Website Redesign and Relaunch
Project Management, Content Strategy + Copywriting
Working in collaboration with the managing director and director of communications, I served as project manager for the redesign and relaunch of Crosstown Arts' website.
My primary role was to interpret organizational goals identified by leadership into actionable tasks for our creative agency partner, Loaded For Bear. The process involved a complete retooling of site navigation, migration from Virb to WordPress, incorporation of more complex functionality and interactivity, stakeholder research, digital asset creation, content strategy/development, as well as QA/QC testing support.
Crosstown Concourse Groundbreaking
Project Management & Event Planning
I managed promo inventory, trained volunteers and ran merchandise operations for the brand reveal in collaboration with Loaded For Bear during the 2015 Crosstown Concourse groundbreaking ceremony, which attracted more than 1,200 attendees.
Photo courtesy of the Memphis Daily News
Press, Profiles & Awards for Crosstown Concourse
Commercial Appeal — Crosstown Concourse groundbreaking marked with stories, music and rain
High Ground News — Sears Building reborn as Crosstown Concourse at groundbreaking ceremony
Memphis Business Journal — Sears Crosstown transforming into Crosstown Concourse
Action News 5 — Crosstown Concourse breaks ground
New York Times — From Blight to Bright Lights in Memphis
Curbed — Abandoned Art Deco warehouse becomes vibrant vertical village in Memphis
Congress for the New Urbanism — Announcing the 2018 Charter Award Winners
Driehaus Foundation — 2018 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards
ARCHITECT Magazine — Crosstown Concourse
BUILDING DESIGN + CONSTRUCTION — Crosstown Concourse: An ‘organic’ urban village
Joel Parsons: You Are the Hole
Exhibition Statement + Artist Bio
October 9-31, 2015
You Are the Hole is the theatre of desire, abstracted. By presenting the self as something constructed and performed, Joel Parsons gently prods the dichotomy of yearning to divulge and yearning to conceal.
Using the structural components of a theatre, he establishes an installation space that is simultaneously formal and intimate. Occupying the transformed stage are sculptures in voluptuous pinks and nudes, a flesh-like latex curtain and dozens of small drawings. Parson has made a zine to accompany the exhibition, which will be available in the gallery.
The culmination is Parsons’ performance of his originally-choreographed piece, “Beholding and Being Held.”
Joel Parsons is an artist, writer and curator based in Memphis, TN. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College; co-director of Beige, an otherwise space for art and performance; and a founding member of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council. A graduate of Rhodes College and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, he has exhibited his work in Memphis at the Powerhouse, Material, and Southfork Gallery, as well as at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, and venues in Peru, India and South Africa.
No Brag Pure Fact: The Art of Graceland Too
Exhibition Statement + Collector Bio
September 23-26, 2015
In partnership with Gonerfest 12, Goner Records and Crosstown Arts present No Brag Pure Fact, an exhibition of artifacts and exclusive footage from Graceland Too. Included are some of Paul MacLeod’s own Elvis-inspired outsider artworks, notebooks he kept and mounted photographs of visitors to his house, all courtesy of Friends of Graceland Too. Filmmakers Jeffrey Jensen and Geoffrey Shrewsbury have also contributed video footage of MacLeod and clips from their upcoming documentary, The Rise and Fall of Graceland Too.
At the reception, meet special guests and purchase Graceland Too memorabilia: a commemorative 45 RPM record and “Friends of Graceland Too” t-shirts.
WHO WAS PAUL MACLEOD?
Elvis Presley fans tend to be an especially devoted lot, but Paul MacLeod possessed a zeal few could rival. Driven by his perverse affinity for The King, he turned his own Holly Springs, MS home into Graceland Too, an obsessive, candy-colored shrine dedicated to all things Elvis, where his ongoing mission was amassing all of the Presley ephemera he could get his hands on and documenting every mention of the star he could find via radio, television and film. In addition to being a dogged curator of kingly dreck, MacLeod was known as a bombastic personality with the eccentric habit of giving lengthy, frenetic tours of his home to anyone who stopped by, 24 hours a day.
Spectacle to some, sanctuary to others, Graceland Too was a wayward beacon that attracted Elvis fans from all over the world.
Paul MacLeod passed away in July 2014, and over the past year, many have offered their time and resources in service of preserving what became his life’s work: sheltering strange treasures and welcoming fellow pilgrims on the road to Graceland (Too).
Lawrence Matthews III: In a Violent Way
Exhibition Statement + Artist Bio
August 21 - September 19, 2015
A riot is the language of the unheard.
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In a Violent Way is a multimedia installation by Lawrence Matthews II that incorporates a wide array of visual and audio elements, from oil painting and collage to tube televisions and archival video footage. To accompany the installation, Matthews will perform his own original songs at the close of the show’s reception. The exhibition’s title is a nod to the seminal, genre-bending 1969 Miles Davis record, In a Silent Way, which inspired and guided Matthews while he created this body of work.
The imagery of In a Violent Way is sourced from or informed by mass media portrayals of events past and present in four primary cities: Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Memphis, each with its own history of entrenched racial discrimination and economic disparity disproportionately affecting people of color. Mixed media works depicting the demonstrations and unrest of the 1960s tellingly reside alongside banks of televisions sets showing video footage of more recent discord, like the 1992 L.A. Riots. These scenes — differing in timeline, though not in tenor — convey generations of frustration caused by institutionalized oppression, angry citizens crying out against abuses at the hands of authority, and the ambivalent eye of the media that only captures part of the story.
My work does not judge the morality of the individuals partaking in the riots, only the institutions that create the circumstances where riots are the only voice.
— Lawrence Matthews III
Lawrence Matthews III was born in Memphis, TN into a family who encouraged him to be an artist from a young age. He received his BFA from the University of Memphis and was awarded “Best of Show” in the University’s 31st Annual Juried Student Exhibition. Young, but already prolific, Matthews is an emerging artist who has shown work in several solo and group shows across Memphis, including Doomed to Repeat at Circuitous Succession Gallery (2015), Cigar Box Show at Glitch Gallery (2014) and Price is Right at David Lusk Gallery (2014).
Matthews works in a wide variety of media, including oil paint, collage, photography, sculpture, music and film, and combines post-modern, Pop Art and contemporary influences to narrate his perspective as an African descendant living in America.
Kong Wee Pang and Jay Crum: Walking Eyes
Exhibition Statement + Artist Bios
July 24 - August 8, 2015
Walking Eyes is a collaborative exhibition by Kong Wee Pang and Jay Crum. Inspired by a month spent in Southeast Asia, each piece was developed through exchanges of ideas and sketches between the two artist. The work is informed by personal memories, hand-drawn maps, tropical flora and batik patterns. Many of the pieces have high levels of detail with hidden treasures to encourage exploration. The show includes a collection of mixed-media works on paper and fabric, as well as an installation.
Collaborators in life and art, Kong Wee and Jay thoughtfully balance married life, creative exploration and professional growth through ongoing ventures, like the playful TaroPop Studio, which they co-founded in 2009.
Kong Wee Pang is a designer/artist from Malaysia. She graduated from Singapore Nanyang Academy of Fine Art.In 2001, she moved to the United States, where she received a degree in fine art and design and an MFA from Memphis College of Art. She currently works as an art director at the mid-south’s largest ad agency, archer>malmo. Her work has been shown in NYC’S Times Square, Spain, Italy, Berlin, Atlanta, Memphis and California.
My work is concerned with transformation. Coming from Malaysia, I have learned to adapt to a new way of life here in the United States. I exist in a liminal state, living in two worlds. I have focused upon the notion of original self, outside influences and transmutation. Working with watercolor is meaningful to me. In Chinese, we have a saying which translates roughly to, ‘When you drink the water, remember the spring.’ The abstracted figures give me a chance to face my new freedom while remembering where I could from. It is found in translation.
— Kong Wee Pang
Jay Crum is a designer, illustrator and fine artist. He was born in New Orleans and currently lives in Memphis. He received a BFA in printmaking in 2005 and has since been navigating the line where art and design meet. In 2009, he co-founded TaroPop, a small studio producing t-shirt designs and limited-edition art prints. He received his MFA at Memphis College of Art in 2012. H has exhibited work in Memphis, Rome and Barcelona.