Tag: Visual Arts

Cedar Lorca Nordbye: To Frame, To Construct, To Occupy

Cedar Lorca Nordbye

 Utilizing the approximate quantity of wood used to frame a small house, the installation explores questions of diaspora, exile and relocation, with occupancy as a form of resistance, and construction as a metaphor for idea formation.The colorful and fragmented imagery of houses, figures and abstract designs cast on a variety of standard, wooden framing surfaces is the first phase of a two-part project. At the close of the exhibition, the graphically altered lumber will be donated to Memphis Habitat for Humanity and available for use in a newly constructed home, briefly visible as a collaborative artwork between the artist and the volunteer builders before being enclosed within the walls of a future dwelling.

On view in the Crosstown Arts gallery, across the street from the Sears Crosstown building, which is soon to be the largest building remodel in the history of Memphis, the installation utilizes wood collected from multiple sources (including the interior of Sears Crosstown) to examine our sense of the structures we inhabit in a post 9/11, post-Katrina America.

“Our ideas, the thoughts that give shape to our days, our emotions and our interactions, are like the beautiful golden streaked Douglass fir two-by-fours that frame our homes. Humble, cut to length and hidden away.”

Cedar Lorca Nordbye is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Memphis where he has taught since 2003.  His work has been exhibited in California, Atlanta, Chicago, Quebec, Skopje, Alabama, Kentucky and North Carolina in a variety of gallery, museum and alternative spaces.  Norbye has carried out social-practice/performance artworks in Las Vegas, Paris, Greensboro, Seattle, Nashville and New York City, where he has been banned from the Empire State Building since 2003.

When asked where he is from, Nordbye replies, “Michigan for four years, Minnesota for one year, Iowa for four years, Massachusetts for five years, California for ten years, and before that in a childhood blur of hippie-Jewish-exiled wandering which spanned Connecticut, Guatemala, New Mexico and West Virginia, with my mother and my father…who actually is a Jewish carpenter.”

His work can be viewed online at cedarnordbye.com.

The exhibition was organized by the artist and Crosstown Arts.

Public/Art/ists Part I

Crosstown Arts, the UrbanArt Commission and ArtsMemphis are partnering to present a multi-venue exhibition and programming series throughout 2015 to acknowledge public art makers in Memphis.

The series will collectively recognize and share the work of artists who have participated in Memphis’ public art projects and initiatives, including the studio work (non-public art projects) of these artists, as well as insight into their processes and involvement in creating public art projects from conception to completion.  The exhibition and ongoing events of Public/Art/ists not only act as a connection point to these artists, but also reveal the multiple facets of these artists’ practices in the community.

Crosstown Arts will host part I of Public/Art/ists, sharing the studio work of over 40 artists who have made contributions to Memphis’ urban landscape:

Beth Edwards, Cat Pena, Greely Myatt, Anne J. Froning, Jill Wissmiller, Jonathan Auger, Kiersten Williams, Pinkney Herbert, Jamond Bullock, Jeannie Tomlinson Saltmarsh, Carol Deforest, Tootsie Bell, Sean Murphy, Richard Lou, Jeane Umbreit, Jay Crum, Jason Miller, Robin Salant, Tad Lauritzen Wright, Elisha Gold, Anne Davey, Louis Tucker, Robert Burns, Kia Lola, Anthony Lee, Mary Long, Justin Bowles, Bob X, Annabelle Meacham, Penny Dodds, Susan Maakestad, Suzy Hendrix, April Pierce, Stephanie Cosby, Yvonne Bobo, Meredith Olinger, Eszter Sziksz, Jamin Carter, Vitus Shell, Phyllis Boger, Kristi Duckworth, Pam Cobb, Brandon Marshall, Lea Holland, Whitney Kerr, Cedar Lorca Nordbye, Yancy Villa-Calvo & Erica Qualy

Additional information about future exhibitions and programs of Public/Art/ists happening at other venues is forthcoming.

Ben Butler: Cloud Morphology

Crosstown Arts is pleased to present Cloud Morphology, an exhibition of new sculpture by Memphis artist Ben Butler.

Screen Shot 2015-06-11 at 2.12.53 PM

Photo: Chip Pankey

Artist Statement

Every thing, under close enough observation, will reveal the complete story of its making.

In and around Blue Hill, Maine, the blueberry fields are littered with the stones, boulders really, which were dropped by migrating glaciers during the last ice age.  They are not indigenous like the bedrock, they are visitors, and they generally sit on top of the earth.

Stones can seem like the most static and permanent objects we can imagine, but of course they are not static.  Time spent with these particular rocks shows clear evidence of multiple processes – cracks where an enormous force once suddenly split the rock, concavities where a violent encounter with another stone took a small part away, a surface texture resulting from centuries of abrasion from ice and soil and smaller rocks, and a general smoothness, a softening of all features, from the gentle but endlessly persistent wind and rain.  In the quiet of the blueberry fields you can study these features and reconstruct the story.  A single stone was severed from a mountain, tumbled, was tossed about by heaving earth, carried across a continent by flowing ice, scraped and sculpted, and ended up here.  And it is still moving, sinking into the soil, shifting upward and tilting when the ground freezes, softening in the rain, cracking, and rolling down hill, all at pace that is impossible to perceive.  But the physical evidence is there in the stone.

My sculptures reflect the sensibility that an object stands as a momentary physical manifestation of an ongoing process.  They provide evidence of unseen forces, and they point to the distinction between the human and the non-human.  Throughout the natural world, unexpected complexity emerges from simple, persistent processes.  When the order of things is not readily apparent, complexity is often mistaken for chaos.  In the rush to comprehend we often miss the wonderful unseen forces at work.  My response is to play in these boundaries between the simple and the complex, and between the complex and the overwhelming, and to offer a contemplative experience in which language gives way to physical understanding, and slow looking is rewarded.

Artist Biography

Ben Butler received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA from Bowdoin College.  His work has been exhibited in solo shows in New York at Coleman Burke Gallery and Plane Space, as well as at Zg Gallery in Chicago, John Davis Gallery in Hudson, New York, Davidson Galleries in Seattle, and Clough-Hanson Gallery in Memphis, among others.  He is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Individual Artist Grant and numerous fellowships at residency programs including the MacDowell Colony, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and the Ucross Foundation.

He currently lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee and Quogue, New York, and is Assistant Professor of Art at Rhodes College.

 

Product of Pac

Artist Naima Peace’s Product of Pac exhibition features multimedia works, each inspired by a poem from the collection, The Rose That Grew From Concrete, by Tupac Shakur.

Naima reflects on Shakur’s legacy, examining the impact his words and activism still have on people — even almost 20 years after his death.

Anyway, Anyhow

A raw wild visual gumbo to accompany the sick sonic stew of Gonerfest, organized by Goner Records
Bruce Lee Webb
Featuring the artwork of Tim Kerr (Austin, TX), Bruce Webb (Waxahatchie, TX), John Henry Toney (Seale, AL), Butch Anthony (Seale, AL), Timmy Lampinen (Detroit, MI)

TIM KERR
Tim moved to Austin in 1974 to attend The University of Texas at Austin and there he earned a degree in painting and photography. While in the art department, he studied under famed photographer Garry Winogrand and was awarded a Ford Foundation grant for his work.

Tim is also well-known for his slashing guitar work in seminal punk bands The Big Boys, Poison 13, Monkeywrench, Lord High Fixers and more.

His artwork combines social awareness with iconic figures
and searing images overlaid by inspirational quotes. He has been involved in many different scales, from murals to artwork on skateboards.

He recently exhibited in

http://www.timkerr.net/
http://juicemagazine.com/home/tim-kerr-art-show/
http://www.yalostudio.com/2014_04_01_archive.html

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BUTCH ANTHONY
Mr. Anthony has made up his own word, “intertwangleism,” a label he paints on a lot of his pieces, which he defined this way: “Inter, meaning to mix,” he said. “And twang, a distinct way of speaking. If I make up my own ‘ism,’ no one can say anything or tell me I’m doing it wrong.”

Butch’s art world contains sly reworkings of existing paintings, sculptures made of discarded metal and wood, and semi-apocryphal taxidermy all creating a unique voice that has charmed the art world from his native Alabama through New York City, London, and beyond.

Butch did a show in the Goner Store in 2004 which was a huge thrill for us. In the ten years since that show, Butch has become strangely sorta famous, but hasn’t changed a bit. A recent show at Yolo Gallery in Water Valley, MS was a sensation. We are thrilled to have him back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/garden/08doonanny.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.blackratprojects.com/artists/butchanthony
http://www.yalostudio.com/2013/03/anatomy-can-be-fun-new-work-by-butch.html
http://www.museumofwonder.com/

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JOHN HENRY TONEY
Mr. John Henry Toney grew up in Sandfort, Alabama and farmed all his life. He used to drive a tractor around Seale and plow up folk’s garden patches for them. One day he plowed up a turnip with a human face on it… His art career was born. He’s 83 years old and draws everyday.

http://www.museumofwonder.com/#slide3
http://www.garde-rail.com/artists/toney/index.html
http://rawvision.com/articles/love-and-water-art-john-henry-toney

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BRUCE LEE WEBB
Bruce Lee is the co-conspirator and co- creator of Webb Gallery in downtown Waxahachie, Texas. He loves hobo lore and train car graffiti. He is a researcher and collector by nature and is currently working on “As Above So Below -Art of the Fraternal Lodge” with co-author Lynne Adele, which will be published by UT Press in 2015.

Bruce recently curated and participated in the “Akin” exhibit of outsider and self-taught artists at Crosstown Arts.

http://www.webbartgallery.com/
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2012/03/spinning_a_webb_local_artist_a.php
http://www.croftartgallery.com/previousshows/brucewebb.html

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TIMMY LAMPINEN
Timmy, well-known in Goner circles as the the Human Eye / Timmy’s Organism / Clone Defects singer and guitar mangler, is also a 2010 Kresge Grant Arts award winner. As Timmy’s music strives for wild departures and maximum impact via spaced-out sounds, his artwork spreads the color of consciousness and fredom with righteous abandon. His album covers are some of the trippiest of anyone working in the medium today.

http://www.kresgeartsindetroit.org/fellowships/past-fellows/2010-fellows/timmy-lampinen/
http://larecord.com/interviews/2008/12/01/human-eye-yeah-i-drank-the-glitter-slime

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For more information see:
http://www.goner-records.com/gonerfest/gonerfest11-artshow.php
https://www.facebook.com/events/1443801609200425/

Bawlmer

Crosstown Arts is pleased to present Bawlmer, a group exhibition of new work by Baltimore-based artists organized Dwayne Butcher. Butcher is an artist, designer, and curator who moved from Memphis to Baltimore in 2013. Artists he has chosen for this exhibition include Colin Alexander, Kyle Bauer, Amy Hughes Braden, Dave Eassa, Cara Ober and Paul Shortt. Through painting, sculpture, and a prevailing sense of humor, the exhibition aims to make connections between Memphis and Baltimore and their respective creative landscapes.

Curator’s Statement:

‘In my short time in Baltimore, I have noticed many similarities between this city and Memphis. Each is roughly the same size in area and population, and each is similar in its racial, political, and socioeconomic makeup. They both have the “grit and grind” that blue-collar, middle-class urban areas have to have. This “grit and grind” is the prefect incubator for creativity, which makes “Bawlmer,” as enunciated in the local dialect, seem like home to me.

The six artists included in this exhibition approach their work with a sense of humor. They poke fun at normal conventions of class and gender, recall the fads of their youth, enjoy the frivolity of today, break down shapes into the purest of forms, and call into question the superiority of the art world’s “big swinging dicks.”

Oh, the Baltimorons love their crabs as much as Memphians love their BBQ. So there is that. And then there is the Old Bay.’

-Dwayne Butcher

Artist information:

Colin Alexander 

Kyle Bauer

Amy Hughes Braden

Dave Eassa

Cara Ober

Paul Shortt

Curator’s biography:

Originally from Memphis, TN, Dwayne Butcher is an artist, designer, and curator living in Baltimore. He received his MFA from the Memphis College of Art in 2008. While at MCA, he developed a deep interest in the integration of Digital Media expression with traditional art forms. His work wittily comments on his life as a citizen of the American South, often around issues of gender identity. His work has increasingly been shown in international exhibitions in the last two years in locations such as Belfast, Northern Ireland, Chongqing, China, Paris France, Berlin, Germany, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, New York City and Los Angeles. He has been featured in articles focusing on his work and community art projects for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Art21, and Big, Red and Shiny.  When Dwayne is not working on all of the above things, he maintains an art blog focusing on the visual arts of Baltimore and the surrounding area. He enjoys watching short animations and experimental films. He is one of the world’s greatest Risk players and has won awards for his chicken wings.  Dwayne also spends a lot of time with his wife taking pictures of their two worthless cats. Oh. He also likes beer.

-From http://dwaynebutcher.squarespace.com/info/

Cover image: Kyle Bauer, detail