ashle.bailey@yahoo.com

Best,

Ashle

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat during the event.

As Memphis joins the ranks of over 800 cities who participate in this annual event, 20 parking spaces along Peabody Place between Front Street and 2nd Street will be transformed into playful and generous parks on September 16th from 11a.m to 6 p.m.

Park(ing) Day Memphis 2011 is hosted by Memphis College of Art and sponsored by the Downtown Memphis Commission and the Memphis Flyer. Partners for this event are: AIA Memphis, Memphis Regional Design Center, and The City of Memphis.
parkingday.org

INFO:
Peabody Place between Front Street and 2nd Street
September 16th
11a.m to 6 p.m.
****Odessa will be located right in front of the Flying Saucer!!!! Come by and see us!! Chris Miner (Crosstown Arts) will be our installation artist!

Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1990, Frederick Vorder-Bruegge is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. Immersed in the urban and industrial landscape of Memphis, he has actively participated in and completed many ‘do it yourself’ public art pieces, including commissioned murals and personal work. Throughout his time absorbed in the landscape of Memphis, he has simultaneously maintained a practice of making paintings in his studio serving to illuminate his urban experiences.

Frederick is also the artist who completed the mural present to Odessa by the ABC Grant from ArtsMemphis and the Tennessee Ars Commission.

“I am recently involved in the transition and transgression between an intuitive painterly finesse and an abusive constructive attitude. Both dispositions enveloping the idea of paying tribute to a personal relationship with the rails, while also serving to further understand and analyze the discourse between oneself and environmental escapism.”

ODESSA
July 29th
6-9p

“C. Brian DeVaughn is a Mississippi abstract artist, who classifies his work as an integration of pop, neo-expressionism, and Paleothic art. For the past year he has been working on a series entitled, ‘Calculating Possibilities’, in which he uses an old thermostat cover as a tool to incorporate arrangements of colorful shapes, forms, and ideas onto his canvas. Most of the works contained in the series are designed to convey emotions and thoughts through certain rhythm patterns, much like a musical composition, that will lead the eyes throughout the piece and then see it as a whole. ‘This series of works has helped orchestrate my thoughts whether significant or insignificant and formulated them into a colorful rhythmic expression which I hope an audience finds aesthetically pleasing and thought provoking.’”

ODESSA
July 22nd
6-9p

In 1984 the release of the original compact Macintosh ushered in ‘The New Frontier’ for personal computers. Those early Macs radically changed the way people thought about and used technology and information exchange in their day-to-day lives.
27 years later, Nick Canterucci has executed a series of Folk Art with the shells of those original Macs, continuing this ‘New Frontier’ in his exploration of Southern Outsider Art.

This is Nick’s 3rd show at Odessa.

ODESSA
friday, June 17th
6-9p

See more about Nick’s show at Live From Memphis:

http://www.livefrommemphis.com/theintruder/9146-nick-canteruccis-new-frontier

The pair’s work utilizes symbolism, private and universal, to explore often romantic interpersonal relationships, both unique to the pair and common to the world.

This show is held to announce the soft launch and relaunch of the two’s websites.
(josephkendrick.com and stfranciselevatorride.com)

Large and small works will be at hand and private showings will be available by appointment the day of Saturday the 25th only. Beer and wine will be served for a small donation.

ODESSA
june 24th, 6-9pm
june 25th, private showings

Odessa is proud to welcome mosaic artist Mary Jo Karimnia for her show “Table Service”. Karimnia’s mosaic work reflects the fragmentation of everyday life. Much like everyday habits, it comes from a practiced instinct. She experiment widely with materials combining drawing and painting with glass and tile-work.

The intuitive part of her practice began in undergraduate school at Stephen F Austin State University in Nacogdoches, mostly through the act of drawing. Mary Jo originally learned the art of mosaic from Kristi Duckworth and have honed my discipline through practice and observation in places like Istanbul, Turkey.

“Table Service” commentates our consumer society that serves a large helping of flashy goods everyday. We are sold bits of plastic that clutter our lives and plastic-like foods that clutter our diets. Bright colors and sparkly packaging demand our attention. Every product on the shelf seeks our approval and our cash. Over exposure threatens from every angle. Indulgence is easy. Of course, sometimes there is nothing better than a jumbo, pink cotton candy and a whirl on the biggest ride at the fair.

Table Service
ODESSA
June 3rd
6-9p

The Tennessee Arts Commission presents the Arts Builds Communities program each year, giving Memphis and other Tennessee communities the opportunity to fund art related projects. It is a program funded by the Tennessee General Assembly and administered in cooperation with the Tennessee Arts Commission and designated agencies throughout Tennessee. Arts Build Communities Arts Project Support provides funds for a variety of quality arts projects. Funds awarded to a single organization in this category range from $500 to $3,000.

Odessa was awarded funds to provide a mural on the side of its building, giving back to Memphis and specifically the Broad Avenue neighborhood. As an essential arts space in the Memphis area as well as the Broad Ave Arts District, we felt it was necessary to provide a brighter building to our ever developing community.

About the Artist:
Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1990, Frederick Vorder-Bruegge is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Painting from Kansas City Art Institute. Immersed in the urban and industrial landscape of Memphis, he has, since his youth actively participated in and completed many ‘do it yourself’ public art pieces, including commissioned murals and personal work. Throughout his time absorbed in the industrial environment, he has simultaneously maintained a studio practice of making paintings and objects defined by the artist as ‘functioning as an analogous experience to that of my own experiences in the real world.’

There will be a closing reception exhibition Fred’s work on July 29^th from 6-9p.

Currently, Odessa needs to raise enough money to sustain our organization for the remaining months of May, June, and July to ensure that the shows that have been already scheduled can proceed. Our expenses each month are as follows:

• $800 for rent
• $150-$200 for utilities
• $150 for cleaning supplies, toiletries, paint, spackle, and hanging supplies (gallery essentials)

This brings our total monthly expenses to $1,150.00.

Odessa, as stated earlier, has an average of three shows per month, with a gallery rental fee of $100.00 per show.  This brings in a revenue of  roughly $300.00, which is substantially less than our monthly expenses.  Why not raise the rental fee? That is because Odessa aims to be an affordable space for emerging, and often ‘starving’, artists that cannot afford the space rental most other galleries charge.

With enough regular funding, we would be able to eliminate this fee all together, allowing these artists to have this experience for free.

Please consider becoming one of our supporters, because your help is greatly needed right now.  Your contribution will help pay our monthly rent and utilities while allowing us to expand our regular programming and share more of our artists’ work with a larger audience.  You will be guaranteeing a home for experimental and ambitious creative expression in Memphis that quite literally has nowhere else to go in our city.  While our surrounding neighborhood continues to evolve and diversify every week, securing a venue where ambitious art can thrive is more and more vital.

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT!

Odessa is proud to welcome University of Memphis artists Colin Kidder for his solo exhibition. Kidder inflates his sculptures by displacing the living air of a planet located in a star system about forty flapping skin folds from Earth.

The forms that Kidder creates are based on actual intelligence obtained from the professional tongue twisters and copyright artists that inhabit the narrow libraries of antique brains, but they visually resemble slinky socks.

Before his return to the neon bubble planet in his latex slingshot, Kidder would like to shake the longest hand possible.

Friday, May 20, 2011
6:00-9:00p
ODESSA

***Colin will be giving away pieces of the installation at the end of the show, asking for donations to be giving to the HELP SAVE ODESSA fund!*****

Thank you Colin!