Artist Panel:
Contemporary Artists View the South

March 26, 6:00 pm, Botanic Hall

In conjunction with Cheekwood’s current exhibition Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry, five artists discuss what the South means to them and their work. William Christenberry has been working with imagery from the South for five decades. His photographs of his native Hale County, Alabama, have been exhibited around the world. How do younger artists approach the South as an artistic source of inspiration, and how do they relate to Christenberry’s body of work? The five artists on this panel will talk about their current work in relation to regional identity, historical legacy, the changing landscape of the South, and the South in global perspective.

Participants:

Randy Hayes is a painter and photographer based in Seattle, Washington. He was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and still spends extended periods of time in the state. In 2006, he exhibited his Baby Doll House Suite in Cheekwood’s Temporary Contemporary gallery. The work in this series was inspired by a visit to the old plantation where the Elia Kazan movie Baby Doll was filmed. Hayes’ recent exhibition at the University of Mississippi Museum was entitled “Ruins of Mississippi and Other Places in the World.”

Greely Myatt is a native of Mississippi who now teaches at The University of Memphis. Known throughout the Southeast for his public art pieces, Greely’s narrative installations and playful takes on everyday objects have consistently combined art historical references with vernacular influences. He has exhibited his sculptures and installations throughout the world. Recent exhibitions include the University of the South Art Gallery and Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta.

Born in Mississippi, Jack Spencer is a Nashville-based photographer whose work is in many public and private collections. Spencer has had solo exhibitions at the Greenville County Museum of Art (2000) and Morris Museum of Art (2004) as well as numerous galleries. Native Soil, a book of his photographs, was published by LSU Press in 1999.

Terry Thacker received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He now is Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Watkins College of Art and Design. Thacker is a painter, teacher, and public speaker, whose interest in the South is as a vernacular idiom in art.

A native of New Hampshire, Brooke White is a photographer and video artist who teaches Imaging Arts at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. White, who participated in a video exhibition at Cheekwood in 2006, exhibits photography and video work nationally and internationally. Her recent work combines delta imagery from the Deep South and from around the world.