Two large columns serve as the gateway into Rugby Gates, a public art project in Memphis designed by Gregg Schlanger. Photo provided by Gregg Schlanger.

In the last two years, Gregg Schlanger, professor of art at Austin Peay State University, has processed 75,000 pounds of Memphis mud to make 7,000 bricks for a community-based public art project he was commissioned to build.

And after countless trips to Memphis for research, meetings and hard labor, the effort – which proved to be a true example of community involvement – is complete.

At 3 p.m., Dec. 13 in Memphis, a dedication ceremony will unveil Rugby Gates, a series of brick gateways along a main road in the Rugby neighborhood of Memphis. Schlanger will be among Memphis dignitaries and local residents to attend the event.

Rugby Gates marks a neighborhood where the original brickyards of Memphis were located. The project was commissioned by The Urban Art Commission, which administers the public art program for the city of Memphis. The concept for the project developed following several meetings with city officials, neighborhood organizers, local schools and extensive research on the history of the area.  

“Many people attached to this area helped me to put together the project,” Schlanger said. “Community involvement was displayed at all stages of this.”

The construction of Rugby Gates involved 26 Memphis high school students hired to assist in making bricks during a five-weeklong after-school program. Also, students went door to door, handing out 2,500 fliers informing the neighborhood about the project and receiving names to be carved into the bricks.

The final piece consists of 12 brick columns with carved relief depicting images relating to the area’s history. Two large columns serving as the gateway into the neighborhood, approximately the same location where the original stone gateway into Rugby was, are 4 feet by 20 feet. Another 10 columns, measuring 2 feet by 5 feet, serve as five small gateways.

“The history of Rugby as a brick-making area intrigued me,” Schlanger said.

The project began in November 2006. Schlanger transported 80,000 pounds of Memphis clay by trucks to his studio in Clarksville, where the clay was processed and the bricks were made and carved.

In addition to his ongoing work with Rugby Gates, Schlanger was involved in two other public art projects. He created a dozen digital print collages for the Daviess County Public Library in Owensboro, Ky., two of which were chosen to flank the entrance to the history wing of the library.

And in 2007, he spent five weeks in Germany, researching issues on global water consumption. His research culminated into an installation, titled “B.W.R. (basic water requirements) 50 Liters,” at Kunsthaus Potsdam, a nonprofit arts organization in Potsdam, Germany.

For more information about Rugby Gates or Schlanger’s previous work, contact Schlanger by telephone at (931) 221-7789 or by e-mail at .

After this debut at Customs House, selections from the exhibit will travel to the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, Ohio) and Mennello Museum American Art (Orlando, Florida) before closing the tour at the Kentucky Folk Art Center at Morehead State University.

Sixty pieces of Lewis’s work have been gathered from twenty-two public and private collections from across the Southeast and Midwest by guest curators Bruce and Kathy Moses Shelton. Works exemplify the full range of Lewis’s ability to tell a story from his first Noah’s Ark to his most recent, Win, Place & Show, an homage to the Kentucky Derby. Mining the experience of family and home, as well as a trove of legends and beliefs accumulated over a lifetime, Lewis has created a body of work that emerges as a visual narrative rich in its ‘telling.’

Carvings by Lewis have been included in exhibitions around the country and are in dozens of public and private collections including those of The Huntington (WV) Museum, High Museum of Art (Atlanta) and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. United States Senator Lamar Alexander and his wife Honey, and contemporary artist Red Grooms and his wife Lysiane Grooms have also acquired examples of Lewis’s stone carving. In October of 2007, Lewis was proclaimed “Artist of the Year” by the Folk Art Society of America.

Accompanying the exhibit are a locally-produced full-color catalogue and short film produced by Daniel Price, Director of the Institute of Self-Taught Artist Resources.

The Custom House exhibits are open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Museum members are admitted free. On Sundays, the Bubble Room and Explorer’s Floor will close at 4:00 p.m. The Galleries remain open until 5:00 p.m.

Admission prices: Free to Museum members. Adults $5.00; seniors (55+) $4.00; college students with picture ID $2.00; children ages 6 through 18, $1.00; no charge for children under age 6. General admission is free on Sundays.

Free parking for Museum visitors is available behind the Museum at the top of the hill off South Second Street.

The pensive Spence monument is intriguing as the only one not immaculately tended.

Ten years ago friends introduced me to Hope Cemetery, first in a quick drive-by on the way to somewhere else, and later, for a “quick” tour that became a lengthy monument-by-monument tour. For these monuments are like no others. They honor the dead, but are of themselves museum quality works of art and imagination that attract a flurry of annual visitors from all over the world. The granite monuments, carved from Barre’s own Rock of Ages Quarry, rank as the best granite craftsmanship in the world. Most people do not realize that many of the monuments across our country are crafted from Barre (and other Vermont) granite.

I walked the peaceful, quiet grounds, awestruck by the ingenuity of many of the stones, and by the willingness of the creators to step beyond the traditional “names and dates of life and death” inscription and create memorials that capture the essence of individual in the form of a hobby, a career, a love, a memory…

To say that the images unfolding here are breathtaking is an understatement. I was walking through an open air museum of the finest art.

Barre was known for its master craftsmen, Italian stone carvers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These master craftsmen were artists of incredible talent and ingenuity, working the rock solid stone into forms of grace and beauty, power and poignancy. The cemetery includes master works of custom figures, bas-reliefs and ornate crypts, where many of these craftsmen and their families were ultimately buried.

The Braun monument with its open book is one of my favorites.

Inscribed in cursive, in impeccable French, a tribute to Madeleine Braun (1931-1994)

This poem, in flawless cursive, in French, remains a tribute to Madeleine Braun. I was attracted to it first because of its sheer beauty, then the French language I love, and then the inscription “Madeleine,” which was my late mother’s name (she also spoke fluent French).

Inscribed in the base, the name 'Madeleine"

On every visit, I walk up to this stone and run my fingers over the inscription, never tiring of the words and the love they represent. It reads in part:

Just as a ray of sunshine, you illuminate my life
with your magnificent smile, your grand generosity,
your dynamic energy, and your marvelous joy in life.
Young of heart, body and spirit (mind)…
you are an admirable example of courage and love…
Your husband, your sons, and all who love you
We think of you and want to say ‘Thank you, Madeleine’
for giving us the chance to love you.”

The Braun monument dominates its section of Hope Cemetery

The theme of love eternal continues with the near life-sized sculpture of William and Gwendolyn Halvosa, sitting up, one can only imagine them propped up on feather pillows, in their marriage bed. Pajama’d figures, shown holding hands, between them the inscription “Set me as a seal upon thine heart for love is strong as death” from the Song of Solomon 8:6. Their tombs stretch out before them, twin “beds” with a single headboard.

Eternal love

Hope Cemetery was established in 1895 and originally contained 53 acres. Since that time it has expanded to a total of 65 acres. Edward P. Adams, a nationally known landscape architect, created the original plan for the cemetery. In the past century, each section of the grounds has emerged after meticulous planning and intricate design, with the approved monuments representing strict architectural and artistic standards. The cemetery was created with an eye to attractiveness, ease of maintenance, and the provision of a unique opportunity for families to honor their loved ones.

While the cemetery has an seemingly infinite array of unique headstones, there is a uniform feel to the grounds because every single one of the monuments and crypts is carved from Barre Gray Granite. Custom carved stones are expensive, so many of the cemetery’s headstones are traditional, but among the more standardized markers visitors will find the amusing, the curious, the inspiring, the sentimental, and outright masterpieces.

A 1/2 scale replica of race car #61 celebrates local driver Joey Laquerre, Jr, who died in a 1991 snowmobile mishap.

Among the more unusual, and distinctly non-traditional, monuments is this race car, a half-size replica of race car #61, designed to celebrate local driver Joey Laquerre, Jr, who died in a 1991 snowmobile mishap. This is followed by a plane, captured angled in flight.

A bi-plane banks sharply on its way to Cloud Nine

Brusa monument: The Dying Man

The stones represent the carvers, the artisans, themselves.

“The Dying Man” is stone artisan Louis Brusa’s own grave, a strange and evocative portrait of the carver in the arms of his wife, slipping into the afterlife. Brusa died in 1937 to silicosis, an illness that plagued stonecarvers and was which was caused by breathing in stone particles in the air at the quarries. In 1930, then modern ventilation equipment elimated that health hazard from the quarry workplace.

Brusa was the creator of one of Hope Cemetery’s most striking monuments, the stone known as the “Bored Angel,” also known as the “Sitting Angel”. Near life-sized, she sits, resting, between columns, her legs crossed, head balanced on her chin, wings flowing to the back of the stone. her look is pensive, thoughtful, perhaps bored as some suggest. We can’t help wondering what, or who, she is waiting for. or remembering.

Louis Brusa

Just as the monument are unique, so too are the numerous mausoleums “museum worthy.” All are fashioned of that hard gray granite, the angles sharp and precise, the columns immaculately rounded, the stained glass windows impeccably fashioned, and the bas reliefs, sometimes in bronze, the equal of what might be found in any world class museum.

Rock of Ages and Barre’s granite quarries lie southeast of Barre, Vermont (I-89, exit 7), and the Granite Sculptures of Hope Cemetery are set across a rolling hillside just off the main road in downtown Barr. The perfect time to view this outdoor memorial sculpture garden is in the autumn, on a fall foliage vacation tour, when nature bathes the hillsides in colors, a fitting backdrop for the vibrant work of these Barre stonecutters.

The best (or most intriguing) of Hope Cemetery:

CALCAGNI: Towering colonnade memorial with an exquisite hand-carved angel centered betweed two four-colum sections. Note the symetry, the perfection of the horizontal lines in the structure of this piece.

ZORZI: A softly curved hand places a bouquet of flowers over the oval inscripted area; the flowers seem suspened over air, a space meticulously hollowed out to create that aura of dimension.

BONAZZI-SULLIVAN: This mausoleum, created with sharp angles and perfect symmetry, is soften by its bronze door, a panel lavishly inscribe with the figure of a woman, head bowed to her arms, perhaps weeping, beneath carved boughs.

BONAZZI-SULLIVAN: A close-up of the figure reveals the sharpness of pine needle clusters and pine cones above and behind the figure. From the strands of upswept hair to the drape of her gown, to the oval leaves before her, she lends an element of softness and gentle sorrow to this otherwise austere crypt.

GIUSEPPE DONATI: A bas-relief of a soldier smoking a cigarette; a portrait of his wife or girlfriend floats in a curl of smoke.

MALNATI: Finely carved ribbons and floral work are a delicate shift in style from the many rugged monuments here.

BRUSA: Between stone pillars, this angel sits, head in hands, waiting. Just sitting? Is she bored?

BRUSA: Brusa carved this angel, with her strong aquiline nose, ragged curls and partially unfurled wings.

CASSAVOY: The corner of this monument reveals a woman outside her country home, pine trees filing the Green Mountain land behind her.

COLUMBO: Stunned rugged cut is tamed by the rolling curves of the scroll and the bursts of wilfowers beneat an assymetrical single column and partial arch

HILLFERTY: This stunning embrace of an angel calls to mind a similar piece by Daniel Chester French, whose "embrace" was inspired by a plume of steam at Yellowstone.

ERIKSON-ANDERSON: A ship sailing the sea; the simplest of wave lines at the top of each section balance the

ELIA CORTI: Cut from a single piece of granite by the brother of the deceased. Outstanding hand carved life size figure. Notice the detail of the clothing, the tools of the granite trade. Background is shell rock finish.

ELIA CORTI: Profile view of this three dimensional figure

SIMONETTA: Sorrowful figure of vieled woman on one knee, holding flowers that droop earthward. Contemplation? Weeping?

SIMONETTA: Close-up of the female figure

SIMONETTA: This oval portrait of the woman buried here is inset into the granite base

EGENIOA CARUSI: Striking bust leaves no doubt of the power and persona of Mr. Carusi. Museum quality work.

HALVOSA: One of the incriptions on the "beds"

The Corrigan stone includes the flight of wild geese

The tall Friberg monument is elegant simplcity. The 'wings" on either side seem poised to protect, or possibly take flight.

The back road at Hope Cemetery is lined with meticulously carved mausoleums, some with ornate bronze doors and gates, others with elegant stained glass windows.

The Cruickshank monument is magnificent simplicity: a rugged cross that stands nearly ten feet high

The Rouleau Mausoleum, with bronze doors, stauary and urns.

The assymetrical Rovelli stone includes a scroll and meticulously detailed spier mums with every delicate petal hand carved.

The Martel monument has a unique inscription on each side of its cube

Two pyramids with details inscriptions and quotes stand behind more traditional monuments at Hope Cemetery

Inscription on one of Vrooman pyramids

Bible quote fills on side of the Vrooman pyramid

The Bettini armchair has an intricate floral design on the face of each arm.

Grenier's love of violin immortalized in this bas relief

ROULEAU: Impeccably carved Mausoleum with ornate doors and guardian statuary

The Entrance to the Hope Cemetery

CUMMING: A flower garden

MAURICE: Christ kneeling in the garden

SPENCE: Hauntingly pensive

THOMAS: Love

DAVIS: Remembering his love of the sport

PECOR: In the hands of the Lord

In the midst of grandeur, this simple ceramic plaque honors a teacher.

In downtown Barre, this monument stands as a tribute to the stonecutters of the local quarry

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photos by Christine Anne Piesyk

Anomaly will premiere at 7 p.m., Monday, April 7 in the Don Jenkins Gallery, located on the third floor of the Morgan University Center with a reception on opening night. The exhibition will remain on display until Wednesday, April 10 and is is free and open to the public. Matthews is an art major on track to receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture in May.

A resident of Clarksville, Matthews’s exhibition will consist of several large wood sculptures, which he describes as, “large ambiguous forms meant to entertain the eyes and create visual significance by arousing curiosity in the viewer.”

“I look to avoid much of the mental baggage that accompanies representational work to fashion a more direct dialogue between the piece and the viewer.” — Sam Mathews

Matthews works primarily with found wood and steel. “To add to the appeal and dynamic of my piece, I look to affix a sense of movement or the possibility of rearrangement in the hopes of adding another dimension of interest. Each piece is meant to be one of a kind, foreign, something the viewer has never seen before and probably won’t see again,” he said.

“Statistically a person in an art museum looks at each piece for an average of three seconds; I look to gain that fourth second, a moment of contemplation and disorder. I don’t want the viewer to have to be an artist to appreciate or analyze my work. I don’t want to try to tell people what they see or how they should look at it. My work is a dialogue between the sculpture and the viewer, not the artist and the viewer.” — Sam Matthews

For more information about Anomaly, contact the art department by telephone at (931) 221-7333.

A Tennessee native and Professor Emeritus of Art at Austin Peay State University, Bryant was introduced to Saturday’s crowd as “an educator, mentor and humanitarian of the first order,” one who has guided and prodded his students to “find their voices” even as he continued his quest to develop and expand his own.

Meandering through the crowds, one could hear the comments of friends, of art lovers, watch them inhaling in awe at the beauty and substance of this work. In an era where art is displayed but art lovers are kept at safe distances, the Customs House exhibit was presented in a manner that invited touch, that invited close inspection of the most minute detail of each piece, be it a small “sleeping stone” or a majestic chair with outstretched arms. The art itself invited it.

Bryant, recipient of the Distinguished Artist Award from the 2007 Governor’s Awards in the Arts, greeted visitors at the museum’s entrance, and later spoke briefly to a gathered crowd, saying in his characteristically quiet voice that now “he knows what a deer feels like, when its looking into the lights of a car.” He said this experience “honored” him.

The collection is diverse, a sampling of majestic polished wood carvings that seem almost molded by hand rather than carved with metal tools; supple, succulent wood with a satin sheen that invited touch, wood in which Bryant found and released an ethereal spirit, a hidden essence unearthed and brought to the light of day. A gift to the rest of us.

The wood carvings fashioned by his touch are deceptively simple: the hint of eyes, mouths, faces, figures in many cases barely elevated from the base wood, but all the more expressive for it.

In one tall piece, The Actor, we are given the essence of a figure but with a second face midsection, a second ‘voice” emerging. And that is part of the truth, the honesty of his work; that form, feeling, passion are within us all and continue to emerge, to shape, to erupt or more often quietly blossom from within. Bryant deftly finds that inner beauty and presents it to us without revealing the ending. That is left to our imagination and interpretation.

Numerous ceramic pieces, many of primitive female forms with lush, full but non-graphic shapes recall the Goddess figures of ancient cultures and for me were reminiscent of Goddess art and other Peruvian pieces exhibited in Lima’s Gold Museum and the museum/home of Francisco Pizarro. The rich brick earth tones in many of the ceramic pieces evoke a sense of timelessness and a connectedness to Mother Earth.

Bryant’s famous Sleeping Stones, some clustered in a shallow dugout, are simple designs to grace a garden, a desk, a personal library — restive pieces that call out for touch.

Visitors were given a glimpse of Bryant’s process in a pedestal display of sketches and materials, and through a series of photo-graphs of the artist at work, displayed throughout the galleries.

In an alcove, testimonials from Bryant’s students and samples of art by those students were prominently displayed. At right, a selection of works by former students of Olen’s, including curator Tom Rice and Michael Adams (pictured left with his work, Infinity).

Bryant holds a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has studied both in the United States and abroad. Bryant is a founding member of the Tennessee Association of Craft Artists.

Guest Curator Tom Rice assembled a striking and powerful collection of Bryant sculpture in clay, stone and wood from the early 1950s to recently-completed work. Rich Goodwin Created a video detailing the life and work of Olen Bryant on view with the exhibit.

The exhibit, showcased in the Crouch, Orgain and Bruner galleries, runs through December 31.

The striking entrance to the Bryant exhibit. Bold color, and a simple acknowledgment and introduction to Olen Bryant.

A study in blue, the face “sleeping” while the inner spirit is alive, a juxtaposition of the conscious and unconscious, the hidden waiting to be found.

A grouping of wood pieces, the sheen shape and subtlety inviting touch. The exhibit allows visitors rare intimacy with each of the pieces. At the right of this cluster is one of the portraits of Bryant at work in his studio.

Sketchbooks and raw materials give insight into the artist’s process.

Photos by Debbie Boen and Christine Piesyk

Debbie Boen also contributed to the story

“…He has a magic touch that wakes up the wood he’s carving or pours life into the ceramics that he’s molding…”

Olen Bryant: A Retrospective opens at the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center on North Second Street on Saturday, September 15, featuring the best of Bryant’s work. The exhibit will run through December 31, with an opening reception scheduled for Saturday at 6 p.m.

Bryant received the Distinguished Artist Award from Governor Phil Bredesen during a special ceremony celebrating the Governor’s Awards in the Arts at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville in March, 2007. He is a well-known sculptor and educator and has received national recognition for his work.

Bryant holds a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has studied extensively in the uSA and abroad. He is a founding member of the Tennnessee Association of Craft Artists and a Professor Emeritus at Austin Peay State University.

In presenting this artist, the Customs House wrote:

“Rarely does an institution have the privilege to present a retrospective of an artist whose quiet influence has profoundly affected so many people. As a teacher, friend and artist, Tennessee native Olen Bryant has been gently guiding generations to find their own artistic voices, while still following his own.”

Bryant sculpture in wood, clay and stone for the early 1950s to the present has been assembled by guest curator Tom Rice.

Debbie Boen writes:  Before Olen moved away from Clarksville a few years ago, I’d see him at every one of the Roxy Theatre shows, at least a couple of times each show. He and his partner came to all the special interest movies at the Custom House Museum, and attended numerous lectures and shows at Austin Peay.

I still see him in our Library in the way that his carved wood pieces greet me on the second floor.  They seem to be alive; I always have to catch my breath when I see them. His work has been featured in local shows and contests, and he frequently gives pieces of his work to help the Roxy Theatre every year.

He’s a quiet and very likeable man. I see Olen Bryant in Cheekwood, where an outdoor meditation area has one of his pieces as a vocal point. I see his influence in the works of his students, Tom Rice and Michael Adams. Their pieces adorn the Custom House museum and other Clarksville sites.

Olen Bryant: a quiet man whose silence says so much. I often wonder if he has some magic touch that wakes up the wood he’s carving or pours life into the ceramics that he’s molding. I don’t really know him well at all, but I have felt honored to have lived in the same town, to have seen him around, and to have had the opportunity to experience his work. He’s a legend.

The reception is free and open to the public on Saturday, September 15, 2007, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Picture from: theframemaker.com sculpture by Olen Bryant