Tag: Crosstown Arts

Here All Along

On View: Wednesday, August 26 & Thursday, August 27, 10 am – 6 pm
Reception: Friday, August 28, 6 – 9 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, August 29, 2 – 4 pm

Superficially, a neighborhood is designated by boundaries, the invisible lines traced along streets and across topographical features. But a neighborhood is given meaning by its inhabitants, the people whose lives enmesh to tell a story and create a sense of place. Here All Along is a collaborative exhibition featuring works from several artists living and/or working in the Klondike Smokey City, New Chicago and Crosstown neighborhoods.

The show’s works are expressions of individual experiences, but together they conjure notions of everyday life in these communities. From portraiture to large-scale public sculpture to intricate leather and fabric goods, Here All Along is a collection of distinct offerings focused on transcending invisible lines and creating connections between neighborhoods, connections between people.

Participating Artists: Calvin Farrar, Renee Hodges, Darlene Newman, Ted Norwood, Artiek Smith, Nelson Smith III, Nelson Smith IV and Larry Walker & Brittney Bullock

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MicroCinema Club: The Best of DC Shorts

DC Shorts

Doors: 7 pm / Presentation: 7:30 pm
Pay-what-you-can

The best of DC Shorts Program brings you 9 terrific films in 90 minutes. Take a peek at what’s playing:

THE GUNFIGHTER
A gunfighter walks into a saloon, but the film’s voiceover has other goals in mind.
YEARBOOK
With the end of the world right around the corner, a man is asked to write the final pages of recorded human history.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Passengers on an airplane struggle to stay grounded when an Arab man boards the flight.
CADET
Pushed by his coach/father, a young runner eventually lashes out at the least expected moment.
SILLY BASTARD NEXT TO THE BED
A retired Air Force officer realizes he was at the center of a huge political scandal during the Kennedy administration.
THEY ARE THE LAST
A day in the life of a lighthouse keeper on a remote cape off the Uruguayan coastline.
THE CHAPERONE
When a motorcycle gang crashes a school dance, there’s only one person who can restore order: the chaperone.
ONE MINUTE TIME MACHINE
Hoping to impress a pretty girl, a nerdy scientist shows off his one-minute time machine.
WHAT CHEER?
Struggling to overcome the death of his wife, a man is tormented by a cheerful marching band that follows him seemingly everywhere.

Organized by Indie Memphis and Crosstown Arts with support from ArtsMemphis and FirstTennessee Foundation | ArtsFirst.

Lawrence Matthews III: In a Violent Way

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm

  • Performance at Rock For Love: Friday, September, 4, 8:30 pm
  • Artist Talk: Thursday, September 10, 7:30 pm

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In a Violent Way is a multimedia installation by Lawrence Matthews III that incorporates a wide array of visual and audio elements, from oil painting and collage to tube televisions and archival video footage. To accompany the installation, Matthews will perform his own original songs at the close of the show’s reception. The exhibition’s title is a nod to the seminal, genre-bending 1969 Miles Davis recording, In a Silent Way, which inspired and guided Matthews while he created this body of work.

The imagery of In a Violent Way is sourced from or informed by mass media portrayals of events past and present in four primary cities: Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Memphis, each with its own history of entrenched racial discrimination and economic disparity disproportionately affecting people of color. Mixed media works depicting the demonstrations and unrest of the 1960’s tellingly reside alongside banks of television sets showing video footage of more recent discord, like the 1992 L.A. Riots. These scenes — differing in timeline, though not in tenor — convey generations of frustration caused by institutionalized oppression, angry citizens crying out against abuses at the hands of authority, and the ambivalent eye of the media that only captures part of the story.

“My work does not judge the morality of the individuals partaking in the riots, only the institutions that create the circumstances where riots are the only voice.” – Lawrence Matthews III

Lawrence Matthews III was born in Memphis, TN, into a family who encouraged him to be an artist from a young age. He received his BFA from the University of Memphis and was awarded “Best of Show” in the University’s 31st Annual Juried Student Exhibition. Young, but already prolific, Matthews is an emerging artist who has shown work in several solo and group shows across Memphis, including Doomed to Repeat at Circuitous Succession Gallery (2015), Cigar Box Show at Glitch Gallery (2014), and Price Is Right at David Lusk Gallery (2014).

Matthews works in a wide variety of media, including oil paint, collage, photography, sculpture, music and film, and combines post-modern, Pop Art and contemporary influences to narrate his perspective as an African descendant living in America.