Art Talk

Recently while at the Mississippi Museum of Art I learned about a southern artist that I had not known about previously. Come to find out, there was a lot I could learn about Carroll Cloar, as several museums and galleries in Memphis were celebrating his work this summer in honor of it being 100 years since his birth in 1913.
In the Summer of Cloar, several groups got together to put on special shows, exhibits and programming featuring the work of this painter who was from Earle, Arkansas. Six venues in Memphis and West Memphis were involved, and four of the shows are still up for public viewing. I was lucky enough to see three of the exhibits this week.
My first stop was at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art where The Crossroads of Memory: Carroll Cloar and The American South is up through Sept. 15. This show is compelling in so many ways.
The main being that this collection is extensive, containing 85 paintings curated by Stanton Thomas who put two years of work into gathering all the paintings exhibited in the gallery.
There are also exhibits up at the Art Museum at the University of Memphis and the University Libraries. All of these shows give a real overview of this prolific southern artist who had something to say and said it so compellingly through his paintings.
For more information you can go to http://summerofcloar.com/.ease Send me your arts related news to arttogollc@gmail.com.