Memphis Material

Memphis Material
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  • Arts
  • Updated Weekly

An oral history project chronicling the stories of the visual arts in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis Material is a podcast celebrating the personal histories, intimate stories, and the studio practices of some of the people who help shape the creative landscape of our city.

  1. 6d ago

    Andrea Morales Part 2

    From Andrea’s amazing website: Andrea Morales is a documentary photographer, journalist and educator born in Peru, raised in Miami, now living and working in Memphis, Tennessee. Her personal work attempts to lens the issues of displacement, disruption and magic. Adding glimpses of daily life, meaningful or mundane, to the record through photography is central to her practice. She has worked as a photojournalist in newsrooms small and large, such as The Concord Monitor, The Lima News and The New York Times, with equal enthusiasm. She’s also worked at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project with students in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. In Memphis, she serves as the visuals editor at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom in Memphis reporting from the intersection of power, poverty and public policy along. Her work has been exhibited across the country and is held in public and private collections including The Do Good Fund, Memphis International Airport, and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Her first major museum exhibition Roll Down Like Water, opened at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in September 2024. The accompanying academic catalog, designed by Paul Holberton Publishing, was published in October 2024.   In this interview I reference this video of a lecture by Latoya Ruby Frazier, this series from Gregory Crewdson with Latoya Ruby Frazier, as well as this interview in the Brooklyn Rail.

    Andrea Morales Part 2

  2. Jul 17

    Andrea Morales Part 1

    From Andrea’s amazing website: Andrea Morales is a documentary photographer, journalist and educator born in Peru, raised in Miami, now living and working in Memphis, Tennessee. Her personal work attempts to lens the issues of displacement, disruption and magic. Adding glimpses of daily life, meaningful or mundane, to the record through photography is central to her practice. She has worked as a photojournalist in newsrooms small and large, such as The Concord Monitor, The Lima News and The New York Times, with equal enthusiasm. She’s also worked at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project with students in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. In Memphis, she serves as the visuals editor at MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom in Memphis reporting from the intersection of power, poverty and public policy along. Her work has been exhibited across the country and is held in public and private collections including The Do Good Fund, Memphis International Airport, and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Her first major museum exhibition Roll Down Like Water, opened at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in September 2024. The accompanying academic catalog, designed by Paul Holberton Publishing, was published in October 2024.

    Andrea Morales Part 1

  3. Jul 10

    Maysey Craddock Part 2

    Maysey Craddock has long been fascinated by ruin. The ephemeral quality so richly sewn into her paintings began with her childhood interest in searching for fossils at the edge of rivers or uncovering contents of forgotten drawers, always intent on discovering what came before – what once was. Craddock’s large-scale gouache paintings reference spaces in similar states; a landscape left to its own devices, crumbling structures, transformation, and natural entropy. Working from her own photographs, Craddock transfers her intricately drawn imagery onto found materials and carefully builds the surface with layers of paint, eventually revealing the bigger picture. She compares her process to a familiar expression; “There is a chunk of time where I am only seeing the trees, and then towards the end I begin to stand back more, and try to see the forest. It becomes a balance between light and dark, the contrast of tight color and washy strokes, all weaving together until I feel, instinctually, that the painting has achieved the perfect harmony and tension. The built paper and the unbuilt image merge.” Craddock currently lives and works in Memphis, TN. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art (2003) and a BA from Tulane University (1993). For the past three decades, her work has been shown in galleries and institutions across the US and in Germany.  Craddock has received fellowships including the APSU Tennessee Artist Fellowship and the Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship, and has participated in artist residencies both in the US and Germany, including the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany; the Vermont Studio Center Residency in Johnson, VT; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, VA.  Craddock was a founding member of ArtsMemphis’ Artist Advisory Council and the ArtsAccelerator Grant for Individual Artists.  She currently works from her studio in The Medicine Factory in downtown Memphis.

    Maysey Craddock Part 2

  4. Jul 3

    Maysey Craddock Part 1

    Editors note: Both Maysey and I mentioned the piece The Eagle Has Landed painted by David Parrish in 1969.  It will be among the works from the permanent collection on display when the Memphis Art Museum opens in December. Maysey Craddock has long been fascinated by ruin. The ephemeral quality so richly sewn into her paintings began with her childhood interest in searching for fossils at the edge of rivers or uncovering contents of forgotten drawers, always intent on discovering what came before – what once was. Craddock’s large-scale gouache paintings reference spaces in similar states; a landscape left to its own devices, crumbling structures, transformation, and natural entropy. Working from her own photographs, Craddock transfers her intricately drawn imagery onto found materials and carefully builds the surface with layers of paint, eventually revealing the bigger picture. She compares her process to a familiar expression; “There is a chunk of time where I am only seeing the trees, and then towards the end I begin to stand back more, and try to see the forest. It becomes a balance between light and dark, the contrast of tight color and washy strokes, all weaving together until I feel, instinctually, that the painting has achieved the perfect harmony and tension. The built paper and the unbuilt image merge.” Craddock currently lives and works in Memphis, TN. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art (2003) and a BA from Tulane University (1993). For the past three decades, her work has been shown in galleries and institutions across the US and in Germany.  Craddock has received fellowships including the APSU Tennessee Artist Fellowship and the Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship, and has participated in artist residencies both in the US and Germany, including the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany; the Vermont Studio Center Residency in Johnson, VT; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, VA.  Craddock was a founding member of ArtsMemphis’ Artist Advisory Council and the ArtsAccelerator Grant for Individual Artists.  She currently works from her studio in The Medicine Factory in downtown Memphis.

    Maysey Craddock Part 1

  5. Jun 14

    Derek Fordjour

    From Derek Fordjour’s page on the Petzel website: Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis, Tennessee) Derek Fordjour is the recipient of the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation Artist Fellowship, the 2023 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Spirit of the Dream Award, and previously served as the Alex Katz Chair at Cooper Union. He has received public commissions for the High Line, the NYC AIDS Memorial, MOCA Grand Avenue and the MTA’s Arts & Design program. Fordjour’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times,Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. A monograph of his work will be published by Phaidon in 2027. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia. He also earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. His work is held in the private and public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, and The Royal Collection in London among others. He is the founder of Contemporary Arts Memphis.

    Derek Fordjour

  6. May 31

    Tim Andrews Part 2

    Tim Andrews was born and raised in Northwest Arkansas attended Junior college in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He movee to Memphis in the mid 80s to attend Memphis College of Art.  He received his bachelor of Fine-Arts degree with emphasis in printmaking and painting. After graduation Andrews started teaching in the summer school and Saturday school programs continued that for years and returned to Memphis College of Art in the 90s to get his masters degree in 1994.  He continuted to teach Saturday AP class for years meeting and engaging with some of the finest young artist in our area.  He maintained a studio at Marshall Arts for years and with a active member of the Art Farm community in the 90s and early 2000’s he continued making art in our community ever since and has been featured in several group shows over many years. Tim now lives just outside of Memphis where he continues to make art and show.

    Tim Andrews Part 2

  7. May 22

    Tim Andrews Part 1

    Tim Andrews was born and raised in Northwest Arkansas attended Junior college in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He movee to Memphis in the mid 80s to attend Memphis College of Art.  He received his bachelor of Fine-Arts degree with emphasis in printmaking and painting. After graduation Andrews started teaching in the summer school and Saturday school programs continued that for years and returned to Memphis College of Art in the 90s to get his masters degree in 1994.  He continuted to teach Saturday AP class for years meeting and engaging with some of the finest young artist in our area.  He maintained a studio at Marshall Arts for years and with a active member of the Art Farm community in the 90s and early 2000’s he continued making art in our community ever since and has been featured in several group shows over many years. Tim now lives just outside of Memphis where he continues to make art and show.

    Tim Andrews Part 1

  8. May 15

    Lawrence Matthews Part 3

    Born and raised in a lower middle class neighborhood fixed between the Mississippi border, the Memphis city limits and the well off suburbia; Lawrence Matthews’ early life was lived in places, ignored, forgotten and in the liminal interiors of southern family homes and spaces. His life and work exist as an extension of the southern gothic voices with whom he is aligned. He emerges as somewhat of a Morrisonian beloved ghost, a child who desired more. Now, fully grown as a manifestation of his environment’s love and bitterness intertwined. With a BFA from The University of Memphis and a decade long career exhibiting, performing and working with various arts nonprofits, his work in nearly every area of the arts is an amalgamation of his whole life. Visually inspired by Parks, Eggleston, and the regionalistic mythology of Paul Thomas Anderson and early Spike Lee; Matthews’ own visuals weave African spirituality with the Christian mythology that permeates the region. While working as a musician he’d create with the rap, soul and alternative rock references he’d come in contact with through his upbringing. His artistic practice highlights the deep relationship between the often maligned spiritual connections Black people have explored for generations, creating a hauntingly familiar but surreal experience.

    Lawrence Matthews Part 3
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About

An oral history project chronicling the stories of the visual arts in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis Material is a podcast celebrating the personal histories, intimate stories, and the studio practices of some of the people who help shape the creative landscape of our city.

Information

  • Creator
    Memphis Material
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    70
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Memphis Material