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Crosstown Arts Spring 2022 resident artists Lucy Wang, Kate Roberts, John Rash, Gunter Guapp, and Jasmine Marie will present artist talks.

Free and open to the public. Masks are encouraged at this event.

Lucy Wang is an award-winning published and produced writer, mentor, and performer. Her plays have been performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her poetry and prose have appeared in literary and trade magazines. After Wang sold a half-hour TV comedy pilot, feminist icon Gloria Steinem urged her to do stand-up, which was so exhilarating that Wang developed and performed two one-woman shows to sold-out audiences. Her manuscripts are archived at the Huntington Library and CEMA collections at UC Santa Barbara.

Lucy’s work is largely dedicated to fighting for social justice, creating more inclusive roles, and inciting laughter.

“I am a founding member of Honor Roll!, an action advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40 as well as our women+ over 40 allies, that fights for more inclusion, more visibility in theater. One of the ways I champion change is through comedy. Comedy is revolutionary. I can’t force you to think something is funny. Laughter is involuntary. We all know what canned laughter sounds like. Real laughter has the power to connect us, open our hearts, and change our minds. I never met anyone who said, please, stop, no more laughter. That’s why I love to share stories that tackle complex issues with joy and laughter — it will improve our health and understanding of each other. Live, love, laugh.”

Kate Roberts is an artist and educator working in Memphis, TN. Her practice is a mediation on time and its role in the decay of memories, objects, and the spaces they exist within. Inspiration is drawn from historical objects, the architecture around her, or events and choices that shaped a site. Primarily working with clay in its unfired state, Roberts questions the permanence of these objects and sites. The results are installations that explore the connection between the vulnerabilities of the nature of clay in its many forms from dust, to wet slip, to unfired and the mortality of people, objects, and places. The moments of fragmentation found in-between act as metaphors for change, impermanence, and devices for reinterpretation. Distorted and ghostly, the sculptures and installations result in a fleeting, fragile reminder of the consequences of nature, time, and circumstance.

“I grew up in the Southern part of the United States. The landscape is lush and bountiful and at times can be hauntingly visceral. This is due to the areas’ humidity. It causes the pace to be slow … nearly stagnant. Time does not move in a linear fashion, but is suspended. As southerners we live in suspension between myth and truth, between appearance and reality, between life and death, and between the past and present. In my work I try to find that similar moment in-between.”

John Rash is an artist and documentarian working in lens-based media across the mediums of photography, video, audio, and installation. John’s work is primarily centered on representations of outsider identities, counterculture communities, and alternative lifestyles with a commitment to accountability and promotion of social and racial justice. These stories and images utilize the traditions and innovations of documentary fieldwork and are retold through experimental methods of visual storytelling that highlight the human condition.

“All documentaries are collaborative portraits framed and assembled by a subjective narrative. No story is too small and every person has at least one worth hearing.”

Gunter Guapp is a composer and music teacher based in Memphis, TN, whose work combines interests in noise composition and genre music. His recent work utilizes folk melodies, chaotic textures, and improvisation to explore themes of interpersonal connection and accessibility. Recent premieres include collaborations with Hypercube, the Julius Quartet, Four Corners Ensemble, and Ensemble PHACE to present new pieces in Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Vienna.

“At its best, I think concert music should be physically engaging and allow performers to immediately connect to listeners and invite audiences into performance spaces”

Jasmine Marie (she/her) is a queer Black multidisciplinary artist born and based in Memphis. Her work centers stories of Black southern heritage, spirituality, and black femme identity, most often through afro-surrealist/futuristic imagery. She is half of NuJas, a multidisciplinary art house centering black women and queer folks.

“I think overall I want to make work that holds black folks close and moves us to imagine how love and community free us. Even in pieces that aren’t intentionally futuristic, I want us to feel bigger. Like we are part of something that transcends time and challenges our understanding of our place in the world.”