William Eggleston: Democratic Camera

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Photographer William Eggleston is being honored with a retrospective at The Whitney Museum of American Art. You can catch the tail end of the show if you get there before January 25th. Apparently the exhibit is going to travel throughout the US, but details are scarce. I’ll try to get to the bottom of it.

Eggleston is a pivotal figure in the color photography movement. He mostly photographs personal acquaintances and places close to home: Memphis, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Delta. What I find appealing is that Eggleston doesn’t particularly want to be known as a Southern artist and he never sets up a picture. He’s less about “place” and all the preconceptions that go with it, and more about time and the senses: light, form and feeling in a given moment. In abandoning “place,” Eggleston shows us that consciousness of the moment is always available to us. Anytime. Anywhere.

Exhibit site
Eggleston Artistic Trust

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Delta Dream Express

Key Surgery

Mr. Jackson Returns

Tootie’s Turn

Po’ Teddy and Betty Boop

Farm near Rolling Fork, Mississippi

1. Click here. And click on the first song. Then come back here.
2. Now click here.
3. Listen and look.

Prospect.1 New Orleans

We are absolutely running behind on this. Haven’t even made it down there for a glimpse. Prospect.1 New Orleans claims to be the largest international contemporary art biennial ever organized in the US.  Like all good art biennials, venues are located throughout the city. Word is, building some of those yawning exhibition halls wasn’t in the budget and the result is a series of about 25 intimate settings. The exhibit is open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 am-6 pm, until Sunday, January 18th.  Complimentary shuttle service leaves from the W Hotel (333 Poydras, map) every 30 minutes or so. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Be on the lookout as Cabinet of Seeds reports.

THE SKINNY:
Prospect.1 homepage
Artists
Venues
Maps (We recommend the “Official Navigation Map.” It lists artists by venue, satellite venues, other city art spaces, and shuttle schedule.)
Registration
New York Times review

If you get the art coma, we recommend reviving at El Gato Negro, 81 French Market Place, 504.525.9752, just behind the US Mint, a Prospect.1 venue.

Prospect.1 Welcome Center @ Hefler Warehouse, 851 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA, map, 504.715.3968

The Meaning of Tea

“The Meaning of Tea” by Scott Chamberlin-Hoyt is a beautiful film on the Southern Arts Federation’s Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. The film visits 7 countries and explores the role that tea plays in various cultural rituals. Chamberlin-Hoyt explores the people, landscapes and rituals of England, India, China, Japan, Morrocco and France. He also includes one sort of embarassing clip about a town called Tea, South Dakota.

He should have included something better about the U.S. There are tea rituals here. I once saw a girl order a shot of vodka in her iced tea during lunch at the Ground Zero Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There was definitely some kind of ritual involved in that. At the time I took it to be the age old ritual of impressing a guy. But maybe she wanted to impress his grandmother who was also with us. Maybe that’s just what they do at Ground Zero. Or maybe that’s just how Memphis girls do when they get out of town for lunch.

Southern Art Federation
Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers including tour schedule, filmmakers and venues
“The Meaning of Tea” website including trailers of the film

Rethinking Landscape: Contemporary Photography from the Allen G. Thomas, Jr. Collection

photo by Kerry Skarbakka

Eudora Chair

A few weeks ago, a friend and I met Critz Campbell at a cocktail party in New Orleans. When we asked him what he does for a living, he just said he was a sculpture professor at Mississippi State University. When pressed, he said he designs furniture. When pressed further, he showed us this picture on his iPhone. It’s called “The Eudora Chair,” named after Eudora Welty, modeled after 1930’s armchairs, made out of resin-encased fiberglass, illuminated from within, and completely functional as a chair. You can get it covered in your choice of fabric (yes, that’s any fabric you want), but my mother has a couple of old club chairs that were once covered in this chintz, so this is my favorite. Will update when I figure out exactly where to order.

PS–Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum selected it for their Design Triennial, and it’s been covered by Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Elle Magazine and the Discovery Channel

Marion Post Wolcott

A Marion Post Wolcott exhibit opens today at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and runs through December 21. Read more about this New Yorker who became a photographer for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression:

Interview with Wolcott (Smithsonian archives)
Wolcott biography (Wikipedia)

Disfarmer

Disfarmer is going to blow your mind. I can’t help but wonder about his subjects’ lives and relationships. All the little details…the bandage on the lady’s leg in the second picture, the way the couple in the fourth picture holds each other and her shoes and twisted stocking, the tough little blonde and the mother’s deeply tanned arm in the last picture…To see the full collection (you can buy prints) and read more about this 1940’s Arkansas photographer, go to www.disfarmer.com

Yee-Haw Industries

Copyright 2001 * Yee-Haw Industries

Copyright 2007 * Yee-Haw Industries

Copyright 2006 * Yee-Haw Industries

Without a doubt, Yee-Haw Industries is the go-to for letterpress posters promoting special events and music acts. Partners Kevin Bradley and Julie Belcher became pioneers of the now ubiquitous band promo/art poster when musicians such as Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Buddy Guy and Trey Anastasio came knocking on their Kentucky barn door back in 1996. Now they’re set up in Knoxville and do everything from calendars and journals to greeting cards and apparel. But my favorites are their fine art pieces (what they set out doing), like ol’ Evel up above. All work is custom-to-order, designed, set, and pressed by hand.
Click here to shop their Etsy store. And their other store here.

Yee-Haw Industries, 413 South Gay Street, Knoxville, TN, 37902; Ph: 865.522.1812; Fax: 865.524.8897; mail@yeehawindustries.com; www.yeehawindustries.com

Richard Stephens

Home Place, Richard Stephens

My mother and I stumbled on a Richard Stephens exhibit yesterday at The Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas.  Stephens’ color palette is really unusual, the colors never muddy, and he has the ability to make structures, such as old shrimp boats and industrial buildings, look lively.  His talented use of plain white portions of the canvas is impressive.  We especially like the chunky brush strokes and colors in Home Place, above, even though this picture doesn’t do it justice.  www.raswatercolors.com

American Dream Safari

I think this sounds grand.  American Dream Safari tours leave out of Memphis daily in a restored ’55 Cadillac, and include:  Delta Day Trip (“Highway 61 blues and blacktop”); Yards, Gardens, and Architecture (in Memphis); Juke Joint Full of Blues (good way to hit the town and cut loose, fee includes entrance to three clubs); Drive by Shooting (not a funny title, but allows one to pretend to be William Eggleston for a day); Road Therapy Tour (if you just need to get away and cruise through the Arkansas countryside); Gospel Church (fee includes tithe and lunch at the fantabulous Gus’s Fried Chicken); and Tupelo Day Trip (to you-know-who’s house.)  You just hop in the car and the driver whisks you away.  Perfect.
American Dream Safari; 9am – 5pm, 7 days a week; tad@americandreamsafari.com; 901.527.8870; PO Box 3129, Memphis, TN, 38173;  www.americandreamsafari.com