'Somehow I feel like I can reach out and touch memory. Somehow it is malleable, you can manipulate it, form it, shape it. It certainly can shape you.' William Christenberry
'Working from Memory' is a collection of stories by the renowned visual artist William Christenberry. Christenberry's writings emerge from the literary tradition of the American Deep South and yet can clearly be seen as an integral part of his oeuvre. With their lucid, lyrical qualities they illuminate personal experience against a backdrop of the important political and cultural aspects of the Southern States.
William Christenberry's photograph of the T.B. Hick's Store in Newbern, Ala, 1976.
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1936, William Christenberry grew up in the deep south where old road signs, deteriorating buildings, and dirt roads shaped his boyhood memories. In 1954, Christenberry began his academic career at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa where he studied the fine arts and graduated with a Master of Arts in Painting in 1959. During his early career, Christenberry was primarily a painter, but began incorporating the use of photography into his working procedures. In 1961 he moved to New York. He met Walker Evans, whose photographs particularly influenced Christenberry. In 1968, Christenberry moved to Washington D.C., joining the faculty of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Design, where he continues today as a professor of drawing and painting.
Since then Christenberry's pilgrimages home to visit family in Hale County, Alabama have become occasions for his artistic inspiration. Through a variety of media, Christenberry explores the effects of time on his boyhood home by choosing subjects such as buildings, signs, and found objects. Today Christenberry's work experiments with the many positive and negative emotional responses art can trigger. Christenberry's international stature continues to grow as his work is featured in many museums throughout the United States and abroad.
The exhibit, "William Christenberry: Site/Possession," runs through 21 Sept 2008 at the University of Mississippi Museum. Both Christenberry and Andrea Douglas, curator at the University of Virginia Art Museum, plan to attend a public reception 7 Sept. This exhibition features his drawings and sculptures with only a few photos. The show reveals an artist at ease with many media and in tune with their abilities.
WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY, 'WORKING FROM MEMORY'
Text by William Christenberry based on conversations
with Susanne Lange
112 pages, 50 colour plates
23 cm x 25 cm
Clothbound hardcover with dust jacket
£22.50
Steidl
WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY, 'SITE/POSSESSION'
University Museum, University of Mississippi
Fifth Street and University Avenue,
Oxford, Mississippi
T: +1 662 915 7073
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