Tag: Metal Museum

Categories
Art Art Feature

Metal Sculptor Lewis Body Sets up Shop in Memphis

Lewis Body was a “misfit artist” during his teen years in Michigan.”I wasn’t interested in school,” he says.

Except art. His art teacher let him spend as much time as he wanted in the art department. “She gave me confidence because she saw something in me.”

Now the owner of L. B. Metal Design in Memphis, metal sculptor/blacksmith Body, 27, recently completed two bus shelters for Athens, Georgia. He takes commissions for furniture, sculpture, and architectural metalwork. But, he says, “Public art is the main thing we’re pushing.”

Lewis Body

Body began working with metal when he was 12. “I would find old Schwinn bikes in dumpsters, and I would chop them up and put long forks on them,” he says. “And make goofy art bikes.”

When he was 14, he got a job in a body shop, where he learned the basics of fabrication and how to weld.

His first metal sculpture was a 3-foot tree made of rebar, which he took to Metal Inc., an art fabrication studio. He was told, “It looks good, but what you need to do is spend time. Really look at a tree and study it. Study each part and what it does.”

Body continued working on his tree, which he wanted to taper. “Working out how I was going to make it taper was what made me realize blacksmithing was even a thing,” he says.

A man at Metal Inc. gave Body an old forge — and, eventually, a job.

Eva Langsdon sits under “Synergy,” a bus shelter by metalsmith Lewis Body.

A year later, Body began apprenticing with master blacksmith Scott Lankton at Lankton Metal Design. “All the forging, blacksmithing techniques in the beginning were learned from him,” he says.

That’s when Body knew his career path. “As soon as I saw what blacksmithing could produce, it was over.” He created a table and then progressed to more contemporary furniture and sculpture.

Body got numerous commissions, but after a year in business, he decided to sell his anvil, buy a plane ticket, and move to Hawaii, where he helped restore a 150-year-old Chinese temple.

After returning, almost a year later, to the mainland, Body began working at Bondi Metal Designs in Oakland, California. While there, he got an apprenticeship at the Metal Museum, which was “maybe the most important thing” he’s done for his career. “It gave me the time and resources to develop my own style,” which he describes as “minimalist” and “volumetric.”

“It’s not flat,” he says. “Every dimension takes up space.”

While at the museum, Body was chosen to do a public arts commission for a guard rail for Johnson City, Tennessee. “I’m grateful to the museum for that experience because they really let me take the reins on it,” he says. “I did all the design work and coordinated with the builders and kind of led the fabrication in the museum shop.”

He decided long ago to stay here. “I fell in love with Memphis through my time here,” he says. “It’s got a real charm to it.”

Body moved all the machinery he’d collected over the years to a warehouse, which he converted to his blacksmith shop. He and his girlfriend, painter/metalsmith Eva Langsdon, who works with him, live in Midtown.

After the move, he got commissions for the Georgia bus shelters. “Synergy” is a contemporary minimalist design with a cantilever roof and a stainless steel bench. “Civic Sprout” is “inspired by a sprouting plant, but the forms are still pretty contemporary in nature,” he says.

Body feels he’s in a good place. “I couldn’t ask for too much more.”

As for Memphis, Body says, “I don’t plan on leaving any time soon.” But, he adds, “I’d like to retire to Hawaii.”

L. B. Metal Design is at 309 West Olive Avenue; (248) 410-0765.

Categories
Cover Feature News

On the Clock: Memphis Animals Who Put in a Day’s Work

CREDIT: Bee Garriott/Facebook

My three dogs haven’t worked a day in their lives. Unless you consider napping, eating, and demanding lovin’s work. That’s my oldest boy, Doogie Howser, on the cover. (Shout-out to Hollywood Feed for providing his cover-worthy wardrobe.) He’s 9 years old, and he is the very best boy. Doogie’s brought me — and, I’m certain, all who’ve encountered him — so much joy (and unsolicited slobbery kisses), so, in that sense, you could say he has put in some work. He also provided crucial insight and editorial assistance for this cover story and is awaiting his paycheck.

We thought it’d be cool to search the city for other animals putting in the time — to brighten people’s days, relieve anxiety, greet guests, or entertain the masses. We found dogs (lots of dogs), cats, ducks, fish, and even goats working various jobs in Memphis. We hope you’ll enjoy — as much as we did — getting to know more about these hard workers and how they keep business going around town. — Shara Clark

Bee Garriott/Facebook

Bee

Bee

“People come in here just to see her,” says Martha Garriott. “They know her name, and they don’t know mine.” Garriott’s referring to her toy poodle, Bee, the unofficial supervisor at Urban Earth Garden Center. Bee’s smaller than many of the lawn ornaments and flower pots the center sells, but she’s doing big, important work. From her post — a comfy bed, layered with toys, atop a tall chair behind the counter — she oversees the store. “Any time I ring up a sale, I have to put her in the chair to get on the register because she’ll bark if I don’t,” Garriott says. “She has to watch me to make sure I do it correctly.”

Bee, a former champion show dog and breeding dog, was rescued by Garriott three years ago and has been working at Urban Earth since 2017. Her duties include greeting customers (who often bring her treats and toys), modeling products for the center’s Facebook page, and providing pet therapy to her co-workers.

When Garriott first brought her home, she says, “Bee had never been on grass, she didn’t know what grass was. She had never been allowed to jump, and I don’t think she knew how to bark, she was so quiet for so long. But she’s got a very good life now. Everybody loves her.” — Shara Clark

Say hi to Bee at Urban Earth Garden Center, 80 Flicker Street.

The Peabody Memphis

Peabody Ducks

Peabody Ducks

Just like clockwork, every day at 5 p.m., after six hours of paddling around in the Peabody Hotel lobby fountain, the illustrious Peabody ducks are ready to retire to their posh Duck Palace on the rooftop. Their “valet,” head Duckmaster Doug Weatherford, steps down before the crowd of eager children and families to announce the ducks’ march back upstairs.

“All that remains is to play the John Philip Sousa ‘King Cotton March’ and march our five feathered friends single-file up the red carpet into that elevator en route to the palace on the rooftop,” he proclaims. “You, too, will have been an eyewitness to the world-famous march of the Peabody ducks!”

The five mallards — one brightly colored male and four females — step onto the red carpet and march back to their humble abode, where they will live for 90 days before they are sent back out into the wild and five of their friends come to take their place. Until then, this team of ducks will continue to enjoy their five-star Peabody Hotel experience, complete with room service — we hear the ducks turn their beaks up at iceberg lettuce, so they receive the finest romaine — and personal showers dealt by Weatherford himself.

“They’re wild animals, so we don’t give them names, and they only ‘work’ for us for 90 days,” says Weatherford. “Our object here is to make sure that they’re healthy and that they remain as unchanged as possible.” — Julia Baker

Watch the ducks march (11 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily) at The Peabody Memphis, 118 S. Second.

T. Clifton Gallery

Argus

Argus

A low bark — almost a grunt — was heard when I entered T. Clifton Art and Custom Framing Gallery. The sound came from a huge ball of fur on the floor. It was Argus, a chocolate St. Bernard who, at the age of 10, is a Broad Avenue legend. The gallery even sells T-shirts bearing Argus’ likeness.

“He’s come to work with me every day since he was 7 weeks old,” says gallery owner Tom Clifton. And this is a gallery filled with glassware, some items priced at thousands of dollars, on open shelves. “Ever since he was a puppy, he’s never broken a thing.”

Argus isn’t a guard dog per se, but he “senses things I don’t,” Clifton says. He’ll let out a “woof, almost a grunt,” which is fitting because Clifton named Argus after a mythological Greek “warrior guard.” Argus, who’s been in FedEx TV commercials and various fashion shoots and brought cheer to nursing homes, is recognized when Clifton goes out.

The first time Clifton saw Argus, he was in a pen with other puppies. Argus walked up to the side of the pen, put his paw on the edge, and stared at him. “That was it,” Clifton says. “From that moment, we’ve been inseparable.” — Michael Donahue

Visit Argus at T. Clifton Art and Custom Framing Gallery, 571 Broad Avenue.

Bruce VanWyngarden

The Goats of Beale

The Goats of Beale

Angelina and Zena are a pair of 5-year-old goats who patrol the west side of the patio at Silky O’Sullivan’s on Beale. They are the fourth pair of goats to inhabit the famed joint since it opened in 1992, a result of a brainstorm by the club’s legendary founder, the late Silky Sullivan. “A goat named Puck is part of Irish mythology,” says club senior manager Jay Wells. “And Silky thought goats would be a great fit for the club. And they have been. People come from far and wide to see them, and they love visitors.”

The goats’ quarters, which include ramps and steps and private spaces, are separated from the customers by a couple of fences, mostly to keep patrons from feeding them or, worse, giving them beer. But Wells let me get up close and personal with A and Z, and let me tell you, they are the sweetest animals you could imagine, affectionate and curious and more than happy to nuzzle faces with their visitor.

“They have a better health plan than I do,” says Wells. “The vet comes regularly to trim their hooves and horns and check them out. They come from a goat farm near Atoka, which is where they retire at some point.”

And what do they eat? “Purina Goat Chow,” says Wells. Well, that, and the saltine crackers I gave them.

— Bruce VanWyngarden

Meet Angelina and Zena at Silky O’Sullivan’s, 183 Beale Street.

Jesse Davis

Zen

Zen

It’s the most common trope in comic books — the traumatic origin story. Wolverine underwent horrible experiments. Ditto Rocket Raccoon, X-23, and the Winter Soldier. Well, real-life comic dog Zen might have them all beat.

“We think she was a bait dog because her ears are clipped, and they’re not professionally clipped. And she had gnarly scars on her head and her legs. She’s filling in now, but she was skinny. She was rough,” says Shannon Merritt, co-owner of 901 Comics and 901 Games and dog-father to Zen.

Like Professor X giving Wolverine a home, Merritt found Zen at Memphis Animal Shelter, whisked her away, and gave her a new home and a new purpose — to patrol the aisles of the comic store, nosing out head-scratches and belly-rubs from customers.

Patrons of 901 Comics will doubtless remember M.J., the mascot of Merritt’s Bad Dog Comics line, who lost her battle with cancer in the winter of 2018. “I had a real tough time when M.J. passed,” Merritt says, though Zen is doing her best to fill the pit-bull-sized hole in his heart. The pair stick together and support each other. “She comes with me whenever I’m working,” Merritt says. “She’s okay with everybody coming in here.” — Jesse Davis

Rub Zen’s belly at 901 Comics, 2162 Young Avenue.

Metal Museum

Spatz

Metal Museum

Mr. Fuller

Spatz and Mr. Fuller

If there’s a sweeter gig than bookstore cat, it can only be museum cat. What better way to pass the time than to pad about the museum grounds keeping an eye out for pests — or for friendly tourists willing to bestow belly rubs? Indeed, resident Metal Museum cats Spatz and Mr. Fuller have it made in the shade. Mr. Fuller is a lazy tabby who showed up in 2008, and Spatz, the wilder of the two, is a black cat who made his first appearance in 2015.

Don’t be fooled by their sweet gig, though, the cats do work. They’re mascots, says youth initiative coordinator Darcie Beeman-Black, who has incorporated the cats into the educational materials for youth groups, like the “I Spy” program and Spatz’s scavenger hunt. Even the cats’ names are teaching tools. “A fuller is a tool in the blacksmith’s shop. It’s a peg that fits perfectly into a slot of the same size, and they use it to make curves in metal,” Beeman-Black explains. “Spatz is the protective covering you wear over your shoes in the foundry. They named him Spatz because when he was a kitten, he was always at your feet.

“They are tough cats. They’re in the shop a lot,” Beeman-Black adds. When they aren’t in the shop, they can be seen lounging around the grounds. Mr. Fuller can usually be found near the sculpture of an ant. “You can just walk up to him and scratch his belly,” Beeman-Black says. “He’s really sweet.” — Jesse Davis

See Spatz and Mr. Fuller at the Metal Museum, 374 Metal Museum Drive.

Jon Sparks

Molly

Molly

Molly greeted me at the door to All About Bikes with a wag and a cold nose. “Come in,” she said, “and try out one of our Baja Trikes. They’re a nice, easy ride for Boomers.” I glared at her: “Are you saying I’m old?” I barked. She looked back with kindly, soulful eyes and nuzzled me saying, “It’s okay, I’m 12 years old, so I’m sympathetic. We can get you a comfortable seat as well.”

I harrumphed and looked at Tommy James, the shop’s co-owner and devoted minion to Molly. Ignoring my snit, he explained the store was formerly All About Pets, and you can see the one-time resident dog Shelby memorialized on the back wall. The mission changed, but a canine presence was preserved, and sweet, laid-back Molly has the run of the place, sometimes going out front to take in the air and receive visitors who often will come by just to say hi to her. Tommy doesn’t seem to take offense. I scratch Molly behind the ears and say, “Okay, you got something in a comfort bike?” She gives me a nudge. “Walk this way,” she says. “I got you.”

— Jon W. Sparks

Let Molly assist you at All About Bikes, 621 S. Mendenhall.

Bass Pro

Bass Pro

Fish, Ducks, and Alligators (Oh my!)

“There he is! There’s the surgeon!” That was the cry from a youthful visitor to the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid during a visit last week. The lad, who was eager to communicate his excitement to a group of peers being squired by adults, was no doubt a vacationer from elsewhere, like many, perhaps most, of the visitors to the Memphis riverside attraction.

The young man was verbally mistaken; there was no doctor swimming in the pool where he was pointing. But there was a bona fide sturgeon — a big fish that was clearly an exotic being, a long, silver eminence among the dark lesser spawn swimming in the murky waters on the Pyramid floor. It’s not the dolphins at SeaWorld, but these aquatic creatures are an attraction all the same for the people who come to the Bass Pro Pyramid, not only to purchase outdoors ware but, it would seem, to get a whiff of the natural outdoors world while they’re at it.

The fish are real; so are the ducks in another pool, and the alligators swimming in a tank near the elevator. There are other wild creatures on view at Bass Pro — bears, moose, wild boars, for example, but these are stuffed animals or facsimiles of the real thing. Not working stiffs like the fish and the ducks. Just plain stiffs. But they all, real or fabricated, earn their keep.

— Jackson Baker

See the creatures of the great outdoors indoors at Bass Pro Shops, 1 Bass Pro Drive.

Maya Smith

Axel

Axel

While brothers Darin and Josh Throndson are busy making teeth and other dental supplies at Innovative Dental Technologies’ lab in Crosstown Concourse, Axel, their chocolate brown cane corso, is there for moral support. Only a year old, Axel already weighs about 120 pounds. He’s giant but gentle, they say.

The brothers say tug-of-war is one of his favorite pastimes. He also enjoys the dog park on the Crosstown campus. But, their friendly companion spends most of the work day sleeping. And he’s a snorer. The brothers say the snoring is sometimes distracting but a reliable source of laughter.

Since Crosstown is dog-friendly, Axel comes to work every day with the brothers, who work long hours, sometimes 60 hours a week. “He’s good company and it’s allowed, so why not bring him?”

He’s been coming to the lab since he was a puppy. The brothers carried him to the fourth-floor office in a laundry basket until he was big enough to walk. When Crosstown regulars see Axel now, they are surprised that this is the same dog that had to be carried in a basket, the brothers say.

— Maya Smith

Axel’s hard at work at Innovative Dental Technologies, 1350 Concourse Avenue, Suite 450.

Daniel McGarry

Buster

Buster

When I walk into Clearview Family Eyecare, Buster is on the receiving end of joyful head-scratches being doled out by a curly-haired toddler while her parents finalize their appointment. According to his owner, Dr. Seth Salley, he’s the clinic’s Chief Happiness Officer or CHO.

His primary duty, aside from rigorous napping, is greeting people. “When he hears somebody walk in, he comes out and sniffs them and says hi,” Salley says. “And then he sits on people’s feet.” His presence also tends to take the edge off for nervous patients. “I had an autistic kid in here a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking to Buster and me. When we got through the exam, his mom said, ‘I don’t know what happened, but he never talks to doctors … I think it was Buster.’ He just has that effect.”

Buster, 5, is an English Springer Spaniel imported from Sweden by breeders in Mason, Tennessee. “He was a breeding prospect, but they told me, ‘He’s so laid-back, he won’t breed.'” He’s been working as Clearview’s online mascot, welcome crew, and calming agent since he was adopted six months ago. His Swedish export pedigree papers list his given name as Big Brazzel Dragon Fly, but at the request of Salley’s kids, they renamed him Buster, after Andy’s dog in Toy Story. — SC

Feel Buster’s serenity at Clearview Family Eyecare, 618 Oakleaf Office Lane, #100.

Toby Sells

Lucy

Lucy

When Lucy does her job, there are no good options. “If you’re right, it’s bad,” says K9 Officer Brian Jenkins. “If you’re wrong, it’s bad, just in a different way.”

Lucy is a German Wirehaired Pointer, a stocky, beautiful dog with a gray/chocolate coat. Brimming with energy, she bursts through a door at Memphis International Airport, and her nose immediately goes to the ground. Over a bag, behind the gate desk, and up and down the rows of empty seats, Lucy hunts bombs. Lucy was trained at Lackland Air Force Base. Some of her kennel mates joined the military, sniffing out explosives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lucy met Jenkins and came to Memphis, keeping the airport here safe with the Transportation Security Administration.

After a few more sniffs, Lucy sits. Jenkins throws her a tennis ball, pets her head, and praises her good work. It was a training exercise, of course. If it was real, only bad options would be left. It’s either a “multi-million-dollar mistake” to dump the concourse, re-screen passengers, and recall aircraft, or, “there’s a bomb in my airport,” Jenkins says. Lucy just thinks she’s playing, though. Yes, she goes home with Jenkins at night. And, yes, “she has her own bedroom.” But, no, you should not pet Lucy. She’s working to keep you safe, and pets from strangers aren’t part of her training. — Toby Sells

See Lucy in action — no touching, please! — at Memphis International Airport, 2491 Winchester Road.

Categories
News News Blog

Metal Museum Eyes Overton Park Expansion

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Metal Museum leaders are looking to expand the museum to Memphis College of Art’s (MCA) Rust Hall in Overton Park in a $45 million proposed project.

MCA officials announced in October 2017 the school would close because of ”declining enrollment, overwhelming real estate debt, and no viable long-term plan for financial sustainability.” The school is expected to be fully closed by 2020.

Earlier this year, city leaders launched Project Overton Park to envision the future for Rust Hall and the Brooks Museum of Art, as its leaders eye a move to a new location on the Memphis riverfront.
[pullquote-1] Carissa Hussong, the Metal Museum’s executive director, said when the city issues a request for proposals for Rust Hall, the museum intends to submit an application.

The museum would keep its French Fort location on the river for residency programs. Rust Hall would be the site of the museum’s exhibition spaces, metalworking facilities with apprentices, commissions, and repairs, and an expanded education program, Hussong said.

To get there, the Metal Museum has kicked off a $45 million capital campaign. It includes $21 million for renovations to Rust Hall, $4 million in renovations to its existing campus, and a $20 million endowment “to ensure the museum’s ongoing financial stability and to provide adequate resources to maintain Rust Hall.”

“At first, when the idea of Rust Hall was mentioned to me, I thought, why would we do that?” Hussong said. “We have such a beautiful location that is such a part of our history. But the more I thought about it, I thought, maybe we could do both.”

The Metal Museum is six years into a process to re-envision its campus, Hussong said. They’ve been working with Looney Ricks Kiss, a local architectural, planning, and interior design firm, on a new campus master plan. They’ve also been conducting surveys “to see what people want and to what we’re doing well and not doing well,” she said.

“What we’ve gotten from that process is more — people have said we want more of everything,” Hussong said.

Metal Museum/Facebook

Should the museum be chosen for expansion into Rust Hall, the French Fort location could be home to am artist-in-residency program that “does not exist elsewhere in the United States.“ Metalworking requires lots of heavy equipment, Hussong said, and moving it is expensive. That makes traditional metalworking residencies long (lasting years) and costly.

The Metal Museum’s on-site equipment would give ”emerging metalsmiths access to equipment they not afford early in their careers.” Its onsite housing could also lower the cost and shorten the time of residencies.

At Rust Hall, the museum would have the opportunity for a “more robust class offering.” It has no dedicated classrooms now, Hussong said. Also, no indoor space means they haven’t offered summer camps or courses.

“There are a lot of things we would be able to do in a larger location and we’d really be able to expand our programming,” she said.

The museum now has about 25,000 square feet, a staff of 19, an annual operating budget of about $1.5 million, and about 30,000 visitors each year.

Museum leaders have said the move would also allow the museum to triple its exhibition space, triple its annual visitor number, educate at least 3,800 students each year, triple the metalworking space, enlarge the museum store, and more. 

Categories
Art Art Feature

Work by Josh Breeden and E.A. Chase.

St. Francis Elevator Ride, i.e. designer and artist Josh Breeden, makes digital collages that look roughly like what your grandmother might have seen if she took acid and spent a long time exploring her 1960s kitchen. Tequila-sunrise-tinted backdrops create a ground for bouquets of metallic machinery, while illustrative body parts float somewhere in the natural order.

In a new show, “Lush Interiors,” at the Memphis Botanic Garden, Breeden expands his practice into three dimensions: The collages are separated out on several wooden planes, which, in turn, are bolted together to create a layered image. Breeden makes the cuts using a CNC router, and so, like everything else on the Elevator Ride, the panels are cleanly designed. This approach is a step forward but not a departure from the artist’s earlier work, which variously portrayed the crystallized and melting visage of Miley Cyrus and mid-century dinner parties gone psychedelically haywire.

Tending the Typing Pool by St. Francis Elevator Ride

The collages in “Lush Interiors” bring to mind Renaissance botanical drawings. The outsized fruits of the artist’s imagination, coupled with some engineering-style linework, give the impression of a Taxonomy of the Weird. Even the assumed name seems to confirm: St. Francis, old world patron of the natural, goes on an elevator ride, otherwise known as the No. 1 American experience. So it makes sense that there is a good mix of gross Americana and transcendent florals visible in the work.

Breeden is a great designer, and his work as St. Francis definitely walks a border between art and design. But I’d be curious to see what would happen if he abandoned his spic-and-span design sensibility and let in some mess. After all, a 1960s grandma on hallucinogens would probably not have the time to clean.

Contemporary blacksmithing is not so much a job as it is a vocation, like nunhood or being a Hollywood stuntman. The average American teenager doesn’t just stumble into a smithy on the way home from Anime club, and so the few current-day souls who choose to spend their life in a forge are special. In my experience (and I used to work at the Metal Museum, so I get to have an opinion), the field is populated with people who love doing things the hard way, appreciate nature, make bad puns, and are usually very sturdy.

Bear these traits in mind when you go see the blacksmith E.A. Chase’s exhibit of engineering sketches, on view at the museum through October 2nd. The small exhibit is located on the first floor of the museum’s library building, and, though it isn’t the flashiest show in the museum’s history, it is certainly one of the most candid. You can imagine Chase, a white-bearded, veteran craftsman, sitting in his California studio and carefully shading in his imaginative designs of steel mermaids, copper monkeys, and iron dragonflies.

E.A. Chase’s Proposed Sculpture for the City of Exeter, California

Chase is one of the 20th century’s most noted blacksmiths, a New-York-educated craft revivalist whose designs are both innovatively engineered and unusually artful. The artist made his drawings of gates, lamps, railings, chandeliers, and fireplace sets for a seemingly whimsical and monied Californian clientele. His butterfly-shaped steel gates, lovingly sketched on velum paper, will make you want to acquire coastal property and grow citrus fruit. Hand-serifed letters and accompanying sketches of miniature blacksmiths only add to the candor and charm of the work.

The show of Chase’s drawings offers visitors a chance to visualize the labor and extensive planning that goes into large-scale metalworking projects, even those that never came to fore. There’s something sad and beautiful about the drawings for projects that were left somewhere in the balance. One structure, a proposed public commission, showcases the complete history of the city of Santa Cruz from indigenous history to tech economy. The drawing is elaborately made, but the gate never came to fruition. A brief note beneath the piece reads that it “floundered in politics.”

Categories
Art Exhibit M

Peculiar Forms: Taiwanese Metalwork in Memphis

CREDIT: Visual Cues, Ms. Chen, Ting-Chun

Visual Cues, Ms. Chen, Ting-Chun

This Sunday, December 13, from 2-5PM, the Metal Museum will host an opening ceremony for a new traveling exhibition, the 2015 Taiwan International Metal Crafts Competition. The exhibition, which will remain on view through March 13, 2016, features the best of Taiwanese metalwork as judged by the The Gold Museum of Taipei City. 

Soliloquy, Ms. Ou, Li-Ting

The artworks featured in the exhibition draw from both modern and more traditional tropes of metalwork, combining eastern and western craft sensibilities to create a selection both broad and masterful. Work by Li-Ting Ou and Ting-Chun Chen (both featured above) stands out. 

Flavour, Ms. Chen, Siou-Yi

The Metal Museum is one of few museums in the world devoted exclusively to fine metalwork. This will be the first exhibition from Taiwan that the Metal Museum has hosted. 

Categories
Art Art Feature

“A Kind of Confession” at the Metal Museum.

There is nothing creepier than a useless machine. I don’t mean an obsolete or a broken machine. I mean a machine that clicks and whirs pointlessly, full of complex mechanics that achieve nothing. We count on our machines to provide simple solutions to clear problems. A pointless machine unsettles both question and answer.

Metalsmith David Clemons, a medical illustrator-turned-craftsman, is expert at creating functionless machines. His sculptures, on view now as part of the Metal Museum’s “A Kind of Confession,” are threatening and oblique in equal measure. Works such as 2007’s Sensoscopia draw from the visual index of antiquated medical devices and futuristic weapons. Senescopia is almost a gun, almost a microscope — true to form but completely neutered of purpose.

Clemons, who is black, places his artistic concern in “things that deal specifically with racial identity and construction,” whether that identity is formed from within or without. Sculptures such as Blood (2004) and Polyps (2013) deal with identity on multiple levels — not only African-American identities forged around a long history of brutality, but also to the industrial history of steel and wood. Clemons’ materials are not a casual footnote in his work; he uses steel’s material vocabulary to pose an ontological question. Taken apart, the shiny joints and levers of Senescopia mean nothing, but imagined together become an identifiable (if purposeless) system. Clemons’ machines ask: At what point do we identify a series of isolated characteristics as a definite something? Or someone?

Metal is an apt material to communicate America’s violent history of racial injustice. The artists in “A Kind of Confession” use the tropes of metal (its association with jewelry, weapons, medicine, farm tools) to re-envision the history and meaning of the material’s use. “A Kind of Confession,” curated by Grace Stewart, presents work by 11 black metalsmiths, divided into three categories: work that addresses African roots, colonial history, and contemporary issues. The title is drawn from a James Baldwin quote: “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” As featured artist Helen Elliott puts it, these works are an attempt to “tell the truth and shame the devil.”

Shani Richards’ Bulletproof

Shani Richards’ Bulletproof, a chainmail hoodie made out of soda tabs, references teenager Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman. It is displayed spread across a low pedestal, sleeves slightly askew. It is a clear memorial, simple and moving. Richards communicates, in one piece, something that a million photographs, news blips, and think-pieces couldn’t: Violence is quiet and senseless. We are left trying to make up the difference in hoodies and soda tabs.

Other stand-out works from the exhibition include Tanya Crane’s Which Side Do You Pick, a chain made out of a hair pick and plated gold; Joyce Scott’s beaded statuette of a woman, titled He’s My Husband and He’s My Baby; and Sonya Clark’s Roots & Branches (In Hair and Copper). In a time when much contemporary artwork feels tone-deaf to political and social realities, these works are tuned in. Their success is immediately related to the way that the artists consider their materials.

Taken together, the work in “A Kind of Confession” is the most challenging contemporary art Memphis has seen in recent memory. I’ll follow critic Ben Davis in saying that we need a “more organically political character for contemporary art” and that this can only be achieved through artists focusing on our country’s complex history of injustice. We need artists and curators who can see the pointless machine, piece for piece.

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. 

[jump]

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. 

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Bike To Work Day/Bikesploitation

Bicycles are everywhere these days. And you’ll be seeing a lot more of them this week as Bike Month kicks into high gear with events like Downtown Memphis’ Bike to Work Day and Bikesploitation at the Metal Museum.

The addition of 71 new miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared-use paths has led to increased bicycle usage. While pedal-pushing trend lines have remained flat for most of Tennessee, Memphis has seen its number of bike riders double since 2008. A four-week study conducted in the fall of 2013 showed 21,000 people using just the Wolf River Greenway with a 500-average of weekday users ramping up to 1,300 on the weekend. That sounds impressive, but the study concludes that while Memphis is becoming a more bike-friendly city, more events and opportunities for education will be required to catch us up to national averages. As it happens, more events are on the horizon.

Friday, May 16th, Downtown Memphis will celebrate five years of participating in Bike-to-Work Day, a competition to see which area businesses can put the most bikes on the street. Individuals register at downtownmemphis.com then each company will verify participation by posting a group photo to the Downtown Memphis Bike to Work Facebook page.

The two-wheeled goodness continues on Saturday with Bikesploitation. The free bike-centric festival, held at the Metal Museum, features a variety of events for cycling enthusiasts. Every Bikesploitation event is a little different, but they all feature music, bike-specific art and film, good food, family fun, and games, as well as some unusual bikes.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Bikesploitation Returns For More Cycle Films at the Metal Museum

CREDIT: valibus.com

The fourth annual Bikesploitation film festival is about more than just film. “I think a lot of communities that are embracing the bicycle are having film festivals. We’re seeing them pop up all over the place,” Christopher Reyes says. Reyes and his partner Sarah Fleming have been putting on the festival since their days as co-creators of the music, art, film, and culture website Live From Memphis.

The goal of the event is to both entertain and educate the public about the world’s most efficient mode of transportation. “It’s really popular, the bicycle genre, among filmmakers,” says Fleming, whose bicycle-themed short documentary Training Wheels was a hit on the indie festival circuit in 2011. “If you’re looking for feature films, it’s kind of hard, but if you’re looking for good, short bicycle films, there are lots to choose from.”

valibus.com

Art, music, races, and more at this year’s Bikesploitation

Curated by Memphis filmmaker Edward Valibus, the film competition includes selections from all over the world. “We try to have a really good collection, so there’s BMX stuff, and there’s mountain bike stuff, road bike stuff, fixes, you name it,” Fleming says. “And there are all different genres, like narrative films and documentaries, so you can get a great overview of films from around the world and locally.”

Films from as far away as Australia and Israel will screen at the festival. Walnut documents craftsman Geoffrey Franklin’s process of making bike accessories from wood by hand. The spectacular Dust in the Chain from Germany follows a daring stunt rider’s trick-filled trip through an abandoned industrial building. Canadian director David Phu’s six-part film on Vancouver’s bike culture is an inspiration to those trying to make Memphis more bike-friendly.

“Most of the films are geared to inspire,” Reyes says. “That’s what we want the whole festival to be. We want people to approach biking with creativity, with film, music, and art, so it’s easy for people to tap into the scene and find something that interests them.”

Live From Memphis’ multimedia approach will be alive and well at the Metal Museum during the all-day festival. Events include a massive bike-related art show, a number of races and time trials, and interactive sculptures. “If you’re an artist and you have something that is somehow bicycle-related that you want to be in the show, we wanted to include it in the show,” Fleming says.

The location is new this year. “We’ve been wanting to do it at the Metal Museum for a long time, but part of the issue was getting there safely on bikes,” Fleming says. A series of group rides (“slow jams,” as Reyes calls them) has been organized from all over the city to help riders find the best route to the bluff-side festival.

“The ride leaders are stoked,” Fleming says. “There’s one is South Memphis, one in East Memphis, one in the University of Memphis area, one in Midtown, and one in downtown. It’s not about, ‘Oh, I ride a fixie’ or ‘I like to race.’ It’s about the bicycle in general. We want all kinds of people who ride bicycles to get together.”

Bikesploitation 4

Saturday, May 17th

National Ornamental Metal Museum

Free

bikesploitation.com