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67art of value 2011/sixtyseven/the journal/winter arts independent an

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Cover: Courtesy of the artist. Patrons Leslie Luebbers & Fredric Koeppel Carol Crown Ranta & Richard Ranta Editorial Sheri Fleck Rieth & Tom L. Lee 05 Numerati Michael Aurbach David L. Butler  Value and the Stieglitz Collection Larry Creson David Maddox Jason Curry 06 The Eclectic Eye Alison England Moving Targets: The Value of the Ruth Grover Image, the Value of the Institution Terri Jones  08  David Lusk Gallery Jeffrey P. Thompson Susan Mulcahy Greely Myatt Regional Updates: Patrick O’Sullivan Rushton Patterson 10 Memphis & Nashville Adrienne Outlaw Piston & David Piston Greg Pond A Conversation with Harmony Korine Kevin Sharp and Erin Riordan Buzz Spector 12 Sara Estes Mary E. Stubbs Union University Friends Adrienne Outlaw: Art Makes Place Lisa Francisco Abitz 14 Nashville, TN Cheryl Bader Dorothy Joiner Lea Barton Bill Baucom & Susan Spurgeon Editorial Bill & Dana McKelvy Beausoleil Since Dwayne Butcher’s resignation as editor of hope to provide a place where people come to find Job description: Part-Time: Normally, four issues of Christopher Miner Suzanne C. Brown Number, the Board of Directors has taken on the out what is happening in the Southern art scene and Number are published and distributed annually. However, “Every Other Girl in the World” Amy Bonk Chanin the Board has chosen to reduce this number to two in 15  Larry & Mattie Edwards responsibility of keeping the “voice of the visual arts discuss the merits of the work presented. We believe order to provide the Executive Editor with enough time Jones Hall Gallery Jennifer Gonzalez in the Mid-South” going. This has come with the usual this to be an important addition to the print journal, to assist the Board with the restructuring and long-term The University of Memphis David McCarthy challenges of limited time and resources as we have which is one of the only publications to fill the void planning of the organization. This planning phase and Dorothy Metzger Habel Dwayne Butcher reduced publication load is expected to last for two years. Pinkney & Janice Herbert worked hard to carry on with both print and online of arts writing left by the more commercial media Therefore, during 2011 and 2012, the Executive Editor’s B. Hussey publications. During the process of putting together outlets’ lack of arts reporting. primary responsibilities include: The Way We Move Richard & Carol Knowles Lorraine Kroul this issue, the Board has also been working on finding In order to connect the variety of local art scenes • Oversee all phases of the production process ensuring 16 Curated by Ron Lambert Annabelle Meacham ways to make the publication more timely and responsive throughout the region, we are hoping to add a new timely production and distribution of two issues annually, coordinating efforts with other regional editors, Cheekwood Video Installation Gallery Carol Mode to the regional arts community. Considering the theme feature that provides short reviews or regional updates. authors, art director, and Board of Directors. Specific Laura Hutson R. Carroll Todd Leandra Urrutia for this issue, The Value of the Image and The Value of If you would like to contribute or be the voice of your responsibilities include: Mary K. VanGieson the Institution, it is timely that we have been evaluating local art scene, please let us know. In addition, each · Manage and maintain publication budget Chihuly Grows Big and Bombastic Artists the institution of Number, Inc., which has a 24 year publication will feature lengthier articles about current · Identify writers and contributors, administer contracts Nashville, TN LeRome Causly 17  Beauvais Lyons history, while also considering the value of the visual issues in the arts, in-depth reviews of shows, and interviews and handle all correspondence Matt Christy Holly Whitt Randolph arts more generally. with artists. The problems that we face, as do most 7· Solicit and organize advertisements Number: Sponsors Kathryn Skinner 6 Number has been published and provided to the arts organization, are funding and people-power. · Write editorials Lou Haney public free of charge since 1987. A variety of artists, In order to keep this valuable voice of the visual · Manage Social Media – Twitter & Facebook University of Mississippi Museum 18  historians, art lovers and business owners throughout arts alive, we are asking for your support. Currently, · Work with Board and staff to generate themes/features Oxford, MS the tri-state region have contributed to and supported we are seeking an editor to work with the board to and identify pertinent topics that should be addressed Rebekah Flake Mary K. VanGieson, Secretary it. Many people I talk to in the Memphis arts scene bring Number into a more active role in the Southern · Proofread and edit all materials before going to press William Andrews have been involved as a board member, editor or dialogue on the visual arts. This is an opportunity · Create and maintain databases of contact information Richmond Barthé Jennifer Gonzales for contributors, subscribers, and advertisers Todd Richardson writer at some point in the history of the publication. for someone who loves the arts and the region to · Attend all Board meetings 19 Dixon Gallery & Gardens Sheri Fleck Rieth Through their dedication, over 5,000 copies of each demonstrate the value of the arts and its institutions Memphis, TN Board Number: Leandra Urrutia issue of Number are distributed to bookstores, to the community. Please see the ad to the left for • In collaboration with the Board of Directors, work toward Rehema Barber developing the long-term vision and goals of Number galleries, colleges/universities, coffee shops and more details on the position. Additionally, we are Inc, including: gathering places throughout Tennessee, Northern always looking for support in the form of sponsors. · Establish a business plan and raise profile of the journal Keith Herrin Mississippi and Eastern Arkansas. Back issues If you have enjoyed the editions of Number that pop · Assist in Defining Board member roles and establish a Go Play By Your Self 20  Jennifer Gonzales, Editor starting with Number 33 (Spring, 1998) are available up at your school, gallery, or coffee shop and would strategy for Board growth SR404 Mary K. VanGieson, Advertising online at www.numberinc.org, and provide a great appreciate a more regular feed of arts news, your tax · Enhance sales and advertisement strategies and David Thompson, Designer Johnson City, TN archive of the visual arts in the region. deductable donation will certainly help. In addition to broaden subscription base Scott Contreras-Koterbay As any organization must do, we at Number are paying for the printing costs, Number also pays its · Build online presence through website and social networking constantly evaluating our goals and creating plans writers, designer and editor. As many of our writers office · Determine staffing needs and assist with writing job All published material is protected under this for achieving our mission. We want Number to be a are professionals in the arts field, we believe that this po box 11008 descriptions copyright; however, all rights and ownership memphis, tn 38111-0008 critical voice for the visual arts not only in Memphis is an important part of supporting local art communities. remain with the contributor. Published by · Identify appropriate grants and philanthropic Number: Incorporated, a non-profit 501(c)(3) but also throughout the Tri-State region. Over the It is the community’s contributions through advertisements, graphic design & ads organizations; initiate and oversee grant writing and organization. The focus of Number: is on the necessary follow up contemporary visual arts in the tri-state region [email protected] next two years we plan to publish at least two print grants, sponsorships, and people power that bring the (TN, AR, MS). Opinions expressed herein are editions per year and expand the online offerings. By arts news to you. For more information on how to To Apply: Letter of Introduction, CV, Writing Samples, those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect expanding our online presence to be more responsive contribute in any capacity contact us by email at Names and Contact Information for 3 References those of the publishers. Contents in whole or Supported in part by grants from the electronically by April 1, 2011 in part may not be reproduced without written Tennessee Arts Commission. to the diverse array of visual arts opportunities, we [email protected]. Number: 67 Winter 2011 VOLUME XXIV, NO. 1

permission of the publisher. © 2011 Number: Incorporated

Jennifer Gonzales is a board member and temporary editor of Number, as well as a professor at Memphis College of Art. 5 Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery, Fisk University photo by Robin Paris. together, with unassailable performance statistics like rural backwardness. “How can we let our cultural one tries to speak for them, and lacking a voice the the number of graduates who go on to advanced study patrimony go there?” In a related thread, Crystal pictures cannot resolve the dispute. While these in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Bridges represents part of the reputational laundering pictures weigh heavily in so many ways (they can make Fisk contends that converting the asset of the Stieglitz of the Walton family, a process that takes place with or break reputations and institutions), they are mute, Collection into some type of monetary form is an any new fortune. The person who makes the money powerless to express themselves. Stephen Foster’s existential requirement for the institution. Preserving is seen as someone simply out to make a buck. The line fits them: “There are frail forms fainting by the the educational value of the institution depends on the children and the children’s children, who grew up in door; though their voices are silent, their pleading art and its economic value. different circumstances, take some of the fortune looks will say Oh hard times come again no more.“ Fisk needs economic support from the collection, and buy assets that befit their wealth and give In this discussion, images themselves matter hardly Value and the Stieglitz Collection but Nashville as a city depends on it for reputational luster—cultural value—to the family name. at all. Not that many people come to see the pictures, In 2005, Andrew Kaufman displayed a piece at pictures as well. They are delicate objects, vulnerable met with resistance first from the O’Keeffe Foundation value. It’s about the only permanent collection of art Moreover, the case carries implicit value judgments which were out of sight for a few years but are now the Tennessee Arts Commission called “The 10 Most to elements or attack, regularly carted off in acts of in New Mexico, which served as the heir to O’Keeffe’s in the city of real note. But the loss of prestige if Fisk about Fisk’s leadership. Could they have avoided back on display. It is a strong collection but modest, Expensive Paintings Ever Sold.” It consisted of pillage. Rusty Johnston made paintings he showed at interests, and then from the Tennessee Attorney were to close its doors would be huge. If you accept getting in a situation where they have to do this? Did deep but narrow—mostly American work from 10s and fiberglass forms covered with resin, sanded and Dangenart that would disintegrate during an exhibit, General. After the courts rejected several rounds of the argument that monetizing the collection is an they do something wrong? The answer may be no, but 20s, with a strong sampling of Hartley, Dove, Stieglitz, stained into a mess of dark smudges. The panels the surface pigments laced with baking soda that proposals, the Crystal Bridges Museum, currently existential need for Fisk, the city is left with a no-win the AG’s earlier proposal to take the collection away Marin, and Demuth. There are ringers in there like an contain no content per se. Only their dimensions made them slough off into a pile of flakes on the floor. under construction in Arkansas by Wal-Mart heir Alice situation—loss of the collection or the institution. from Fisk “temporarily” seems thick with the feeling actual Blue Period Picasso painting and the O’Keefe differentiated them, each one matching the height Institutions that own art reflect the power and Walton, stepped forward with a proposal to buy a half As the possibility of losing Fisk arises and you see that Fisk cannot be trusted to care for the art. Flatiron painting that gets so much attention, and and width of one of the most expensive paintings weakness of pictures inside them. When a picture interest in the collection and share it with Fisk. In its the response, it calls into question how much value The current proposed settlement allows the sale some unusual things like two paintings by the Italian sold at the time. Images—something to recognize grows up to be “big and strong” and commands most recent decision the court accepted this proposal, the entire Nashville community places in Fisk. Any of 50% interest, with Fisk receiving $30M. Of that Futurist Gino Severini and an early Diego Rivera in and reproduce, decode and interpret—didn’t matter. respect in the market, it normally ends up in a museum but put significant restrictions on how Fisk could use historically black college faces the need to explain why money, the court stipulates that Fisk set aside $20M cubist mode. But all the other values at stake leave Pictures did—the brute objects bought and sold at or in the protection of an institution. Valuable pictures the funds. it is indispensable now that formal segregation has for an endowment to care for the art. This decision will little room to assess the value of the pictures or images. auction, defined by the abstract but so concrete give the museum status, and in exchange museums At its base, the case deals with the reality that the ended. These schools do have a valid case, founded get appealed, but the decision again questions Fisk’s At this point in proceedings the art works express semantics of financial valuation. elevate their charges to a position of reverence. They Stieglitz Collection is an asset in the narrow accounting in access, self-determination, particular institutional ability to act as steward of its resources—they can themselves more strongly not as individuals, but as a The phrase “power of images” rolls off the tongue also protect them, put them behind glass, under the sense. This asset has a firm value—about $74M strengths, and outcomes achieved in the environment make the sale, but the court will tell them how to spend population in the court case. In court, they have shown so easily. It resonates with our emotional responses to eyes of security guards and cameras, housed under according to court filings. This value gives the they provide, but the specter of institutional extinction the money. If you think of Fisk as an art collection and off their ability to hold and project value and transmit art, to the pleasures of pictures, and to communications ideal climate control conditions. collection overwhelming weight. Two years ago, Fisk’s brings that value question to the fore. a college, the decision says that the art collection it in unmanageable directions. The collection’s function theory in a post-literate hyper-political culture where The ongoing controversy around the fate of the audited financial statement for 2008 listed assets of The latest decision, in which a 50% share will go to should get the lion’s share of the proceeds. Preservation to contain and convey values of so many types gives it visual images are deployed as tools and weapons. Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University shows how little $92M, of which the art collections made up $62M the Crystal Bridges Museum, does not constitute loss of the collection is worth more than preservation of power, even destructive power. The art collection has Images make or break politicians (Dukakis in the tank). images have to do with the value contained in pictures (presumably there has been a new valuation, and the of the art. The Attorney General’s case emphasizes the college. If this decision stands, Fisk will receive $10M made itself a problem, a dilemma with no clean We shield ourselves from images too devastating to and prized by institutions. The 101 art objects in the financial statements probably reflect the value of another value, respecting donors’ wishes. If donors get to support its operations. If it sets those funds aside resolution. It resists. view (bodies falling from the World Trade Center). We collection donated by Georgia O’Keeffe are smothered other art Fisk owns—all those Aaron Douglas murals, the idea that non-profit organizations in Tennessee as endowment, under standard endowment manage- The Stieglitz Collection has taken on qualities of a worry that images will take childhood away from children. in a dense atmosphere of value, values that compete pieces by Sam Gilliam and Martin Puryear and many are free to rewrite their stipulations, the AG fears that ment practices it will generate about 5% a year, or cyborg that develops autonomy. It requires an institution Pictures also have power, and that power draws openly in the Tennessee court system, cancel each others). Based solely on these financial statements donors will make fewer gifts in Tennessee—they’ll use $500,000 (given the brutal economy, more institutions to win the court case and subdue the collection, put it in only in part from the images they embody. Kaufman’s other out in complex ways, and relegate images to a you could conclude Fisk is a college attached to an the money another way or give it to organizations out today pay out at 4%). Fisk’s annual operating expenses its place institutionally, geographically, and economically piece at the Arts Commission made clear how much second order consideration. art collection (in the same way Yale is a university of state. in 2008 were $27M. $500,000 helps, but it would (whose balance sheet(s) will contain it). When that power a picture carries simply from the price it In 1949, O’Keeffe gave Fisk this set of works attached to an investment fund). That’s not the end of the values swarming this cover less than 2% of the budget. If Fisk could use the resolution finally comes, it hardly means the pictures commands. You pay multiple millions of dollars for assembled by her late husband Alfred Stieglitz, with From an accounting perspective, Fisk has much collection. Nashville artist Jodi Hays, who is from entire $30M, that would provide $1.5M. will rest in peace. Through the court proceedings, the the picture, not the rights to the image. Price gives instructions that the collection be maintained in less value when you take away most of the art. That Arkansas, makes the point that it is hard to avoid Borrowing another idea from Mitchell (or even Stieglitz Collection has given people a glimpse into the one picture precedence over others. If it sells, it really perpetuity, not sold off in whole or in parts. Over absurd, reductionist approach flies in the face of the seeing the resistance to Crystal Bridges nearly every Gilson), one can see art works as living organisms and life pictures lead independent of images. They possess is art, it is important, it is visible. the intervening years Fisk saw its financial position obvious value Fisk holds as an institution. One of the time they buy something (like Kindred Spirits from the therefore as actors on their own in the drama. As all of a wildness that stays largely dormant most of the time At the same time, W.J.T. Mitchell points out the weaken, and in 2005 its board voted to authorize sale best historically black colleges in the country, a place New York Public Library) as the reflection of pernicious these values come crashing together, the paintings but never entirely shuts down. weakness of images, and weakness characterizes of two of the most valuable paintings. This proposal where students and faculty work unusually close value judgments about Arkansas as the epitome of themselves are the only ones without a voice. Every- 6 NUMBER:67 David Maddox is a writer and musician living outside Nashville, TN. 7 Moving Targets: network of images and contexts into the curriculum. It across the spectrum of majors, from math to English, institution is where one encounters opinions and The Value of the Image, the Value of the Institution is a job that I greatly enjoy, and I have been lucky to from philosophy to the natural sciences. Majoring in expressive forces contrary to one’s own. Art historians, even very good and inventive ones, complicated by changes in the field of art in the late circles during the 1970s, its demise was greatly experience two different formats geared toward studio art at an institution like Sewanee means that A former BFA student of mine from Michigan is are primarily interpreters. They use a complex repertoire 20th century. Discussions of opticality, “perverse exaggerated. As such, we find ourselves today asking producing BFA graduates and BA art majors at two your course work also spans multiple disciplines. This now working on her MFA at UT Knoxville. As part of of intellectual codes that structure the record of visual perspectives,” minimalism, post-minimalism, and what defines a painting? Can we still recognize one very different institutions. My first position at Western is a condition that parallels the various modes of inquiry one of her classes with me, we waded through Donald expression and, by doing so, invest images with value, conceptualism suggested a plethora of perceptual when we see it? While literally thousands of paintings Michigan University’s Frostic School of Art required an found in contemporary art today. The student of art is Judd’s terse prose and looked carefully at his minimal tracing a practice that all cultures share regardless of models. The literalist aesthetic, on the one hand, are made each year in the portable, rectangular, instructor of contemporary art history to create courses no longer solely immersed in a single medium, but is “boxes” as part of a seminar on 1960s sculpture. She time and place: image-making. They write about the held that a work should reveal nothing other than its paint-on-canvas format, countless new works have geared to the many students working toward completing required to demonstrate competence, or familiarity recently emailed me a mash-up of footage from an theoretical and philosophical implications of visual constitutive materials and manner of construction. employed highly unconventional materials and a BFA. Courses at the Frostic School were divided with, different disciplines within the arts and sciences. exhibition of late works by Donald Judd and the objects as a way to explain their impact on a specific Best encapsulated by Frank Stella’s tautology “ techniques—Fred Tomaselli’s use of plants, pills, insect according to specific media and required students to A set of concepts that range from postmodernism, soundtrack from the popular YouTube “double rainbow” cultural landscape. As a historian of contemporary art what you see is what you see,” this was a powerful, wings, and catalog clippings, for example—that overlap demonstrate competence in each. In this setting, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism, just to name video. It is a witty video that mocks the contradictory I write about the recent past and navigate a post- self-exhausting dogma, yet its denial of visual with sculpture, installation, and mass communication my job was to familiarize students with the discourse a few, are often recruited by critics and historians rhetoric of Donald Judd and the gleaming, stark structural field of inquiry that academics and critics— contradiction allowed little room for invention. More technology. One could even include the history of surrounding contemporary art and to provide exposure because they have shaped the creation and reception “specific objects” he produced late in his career. Yet, and many artists—have been exploiting since the problematic still was the issue of literalism. The painting itself as a material and/or theoretical support to the range of imagery currently part of the globalized of art produced during the last few decades. The the video also intersects with the flow of random and 1980s. This requires keeping track of the proliferation premise that a work of art makes itself visible in its as recast in the work of Kehinde Wiley. art world. Likewise, I was there to help students direct embrace of theory by influential art graduate hilarious infotainment instantly available today. In of new media and new art categories that have been entirety masks the ambiguities of that experience While sculptors continue to carve, cast, and construct, articulate the motivations and influences behind their schools in Europe and North America makes neces- essence, it is a mode of institutional critique intersect- created due to the end of media-specificity and the and, what is more, the distinctive ways in which many there is a broadening of forms and techniques such as own art-making. With a solid background in the sary the acquisition of theoretical knowledge for ing seamlessly with mass culture through the means expansion of the international art market. This different art practices are seen by different audiences. installation and time-based film and video that find history and theory of the recent past, undergraduate teaching analytical and interpretive skills. But these of the most popular, electronic information stream. It process requires writing from a mobile perspective as Literalism is a good staring point—Just what am I their way into the vocabulary of sculpture. Sculptures students could develop the language with which to fields of discourse are useful for the artist as well, was also a nice gesture from a former student. intellectual discourse changes from year to year. In looking at?—but it is not an adequate model for whose characteristics include the slick refinement of situate their practice in relationship to the field at providing conceptual tools that allow us to ask new In this world of “knowledge networks” like general, historians invested in the field of contemporary describing how we actually experience art. Would mass-produced consumer products along with the large. Several students hoped to complete an MFA, questions, find new meanings, approach or make Wikileaks and Twitter, information has become art rely on the theory and critical analysis tools works of contemporary art attract viewers decades embrace of schlock and kitsch have continued to and these were necessary skills. objects with new eyes and minds. As writer and increasing non-hierarchical. As early as 1980, Deleuze available in the wake of Conceptual art, a point at later if the works were completely transparent to amplify the legacy of the ready-made. Meanwhile, This relationship was reciprocal. My training did curator Bennett Simpson noticed in a discussion of and Guattari called this type of system de-territorial which art-making as a practice became increasingly vision alone? For instance, are Sarah Sze’s elaborate the pace of change in the world of digital editing and not always prepare me to answer questions about fine arts degree programs, “Employing conceptual, in order to characterize thought and research that is theoretical and idea-driven, moving in multiple constructions so easy to see, to know? The answer production has changed the landscape of photography, material and construction, a major focus of BFA post-minimal, video and performance artists…tended interconnected but with no beginning or end, without directions simultaneously with many new forms of to these questions is “of course not.” Sol LeWitt’s light, and art simultaneously. In fact, we are, arguably, undergraduates immersed in studio requirements. to privilege intellectual and critical study over the more a predictable entry and exit, and that resists clear media in tow. In many respects, Conceptual art helped conceptualism hides as much as it reveals, as Lucy witnessing a paradigm shift as the potential of digital Comfortable as we sometimes are in our world of traditional training in manual skills like drawing, figure organization. This model of knowledge is increasingly forge the tools of contemporary critical analysis and Lippard noted long ago. And as many current writers technology to alter the nature of the image, to projected digital jpegs, a single question about how painting, and sculpture. ‘Knowledge work’ became common, and artists are taking advantage of the contemporary art-making. It established a two way have noticed, even Yinka Shonibare’s work contains transform the visible into binary code, so that we no something is made and with what material can stop detached from its antecedent, technical work.” While I possibilities creating meaning from disparate units, street whereby there is no contemporary art history more contradictions than the eye can absorb. If the longer discuss the blurred boundaries of traditional an art history class in its tracks. Learning more about do not necessarily agree that a complete “detachment” reveling in the complexity. It calls for an increasing without art, but likewise, no contemporary art without value of the image in contemporary art is only discern- media but the blurred boundaries of fact and fabrication. materials and their manipulation was parallel to providing occurred, I do agree that the institutionalization of the supple approach from the institution—and arts an understanding of history and theory. The job of the able through a field of differences, exposure to these Add to this mix the emergence of a linked global better support to a studio-centered curriculum. art education has led to a necessary facility with the educator. The historian of recent art need not adhere artist is to make the specific thing—the work of art— differences is only possible at the institutional level. society (both technologically and economically) and My pedagogical role is different at a small, liberal “knowledge work” that goes along with the formal to a single methodology, but may arrive at a syncretic from their position. The job of the art historian is to The boundaries of traditional media and so-called the growth of the international art fair. While this list arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee, where I work training in any medium of choice. If you understand art approach suited to the task at hand. That is, one understand that position and to provide overall new media have been traversed in remarkably fresh ways. of factors is by no means comprehensive, my goal is today. At The University of the South, art history has as simply personal expression, then, fine, you don’t follows clues implicit in the artwork or historical perspective, to interpret and play out possible The practice of painting, like other traditional media simply to suggest that “the image” in contemporary its own majors who work within the methodology of need an institution. But no one thinks of art that way problem rather than allowing a theory to predict in meanings of the work of art with language. such as drawing and sculpture, saw its boundaries art is part of a complex forest of signs. the discipline and who attempt mastery of a historical anymore. Your tools are always going to be a language advance the interpretative result. The image, however The problem of how we look at a work of art was stretched and took on new life in this rather recent As an instructor of contemporary art history, I am period. While a number of studio art majors take art that is culturally determined. If you can’t speak that defined, suggests how to proceed rather than the another concern at this crucial point of transition period. While painting was declared dead in many responsible for incorporating much of this complex history courses, the majority of students I teach range language, you can’t be a part of the discussion. The other way around.

8 NUMBER:67 Jeffrey P. Thompson is an assistant professor of art and art history at Sewanee: The University of the South. 9 UPDATE: MEMPHIS UPDATE: MEMPHIS UPDATE: NASHVILLE

UrbanArt Makes Strides in Memphis Memphis and the Value of Arts Communities: Value of the Institution and Value of the Image On the Verge of a Breakthrough? As a non-profit organization committed to fulfilling its mission of enhancing the cultural vibrancy of Next, we’ve condensed the selection process in a manner that builds increased levels of Have you visited one of Memphis’ arts districts? Can you name one? Most can probably name A recent article in New Yorker Magazine by Nick Paumgarten relates video gaming culture to our community through the development of public art in Memphis, UrbanArt has seen quite a few community engagement prior to contracting the final artist to assist smoother approvals through South Main—hopefully. How about Broad Street, Crosstown or the Edge district? It is my experience theories on play of French intellectual Roger Caillois. Caillois’ premise (a reaction to Johan Huizinga) twists and turns in its 14 year history. Governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, it’s taken on a selection committees. Additionally, Public Art Oversight Committee (PAOC) members shall be that when it comes to the arts in Memphis, only a select, dedicated few are well-informed. Although is that if play is “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often money,” variety of roles including project management, community education, and political advocacy. It acted invited to attend individual selection committee meetings, and selection committees for individual few individuals stay immersed in the art happenings around the city, there are hundreds if not we see its intrinsic value. It is a simulation of real life. Caillois goes on to break down the appealing as an incubator for the Memphis Regional Design Center and the local chapter of the Urban Land projects shall be requested to attend those PAOC meetings where their projects are to be discussed. thousands of arts events, artists and arts organizations to experience in our community. There just aspects of gaming into areas of competition, chance, simulation, and vertigo. What individuals buy Institute. In 2002, UrbanArt initiated legislation through the City Council that resulted in the City of The PAOC is a City mandated body of 7 volunteer members nominated by UrbanArt and the Mayor seems to be a lack of cohesion among all of them. It is precisely this diverse, growing and talented into with video gaming is an opportunity to step out of their respective “real lives”, confront (or be Memphis Percent for Art program, whereby up to 1% of capital improvement projects’ budget may and approved by City Council that advises on the Public Art Plan, approves project Requests for arts sector in Memphis that has brought Artspace to consider our city for one of its potential locations. confronted by) a series of obstacles in a notional situation, and experience a sense of instability that be considered for public art and design enhancements within the public realm. Today, this constitutes Qualifications (RFQ), and confirms selection committee decisions of commissioned artists. It also Founded in 1979, Artspace is the leading nonprofit real estate developer for the arts. The hopefully will be associated with the thrill and engagement of uncertain outcome. Perhaps this the majority of our day to day work, with 39 individual city driven projects in the works, and new reviews all project designs and ensures that the overall processes of the Percent for Art Program are organization has completed 24 artist living, studio and commercial spaces across the nation with relates to what we do as artists, what collectors buy into, and what the institutions of our industry projects proposed annually as a part of the Public Art Plan. Additionally, we also partner with conducted according to agreed upon standards. several more projects under consideration, including a building in Memphis. About six years ago local format, quantify, and perpetuate. That is, providing, all of this is not a complete waste of time, etc. Memphis City Schools, the Memphis Area Transit Authority, and various grant foundations, private Regarding artist’s selection, the PAOC has approved providing honorariums up to $1,500 per artists interested in transforming the old Tennessee Brewery were advised to consult with Artspace The visual art industry; commercial galleries, independent artist initiatives, state and city art development, and community groups to bring even more works of art into the landscape of Memphis. artist for up to 3 artists per project for design proposals. Furthermore, we’ve devised a system that by local art gallery owner Jay Etkin. Several obstacles—primarily to do with prohibitive cost—resulted commissions, academia, and the museum system, is experiencing fundamental changes that go At present, UrbanArt has coordinated the production of 120 individual works of public art across we believe has the potential to make it where artists could consistently garner up to 20% of the in abandoning the project at the time. Artspace Senior Vice President of Consulting and Strategic beyond the usual ebb and flow. I find third tier cities like Nashville (Austin, TX, & Milwaukee, WI) to 56 sites throughout Memphis and Shelby County since its founding in 1997, bringing the unique entire project budget for their design fees and fabrication labor costs. This is a new metric with new Partnerships Wendy Holmes says that Artspace kept an eye on Memphis’ active arts scene, hoping be interesting studies as area institutions interpret what goes on in more developed centers to their character of our city to light through the creative vision of artists working in nearly every media mechanics, so understand that 20% may not always be the case, but that we are working to make it for another opportunity to enter our community. When the City of Memphis, Hyde Family Founda- constituencies. Artists here need to take a more active role articulating what they do, its relevance, imaginable. From stone to steel, paint to paving, sound to light, and a few materials in between, the case more often than not. tions and Artspace collaborated on a proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts for the and the context in which it is received. Artists, institutions, and patrons: we should all be having UrbanArt has worked with artists living locally and further afield to make the built environment of Whereas the City ordinance that founded the Percent for Art program mandates 60% of those Mayors Institute on City Design (awarded to AC Wharton in July 2010), it put in motion renewed more fun. We’re certainly not making any money. Memphis shine. We believe a world with art is fundamentally more wonderful than one without. projects completed in a 5 year period be produced by local artists, we are now closing in on the 90% dialogue. This could be the right time, partnership and opportunity for Artspace to target Memphis Nashville is a comfortable and conservative city based on creative industry that is narrowly Towards this end, UrbanArt has recently adopted a series of changes in the way its programs mark and believe this statistic will hold between the 80-90% level fairly consistently in the future. for one of its live/work spaces. interpreted as entertainment. The city and the business community pay a of lot lip service to its creative and practices are structured which we believe will improve the way large-scale public art productions Furthermore, whereas historically the program produced projects primarily in association with The City of Memphis, Hyde Family Foundations and Artspace are currently financially committed class but are not effective in engaging it. More adult conversations about what artists do and bring to take place in terms of project determination, artist selection, artist payments processing, and overall new City capital improvement building projects, we are now permitted to produce projects on any to implementing a substantial project in Memphis. Here is what has happened so far: In October 2010 a our community need to take place and artists (those responsible for the product) must take that initiative. project completion. appropriate City owned property or parcel of land. We feel this will enable the general public increased strategic plan was created to survey area artists of all disciplines to assess the need for an Artspace The end of 2009 saw area academic programs expanding, conversation regarding museums First, we’ve been able to add new staff as the result of a resolution approved by the City Council accessibility to art throughout the city. It will also serve to streamline the process a bit by not building and assist in the development of an affordable living/working space. The survey launched picking up (somewhat), and commercial galleries seeing upturns in sales as the collecting base allowing a percentage of the Capital Improvement Projects allocations for expenses associated with needing to necessarily coordinate artists’ work with CIP project construction schedules, which November 10, 2010, with a lively, free party open to all artists at Playhouse on the Square. At this party, (sensing a harder hitting recession) responding by looking more locally for art. The business project management. Previously, we were receiving a set sum that did not change for several years. occasionally incur delays for various reasons. the hundreds in attendance were able to complete surveys on laptops and network with fellow artists. community was beginning to make more of an effort to expand the conversation of what visual art This had the deleterious effect of causing UrbanArt to essentially subsidize the City program when This January (2011) UrbanArt began re-developing its website (urbanartcommission.org) with The survey results will guide Artspace in important decision-making. Once Artspace becomes brought to the city. We even got a sorely needed new independent artist-run space. Then everything the caseload swelled, rather than the program covering its own costs. Over time this put the the generous grant support of ArtsMemphis. When complete, artists will be able to build profiles to whole-heartedly committed to the local arts community, it will own and operate the facility, taking came to a screeching halt as a sagging economy hit full-force. organization in a bad spot with an untenable future. With the passing of the resolution we will be show their work to the broader public, and apply to UrbanArt’s projects with the click of a button via responsibility from construction to management, ensuring its success. Artspace chooses areas that I feel that most folks tend not to go out of their way to be challenged; too many distractions. Making able to give each project more attention from individual project managers moving forward as well as an RFQ gallery of open opportunities. Selection committees will be able to review documents and have strong community leadership, known artist communities, are difficult to redevelop and include art is challenging enough but a new strategy is desperately needed by the studio community here to secure the fiscal foundation that enables us to continue our work. portfolios of project applicants in secure forums rather than UrbanArt staff spending dozens of a historic building set in an urban area. These are the official criteria for Artspace projects, which start leading the conversations. An appeal has been made to the city and business community to use Secondly, invoice turnaround has been an ongoing cause for concern for a number of years. hours per project composing phone-book sized presentations one at a time. Education tools will narrow the site for a possible space in Memphis considerably. Artspace developers, architects and more unleased spaces for independently curated shows; see Pop-up galleries. Shows in the downtown After concerted efforts by UrbanArt and officials within the City administration, we have come to an enable artists interested in developing public art careers to learn how best to structure their application contractors find “flexible” characteristics to create buildings with unique personalities. They’ve area, taking advantage of an Art Crawl that continues to pick up patrons but flags in diversity and more agreement on measures that should reduce payments turnaround by as much as 1/3 of the previous materials, compose design documents, manage their project expenses, and construct the best turned wood paneling into bookshelves and a gymnasium into an apartment and studio. Holmes challenging work, could initiate more critical interaction. These shows could prove a resource for students, timeframe. Included in these changes are: setting up electronic payments of invoices, weighting artwork possible. stated that, in Memphis, it is likely Artspace will create 50-70 live/workspace units and some a more effective outreach component for museums, and give area faculty members outlets who are not benchmark compensation percentages toward the front end of the project so that materials sourcing The artists that make the work of UrbanArt worth the effort deserve the best experience commercial space, as well. If a suitable, large-enough building is not found, Artspace will combine involved in the commercial galleries. They could help attract more focused artists and upper tier collectors is swifter, and layering of design and fabrication invoices so that payments can be scaled in sums possible. Neighbors in the Memphis metropolitan area will no doubt benefit from the public art preservation with new construction, as it did in Seattle. It will be three to six months before site living here that remain uninvolved in the local scene. A more active studio community might also be in a over fewer installments throughout the course of the project’s production. produced as a result. selection, but Holmes is sure that 2011 will be full steam ahead for the project. There is funding and better position to address its current lack of appropriate working space. We’ve rewritten our Artist Handbook covering all aspects of the application, selection, design, To receive upcoming project notices, please send an email to [email protected], backing for a downtown location—specifically, South Main. I would say that currently South Main is It seems that the most accessible point of contact for the studio community and its respective and fabrication processes for City projects. Coupled with a series of professional development and request to be added to the ‘Constant Contact Artist Opportunities’ list. If you would like to mostly gentrified and on the verge of becoming stale, evidenced by galleries moving out due to high city at large is exhibitions; independent exhibitions taking place outside the institution. Conversations workshops and video tutorials, we believe this shall better serve artists interested in pursuing our receive an e-newsletter to keep up with what UrbanArt is working on in general, ask to be put on the rent and too many empty condos. As I mentioned earlier, burgeoning arts community work is strong, (and exhibitions) are currently underway here to involve other Tennessee studio communities in an project commissions. Guest speakers coming to Memphis in spring and summer 2011 shall cover ‘News’ list. if not stronger, in other arts districts in Memphis. South Main needs a new life. Offering living and exchange program; give a show to get one. If we are truly confident about ourselves as a creative topics as varied as how to best install a mural to how to read a City contract. working space for artists at affordable prices is exactly what South Main needs to tip it back onto the class, we need to put ourselves in a better position to get what we need and make the institutions John Weeden is the Executive Director of UrbanArt. “cool” side of the scale. Some organizations in South Main have helped to breathe new life into the work for us. I believe that Nashville might more easily put itself in that position by involving other area recently, including the Memphis College of Art Graduate Center and the Memphis Music Tennessee/regional artists in the context of what we are doing here and what they have accom- Foundation. A facility like Artspace furthers that momentum and benefits artists by providing them plished there. It offers more opportunity, more dialogue, and proves that we are the reason the with more time to work, access to necessary or expensive equipment, encouragement to collaborate, institution exists. diversity and the potential to increase income. Artspace can push our artists to THINK BIG and A good challenge, indeed. Shall we play a game? increase their value to our community. Memphis artists and arts communities should be very proud to attract Artspace’s attention and Lain York is an artist based in Nashville, TN. to even be considered by the Memphis city government as a good investment. We have strong backing for this project from government, private foundations and individuals—but it’s our strength in arts content all over Memphis that is the real catalyst for all of the support locally and nationally. Artspace is a successful and enduring nonprofit organization. As a business, they have not and will not fail. Let’s get behind them and their expert decisions and hope they come to Memphis!

Lauren Boyer is the Community Services and Operations Manager, ArtsMemphis. .

“A Note for Hope” mural by Jeff Zimmerman at Redbirds Stadium, Memphis. “Tom Lee Memorial” by David Allan Clark at Tom Lee Park, Memphis. National Hotel Artist Lofts in Galveston, TX. 10 NUMBER:67 11 A Conversation with Harmony Korine Though most know him for his groundbreaking pretty cool. We thought maybe there was something that last? Do you stay in character all night or career in independent filmmaking Kids,( Gummo, to be done there. It just happened pretty naturally. is it more of a posed photo shoot? Mister Lonely), Nashville-based artist and director You used the same photos as the foundation for Yeah, it’s like the same with the movies. You just go Harmony Korine is staking an equal claim in the visual Shadow Fux as well as the inspiration for Trash and kind of become a character and you say, ‘Tonight art world. Much like his films, Korine’s painting and Humpers. Did the identity of the characters in the we’re gonna go and fornicate with trash and set stuff photography present an untamed and often hilarious photos change within the two different contexts? on fire. We’re gonna torch this town.” And that’s kind world of brute vice, vague imagery, and the sexual I think the Shadow Fux show is kind of its own thing. It’s of it. Then you just get into a zone and you don’t even exploitation of trash receptacles. based in the same world maybe, but it has it’s own logic. think about it. You just do it. You suck it up, you snort Last September Galerie du Jour in Paris presented In a 2009 interview, Rita claimed she was it down, and you just go with it. Korine’s work in a group exhibition alongside photog- ‘’obsessed with getting things to complete What kind of camera did you use for the pictures? rapher Ryan McGinley and the late Dash Snow. Most perfection’’ whereas you subscribe to your own I was using disposable cameras. We would usually fill recently, Korine collaborated with painter Rita Ackermann genre of “mistakism,” which adheres to the idea up a glass with ice and a shot of bleach and we would on Shadow Fux, an exhibition for the Swiss Institute in that mistakes in art are perfect. How did your each take a sip and go out with disposable cameras. New York. The exhibit presents large-scale fusions of opposing approaches come together in the exhibit? So if you used a disposable camera, did you just Korine’s photography and Ackermann’s painting as well Well, I’ve never heard that from her. I don’t even know go to some place like Walgreen’s to develop it? as deleted scenes from his latest film Trash Humpers if that’s true. I guess I just don’t care. All those words Yeah, exactly. (2009). Both exhibitions were met with widespread don’t mean anything to me. Do you know what I mean? Why the affinity with lo-fi equipment? critical acclaim. You just make things and you feel it. It’s all just perfect. Well, it just makes it look more shitty. I like it for that. I caught up with Korine to talk about these two [laughs] I thought it needed to be sufficiently shitty. exhibits and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned What was the process of making the artwork In the Aftermath exhibit at Watkins, your print into one about drinking bleach, masks made of human since she lives in New York and you are in was exhibited almost like poster, naked and tacked skin, and a dead man who stressed about cheese. Nashville? to the wall, whereas in the Pigxote exhibition, Harmony Korine & Rita Ackerman, “Soundtrack to Chlorine (2010).” Courtesy of artists. A lot of times it was through the mail, or she would your photos were small and framed nicely. How SE: Let’s start with the Shadow Fux exhibit. come down here or I would go up to New York. I would do you decide the best way to present your work? was your relationship like with Dash? think the way you do instead of overanalyzing an upcoming exhibition? Is anything a priority? How did you meet Rita Ackermann? generally send her things then she would work on them Usually I just spend about 35 seconds. I mean, if there’s [Pauses] Um...I don’t know. I think maybe that everything and planning each move they make. Just to get that shit there on time, on the day of HK: Well she’s just a good friend of mine. When I first in her studio and send me stuff. It was basically just some tape next to me and I can just tape that shit up, question is hard to explain. Your way seems much more freeing. Do you the thing. moved to New York, she was friends with my girlfriend like that. We didn’t even really talk about it too much. that’s good. If there’s five one hundred dollar bills and Understandable. Well, in a memorial exhibition think your mindset allows your artwork to have You’ve had a few shows at Galerie du Jour. at that time and she used to come over and we became It was something that was difficult for us both to a hungry framer, I’ll just say, ‘Hey, go do your thing, in New York, you displayed a poem you wrote less pressure on you? How does the response to your work differ friends. Over the course of our friendship we would—I articulate, which is a good thing. We always wanted bastard.’ Everything you judge on its own. I mean, for him. I think it was about a rabbit. Do you Yeah, I just don’t ever feel pressure. I don’t feel that. in Paris as opposed to the US? don’t want to say collaborate… yeah, I guess collaborate to just kind of go for it. I could’ve just done anything. I could’ve set those remember any lines from it? Once I was at a masseuse and they were digging a They always love it. Everywhere I go they just love it. —on things informally. She’s a great artist and I always Did the end result turn out how you anticipated? photos on fire and they would’ve been just as good. No, I can’t remember anything. I just can’t remember knot out of my neck. That was the only pressure I’ve It’s all laughed up. Even the ones that hate it don’t really thought she was really terrific and a great painter. Yeah, everything always turns out exactly how I I could’ve puked on that painting and it would’ve everything. Sometimes when I try to remember ever felt and it made me nauseous. So I decided to hate it. They love it. I’m really grateful for all that shit. That’s basically how I met her. anticipate. I just never anticipate, so I don’t ever know. looked even nicer. anything, I remember everything. So I just try not never feel that again. But you know, it’s not even a Has anyone ever gotten mad at you because they You often say that your work is essentially perfect Like I say, it’s always perfect. All the mistakes and Let’s switch gears and talk about the show at to think about it. choice. You are who you are. I knew a guy once who were offended? exactly as it is. So what prompted you to invite everything, it’s just great. Galerie du Jour with Ryan McGinley and Dash When you are in a group show like this, how obsessed over everything. He obsessed over the way Oh, of course. But really, those people just loved it. another artist, in this case Rita, to work on your So, I have to ask, where did the creepy old Snow. Why did you choose to show paintings do you edit your work—if at all—to fit with the his shoelaces were tied. He obsessed over the way his Let’s wrap this up with one last question. Do you photographs? masks come from that were used in the photos? as opposed to photography, considering both other artists? hair was combed. He obsessed over what cheese he have any advice for young artists out there? Well, it wasn’t really like that. It was more of an idea we These people made them in California. Snow and McGinley are photographers? Oh no, I don’t ever pay attention to that. ate. He obsessed over the types of women he would Yeah, just love it. Like you can’t get enough of it. Fuck had. It was like, ‘Why don’t we do something together Out of what? I didn’t really think about it too much. I thought it Ever? date. He obsessed over specific dogs. He obsessed it up. Just fuck it. Just lather it up, wash it down. And and put it out there.’ We wanted to make work that Human skin. would be nice because I had started making these I mean I haven’t, that’s not to say one day I won’t. In over his weight and the length of his beard and he died never take no for an answer. Make sure you skin your seemed less ‘collaborative’ and more like it’s just one Are you serious? paintings and that’s what I was working on. the past, I just don’t even know. I won’t even know. a really painful death. knees and keep going. Don’t ever back up too far. person. I had just made the film Trash Humpers and Uh, yep. For the exhibit, Ryan McGinley wrote somewhat Like sometimes you don’t know where you are in life. Right, it’s just better to not stress. So if you Always exercise. Don’t be too much of a douche. I had a lot of the images that had inspired the film, [Laughs] Okay, so when you are out taking these of a tribute to Dash Snow, a story about what And that’s a place that I’m in most of the time. don’t think about framing or what pieces to What else? Have fun. Don’t doubt yourself. Be bold. these sort of prototype images I had shot that were photos everyone in character, how long does their friendship was like before he died. What You know, it seems like for artists it’s better to display, what do you think about when you have Stay healthy. And remember to always be a gansta. 12 NUMBER:67 Sara Estes is the Gallery Coordinator for Fisk University Art Galleries in Nashville, TN. 13 Christopher Miner In “Lord of the Starfields” Miner attempts to The pieces are direct and selfish but Miner presents “Every Other Girl in the World” justify the type of porn he has on his computer in a them in an intimate, vulnerable way and I found myself Jones Hall Gallery one-sided conversation with God. The radio signals to overlooking this selfishness and not questioning the The University of Memphis Almighty plead for a less severe judgment because the delivery or the contents of the message. In “Right November 1-26, 2010 porn on the hard drive really isn’t so bad. As I stood in Here is the Place to Be,” this is especially the case. Jones Hall Gallery watching the video, I could not help The artist is shown sitting with his newborn son Do we always want what we cannot have? to think what type of porn “isn’t so bad” and wondered singing him a lullaby. Once the viewer gets over the In the exhibition, “Every Other Girl in the World,” if one day I would have to justify the contents of my affectionate embrace between father and son, we hear at Jones Hall Gallery at The University of Memphis, own hard drive. In the piece that shares the title of that Miner is actually singing Mystical’s “Shake Your Christopher Miner asks himself this very question. the exhibition, “Every Other Girl in the World,” Miner Ass,” a song with very explicit lyrics. The new father Each of the five single-channel videos on display dealt narrates a fight he had with his wife while on their now has to vicariously live through such songs. As with the question from different aspects of the artist’s honeymoon in Acapulco. Acapulco is a city the artist Miner puts it, he “don’t have girls pop lock at my life. Miner, originally from Jackson, MS, currently lives recently lived in with a former girlfriend. Was he, cock house” anymore. The song represents the artist’s Adrienne Outlaw: Art Makes Place them to propose ideas for a mural. The winning design stoops “an architectural device designed to make in Memphis with his new wife and newborn son. Each subconsciously or not, picking a fight with his new non-domestic life and the baby represents the Nashville, TN by Cody Attwood was based on a postcard, with the people feel at home without even being in the house.” are subjects in the work that examines his decisions bride to have an excuse to leave the suite in hopes of realization of the present. Whatever longing we may name Nashville above the city’s skyline. Rather than an When such comfortable situations are limited or even to be a new father and husband. We have all had the running into the ex to see if his decision to get married have for something else, regardless of the regret of A recent incident in New York City merited coverage airbrushed, sanitized view for tourists, the community regarded suspiciously in the public areas, Calway-Fagen’s same thoughts that Miner has unashamedly put on was the correct one? Perhaps. But, it is definitely a the decisions we have made, right here is the place on all nightly news shows. Surveillance cameras recorded mural personalized the image, as evidenced by the stoops represent a refreshing effort to revitalize the display, attempting to deal with current family con- chance I would not want to take on my honeymoon. to be. Which is a good thing, because I happen to like scores of passersby who peered furtively at a bleeding message added to a building by one young artist: social ambience. flicts while longing for anything other than what we I may not have been married very long. where I am. man lying on the sidewalk only to hurry past him. For “Brad was here.” In Milemarkers (2009) Bonnie Fortune made digital may have now. well over an hour, not one of them called 911. The man, Admirably suited to its site, the mural lent—or portraits of the Pi Beta Phi Rehabilitation Center’s who had been stabbed helping someone else, died re-lent—a human dimension to an area that has Aphasia Group. Having lost the ability to articulate before rescuers arrived. The origins of this urban recently undergone considerable gentrification. Once ideas in words after disease or brain damage, the disaffection are fairly easy to trace in 19th-century bustling with African-American businesses and homes, Aphasia victim often experiences a painful isolation. history: mushrooming cities with the concomitant the streets now hold high-rise condominiums and Such is not the case, however, in Fortune’s photographs, alienation resulting from too many stimuli. The remedy, several eminent cultural institutions. Cooper’s com- where the subjects proudly display a symbol of their however, is much harder to find. But just as art munity mural serves to interject a decidedly human recovery, their personal “milemarker.” For Karen, a recorded this alienation—in the late Manet, Degas, dimension into a neighborhood rapidly losing its student-worker, it was a comb, a flower, and a brush, and others—art is also working on its reversal. original character. emblems of her learning by listening. For a man Marking a decisive contribution to the defeat of Inspired by a Greek Orthodox wedding in which a affectionately called CR, it was his newly refound urban estrangement, Adrienne Outlaw’s three-year- ribbon joined the bride’s wreath to that of the groom, ability to distinguish apples from oranges. long project in Nashville, Tennessee, Art Makes Place Lindsey Obermeyer knitted sweaters, caps, and Adjoined to each portrait is the individual story of aims at reconnecting people to each other and at mittens, all designed to link two or more wearers: that person’s therapy and restoration. Diachronic text reversing the disconnect between artist and public. sweaters with extended backs linked by a braid, juxtaposed to the still, synchronic image underscores Outlaw’s fostering of community was two-fold: first in mittens joined by a long cord; one cap named “you,” the human dependence on words for communication. assembling funding and collaborators – no small task; another for “me”; one black, the other white, and on So effective is Fortune’s project that the group intends and, second, in the imaginative projects undertaken and on. These classy garments are meant, the artist to adopt similar activities in the future. throughout the city beginning in 2008 and still ongoing. says, to make visible emotional relationships. Including public panels, a blog, and an installation, For the most part performance-based, these works Worn with enthusiasm all over the city—on the the final work of Art Makes Place was Adrienne enrich the ongoing redefinition of what art, particularly Vanderbilt campus, downtown, at the Nashville Public Outlaw’s The Enhancer Project (2010). Asking the public art, is and can be. Library, and at a score of other venues—the paired audience to think deeply about ethical issues involved A collaborative venture of Brett Bloom and Bonnie garments were real show stoppers. Two McDonald’s in elevating mental activity with “smart drugs,” Fortune, the initial project of Art Makes Place was titled workers worked contiguous registers, their caps linked Outlaw focused on the brain. As a tangible image of Let’s Re-Make (2008). The artists placed hundreds of by a braid; College students bobbed heads joyfully, the public dialogue, she distributed metal, brain-shaped Still from Pictures of Elissa, 2007, Single-Channel Video. Courtesy of the Artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Still from Right Now is the Place to Be, 2009. Single-Channel Video. Courtesy of the Artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash. posters around Nashville and later in Memphis, San waving the ribbon connecting their twinned red hats. viewfinders she designed to be held like a monocle, Diego, Champaign-Urbana, St. Louis, New York, and Two women at computers some distance from each with an eye hole in the form of a pill. Significantly, the Los Angeles. Each poster had pull-off tabs inscribed other remained connected by their single blue sweater extension for the hand on each viewfinder represents with the words “I will help.” The aim was to jump-start though each sat riveted to her own screen. the brain stem, that area which controls, among other the sensibility—from apathetic to engaged, from impotent Extending the opportunities for participation, autonomic functions, blood pressure, circulation, and to energized, from defeated to hopeful. As one participant Obermeyer taught knitting to students, even fellows. breathing. The eye hole also draws attention to the said, “I tore off one of those tags and put it by my Ted Fischer observed that “The knitting...jolted me frontal lobe, that strategic site of long-term memory, phone.... ‘I will help’ represents a positive attitude that out of my everyday complacency.... And for me this is associated as well with maturity and decision-making. opens up the possibility for great things to happen.” the magical transubstantiation of art—of real art, Seeing their own fuzzy reflection on the viewfinder’s Within days of the catastrophic flood this spring, the authentic art, engaged art.” shiny surface, participants are invited to ponder the AMP team put several more up around Nashville. For Community Outpost (2009), volunteers unknown effects of pharmacological meddling with On a wall of the Rock City Machine Company Building positioned Mike Calway-Fagen’s five brightly colored the complexities of the brain and its product, thought. in historic downtown Nashville, Michael Cooper and a stair stoops around the city, inviting people to sit It is auspicious to witness such a dynamic and team of student and community volunteers drew a down and talk or to rest and perhaps think. The artist potentially curative project as Art Makes Place. When temporary chalk mural, Nashville (2009), the second thus updates—with wheels—an architectural institu- asked how many would be affected by the art, Outlaw project of Art Makes Place. Before beginning, Cooper tion from the past, the urban stoop where city confidently declared 100,000. This lofty goal bespeaks talked to students at Overton High School about graffiti dwellers used to interact with the neighbors and those an audacious and laudable ambition to reweave as a lucrative and expressive art form. He then invited passing by. A participant, Veronica Kavass, called the America’s raveled social fabric. Still from Pictures of Elissa, 2007, Single-Channel Video. Courtesy of the Artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Still from Newlywed Christmas, 2008. Single-Channel Video. Courtesy of the Artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash. 14 Dorothy Joiner is the Lovick P. Corn Professor of Art History at LaGrange College,NUMBER:67 LaGrange GA. Dwayne Butcher is an artist/blogger/teacher/curator and chicken wing connoisseur living and working in Memphis TN. His work and writing can be seen at dwaynebutcher.com. 15 Chihuly Grows Big and Bombastic accurately the Christmas tree, with its chasing colored familiar or too commercial; describing the once rare, Nashville, TN lights, bouncing and scattering. These are what Aldous transporting sight of an illuminated city he wrote, with Huxley in Heaven and Hell called the visionary arts of a wry sense of humor, “Now it occurs nightly and Invading both the Frist Center and Cheekwood the everyday, things that reminded a person of the celebrates the virtue of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste.” 1 Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, Chihuly was “Other World of preternatural light and preternatural At the Frist there is a wall of drawings stacked 3 everywhere in Nashville. 4,500 new members joined color, of ideal gems and visionary gold.”1 Today we high and 18 across painted with shiny, metallic paint Cheekwood during the Chihuly exhibition, and their might add the car to Huxley’s long list of metal, glass, on paper. Although they help to clarify Chihuly’s gate revenue is up almost 700% in comparison to and shining surfaces that remind us of the deep sensualism and his interest in gesture, spontaneity, the same time last year. Chihuly has been a financial subconscious “antipodes of the mind.” Chihuly, who and intense color, they are a disappointment. And it’s jackpot for the museums, causing an extension of once sited Houdini as an influence, might also be not because Chihuly lacks skill as a draftsman. Many exhibition times. Celebrated for elevating glass from included as one of Huxley’s visionary artists.2 Chihuly of his older drawings (not shown in Nashville) share mere craft to ebullient, psychedelic installation art, often places his pieces on dark mirrored platforms (a a calligraphic economy of line reminiscent of Rodin’s Still from Aurelia Mihai’s, Endless Motion,” 1998. Still from Barbara Hammer’s “Sanctus,” 1990. Still from Monica Panzarino & Nadine Sobel’s “Loose Control,” 2008. Chihuly’s fantastic glass forms seem to celebrate jeweler’s trope) that double the spiky explosive forms watercolors. But here he cares little about scale or light and color. He is a hit with people who often feel so that they seem to float, extending their elegance nuance of color or mark. The glittery paint and tired alienated by contemporary art, with its negating, and otherworldliness. gesture of pouring and throwing, in addition to the fragmentary forms, and its elitist intellectualism. The At Cheekwood he took advantage of the reflective pure pigment that rarely harmonizes with the silvers, large, multi pieced, ambitious glass installations take ponds on the grounds to reflect tall sapphire and azure golds, and blacks, contribute again to a ritzy commer- advantage of the unique property of glass to be both blue glass stalks that seemed to grow out of the cialism, a glamour magazine aesthetic, the kind with transparent and reflective, causing them to glow with water. Intensely colored during the day Cheekwood Baywatch breasts, high-powered cars, and a proclivity an inner light. For many that inner light is a fantastic, also opened their doors at night to throngs of visitors for cheek reds. eye opening celebration of color and form. For others who searched out the glowing forms in the dark. None of the other critics I read quite convinced me that inner light seems like little more than the trumped But the commercialism and kitsch just doesn’t go that the subconscious wonder awakened by Chihuly’s up commodities of a brand: Chihuly. Chihuly lacks the away. I keep hoping for that critical self-consciousness work trumped the more commercial interests or self-consciousness that makes other blockbuster artists, that, even if only a little, rebels. Peter Fischer responded associations. More power to those who can remain who work with an army of minions and experts, to the problem by saying that the distinctions between engaged by Chihuly, who can see the “antipodes of the ambiguous, ironic, and difficult. kitsch and high art, craft and meaning, disappear, that mind” in his surfaces or to appreciate the complexity A friend and I went to see Chihuly at the Frist Center “ the change from a sense of well-being to boredom of their creation. I just couldn’t get there. Chihuly Still from Jeff Daniel Silva’s “Second Sight/Split Second,” 2000. Still from Robert Cambell’s “Redress,” 2005. Still from Peer Bode’s “Video Locomotion,” 1978/2010. and his only comment was, “Chihuly makes big that is inseparably associated with kitsch simply makes big Christmas ornaments, the best, most Christmas ornaments.” That stuck with me. His doesn’t occur with Chihuly’s work.”3 Perhaps he’s wonderful dam Christmas ornaments around. statement was a condemnation of craft outstripping right, and it is only cynical artists who get bored, but The Way We Move only notice movement, and people seem like details - various acts, such as sticking tongues out to blow art, which is a central issue in the critical reception of I kept looking for the fragmented and damaged in all Chihuly’s work, but it also belittled Christmas ornaments. the glittered pageantry. I wanted to place his work 1 Huxley, Aldous The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell Curated by Ron Lambert bees in a hive. raspberries or trill their lips. The extreme close-ups Harper Perennial Edition, 1990. October 9, 2010 – February 20, 2011 Derived from archives of X-ray footage from the are at times unrecognizable as human, a strange He saw that Chihuly reflected two things: a gaudy not in the manicured gardens of Cheekwood, but in 2 Rose, Barbara “The Earthly Delights of the Garden of Glass” Cheekwood Video Installation Gallery 1930s, Barbara Hammer’s “Sanctus” (1990) transforms assortment of skin and spit and tongues. commercialism, and a theatrical, festival like pageantry, the battered, broken down alleys of north Nashville. Chihuly’s Garden of Glass, Portland Press, 2002. 3 Fischer, Peter “High-Dosage Beauty Dale Chihluy’s Mille Fiori human bodies into day-glo models of psychedelic Robert Cambell’s “Redress” (2005) is an examination the museum’s version of fireworks, jewelry, baroque Huxley too was hip to the problem of boredom in Installation” A Kind of magic: the Art of Transforming, Museum of Bodies stand for many things. From the visceral banality—they perform various everyday activities of professional dancers at rest but never resting. costumes, and the Christmas ornament, or more vision inducing experience when it becomes too Art Lucerne, 2005. eroticism of pornography to the terrifying and tragic while under the lens of cameras that seem to turn Their bodies are instruments, a means of survival. theater of open-casket funerals, sometimes just the their bodies into fragile, magical things. An example of The dancers move around an abandoned building in sight of a body has the capacity to invoke monsters of the earliest X-ray video technology, it is well-timed to a stylized piece that is ambiguously nostalgic, like human emotion. The artists in the The Way We Move coincide with the current conversation regarding the new photographs made from old film negatives. use the human body to drive their various points, and X-ray as an invasion of privacy. It certainly feels The final video in the installation is Peer Bode’s the installation’s audience acts as a kind of voyeur, in voyeuristic to see bodies without their shells, just “Video Locomotion” (1978/2010) which interprets the the very private, almost cloistral rooms of Cheekwood’s bones and an outline of flesh. It is as captivating as history of looking at the human body in video. It is a Video Installation Gallery—a set of seven successive pornography, to be sure: while watching a man shaving tribute to some of the original photo technology, that venues that were once utilized as horse stables, and his face with an electric razor, or a woman applying isn’t quite updated in this video as much as reinter- which remain just small enough to accommodate a moisturizer under X-ray lens, the movement of the preted through the lens of likewise outdated technol- few people at a time. human body stripped of all external signifiers, is near ogy. Bode uses lo-fi edits to alter footage that was The first video shown in the series is in many erotic in its grace. technologically advanced in its time, resulting in a ways the strongest. Aurelia Mihai’s “Endless Motion” The third video in the installation is “Loose doubly retro aesthetic. (1998) is, in the simplest terms, a black-and-white Control” (2008), by Monica Panzarino and Nadine Voyeurism, in many ways, is making familiar that grid of video surveillance footage showing people as Sobel. Choreographed to the song “Lose Control,” which is supposed to remain unseen. Other peoples’ they ascend and descend staircases. The grid pattern by Missy Elliot, it is both a tribute and a parody of bodies are mysterious but they are also familiar; they changes shape from the beginning of the piece traditional music videos—the kind that show cool kids are like you but they are not you. Perhaps it is this through the end—it starts out in a three-by-three grid, propped against a wall, while fly girls shake asses in familiarity that induces such empathy in a mass like the opening credits of the Brady Bunch, and short shorts. In this video, the artists play both roles, audience. The closer you get to seeing the insides of slowly increases in size. Formally, the horizontal lines looking at times ridiculous, and at times seriously cool. other people—their anonymous pacings, their trans- of the stairs and the vertical lines of the guardrail The remaining videos round out the curatorial intent parent flesh, and all of the ways they try to under- make a nice container for the hundreds of people of Lambert’s mission—to show the full capacity of the stand movement and share it with each other—the moving through the screens. It is hypnotic. Mihai has body as a storyteller. Jeff Daniel Silva’s “Second more you understand that the body is a vehicle for managed to use the bustle of daily travel to create a Sight/Split Second” (2000) shows its subjects faces shared experience. minimal, almost Zen-like palate. As the screen shots in close-up—2000 frames per second, rather than the multiply and the human figures become smaller, you standard 24 frames per second—while performing Dale Chihuly, “The Sun,” Glass, 2010. Courtesy of Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. 16 Laura Hutson is a writer and curator livingNUMBER:67 in Nashville. Matt Christy is an artist living in Nashville. 17 Richmond Barthé positive for their extraordinary life-like qualities and A 150-page catalogue by Dr. Samella Lewis accompanies this exhibition. Dr. Margaret Ann Vendryes, who contributed much of the Dixon Gallery & Gardens negative for the blatant nudity. Other audiences biographical information in this review, also has a comprehensive Memphis, TN appreciated Barthé’s penchant for Classicism and biography on Barthé that is available in the Dixon’s gift shop. October 2, 2010 - January 2, 2011 supported his use of nude figures. However, as Richmond Barthé, “Feral Benga,” 1937, Bronze. abstraction burgeoned in the 1940s New York art Collection of Samella Lewis, Los Angeles, CA. The Dixon Gallery and Gardens exhibition Richmond scene, Barthé shifted to depicting Christian themes. Barthé: Harlem Renaissance Sculptor was an impressive Making works related to his personal faith allowed survey of one of the most talented sculptors of his him to continue pursuing representational subject generation. The works are powerful, filled with raw matter, while also launching Barthé into a different sensuality and display an adroit range of subject matter. patronage system, the American Roman Catholic Not only are the busts and figures exquisitely rendered Church. Busts like John the Baptiste (1942) in animated or stationary poses, but each work also and Angry Christ (1946), also included in seems to have a story to share with its viewers. Mr. the Dixon exhibit, reveal the influence of Barthé has managed an impressive feat, storytelling master sculptor Rodin. While many using a static medium to exhibit movement, grace and critics find these works to be some elegance. The work presented at the Dixon showed of his less successful, I would like to Lou Haney, “Hello Jello” (installation view), acrylic on canvas, 72 x 108”, 2009. Lou Haney, “Athletic Aesthetic (Girliest Football Painting Ever)” (detail), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48”, 2009. viewers the true mastery and talent of an almost assert that Barthé was a conflicted Photo courtesy of Rebekah Flake. Photo courtesy of Rebekah Flake. forgotten sculptor. man of faith. The angst portrayed in Lou Haney corns, and—my favorite—a strawberry shortcake and entertainment might draw just such an audience Barthé was born on January 28, 1901 into a long- many of his religious figures expose an University of Mississippi Museum sundae. For those who seek comfort instead in into the paintings. Waiting for these same viewers, if standing family of the Bay St. Louis Creole community. overwhelming emotionality that some of January 12 - March 6, 2010 fermented sugars: an ice-cold mint julep. they care to look closely enough, are all the markers of An extremely creative child, he spent hours drawing his secular work does not. Furthermore, Oxford, MS The photorealism of the paintings is an answer to a superficial existence. The works carry an air of or creating stories to entertain himself. As a teenager Barthé’s prior works dealt with a bohemian large-format photography, but the fact that they are self-conscious giggling, implicating the artist in the Barthé worked summers as a houseboy for a family in lifestyle in which he embraced and immersed The twelve paintings by Lou Haney recently on paintings demands an investigation into why Haney has same cultural practices she critiques. Bay St. Louis, and the nineteenth-century Romanticism himself. This shift in subject matter had to, in display at the University of Mississippi Museum operate invested the time and touch necessary to reproduce The formidable painting of the dress shop’s and Neoclassical painting collected by his employers some ways, be a strain on Barthé’s sense of on two registers: curb appeal and critical irony. They scenes that a camera captures adequately. Further- window, depicted as flush with the picture plane, influenced his artistic style. In 1924, aided by his parish artistic and individual self. Gone were the nudes examine the dual appeal and vulgarity of food, of more, the over-sized depictions of the dress, desserts, includes fashion earrings and the FedEx logo, a priest, Barthé moved to Chicago to enroll at The alluding to Classicism, eroticism and masculine painting, and of the feminine lifestyle in the South. and drinks parody a perverse monumentalizing of cocktail dress and a Sysco food-delivery truck, frilly Chicago Art Institute School. After three years at the pride and enter sculptures that are the polar The University of Mississippi Museum presides consumption. The garish colors and looming presence fabrics and rectangular credit-card stickers on the Art Institute, Barthé struggled with the illusion of 3-D opposite, faith-based, chaste, and propagandized. over the geographic pivot point of the way separating of an eight-foot dessert certainly call attention to the adjacent entry door. The fusion of beauty and com- forms on canvas and Charles Schroeder, his anatomy While these works obviously reference the early two epicenters of town and gown in Oxford, Mississippi: subject and to the viewer’s relationship to it. merce onto one surface—the enigmatic double surface instructor, suggested he model forms in clay to obtain teachings of his faith, they also required him to the square and the football stadium. Half a mile and Of the edible-themed paintings, the standout work of painting and reflective glass—makes a sophisti- the feeling of depth missing in his paintings. These series of portray himself more conservatively. one left turn in either direction brings you to the dual is Da Bombe. A cross-section of layered ice cream cated statement about the dress, the wearer of said portraiture exercises brought Barthé public attention Barthé is the only African-American sculptor of hearts beating vanity and commerce into this college- topped with pink icing and garnished with berries is dress, and the culture created to host women in bold after being included in the Art Institute’s Negro in Art his generation for whom the male nude was central. town community. Within the museum, two paintings tightly painted and dominatingly rich in both color and strapless numbers bedecked with blue fabric roses. Week exhibition of 1927. Although Barthé had completed His depiction of a sensual black body was audacious by Lou Haney recreated these poles by flanking her illusory texture. Reading the painting psychoanalytically, SweeTee and Mint Loulep (images of sweet tea and years of instruction at the Art Institute with Schroeder in an era when black masculinity was sexually volatile. delightful exhibition of visual spectacles and delectable glut. one might make much of the shape and color of the the previously mentioned mint julep, here re-named and privately with Archibald J. Motley, Jr., he thought The depiction of black men during the 1930s and Upon descending the ramp into the exhibition space, dessert, which render the two sexualized regions of christened after the artist) further ground Haney’s of himself as a painter, but gradually turned from painting 40s were stereotypical and reinforced the ideology the viewers immediately confronted Keep It Classy. female anatomy and mimic the tones of skin and flesh. practice in a Southern society of leisure. to sculpture given the reception of his initial sculptural that they were either oversexed and dangerous or Tracing the walls of the gallery to sample the spread of On a more formalist note, Da Bombe showcases Several in the show are unabashedly gendered attempts. His professional career began in earnest, with flagrantly promiscuous. Barthé could have easily gratuitously sweet, salty, or spiked snacks and beverages, inventive painting. This is not your father’s photorealism. paintings. The feminine “gaze” is pointed away from the help of a Rosenwald fellowship and Barthé moved been the target of critics that accused him of they finally met the unusual but visually satisfying From a distance, the details in these paintings sparkle; the body and onto the social spectacles of evening to Harlem at the height of the Renaissance. Meeting perpetuating these stereotypes, but I suspect that Athletic Aesthetic in the gallery’s far right corner. up close, the paint has been applied in a no-nonsense, wear and the athletic arena. The male-dominated renowned philosopher Alain Locke and actor-illustrator his adeptness at creating such realistic figures Haney evokes Manet’s painting of the courtesan anti-polished manner. Haney subverts the urge to see spaces of trade and sportsmanship are seen in a Richard Bruce Nugent persuaded Barthé that Harlem along with his supposedly likable personality helped Olympia in the way she seduces from a distance and realism in these images by placing them on a ground peripheral way only; the woman painter/viewer was the most dynamic place for a young African-American to persuade detractors about his motives. One of unnerves upon approach. By replacing the nude with of graphically fascinating patterns. The transcendent determines to see through the scene and ironically artist. Living in Harlem allowed Barthé to mingle within the most striking works within the exhibition was food in the calorie-free form of acrylic paint on canvas, cloud-like motif of lime-green paint stenciled over focus on reflecting, superficial qualities. The visible circles that embraced him without accentuating his race, Barthé’s Inner Music (1956). Created at Lolaus, the artist tackles the seduction and subsequent deep pink takes away the seriousness and points reflections off of the glass, mirrors, and polished while also encouraging his strong interest in nude figures. Barthé’s modest estate in Colgate, St. Ann Jamaica disgust from a feminine and perhaps even cultural instead to the absurd world of fantasizing about food metals in Haney’s art reveal an awareness of the Furthermore, Barthé’s mostly white, and often homo- after a tumultuous emotional period, the work displays feminist angle. porn (aesthetically over-the-top food intended to look complexity in a female version of cultural consumption. sexual, patrons obliged his preferences for the male nude. his renewed vitality and desire to break free of social Ten works in the exhibition read at first glance as at instead of eat). Haney’s backgrounds often deny They obscure even as they illustrate; they are shallow Realistic depictions of the male body is essential in conventionality. In some ways, Inner Music reminds a collective homage to the pleasure foods. In popular spatial laws and yet are reflected off the surfaces even as they model depth; they participate in the Barthé’s work and the male figure in motion, particularly me of both Feral Benga and Black Narcissus. The culture, food is oft considered the female fetish object glasses and pie pans as if they exist objectively, picture even as they are viewed as vain, or even vapid, dancing or at sport, was of great interest to him. Some elegance and quality of his work combined with his and the security blanket for lost relationships, lost jobs, heightening the ambiguous mood of her works. pleasure seekers. of his signature pieces shown at the Dixon include love for the medium is evident. The posture is confident, and loss of direction. These representations of Keep It Classy and Athletic Aesthetic (Girliest This exhibition investigates more than it resolves, Black Narcissus (1934), Kalombwan (1934), Feral but in no way a fetishization of the black male body. sensory satiation mimic the proverbial half gallon of Football Painting Ever) transport the viewer to a shop but its subjects are relevant to the audience and to the Benga (1935) and The Stevedore, (1937). Aesthetic The front foot moves forward as if in time with an ice cream and a single spoon. Visitors, male and female, window (with the title hinting to locals of the boutique times. This level of complexity in aesthetic and social beauty, sublimity or even nationalism were not the only unheard rhythm. Perhaps, the boy of Narcissus has found respite from a particularly gray and wet winter Classy Creations on the Oxford Square) and at the interrogation is welcome. As with other objects of impetuses behind Barthé’s consistent representations grown up enough to look outward, realizing that he (by Mississippi standards, anyway) in the colors, festivities surrounding the crowd and the band, clad desire, saturation diminishes with time, and we long of the black male. Barthé’s nudes uncovered the has made a life for himself, based on his own fortitude patterns and delightful sweetness of Haney’s works. predominantly in the Ole Miss red and blue. Conspicu- to go back for more. So it is with these cheery, yet fundamental humanity of black men, while also and that he has danced to his own rhythm, rather Sweetness is meant literally here: jiggling Jell-O, ously absent are the football players, coaches, and the garish; sweet, yet saccharin; savory, yet unappetizing; flaunting their sexual virility. His figures received than someone else’s for a lifetime that oozing honeycomb, frothy icing, pert little candy ball. These nods to the local patrons of commercialism delightful, yet critical paintings of exuberant excess. mixed criticism from African Americans: will be remembered.

18 Rebekah Flake is a University of Mississippi MFA candidate in Printmaking with an MANUMBER:67 in Art History. Rehema Barber is adjunct faculty in Contemporary art history at the University of Memphis. 19 Keith Herrin exhibitions that attempt to change the world while not of patriotism. Given that increased accessibility, the irresolvable paradox? What is left after these questions the gazes found in Bernini, Hiriam Powers, or even as documentary as the objects are fake representa- Go Play By Your Self necessarily changing your place in it, creating almost signs themselves almost forcibly become speech as is a fundamental incompatibility in the imaginary sphere, Edmonia Lewis. As strange as it might be to make tions of patriotism and military life, and as equally SR404 an oscillation between fixed positions that is even text rather than the associatively constructed com- a reduction of the urge towards identification into such comparisons, by noting nevertheless that what is fake as our own memories of our childhoods are. October 1 - 31, 2010 more disturbing in its long term consequences mercial fantasies that would have been part of the discordant impulses, a misconstruing of the gestalt, set into motion is a conflation of the sculptural and Go Play By Your Self is an invective, commanding Johnson City, TN precisely because there aren’t any to hold onto. It is original packaging; for those not in the know, GI Joe and a prefiguration of an alienating destination. In the the photographic media, setting out a problematic the viewer to engage is a series of activities with into this category that Herrin’s art falls. figures were sold with “biographies” on the back of act of disallowing the viewer complete access to these way of thinking about sculpture, of thinking about the self-constructed and self-referential rules that have At SR404, located in Johnson City, TN—a location Go Play By Your Self consisted of photographs of the packaging as filecards, as an attempt to give “life” objects as fetishized tokens held up against the figures as sculpture as opposed to being photographs little purpose and little reward. In some ways, the title almost as far off the art world’s beaten tracks as GI Joe figures arranged against vague backgrounds, to these figures that could be collected and organized torments of the contemporary world, these images precisely by means of the absence of the normal for this exhibition couldn’t be more appropriate; possible—there has been a growing sense of accom- either as single individuals or in pairs, with each figure for future reference, but a life that was frequently simultaneously force the viewer to return again to sense of scale and the normative usage necessarily through misunderstandings and uncertainties, plishment and confidence, with recent exhibitions holding signs. At first glance, it would appear that ignored by the consumers when all of the packaging thinking of them merely as toys. What is left is that suggested by the actual GI Joe figures, a shift occurs through symbolizations that cease to have meaning or featuring an increasingly vibrant and experimental there was often a comical meaning intended in the had been torn away or utilized piecemeal by the Herrin has created imagery stitched together with an between the two. As photographs of sculpture the never had any in the first place, through a series of tone that belies its provincial location. Many of these arrangement of the figures and the text of the signs, consumers to flesh out play-acting, often itself a emphasis on post-production elucidatory effect that use of space is still of paramount importance even if compulsively reverberating imaginary constructions exhibitions have succeeded or failed for various reasons: with references to homosexual romance, fashion straightforward rendition of the boys’ own lives. It’s remains elusive as a destination of firm meaning. it’s limited through the specificity of the photographic that successively topple the further we are from them the location at the back of a well regarded tattoo parlor choices, and homelessness that veered on being difficult not to see and think of these images of dolls Herrin is more known for producing sculpture and medium, in a manner parallel to, while moving in in time the more we mediate them through failing doesn’t always lend itself to more thoughtful shows, simply sophomoric and superficial. Nevertheless, on for boys as repositories of hopes and dreams, of graphic design than photographs, but in speaking to exactly the opposite direction, of the work of Richard references and reflections, our very sense of who we and the space itself is rather awkward, with little room further contemplation, whether as single figures or as anguish and despair, but this body of work does the artist it became clear that these were, in his mind, Serra; rather than be intimidated by scale and mate- are and what we do falls away as meaningless. These for individual pieces to claim enough attention from pairs, subversive meanings appear. As inclined as the precisely that while simultaneously upending our not as far outside of his normal style of production as rial, the viewer is confounded by intimacy and acces- photographs do not complete me, and, in fact, that the viewers, but there is always a vibrant sense of viewer might be to dismiss this work as simply expectations; the text of the signs are cultural memes, they might appear. Besides the fact that the artist sibility, by memories of childhood and the visceral “me” that is being referred to becomes even more energy there, and its openings are bringing in more photographs of children’s toys—male children at that, drawn from such diverse sources as cinema and wanted the figures to appear larger than life, using a presence of the objects which defined childhood. For complex, perhaps even more impossible, to define. people from a diverse crowd, meaning that it’s serving if one is inclined to such preconceptions- it’s also clear advertising, thereby repositioning the figures back sense of scale that helps the viewer to identify with Herrin, it’s important to realize that these photo- If nothing else, we are left after this exhibition only as an excellent outreach vehicle for the diversity of the that something else is going on. That they have been into the adult world, making them commentators on the scene, instead the figures are treated as sculptural graphs need to be understood as sculptural arrange- with a sense of longing that cannot be rectified, that arts produced in the area. While some of the exhibitions photographed with a macro lens which provides an the current situation of veterans’ affairs, homeless, objects that are separate from the viewer embodied in ments first, as tableaus of a sort, but also it’s impor- can only be turned over and over as a metaphor until have been noteworthy, few have been as thought- enlarged sense of scale gives these figures a relatable and discrimination in a fashion that Hasbro certainly a photographic presentation. Herrin seems to have tant to realize that they could never be successful as where it began and where it ends is impossible to provoking as the photography of Keith Herrin, whose human appearance, transforming them into beings never intended. In this sense, can childhood toys stop been striving after retaining the sculptural experience arrangements of the actual figures because they determine, with privileged symptoms that become exhibition Go Play By Your Self inhabits this strange that demand our attention and participate in our world, being about childhood concerns as part of the in the photographs, with each one shot constructed to would be too directly available to the imagination, to rhetoric, just as GI Joe is, that are seemingly filled space. Some exhibitions are startling in their ability to is a first indication of something not being quite right. construction of an idealized and authority voice, a ego emphasize the manner in which it was focused on the manipulation by the viewer; convincingly, as prepara- with promise but signify nothing real. Yet, that too confront the viewer with new imagery. Other exhibitions That they are holding up signs that run counter to the made certain of its command of the world? Or are eye contact between the viewer and the 3 ½ inch tion for a type of reflection on childhood, Herrin’s is the real, which makes Keith Herrin’s work very are equally startling in their ability to make you rethink idea of GI Joes as “real American heroes” equally pushes adult issues reducible to slogans, a regression into an dolls. Out of this manner of presentation the gaze work establishes a necessarily restricted access, a worthy of consideration as evidence of the remains your place in the world. Then, there is a third category: back against the conflation of dolls for boys as emblems infantilism as agency, one continually reinvigorating an becomes increasingly important in each piece, sense that the photographs are only documentation of childhood returning to us into our adulthood. achieving the same effect as the piercing quality of of the sculptural installations that are as equally fake

Keith Herrin,“Nature, ” Photograph, 2010, 48”x34”. Photo courtesy of the artist. Keith Herrin,“Complete,” Photograph, 2010, 72”x35”. Photo courtesy of the artist.

20 NUMBER:67 Scott Contreras-Koterbay is a professor at ETSU, Scott teaches modern and contemporary art history as well as aesthetics. 21 Memphis, TN Nashville, Tennessee Art Museum of the University of Memphis The Arts Company Communications & Fine Arts Bldg, 901.678.2224, amum.org 215 Fifth Ave of the Arts, 615.254.2040, theartscompany.com

Askew Nixon Ferguson Architects Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and 1500 Union Ave., 901.278.6868 Museum of Art 1200 Forest Park Dr., 615.356.8000 cheekwood.org Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art 119 S. Main, 901.523.2787 belzmuseum.org Cumberland Gallery 4107 Hilsboro Circle, 615.297.0296 cumberlandgallery.com Christian Brothers University Beverly and Sam Ross Gallery (lower level of Plough Library) Estel Gallery 650 East parkway South, 901.321.3432 cbu.edu/library/gallery 115 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. 615.519.3192 estelgallery.com

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Delta Axis/Power House Plowhaus Artists’ Cooperative 211 South 17th Street, 615.262.2224 plowhaus.org 45 GE Patterson, 901.578.5545 deltaaxis.org Hours: Thusday – Friday 12-6 pm, Saturday 10-6, Sunday 1-6 pm Valerie Jaudon: White Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center Dixon Gallery and Gardens 514 Fifth Avenue S., 615.244.7179 rubygreen.org APRIL 12 – JULY 2, 2011 4339 Park, 901.761.5250 dixon.org Sarratt Gallery 1st Floor Sarratt Student Center, Vanderbilt University opportunity Opening Reception: Thursday, April 14, 2011, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Front Street Gallery 515.322.2471 vanderbilt.edu/sarrattgallery 269 S Front, 901.647.6457 us Art Gallery Hollis Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery 401 Charlotte Ave., 615.741.1701 arts.state.tn.us The University of Mississippi Museum 408 S. Front Street (Huling Ave. entrance) 901.522.8300 Number: Inc, an independent, contemporary visual arts journal that seeks to stimulate Please help support contemporary visual arts in the Choose sponsorship level: UNIVERSITY AVE. & 5TH ST., Joysmith Gallery and Studio Vanderbilt University Fine Art Gallery critical discourse by educating, advocating, and informing the visual arts communities of OXFORD, MS 23rd West End Ave., 615.343.1704, vanderbilt.edu/gallery mid-southern region by joining Number: today. All BECOME A MUSEUM MEMBER TODAY! 46 Huling, 901.543.0505 $50 Friend the Southeastern region, is currently searching for a new Executive Editor. Tues.–Sat. 10 a.m.–6 p.m. members will receive one year of Number: mailed Closed every Sunday and Monday along with M U S E U M . O L E M I S S . E D U L. Ross Gallery Watkins College of Art and Design Gallery 2289 Metro Center Blvd. 615.383.4849 watkins.edu/galleries to them and will be acknowledged in each issue. All $100 Numerati most University Holidays. For assistance 5040 Sanderlin Ave., 901.683.6200 lrossgallery.com related to a disability call 662.915.7084. 662.915.7073 contributions will count towards matching grant Job description: Part-Time: Normally, four issues of Number are published and Levy Gallery at the Buckman Performing Zeitgeist Gallery $250 Patron 1819 21st Ave. South, 615.256.4805 zeitgeist-art.com funds and are tax deductible to the extent allowed by and Fine Arts Center distributed annually. However, the Board has chosen to reduce this number to two St. Mary’s Episcopal School – 60 Perkins Ext., 901.537.1483 the Internal Revenue Service. $1000 Deity in order to provide the Executive Editor with enough time to assist the Board with Knoxville, Tennessee Material the restructuring and long-term planning of the organization. This planning phase 2553 Broad Avenue, 901.219.1943 The Basement Gallery 103-B W. Jackson Ave., 865.437.9613 basementgallery.net and reduced publication load is expected to last for two years. Therefore, during 2011 and 2012, the Executive Editor’s primary responsibilities include: Memphis Botanic Gardens name 750 Cherry Rd, 901.576.4100 memphisbotanicgarden.com The Ewing Gallery of Art, University of Tennessee • Oversee all phases of the production process ensuring timely production and 1715 Volunteer Blvd., 865.974.3200 ewing-gallery.utk.edu Memphis Brooks Museum of Art address distribution of two issues annually, coordinating efforts with other regional editors, Overton Park, 901.544.6200 brooksmuseum.org Downtown Gallery, authors, art director, and Board of Directors. Specific responsibilities include: Memphis College of Art The University of Tennessee city state zip · Manage and maintain publication budget 1930 Poplar, 901.272.5100 mca.edu 106 South Gay Street, 615.673.0802

Main Gallery, Rust Hall Knoxville Museum of Art (area) phone number email · Identify writers and contributors, administer contracts and handle all correspondence Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday 9 am – 5 pm, Sunday 12 – 5 pm 1050 World’s Fair Parkway, 865.525.6101 knoxart.org Closed for Thanksgiving November 27 – 28 · Solicit and organize advertisements On the Street Sewanee, Tennessee · Write editorials Memphis College of Art Downtown Gallery 338 South Main, Memphis TN 38103 University Art Gallery · Manage Social Media – Twitter & Facebook Gallery hours: Thursday, Friday 4 – 9 pm, Saturday 12 – 5 pm Georgia Ave., Guerry Hall, 931.598.1223 gallery.sewanee.edu/ · Work with Board and staff to generate themes/features and identify pertinent topics National Civil Rights Museum Jonesboro, Arkansas 450 Mulberry, 901.521.9699 civilrightsmuseum.org that should be addressed Arkansas State University P and H Artspace Bradbury Gallery, Fowler Center, 870.972.8115 · Proofread and edit all materials before going to press bradburygallery.astate.edu/ P and H Café, 1532 Madison Ave. 901.726.0906 width x height B&W Ads Color Ads · Create and maintain databases of contact information for contributors, subscribers, Shainberg Gallery Little Rock, Arkansas Full Page 9.50 x 12.0 $550 $1100 Please inquire about color and advertisers Memphis Jewish Community Center, 6560 Poplar Ave. advertising availability 901.761.0810 Arkansas Arts Center Half Page 4.50 x 12.0 $300 $600 before submitting ads. · Attend all Board meetings 9th & Commerce / MacArthur Park 501.372.4000 arkarts.com University of Memphis Quarter Page 4.50 x 5.875 $165 $350 • In collaboration with the Board of Directors, work toward developing the long-term Jones Hall Gallery, Department of Art, 901-678-221 University of Arkansas at Little Rock 2801 S. University Avenue, Fine Arts Building, 501.569.8977 vision and goals of Number Inc, including: ualr.edu/art Chattanooga, Tennessee Billing: Payment preferred at time of insertion. Otherwise, invoiced upon printing. · Establish a business plan and raise profile of the journal The AVA Center Gallery Cleveland, Mississippi Delivery: via Email to [email protected], PDF files encouraged. · Assist in Defining Board member roles and establish a strategy for Board growth 30 Frazier Avenue, 423.265.4282, avartists.org Delta State University Wright Art Center Gallery 1003 W. Sunflower Rd., · Enhance sales and advertisement strategies and broaden subscription base Hunter Museum of Art 662.846.4720 10 Bluff View, 423.267.0968, huntermuseum.org · Build online presence through website and social networking advertiser contact name Dickson, Tennessee Jackson, Mississippi · Determine staffing needs and assist with writing job descriptions Mississippi Museum of Art The Renaissance Center 380 S. Lamar St. 601.960.1515 msmuseumart.org address · Identify appropriate grants and philanthropic organizations; initiate and oversee grant 855 Hwy 46 South, 37055. 615.740.5519 rcenter.org writing and necessary follow up Jackson, Tennessee Oxford, Mississippi city state zip The University of Mississippi University Art Gallery Meek Hall, Gallery 130 662.915.7193 olemiss.edu/depts/art/ 1050 University Dr. 731.661.5075, To Apply: Letter of Introduction, CV, Writing Samples, Names and Contact Information www.uu.edu/dept/art/gallery.html (area) phone number email for 3 References electronically to [email protected] by April 1, 2011

Number: recommends that visitors call in advance or view websites for open hours and potential changes in exhibit schedules. Send this form with check to: Number: Inc., PO Box 11008, Memphis, TN 38111-0008 22 NUMBER:67 February 19 – July 17, 2011

A wide array of more than 200 works of art illuminates Japan’s enduring infl uence on the West.

1-866-VIEW ART | msmuseumart.org 380 South Lamar Street, Jackson, Mississippi

Additional support provided by Trustmark Bank, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, and the Jackson Convention & Visitors Bureau. Support is also provided in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, The Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Memorial Exhibition Series

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916), The Japanese Woodblock Print, circa 1888. oil on canvas. 20.16 x 24.25 in. Collection of Neue Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Inv. 8401. Photo Credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY. Unknown Artist (Japanese, 19th century), no title, circa 1870. watercolor, ink, metallic leaf on off-white paper. 15.75 x 25.39 in. Courtesy National Park Service, Longfellow National Historic Site.

6683-9_MMA_OrientExpress_Number_4.5x5.875.indd 1 1/10/11 11:27 AM

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