South Main Trolley Night

Wow.   We just got done working one of the showcase rooms at the Folk Alliance and I can easily go another 365 days before listening to any more folk music.

Oh - and South Main's trolley arts thingy is this Friday... February 29th.  I always have trouble remembering when is the last Friday, so here's your notice.

Some highlights... Jay Etkin Gallery is featuring John Garland, Solomon Behnke, and Chicago artist Marcie Oakes.

mx

Okwui Enwezor Lecture Has Been Cancelled

Okwui Enwezor lecture at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

Thursday, February 28, 7 pm.

Okwui Enwezor will lecture in the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Auditorium.

Free with museum admission

Sponsored by the Mr. and Mrs. David Kempner Fund

Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor is one of the world's foremost curators of contemporary art. He will discuss Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography as a response to Afro-Pessimism--a term he developed for viewing Africa only through war, disease, poverty and heartbreak. Enwezor is not interested in replacing the downbeat with upbeat; rather, he seeks to present a complex, 360 degree view of the modern-day complexities of daily life across a vast continent of over fifty nations.

David McCarthy lecture at Memphis College of Art

Rhodes College's Contemporary art historian David McCarthy will present "Dirty Freaks and High School Punks: Americans in Vietnam with Peter Saul" at Memphis College of Art's Callicott Auditorium on Tuesday, February 26 at 7:00 pm.

Hans Schmitt-Matzen at Material Friday

For immediate release:
February 24, 2008

Contact: Hamlett Dobbins, 901.219.1943, hamlettdobbins@hotmail.com

Material is pleased to present its third exhibition of 2008: Hans Schmitt-Matzen: The Lace of History. The exhibition will run for one night only with a reception on Friday, February 29th from 6-8 pm.

A Nashville based artist, Hans Schmitt-Matzen has displayed his work in group exhibitions throughout the country and will be included in the upcoming Tennessee Abstract Painters show at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art.

The Lace of History will present a cross section of two related series of artworks. Several of the works will be from the Loop series, a collaboration with photographer Gieves Anderson. The works in the Loop series comprise a two-part cycle. In the first part, one of Anderson’s photographs is selected to conceptually and formally influence the path of Schmitt-Matzen’s painting. The combination of these photographic and painted elements amounts to a finished work that is the first part of the sequence. After the completion of the first phase, Anderson begins the second stage by converting the first piece back into a photograph. The resulting photograph then stimulates another painting that becomes the second phase and establishes a cycle of cause-and-effect relationships within and between the works. This closed system metaphorically reenacts art’s history—in which all that is made is influenced by what preceded it.

Schmitt-Matzen will also show his personal investigation of other aesthetic paths that Anderson’s photographs might have traveled in his Tangent series. With this project, Hans has sought to engender a web of causality more complex than the linear relationships recognizable in the Loop series. These works allow each cause to have more than one effect, broadening the scope of the overall artistic system to bring it in sync with the complexity that exists in the world.

Hans received his BFA from Middle Tennessee State University in 2003 and has subsequently become an active constituent in the Nashville arts community. He is on the board of directors for the Fugitive Art Center, a nonprofit curatorial organization exhibiting artworks nationally and internationally. Hans is currently employed at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts as an exhibition designer.

Material is located at 2553 Broad Avenue. Parking is available on both the north and south sides of Broad Avenue.

Jpg information: “Schmitt_Matzen.jpg” is Hans Schmitt-Matzen’s Tangent VIII. Oil and alkyd on canvas, 28" x 48", 2006

Joey Fauerso at Clough-Hanson Gallery

February 20, 2008
Contact: Hamlett Dobbins, Director
Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College
(901) 843-3442
For Immediate Release:
Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College is very excited to announce its fourth show of the season: Joey Fauerso: Cling to Me.

Cling to Me will run from February 22 through March 26, 2008.
Please note: the gallery will be closed from March 1 – 10 for spring break & March 20 - 24 for the Easter holiday.

The artist will present a lecture on her work in Blount Auditorium in Buckman Hall on Thursday, February 21st at 7 p.m.

The reception for the show will be held in the gallery from 6 - 8 p.m., Friday February 22, 2008.

Beginning in the fall of 2005, Joey Fauerso was in New Mexico for a year at the Roswell Artist in Residence program where she spent a great deal of her time in the southwestern landscape. Her exhibition Clough-Hanson Gallery draws from this experience. Cling to Me will feature two video animations and a number of large format watercolor paintings that reflect Fauerso’s interest in different kinds of physical and metaphorical transcendence. For the inspiration for the watercolors, the artist draws from a story about Krishna as a child and his foster mother Yasodhara from the Bhagavad Gita where it is written that: “Krishna was fond of butter, and he raided her storehouse for this delicacy. She discovered him in the act, once and began to scold him. He opened his mouth to cry, and therein, Yasodhara, saw, to her astonishment, the whole Earth, the solar system, and the entire Universe. Filled with awe she bowed to Him, retreating, but he closed this vision and comforted her, but, never did she forget this great vision…” This experience of viewing the landscape through this portal, or what the artist has described as a “tear in the body to the soul,” transports the viewer at once inside and outside the body and raises a number of questions about how we fit into nature.

Joey Fauerso was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1976. She attended the University of Iowa where she received her BFA in 1998. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 2001. Since then she has had residencies at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming and a year long residency at the Roswell Artist in Residence program in New Mexico. She has had a number of solo exhibitions including Wide Open Wide at Women & Their Work in Austin, Texas; If I’m thinking I’m Probably Feeling at the Roswell Museum of Art in New Mexico, at Finesilver Gallery in Houston Texas. She has been included in group shows nationally including ones at Western Projects in Chicago, Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, Bamboo Lane in Los Angeles, Diverse Works in Houston as well at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas. She lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.


If you should have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Gallery Director Hamlett Dobbins at Clough-Hanson Gallery (901) 843-3442, via email at dobbinsh@rhodes.edu.

Jpg information: Joey Fauerso, Field Study (3), Watercolor on paper, 45 x 66", 2008. Image courtesy the artist & Finesilver Gallery, Houston.

Our Town

So the Memphis art scene seems to be blossoming of late with the success of the 2.0 rave at Rozelle, the addition of Odessa and the Cove to the Broad Street corridor, and rumors circulating of a new space in viscinty of the old Sears catalog building.  It's all exciting news and speculation. Enough to get some people talking about the lack of cohesion in the Memphis scene.

That's where we're hoping that this blog and message board will come in.  Please help us spread the word that this is a place to hype your stuff as well as find out what's happening this weekend or next.

Heart Heart

ZÜRCo

Rozelle Repairs

First thing first: For the record, we are NOT looking to book any bands or DJs, or host any raves, shows, concerts, parties, or events in the warehouse at all until summer, at least. If you've got a buddy that's looking for a venue, direct him to the Hi-Tone, or DeCleyre, or
somewhere else for the time being. We cannot accommodate them. We are more than happy to provide you with phone numbers or e-mails of other non commercial establishments. Pass it on, you guys.

That being said, here's the WHY: The pressure is back on from the city, courts, and Anti-Neglect Dept. to get some repairs actually done. The work schedule that we have submitted to the city is behind by a few months now, because of our unfortunate robbery and the
subsequent scurrying about to throw fundraising events that followed. It is now mid-February, and by early-to-mid-March, we've got to have some noticeable exterior improvement for an inspection.

NEXT SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD, starting at 9AM, we'll have a work team at the warehouse. On the agenda for the day is caulking and plastering the cracks in exterior courtyard wall, leveling the same wall with brick & mortar, and most likely beginning repairs on the awning, which is rotten in one corner. Anyone can help, but if you have experience with masonry or construction whatsoever, you will be of even greater value. Bring a pair of gloves if you can.

We will be supplying most materials, and throughout the next week, will be looking to borrow, buy, or rent a few others, including: a cement mixer, a sturdy A-frame or triple-frame ladder (to steadily hold a large man & several cinder blocks), and 4x6ft sheets of OSB. If
you know of a means of acquiring any of these, please let us know. We've got the manpower, time, and trucks to haul it & return it, if need be.

We will most likely be convening again on Sunday morning to paint over everything. I'll send out a notice beforehand with the time.

In other news, we are still awaiting our paperwork to come back to us in the mail, most likely closer to mid-March, upon which we'll be applying for grants to continue this kind of work.

ZÜRCO. WS

It's live and in person.  Let's populate this mother and then we can start the hype machine.

Do it to it.

MX