I visited Memphis and checked out the art and music. There’s lots of relevant stuff here that will be useful to spray paint art lovers. Hope you enjoy!

Memphis was way cool. People there walk and talk with rhythm and blues attitude. I don’t know the depths of it, but it was friendly, sassy and bold. The city just pulses with music, art and social revolution. The visit to the Martin Luther King hotel where he was shot was incredibly moving and those feelings flow through the city like the Missisipi river.
As far as we could tell there were easy interactions between black and white. Even the personal growth workshops we found advertised in the vegan restaurant we visited (trying to take a break from heavy Southern cooking for at least 1 meal) were all about being freed from some kind of social oppression, men from male stereotypes, women from domestic violence..even the new age stuff was about political emancipation.
The art was sooooo much more interesting than in Nashville (where I found nothing worth photographing) Even in the restaurants there was cool stuff! Memphis has it’s own style of primitive/stained glass plus a dash of this and that art and it’s main subjects are the musicians.

memphis-style

You can actually paint this style pretty well with spray paint art..I’ll be posting some videos to www.spraypaintartsecrets.com in the next few months, that you can use to do something very similar to this style with spray paint art such as the spray paint art memaid I painted below. I’ll have to paint some musicians now!

Alisa Amor mermaid

Here is some art we saw while chowing down.

memphis-art-4

memphis-art-5

I even saw a painting by Cosmo (my spray painting friends will know who that is) in one vegan restaurant!

cosmo-art cosmo-2

While walking down South Main, we saw a window with some interesting looking art went inside. It turned out to be an exhibit of spray paint art done on wood by local graffiti artists in a “leadership” program. They were encouraged to take their art to galleries and to grow their careers as artists. This resulted in some trully amazing work that inspired me deeply.

Check out the exhibition below, the music was recorded in a bar that we went to on Beale street.
Here are some of the pieces, my favorite was Micheal Wyatt who did the angel figures. Sorry I didn’t catch everyone’s name (if you are part of this exhibit and want your name posted, send me the info and I’m happy to do so)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXo-n9qLbTc

I will be thinking about these pieces for a long time and learning from them. It also gave me the desire to connect with graffiti artists, young and old and teach them the new acrylic airbrush techniques so more and more of them can expand their skillsets and start doing other types of work. It would be all about learning from each other. Perhaps I’ll contact this memphis program one of these days….
While walking around Beale street I met and captured on video these interesting artists painting live in the Pepsico park. I did a bit of an interview..I’ll let them speak for themselves.

You can contact Assane at [email protected] and Youssoupha Ndiaye (his manager) at [email protected]

Hope you’ve enjoyed this slice of Memphis. Ciao–Alisa


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