Exhibitions

GREELY MYATT : STARRY, STARRY, WINTER GARDEN

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art / 1934 Poplar Ave. November 22, 2024 - January 25, 2025

Greely Myatt

For the museum's inaugural Winter Art Garden, artist Greely Myatt uses found objects, including scrap metal, neon, and discarded signage, to create Starry, Starry–an illuminated starscape on the museum's plaza. Myatt is known for testing the boundaries of sculpture by playing with line, light, and flat forms, turning everyday materials into works of art.

From his repository of locally-collected objects, Myatt creates surprising and playful approaches to simple domestic and urban materials. His investigations of similar forms evolve over time–what began as a five-fingered glove turned into a five-petal flower and, finally, into a five-pointed star.

Myatt fills the plaza with clusters of stars. The largest, Big Star, spans twenty-four feet and casts colorful light across nearby surfaces. Inspired by the constellations in the night sky, Myatt suspends Sirius (Dog Star and Pup) in the southeastern corner of the plaza. At the tables are reflective bouquets, StarSprays, echoing frozen sparklers. Next to Wheeler Williams’s sculpture Fall (1961) and atop the bases of where Wheeler’s Spring and Summer statues once stood, is Myatt’s Starfall, a star fragment. Together, these whimsical works form a constellation of Myatt’s own creation.

Starry, Starry, Winter Garden is sponsored by Burch Porter Johnson.