Best of 2011: Standout Memphis art shows made compiling list easy

"Land," steel and beeswax, by Greely Myatt from his "Just Sayin' " exhibit at David Lusk Gallery.

"Cloud," a sculpture by Ben Butler, from his bravura show "On Growth" at Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College.

"Yong!Yong!Yong!" by Jiha Moon: Ink, acrylic, fabric and stickers on hanji paper. Moon's "Day for Night" exhibit showed at the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College.Courtesy of the artist and Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta

Choosing the five best art exhibitions from a year's worth of looking and writing might seem to be fraught with conflict and contradiction, decision and indecision, but actually, once I went back over the shows I wrote about in 2011, the roster fell into place easily.

The order is chronological.

Ben Butler, "On Growth," Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Jan 21-Feb 18. "Exquisite" and "awesome," "bravura" and "self-effacing" were a few of the adjectives I unpacked to describe the two sculptures and 17 abstract drawings -- most in ink, some in graphite -- that comprised this serious, obsessive yet exhilarating display of organic form.

"Digital Mettle: Jewelry and Objects of CAD," National Ornamental Metal Museum, July 15-Sept. 11. This knockout of a show discarded previous notions of bodily adornment for the strange beauty and eccentricity of space-age materials and computer-assisted design. Curated by Matthew Hollern, professor of jewelry and metals and dean of faculty at The Cleveland Institute of Art, "Digital Mettle" sometimes seemed like a combination of installation art with old-fashioned delicacy and fanciful allure.

Greely Myatt, "Just Sayin'," David Lusk Gallery, Sept. 6-Oct. 1. After exhibiting in Memphis for more than 20 years, Greely Myatt turned out his most subtle and elegant show in "Just Sayin'," a display of only 10 works, one a monumental dance of comic strip thought clouds, that reiterated his habitual themes of communication and confusion with pop culture verve and unexpected philosophical tenderness.

Jiha Moon, "Day for Night," Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Sept. 9-Oct. 14. A Korean-American artist who lives in Atlanta, Jiha Moon fearlessly and joyfully married elements of Asian classical and popular culture with contemporary media and digital references in wildly inventive mixed-media-on-paper works. Her balance between fastidious craft and controlled chaos was child-like, astonishing and endearing.

"Adrift," Hyde Gallery, Memphis College of Art Nesin Graduate Center, Sept. 18-Nov. 13. Curator and MCA professor Cynthia Thompson again assembled a group of provocative and thoughtful contemporary works, this time centered on themes of memory and grief, nostalgia and dissolution. From art stars like Damien Hirsh and Petah Coyne to the city's own Erin Harmon, the nine widely diverse artists in the show offered talismanic meditations on what is most tangible yet tragically transitory about human life.

Though not a gallery exhibition, Robin Salant's lighting of the windows in the long-vacant Sears Crosstown building merits mention as the city's best public art project of the year. Working with a $5,000 MEMfeast grant from Crosstown Arts (and using a considerable amount of her own money), Salant brought the scheme to fruition in a ceremony on Oct. 20. It's the kind of public art project that really works as a community builder and definer. Slated to come down at the end of November, the lights will remain in place, thanks to donors, until the end of this month.

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