With

John Weeden of the Urban Art Commission has a great post, Without, on his personal blog. It's a visual statement of the art and design challenges facing Memphis' public realm, a prelude to the "With or Without" campaign that UAC will be re-launching soon.

I wanted to add these 2 thoughts.

1. I hope the WorWO campaign is place-based. The public's visualizing With will be much easier in the actual public spaces. Pay for artists to transform, if just temporarily, those spaces. Advertise With art and architecture, in place.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. The ugliness of Memphis owes so much more to the dystopic land use and anti-design of politicians and developers than to graffiti taggers. So even if we could convince taggers to put down their cans, or pick up their skills, Memphis' blight of ugly would continue. The UAC, rather than just a arts sub-contractor for buildings pre-designed, could/should start influencing this world.
   
   Take a look at this UAC piece by Mark Nowell at A.B. Brewster Elementary School, a block from the UAC's headquarters.
   
   
   
   
   
   It's really cool, but as you might be able to tell, it's in the middle of a street-fronting parking lot, where it competes with the clutter of street lights for attention. So in addition to destroying the school's visual and urban presence, the street-fronting lot hides the power of the art piece.
   
   In this case, the UAC could have been, perhaps, a public advocate for moving the parking lot to the back of the building and creating a space near the front of Sam Cooper which would include Nowell's piece integrated into a grand, inviting entrance for the backpacked kids walking down Sam Cooper towards their school.
   
   As dystopia goes, A.B. Brewster is fairly mild. But it shows the visual and built oblivity of Memphis power elites that pushes much of the city and region to ugly. Other examples are speculative demolition and neglect, white flight abandonment and environmentally nasty clear-cutting.
   
   The Powerless With Spraycans is not the real Without.
   
   The Powerful With Vision is the real With.

Creative Cluetrain

Wow!

Artist Chandler Pritchett's ArtMemphis 2.0 is a digital native's spitball, targeted at Memphis' tired (and expensive -- spend the money on art!) PR and advertising strategies for arts advocacy.

It's a great piece, and any arts leader in Memphis who doesn't read it tomorrow should be fired the day after tomorrow (announced by their successor in a tweet).

Rise Up Memphis Art! Rise Up Memphis Nature!

Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the Citizens to Preserve Overton Park are holding a hike through the Old Forest. Come show your support for this threatened natural beauty, and learn something. Something I learned: don't touch the furry vines.

Also, the artbutcher reported yesterday that operating funds and the Percent-for-Art programs for the very efficient Urban Art Commission were under threat in the present Memphis budget cycle. The latest word is the crisis has passed, but stay tuned to the artbutcher, always.

Performances with Heroes, Idiots, Devils and Dictators (Respectively)

From the UrbanArt Commission:

10th Anniversary - Delbert Sisk Performance

Delbert Sisk will spend his lunch hour every day of March interacting with historical statues at local parks, "interacting" with them, and bringing a sense of humor and life to the unresponsive statues.

Starting March 1, Delbert will be at Tom Lee Park at noon every day through March 8.

Mar 1-8 noon Tom Lee Park
Mar 9-16 noon Confederate Park
Mar 17-24 noon Forrest Park
Mar 25-31 noon Overton Park

This project is one of the 10 Temporary Public Art Projects celebrating the UrbanArt Commission’s 10th Anniversary. For more information, please visit the UAC website, www.urbanartcommission.org.

Mar 1-8's statue has to be the great Tom Lee. I'm pretty sure there are no other statues in Tom Lee Park.

Mar 9-16 will probably be Jefferson Davis. Confederate Park might also have a bust of a guy with a mustache.

Mar 17-24 will be Nathan Bedford Forrest, slave trader, Civil War guerrilla leader, first Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and name sake of Forrest Gump. Sisk will be also performing near Forrest's remains -- Forrest and his wife are buried beneath the statue.

Mar 25-31 could either be Boss Crump or the Dough Boy. I'm not sure, but I'm betting it will be Boss Crump.

This idea sounds great. I hope Urban Art records and posts the performances on their website.