CUT FLOWERS
Greely Myatt
2 - 27 September 2025
There is: a line from a Louis L’Amour novel that goes - The main idea was to stay with an idea until all the possibilities were worked out. As I read this line, I thought about how it is an apt description of my working method. Not always - but generally - I will take an idea and attempt to exhaust as many ways as possible to flip it and see where it takes me. The work in Cut Flowers follows this approach.
There is: a quote by Gertrude Stein, “Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air.”
There is: an image of a white poppy spouting from the gauntlet of a fallen warrior in Picasso’s painting Guernica. It is generally believed to represent hope in dark times. For me, the use of the idea of a flower cut from discarded materials also represents the hope of renewal.
There is: a verb list that Richard Serra made of actions to be taken on materials to make sculpture. Among the verbs is “to cut”. I have taken my cue from both the “verb list” and the image of the drawn flower.
There we are: left with the subject matter of a cartoonish flower cut from various materials using a variety of tools and resulting in pieces that are both consistent and varied, existing in and enclosing air. --- GM 8/25
Greely Myatt was born in Mississippi, teaches in Memphis, and lives and works in West Memphis, AR. He received an MFA from the University of Mississippi and a BFA from Delta State University, Cleveland, MS, and is a long-time professor of art at The University of Memphis. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Europe and Japan. He has received grants and fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission, The University of Memphis, The University of Georgia, Alternate Roots, Atlanta, and received the Mississippi Arts and Letters Visual Arts Award in 1994. In 2009, a twenty-year retrospective of his works was exhibited across Memphis in nine museum and gallery venues. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtNews, Sculpture Magazine, ArtForum, Art Papers, Number, Juxtapoz and American Quilter. His work is in numerous private collections and the following public collections, including: City of Memphis; City of Portland, ME; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Memphis Cook Convention Center; Mississipi Museum of Art, Jackson; Tennessee State Museum, Nashville; Tennessee Brewery, Memphis; Tennessee Interstate Sculpture Project, Hartford; and Urban Art Commission, Memphis.
