THE FOCUS

Desmond Lewis primarily uses industrial materials in his work as he correlates the invisible appearance of structural materials in buildings with the concealed structural importance of African Americans in the United States. Through the creation of fabricated and carved concrete sculptures, his work abstractly addresses the conversations of race, equality, and community uplift. Additionally, Desmond fabricates large scale sculptures that seek to enhance public spaces in developing communities. Desmond Lewis, Studio Visit, December 2018—January 2019 Desmond Lewis, Studio Visit,...

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, TOPS Gallery, CrosstownArts and Powerhouse Memphis, Diverseworks in Houston, Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, and the Atlanta Contemporary. He has also exhibited abroad at the...

I direct the audience’s attention to the interaction of past and present voices that have been both for and against movements of social justice and equality by integrating their words with my photographs. This intermingling symbolizes the collision of knowledge, memory and controversy with personal experience. It is a reckoning of the elusive present with the enigmatic past (and vice versa). Natalie Eddings, Studio Visit, August 2018 Natalie Eddings, Studio Visit, August 2018 The world that we have created today allows me...

I am interested in cultural attitudes towards landscape and the pursuit of utopia (no place). It is the landscape that largely influences our collective mythology and cultures. I compress histories and cultures, alter the pace of time, and distort physical scale to portray a psychological rather than a social or material realism. Greg Pond, Studio Visit, May-June 2018 Greg Pond, Studio Visit, May-June 2018 Greg Pond, Studio Visit, May-June 2018 To be able to see beyond predetermined standards to reach conclusions drawn from...

The Latin word for ‘text’, textum means ‘something woven’, a web. Webs, nets, texts, motifs, and screens are objects used to catch, hold, contain, and connect objects, beings, and environments while remaining as permeable as possible. I am interested in ways in which drawing and painting can weave multiple ideas, perspectives, and narratives into nets or webs that can hold a viewer in a space of visual mystification in ways that allow them to question their current position in the world....

There are two important themes in my photographic work. The first is the evolving relationship between memory in contemporary culture and the technologies of photographic image production. I examine photographic representation of specific political and cultural histories. These representations include photographic archives and related artifacts, which I treat as material to produce new images and installations. The second theme is an effort to challenge traditional modes of photographic representation. The goal is to explore the photographic image beyond its frame,...

I am interested in the constant flux of the visual world. Through common distortions of light, shadow, and atmosphere the familiar becomes abstracted and unfamiliar. Thus - for a fleeting moment - the mundane transforms into the sublime. Heather Hartman, Studio Visit, December 2017 Heather Hartman, Studio Visit, December 2017 My work explores how these phenomena affect my own sense of perception and physical location through a material-driven painting process. Using reductive abstraction, I synthesize the transient elements of my surroundings into...

I am a confused person making what my friend and fellow artist Nick Stolle called "forlorn propoganda." Lots of energy but no guide. Energy free for the taking. Placeholders and stand ins. Signals. Precoded Symbols. Marking a territory, taking up space. Enter new word here. Name it ambiguity. Single it out as a locatable and symbolic, psychological space: Anxiety ridden AMBIGUITY. Flags to urge on and usher in the future. Symbols for the not yet made, a coming production. Magic...