Lauren Kennedy October 31, 2025

Lauren Kennedy

Recorded on April 10, 2024

Lauren Kennedy grew up in Little Rock, then suburban Dallas, then came to study at Rhodes College where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 2008.  She returned to Dallas to work at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Art Fair.  Kennedy returned to Memphis to work for Ballet Memphis and she […]

Mary K VanGieson Part 2 October 24, 2025

Mary K VanGieson Part 2

Recorded on April 5, 2024

From the artist’s website: Mary K VanGieson is an artist, educator, storyteller and sometime writer.  She received my BAE from Oklahoma State University and her MFA from the University of Memphis. She discovered early on that educating high school people in the visual arts is a completely rewarding career. Her work delves into themes of […]

Mary K VanGieson Part 1 October 17, 2025

Mary K VanGieson Part 1

Recorded on March 30, 2024

From the artist’s website: Mary K VanGieson is an artist, educator, storyteller and sometime writer.  She received my BAE from Oklahoma State University and her MFA from the University of Memphis. She discovered early on that educating high school people in the visual arts is a completely rewarding career. Her work delves into themes of […]

Coe Lapossy October 10, 2025

Coe Lapossy

Recorded on March 29, 2024

Coe Lapossy is an interdisciplinary visual artist educator committed to collaboration. Lapossy centers erased histories and marginalized labor. Revisiting artifacts —things forgotten, messages that ‘flew under the radar’. The resulting work is a meditation on what bodies we value, how we memorialize, and what/who survives under the conditions we create. Lapossy (b. 1980, Medina, OH) […]

Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 2 October 3, 2025

Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 2

Recorded on March 22, 2024

Dr. Lisa M. Williamson is a writer and artist in Memphis, TN. She received her MFA in painting from the Memphis College of Art and her PhD in aesthetic theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Williamson’s practice begins with observations of psychological time-keeping, and responds with immediacy to the urgency […]

Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 1 September 26, 2025

Dr. Lisa Williamson Part 1

Recorded on February 9, 2024

Dr. Lisa M. Williamson is a writer and artist in Memphis, TN. She received her MFA in painting from the Memphis College of Art and her PhD in aesthetic theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Williamson’s practice begins with observations of psychological time-keeping, and responds with immediacy to the urgency […]

Lester Julian Merriweather Part 2 September 19, 2025

Lester Julian Merriweather Part 2

Recorded on April 20, 2024

Lester Julian Merriweather (b.1978) is a Memphis-based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University. Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, CAM St. Louis, […]

Lester Julian Merriweather Part 1 September 12, 2025

Lester Julian Merriweather Part 1

Recorded on March 16, 2024

Lester Julian Merriweather (b.1978) is a Memphis-based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University. Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, CAM St. Louis, […]

Terri Jones Part 2 September 5, 2025

Terri Jones Part 2

Recorded on March 23, 2024

Terri Jones lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, Georgia in 1985.  In 1992, she was awarded a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for Works on Paper. In the summer of 2004, Power House, a DeltaAxis initiative, in Memphis asked Terri to respond […]

Terri Jones Part 1 August 29, 2025

Terri Jones Part 1

Recorded on March 9, 2024

Terri Jones lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, Georgia in 1985.  In 1992, she was awarded a Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for Works on Paper. In the summer of 2004, Power House, a DeltaAxis initiative, in Memphis asked Terri to respond […]

Jeanne Seagle Part 2 August 22, 2025

Jeanne Seagle Part 2

Recorded on August 8, 2025 and August 18_2025

From the Dixon Gallery and Gardens website about her amazing show there in 2023.  Jeanne Seagle’s perceptive drawings portray the landscapes surrounding Memphis with a remarkable precision. Delicately rendering the trees and swamps of Dacus Lake along the Mississippi River, Seagle captures the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the varied textures of the […]

Jeanne Seagle Part 1 August 15, 2025

Jeanne Seagle Part 1

Recorded on March 2, 2024

From the Dixon Gallery and Gardens website about her amazing show there in 2023.  Jeanne Seagle’s perceptive drawings portray the landscapes surrounding Memphis with a remarkable precision. Delicately rendering the trees and swamps of Dacus Lake along the Mississippi River, Seagle captures the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the varied textures of the […]

Melissa Dunn Part 2 August 8, 2025

Melissa Dunn Part 2

Recorded on March 8, 2024

Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was born and has lived most of her life.  She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art.  Her abstract-based work is the landing pad where stream of consciousness and the […]

Melissa Dunn Part 1 August 1, 2025

Melissa Dunn Part 1

Recorded on February 24, 2024

Melissa Dunn’s studio is in her house in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was born and has lived most of her life.  She spent her early years immersed in the city’s music scene, splitting her time between playing with bands and making visual art.  Her abstract-based work is the landing pad where stream of consciousness and the […]

Jamie Harmon Part 2 July 25, 2025

Jamie Harmon Part 2

Recorded on March 1, 2024

This interview with Jamie Harmon was recorded on March 1, 2024. From his amazing Amurica website: “I use photography and found objects to tell stories and give glimpses into individuals’ characters and their responses to each other and to their environments. In this way, I consider myself a sort of “visual anthropologist,” making observations in […]

Jamie Harmon Part 1 July 18, 2025

Jamie Harmon Part 1

Recorded on February 10, 2024

This interview with Jamie Harmon was recorded on February 10, 2024. From his amazing Amurica website: “I use photography and found objects to tell stories and give glimpses into individuals’ characters and their responses to each other and to their environments. In this way, I consider myself a sort of “visual anthropologist,” making observations in […]

Carl Moore Part 2 July 11, 2025

Carl Moore Part 2

Recorded on February 5, 2023

This interview with Carl Moore was recorded at the Memphis Listening Lab on February 5, 2023. The artist Carl E. Moore lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.  He recieved both his BFA and MFA from the Memphis College of Art. Moore is the recipient of the Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration and the Tennessee […]

Carl Moore Part 1 July 4, 2025

Carl Moore Part 1

Recorded on January 15, 2023

This interview with Carl Moore was recorded at the Memphis Listening Lab on January 15, 2023. The artist Carl E. Moore lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.  He recieved both his BFA and MFA from the Memphis College of Art. Moore is the recipient of the Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration and the Tennessee […]

Carol DeForest Part 3 June 27, 2025

Carol DeForest Part 3

Recorded on February 21, 2025

This interview with Carol DeForest was recorded on February 21, 2025 From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing […]

Carol DeForest Part 2 June 20, 2025

Carol DeForest Part 2

Recorded on February 5, 2023

From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing spirit to artists and art lover alike. Her shrewd and unfailing […]

Carol DeForest Part 1 June 13, 2025

Carol DeForest Part 1

Recorded on January 10, 2023

This interview with Carol DeForest was recorded on January 10, 2023. From her ceramic studio to her large scale public art projects, private commissions, teaching, interior design business and exhibitions of her sculpture, Carol DeForest has been a force in the Memphis art community for the last 30 years. She has also been a nurturing […]

Agnes Stark June 6, 2025

Agnes Stark

Recorded on August 3, 2022

This interview with the potter Agnes Stark was recorded in the Memphis Listening Lab on August 3, 2022.   Agnes Gordon Stark is a studio potter creating functional and decorative stoneware. Her strong design and glaze technique combine to produce work that is widely recognized for its appealing originality. The stoneware has all of the […]

Maritza Davilla Part 2 May 30, 2025

Maritza Davilla Part 2

Recorded on April 1, 2025

This interview with Maritza Davilla was recorded on April 1, 2025. Maritza Dávila is owner and director of Atabeira Press and Professor Emeritus of the Memphis College of Art where she taught printmaking and drawing from 1982 to 2018 and at the University of Memphis as an adjunct professor. She is currently teaching with Creative […]

Maritza Davilla Part 1 May 23, 2025

Maritza Davilla Part 1

Recorded on June 27, 2022

This interview with Maritza Davilla was recorded on June 27, 2022. Maritza Dávila is owner and director of Atabeira Press and Professor Emeritus of the Memphis College of Art where she taught printmaking and drawing from 1982 to 2018 and at the University of Memphis as an adjunct professor. She is currently teaching with Creative […]

Cory Dugan May 16, 2025

Cory Dugan

Recorded on July 14, 2022

This interview with Cory Dugan was recorded on July 14, 2022. Cory Dugan has been told that he began drawing at a very early age, a mere babe at his mother’s side on the pew in a Southern Baptist church, scrawling savantishly detailed portraits on the church bulletin… no doubt in an attempt to divert […]

Laurie Nye May 9, 2025

Laurie Nye

Recorded on July 20, 2022

Laurie Nye (b. 1972, Memphis, Tennessee) received her BFA from the Memphis College of Art, (1995, Memphis, Tenn.), and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2002, Valencia, California). Nye’s work was the subject of a recent solo exhibition “My River Runs to Thee,” at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, California). Her solo […]

Dr. Earnestine Jenkins May 2, 2025

Dr. Earnestine Jenkins

Recorded on July 6, 2022

Dr. Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins is an Full Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Memphis, where her scholarship focuses on the visual cultural history of the African Diaspora.

Veda Reed April 25, 2025

Veda Reed

Recorded on June 29, 2022

Veda Reed is revered for her long career of creating sublime, luminous, large-scale paintings of skies, cloudscapes, and the cycles of the sun and moon. Inspired by her childhood in wide-open spaces of Oklahoma, her works represent moments of warmth and comfort experienced while witnessing nature.

Greely Myatt April 18, 2025

Greely Myatt

Recorded on June 15, 2022

Greely Myatt is widely recognized for his whimsical sculptural objects and monumental installations made from found materials.

Beth Edwards April 11, 2025

Beth Edwards

Recorded on April 27, 2022

Beth Edwards has had a three-decade long career painting, exhibiting, and teaching.

Peter Sohngen April 4, 2025

Peter Sohngen

Recorded on June 10, 2022

Peter Sohngen was the ceramics professor at the Memphis Art Academy (that later became the Memphis College of Art) from 1969 to 2002 when he retired and was a full time potter and gardener.

Pinkney Herbert Part 2 March 28, 2025

Pinkney Herbert Part 2

Recorded on June 29, 2022

Pinkney Herbert is an abstract painter who maintains studios in Memphis and New York. This is the second of two interviews.

Pinkney Herbert Part 1 March 21, 2025

Pinkney Herbert Part 1

Recorded on June 1, 2022

Pinkney Herbert is an abstract painter who maintains studios in Memphis and New York. This is the first of two interviews.

Chuck Johnson March 3, 2025

Chuck Johnson

The impetus for this series. Memphis artist, Chuck Johnson is an accomplished and vital member of the arts community.

Introduction March 1, 2025

Introduction

Welcome to Memphis Material, an oral history project celebrating the personal histories, the intimate stories, and the studio practices of some of the people who have helped shape the creative landscape of the city.

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