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Memphis Material
Lauren Kennedy
Lauren Kennedy grew up in Little Rock, then suburban Dallas, then came to study at Rhodes College where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 2008. She returned to Dallas to work at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Art Fair. Kennedy returned to Memphis to work for Ballet Memphis and she […]
Mary K VanGieson Part 2
From the artist’s website: Mary K VanGieson is an artist, educator, storyteller and sometime writer. She received my BAE from Oklahoma State University and her MFA from the University of Memphis. She discovered early on that educating high school people in the visual arts is a completely rewarding career. Her work delves into themes of […]
Mary K VanGieson Part 1
From the artist’s website: Mary K VanGieson is an artist, educator, storyteller and sometime writer. She received my BAE from Oklahoma State University and her MFA from the University of Memphis. She discovered early on that educating high school people in the visual arts is a completely rewarding career. Her work delves into themes of […]
Coe Lapossy
Coe Lapossy is an interdisciplinary visual artist educator committed to collaboration. Lapossy centers erased histories and marginalized labor. Revisiting artifacts —things forgotten, messages that ‘flew under the radar’. The resulting work is a meditation on what bodies we value, how we memorialize, and what/who survives under the conditions we create. Lapossy (b. 1980, Medina, OH) […]
Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 2
Dr. Lisa M. Williamson is a writer and artist in Memphis, TN. She received her MFA in painting from the Memphis College of Art and her PhD in aesthetic theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Williamson’s practice begins with observations of psychological time-keeping, and responds with immediacy to the urgency […]
Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 1
Dr. Lisa M. Williamson is a writer and artist in Memphis, TN. She received her MFA in painting from the Memphis College of Art and her PhD in aesthetic theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Williamson’s practice begins with observations of psychological time-keeping, and responds with immediacy to the urgency […]
Lester Julian Merriweather Part 2
Lester Julian Merriweather (b.1978) is a Memphis-based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University. Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, CAM St. Louis, […]
Lester Julian Merriweather Part 1
Lester Julian Merriweather (b.1978) is a Memphis-based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University. Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, CAM St. Louis, […]
Terri Jones Part 2
Terri Jones lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, Georgia in 1985. In 1992, she was awarded a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for Works on Paper. In the summer of 2004, Power House, a DeltaAxis initiative, in Memphis asked Terri to respond […]
Terri Jones Part 1
Terri Jones lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, Georgia in 1985. In 1992, she was awarded a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for Works on Paper. In the summer of 2004, Power House, a DeltaAxis initiative, in Memphis asked Terri to respond […]
Jeanne Seagle Part 2
From the Dixon Gallery and Gardens website about her amazing show there in 2023. Jeanne Seagle’s perceptive drawings portray the landscapes surrounding Memphis with a remarkable precision. Delicately rendering the trees and swamps of Dacus Lake along the Mississippi River, Seagle captures the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the varied textures of the […]
Jeanne Seagle Part 1
From the Dixon Gallery and Gardens website about her amazing show there in 2023. Jeanne Seagle’s perceptive drawings portray the landscapes surrounding Memphis with a remarkable precision. Delicately rendering the trees and swamps of Dacus Lake along the Mississippi River, Seagle captures the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the varied textures of the […]
Melissa Dunn Part 2
Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was born and has lived most of her life. She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art. Her abstract-based work is the landing pad where stream of consciousness and the […]
Melissa Dunn Part 1
Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was born and has lived most of her life. She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art. Her abstract-based work is the landing pad where stream of consciousness and the […]
Jamie Harmon Part 2
This interview with Jamie Harmon was recorded on March 1, 2024. From his amazing Amurica website: “I use photography and found objects to tell stories and give glimpses into individuals’ characters and their responses to each other and to their environments. In this way, I consider myself a sort of “visual anthropologist,” making observations in […]
Jamie Harmon Part 1
This interview with Jamie Harmon was recorded on February 10, 2024. From his amazing Amurica website: “I use photography and found objects to tell stories and give glimpses into individuals’ characters and their responses to each other and to their environments. In this way, I consider myself a sort of “visual anthropologist,” making observations in […]
Carl Moore Part 2
This interview with Carl Moore was recorded at the Memphis Listening Lab on February 5, 2023. The artist Carl E. Moore lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. He recieved both his BFA and MFA from the Memphis College of Art. Moore is the recipient of the Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration and the Tennessee […]
Carl Moore Part 1
This interview with Carl Moore was recorded at the Memphis Listening Lab on January 15, 2023. The artist Carl E. Moore lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. He recieved both his BFA and MFA from the Memphis College of Art. Moore is the recipient of the Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration and the Tennessee […]
Carol DeForest Part 3
This interview with Carol DeForest was recorded on February 21, 2025 From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing […]
Carol DeForest Part 2
From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing spirit to artists and art lover alike. Her shrewd and unfailing […]
Carol DeForest Part 1
This interview with Carol DeForest was recorded on January 10, 2023. From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing […]
Agnes Stark
This interview with the potter Agnes Stark was recorded in the Memphis Listening Lab on August 3, 2022. Agnes Gordon Stark is a studio potter creating functional and decorative stoneware. Her strong design and glaze technique combine to produce work that is widely recognized for its appealing originality. The stoneware has all of the […]
Maritza Davilla Part 2
This interview with Maritza Davilla was recorded on April 1, 2025. Maritza Dávila is owner and director of Atabeira Press and Professor Emeritus of the Memphis College of Art where she taught printmaking and drawing from 1982 to 2018 and at the University of Memphis as an adjunct professor. She is currently teaching with Creative […]
Maritza Davilla Part 1
This interview with Maritza Davilla was recorded on June 27, 2022. Maritza Dávila is owner and director of Atabeira Press and Professor Emeritus of the Memphis College of Art where she taught printmaking and drawing from 1982 to 2018 and at the University of Memphis as an adjunct professor. She is currently teaching with Creative […]
Cory Dugan
This interview with Cory Dugan was recorded on July 14, 2022. Cory Dugan has been told that he began drawing at a very early age, a mere babe at his mother’s side on the pew in a Southern Baptist church, scrawling savantishly detailed portraits on the church bulletin… no doubt in an attempt to divert […]
Laurie Nye
Laurie Nye (b. 1972, Memphis, Tennessee) received her BFA from the Memphis College of Art, (1995, Memphis, Tenn.), and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2002, Valencia, California). Nye’s work was the subject of a recent solo exhibition “My River Runs to Thee,” at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, California). Her solo […]
Dr. Earnestine Jenkins
Dr. Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins is an Full Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Memphis, where her scholarship focuses on the visual cultural history of the African Diaspora.
Veda Reed
Veda Reed is revered for her long career of creating sublime, luminous, large-scale paintings of skies, cloudscapes, and the cycles of the sun and moon. Inspired by her childhood in wide-open spaces of Oklahoma, her works represent moments of warmth and comfort experienced while witnessing nature.
Greely Myatt
Greely Myatt is widely recognized for his whimsical sculptural objects and monumental installations made from found materials.
Beth Edwards
Beth Edwards has had a three-decade long career painting, exhibiting, and teaching.
Peter Sohngen
Peter Sohngen was the ceramics professor at the Memphis Art Academy (that later became the Memphis College of Art) from 1969 to 2002 when he retired and was a full time potter and gardener.
Pinkney Herbert Part 2
Pinkney Herbert is an abstract painter who maintains studios in Memphis and New York. This is the second of two interviews.
Pinkney Herbert Part 1
Pinkney Herbert is an abstract painter who maintains studios in Memphis and New York. This is the first of two interviews.
Chuck Johnson
The impetus for this series. Memphis artist, Chuck Johnson is an accomplished and vital member of the arts community.
Introduction
Welcome to Memphis Material, an oral history project celebrating the personal histories, the intimate stories, and the studio practices of some of the people who have helped shape the creative landscape of the city.