Fair, Patton Explore Self-Perception, Memory In Solo Exhibitions
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Catherine Elizabeth Patton, SPINS V, photograph, 2020, is from a series of self-portraits featured in her exhibition Feeling Through.
New Territory, Feeling Through By Memphis Artists are ASC’s First Exhibitions of 2021
Michelle Fair’s Go on, go on, oil on canvas, 2020, is featured in her exhibition New Territory.
The Arts & Science Center kicks off its 2021 exhibition year with shows by two up-and-coming artists from Memphis. New Territory: Paintings by Michelle Fair and Feeling Through: Examining Emotion in the Midst of Unrest by Catherine Elizabeth Patton are on view now.
ASC Curator Chaney Jewell wanted to look beyond the range of Arkansas in finding new artists within the Delta to showcase, she said. She turned to her search toward Memphis-area artists and found Fair’s and Patton’s works.
“Not only did Catherine and Michelle stand out to me because of lighting and subject matter, but both of them are very emotion, memory, and self-expression based,” she said. “Now looking back on 2020, COVID-19, political crises, and activism that occured, now is the time that, not only do individuals start self-reflecting but we as institutions need to self-reflect.
Jewell continued, “ This is a therapeutic time, a period of limbo, for individuals and for industries, I wanted to take advantage of that and start off the year with the idea of self-reflection. Both Patton and Fair fit into the idea of self-reflection really well.”
Fair Explores New Territory
Michelle Fair
One of the aspects Jewell said that particularly drew her to Michelle Fair’s work is that she mainly paints larger, monochrome pieces that focus on the distortion of the human figure.
“Her first series was really focusing on the fading of human memory and the idea of the things that you do, the way you live your life, the memories that you make, they eventually fade, and how that affects you as a person. As your memory fades, does your story change? Do you change as a person? We talk about how our actions affect us, our personality and who we are, but as that fades, we make new decisions, new choices, and how does that affect us as a person? Her distortion of the physical body reflects the distortion in memory.”
Fair’s New Territory concentrates on a similar distortion but also the setting. “This new series focuses less on the individuals and more on what surrounds them,” Jewell explained. “That’s why she titled it New Territory. It’s new territory for her, in refocusing the subject matter of her artwork. Also new territory, as in the territory — the space around you — Fair is focusing on that.”
Fair earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2014 from Memphis College of Art, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2012 from Christian Brothers University.
Read more about Fair in a Q&A in which she discusses her motivations, methodology, and perspective as an artist. The interview is part of ASC’s Meet the Curator series.
View more of her work on her website, michellefair.com. She is also on Instagram.
New Territory is sponsored by Relyance Bank, and is on display in the William H. Kennedy, Jr. Gallery through April 3, 2021.
Patton’s Feeling Through and Exploring Emotions
Catherine Elizabeth Patton
The works in Catherine Elizabeth Patton’s Feeling Through: Examining Emotion in the Midst of Unrest are her attempt to use photography to document and face the many emotions that came from living through recent events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter, the artist said.
“In Feeling Through, I wanted to address the feelings I was (and still am) faced with during times of unrest such as the one we are living through now,” Patton wrote in her artist statement.
“Earlier on during quarantine, I was met with so many emotions that I didn’t know how to or simply didn’t want to process,” Patton wrote. “Emotions that came from seeing numbers of deaths growing due to an inexplainable [sic] virus, emotions that came from seeing black bodies mishandled and murdered simply for being, emotions that came from fighting desensitization because the latter has sadly become all too common in this society.”
She continued, “These works are my attempt to use photography to face some of those emotions and examine them as I understand them.”
Feeling Through includes a series of self-portraits taken in 2020.
Jewell said, “Whenever she photographed herself, there is a distortion of her face. You can tell that the photograph was taken mid-movement, to kind of show the convoluted and really foggy process of processing your emotions and processing what’s happening. She is analyzing her sense of self and her sense of self within America.”
Patton is a self-taught artist, beginning her craft in 2016. She primarily works in portraiture and creates studies, or series of photographs on specific subjects.
Her previous studies include “Study 1: Sexuality, Sensuality, and Self” and “Bloom,” which featured frank portraiture with flowers incorporated in it, Jewell said. “Bloom” particularly captured Jewell’s attention. Instead of soft, very feminine-appearing flowers and similarly presented subjects, these portraits were very stark, she said. “The flowers were handled sometimes almost violently. We have a portrait-sitter who was grasping roses and I was intrigued by that person’s perspective.”
Patton has shown her work in various galleries and schools in and around Memphis including the Memphis College of Art, The CMPLX, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce through the Young Arts Patrons, and Lipscomb University in Nashville. She has also exhibited her photography as public art, commissioned by the UrbanArt Commission in Memphis, and received an ArtsMemphis’ ArtsAccelorator grant in 2018. She is also an artist in the creative multidisciplinary and multimedia group Unapologetic.
More of Patton’s work can be seen on her website, catherineelizabethpatton.com.
Feeling Through is sponsored by Simmons Bank, and is on display in the International Paper Gallery through April 10, 2021.
