Art Review: Mississippi's storytellers inspire artist
Mississippi and mythic monsters figure largely in painter Allison Furr-Lawyer's work, currently exhibited at D'Edge Gallery on South Main.
The Jackson, Miss., native, a recent transplant to Memphis, taps into a visual storytelling style illustrative of the tales spun by Southern writers such as Barry Hannah, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor: Details of carnivals, painted ladies and the implied decrepitude of a small-town square creep into her work, both via her subject matter and the material she uses instead of canvas, including discarded doors, wood planks and tin ceiling tiles.
Allison Furr-Lawyer's exhibit at D'Edge Art and Unique Treasures includes "Twisted Rubber Woman" (above) and "Attacking the Pyramid."
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In her artist's statement, Furr-Lawyer claims to be inspired by the pictures taken by the late Mississippi literary great Eudora Welty, known more for her work as a writer than her skills as a photographer, despite the wonderful collections "Eudora Welty: Photographs" and "One Time, One Place."
Either Welty's words or her pictures could've informed "Canton Delegate," which features an old woman, her features spread across an old wooden door that Furr-Lawyer has repurposed as a canvas. She wears a blue dress and matching hat, and a real lace collar is attached at her neck. Here, the details are impeccable -- the gill-like age spots on her face, a sagging bustline, a strand of pearls and fallen down knee-highs add up to a portrait as revealing as the adjectives Welty chose to employ in her short story, "The Worn Path." The same subject appears again in the cameo-like painting "Old Lady From Canton," her lips pursed together and her eyelids and turkey neck drooping as she faces the world head-on.
"Sweet Tea," "She Destroyed All My Carpets," "Hale on Wheels" and "Fountain of Youth" depict much younger subjects. The most enthralling of the quartet, "Fountain of Youth," portrays a healthy blonde showgirl hoisting a bottle of holy water, painted on a surface fashioned from various-sized planks of wood. Like a sea siren, she promises a life of danger and excitement to wayfaring young men like Harriman Monroe, the protagonist of Hannah's "Geronimo Rex." Yet, viewed in the gallery, the portrait appears to be a wispy memento of past times, much like the faded murals that still cling to the bricked buildings downtown.
"Twisted Rubber Woman" could be a sideshow banner, while "Welcome To Memphis" and "Attacking the Pyramid" might be movie posters for a yet-unmade horror movie. The latter two combine pure fantasy with a socio-political statement, depicting a rather lady-like Godzilla (in "Welcome To Memphis," she wears a lace slip and airbrushed fingernails) destroying the seedy iconography, such as the Paris Adult Theatre and Skateland, that makes Furr-Lawyer's adopted home stand out.
Work by Allison Furr-Lawyer
At D'Edge Art and Unique Treasures, 550 S. Main, through Jan. 31.
For more information, go to D-EdgeArt.com.
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