductive rights. “It’s really important for us to make it an inclusive conversation because not only does this affect someone who identifies as female, but it affects everyone really.” From there, Sumler, Ellis, Albion, and artist Savana Raught worked together on a volunteer basis to select the more than 80 artists of various media and styles. In the end, the pieces, when put together, touch on a range of emotions coming out of the reversal of Roe v. Wade: frustration, sadness, fear, anger.

Cheryl Hazelton, who is featured in the show, writes in her artist statement, “I’m terrified of what the future might bring. I need to do something … anything … to support the fight against this obvious aggression.” Meanwhile, Emma Self Treadwell writes, “If it were up to me, I’d line the walls of Congress with uteruses as a reminder that we are here, and we are all around you … so choose wisely what you do with our rights.”

Mary Jo Karimnia’s *The Fall 3* (Photo: Courtesy the Artist)

Overall, each piece points to the consensus that, as artist Jenee Fortier writes, “Access to safe abortion services is a human right. None of us are safe until all of us are safe.”

You can schedule a tour of the show here or by emailing nastywomenmemphis@gmail.com. The group will host a closing reception Friday, October 21st, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. You can also view and purchase work from the show online. Prices start at $10, and proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi.

“CHOICE,” Marshall Arts, 639 Marshall Ave., on display through Friday, October 21st.

In her exhibition “Beth Edwards: Inside Out” at David Lusk Gallery, Edwards’ saturate, surreal paintings take us deep inside memory and the creative process and, along the way, turn some of Baudrillard’s postmodern notions inside out. Instead of viewing representations (what Baudrillard calls “simulacra”) as perversions or pretenses of reality, Edwards welcomes all images as raw materials that feed her imagination.

All color schemes and combinations of high-and-low art are possible in Edwards’ worlds. In Happy Day, an exuberant anthropomorphic mouse stands in front of an orange divan and plastic plant and looks at the painting of a human figure fractured by cubism. In Annunciation, a baby doll with a green face and orange hair stands in a royal-blue room looking out an open window. In Edward Hopper-like fashion, sunlight pours into the otherwise empty room creating a geometric pattern on the wall.

All of Edwards’ art is filled with spirit and anointed with light. With the vintage dolls, cartoon characters, and modernist paintings of her mid-20th-century childhood, Edwards builds highly expressive worlds that suggest what is most “real” is unfettered memory and imagination.

“Beth Edwards: Inside Out” at David Lusk Gallery through September 29th

“NIA: Salon 3,” Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts’ current exhibition, showcases established artists and newcomers in an unsettling, exhilarating group show that depicts the world at a boiling point.

Frank D. Robinson’s mesmerizing installation, Full Support, covers the entire back wall with 21st-century posters and paraphernalia. In the large mixed-media painting, Baby Jesus, Ron Herd creates a mosaic of the hopes/needs/fears that drive us all. Crowns, crosses, and doves are everywhere. Large transparent wings flank Christ’s body. Red flames burn inside him, and his crucified feet cradle an ebony baby with an all-seeing eye.

Ron Herd’s Baby Jesus

A charred lump of clay, dressed in crudely stitched burlap, stands at the end of a road blown into rubble in Dail Chambers’ mixed-media installation Crossroads. While Chambers records what happens when disparate points of view collide, Aundra McCoy’s Spirit Dolls provides hope that the world’s cultures and creeds might find a way to co-exist. McCoy’s beaded and feathered fetishes are filled with spirit all-embracing and all-encompassing enough to weave Middle Eastern, Native-American, and African motifs into one exquisitely beautiful work of art.

“NIA: Salon 3” at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts through September 29th

Two of the most cogent images in Jonathan McNabb’s exhibition “New Works,” at Eclectic Eye, take us inside a cathedral and an abandoned prison.

In the silver gelatin print, Notre Dame Cathedral, Christ still hangs on the cross near the ceiling but is almost lost in the shadows. Candles burn far below.

In Prison Interior, light pours through the crumbling walls and jail cells of an abandoned correctional institute, where pictures of family members, Hollywood stars, and comedians are still tacked to the walls. The sunlight pouring through empty jail cells brings to mind Christ’s message — more powerfully than the shadowy scene of the crucifixion in a grand cathedral — of stones loosened, tombs emptied, and darkness pierced by light.

“Jonathan McNabb: New Works” at Eclectic Eye through October 3rd

Photo artist Ian Lemmonds is another artist who finds beauty and hope in unexpected places. Five out of eight prints in “Serial Monogamy,” Lemmonds’ current exhibition at L Ross Gallery, consist of piles of Barbie doll legs backdropped by various shades of monochromatic tiles. Light reflecting off the plastic and ceramic surfaces transforms the legs into glowing bouquets. The slender, long-stemmed shapes counterpoint the square tiles on which they lie. Lemmonds captures our attention with body parts placed in obscure settings. As we stand transfixed, searching for metaphor and meaning — is there something titillating, prurient, or brutish about these dismembered limbs? — he surprises us with an experience of beauty that means everything and nothing.

Another untitled print has a similar effect. Two minuscule human figures look at a huge luminous plastic rabbit materializing out of the floor. This is not the radioactive creature that ate New York. Instead, a father hoists his son onto his shoulders to better see the limpid-eyed creature embued with something like hope and the suggestion that beauty and wonder are all around us.

“Serial Monogamy” at L Ross Gallery through September 30th