exhibit
Twin (Terry), Armada, Acrylic on canvas, 48" x 60"
Five From Memphis
David Lusk Gallery Collaborates with The Arts Company by Beverly Keel
M
ore than 200 miles separate Nashville and Memphis, and often the cultural distance feels even greater between Music City and the Mississippi River blues town.
The Arts Company’s Anne Brown is attempting to bridge this gap with a new exhibit that celebrates West Tennessee art and explores the commonality of the Tennessee experience through the talents of captivating, visual Southern storytellers. Five From Memphis, which opens June 1 from 4 to 9 p.m. and continues through July 19, is the inaugural exhibition of The Arts Company’s new series of invitational exhibits called Selected Contemporary Tennessee Artists. Five From Memphis was co-curated by Brown and David Lusk of the David Lusk Gallery in Memphis and features about 25 pieces of art by Maysey Craddock, Hamlett Dobbins, Don Estes, Jared Small, and Twin (Jerry and Terry Lynn). The pieces selected are considered the “quintessential examples” of what each artist is doing right now, according to Lusk.
“They talk a lot about landscape and the river and the black experience and the history of the Delta region,” Brown says of the art. “These are all very accomplished artists who see things where they are and what is important to where they are. That is what Faulkner and Eudora Welty did and why we know about them. These artists are saying something about that particular river or landscape, but they are also things that resonate with all of us. “My goal is to engage people in art by engaging them in things of our own lives and our own places that, in the hands of an artist, become art,” she says. “Our lives become art. The things we care about and revere are the things that endure, the things that artists care about. Artists help them endure in our visual minds.” The impetus for the exhibit was the recent collaborative project between The Arts Company and FirstBank, The Art of Community: Janet and Jim Ayers’ Collection of Tennessee Art. FirstBank chairman Jim Ayers, who is from West Tennessee, and his wife, Janet, who is from East Tennessee, asked Brown to help them build a major
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