Memphis Wood

Memphis Wood (1902-1989) was an American artist who worked in various media over the course of her career. She worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, pottery, and jewelry design, but she is probably best known for her unusual large-scale abstract fiber art, especially her textile wall-hangings. She was one of the first art educators in the Jacksonville, Florida school system, and taught art at Landon Junior-Senior High School in the city for 33 years until she retired in 1962. She helped establish the Jacksonville Art Museum and the Crown Craftsmen Association, a regional arts organization.

Early life and education (1902–1922) Memphis Wood was born in Dacula, a small town in north Georgia, and was a senior in high school before she saw an oil painting, an experience that ignited her interest in art. She took art lessons, and talked her older sister into payng the fifty cents a week fee. Following her mother's death. Wood attended the State Normal School for Women, a teacher's college in Athens, where she took an art history course. According to the art reviewer Wayne Hamm, she did not train as an artist or as an art teacher. At the time all teachers were required to teach an art course. She found a temporary job in Andrews, South Carolina; there she and the other teachers worked out an arrangement allowing her to teach all the art courses while they assumed responsibility for teaching her academic classes. She heard there were two openings for a permanent teaching job, one of them In Jacksonville, so she came to the city and took the job. during summer vacations, and in 1933, she was awarded a Bachelor's of Science degree in education. She returned later and earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1947.

Career According to the Mandarin Museum, when Wood moved to Jacksonville in 1929, she initially moved into a San Marco garage apartment. In the 1950s she built a home on Woodside Lane in Mandarin, which allowed her the space she needed to create her larger works, and a place to store them. There she formed a lifelong friendship with her neighbor, the artist Charlie Brown, who became a well-known potter in his own right. They built an enduring network of creative people who were the nucleus of Jacksonville’s growing art scene in the 1950s through the 1970s. Wood lived in that home, which she helped build herself, until just a few years before her death in Atlanta in 1989. She later met Karasz in Miami, and eventually Karasz visited Wood in Jacksonville. During the course of her tenure at Landon High School, Russell Hicken, director of the Jacksonville Art Museum at the time, asked Wood to show her wall hangings—it took her a year to create enough of them for an exhibition. After that showing, she gave up painting. and also taught classes at the Jacksonville Art Museum (now the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville). said, "She has probably done more to communicate what art is all about to the citizens of Jacksonville than any other single artist." Before she died in 1989, Wood exhibited her work in North Carolina, Atlanta, and New York. She kept some of her sculptures at home, among them a pair of 7-foot-tall totems standing on wooden bases with shafts about 10 inches in diameter. One is wrapped in Naugahyde and has a feather top—the other is wrapped with yarn alternating with bands of fur, topped with colorful stuffed fabric tentacles like those of an anemone, as described by Mary Campbell.

Education (per Artists of Old Florida ) Normal School for Women, Athens, Georgia University of Georgia, BS in education, 1933, MFA, 1947 University of Florida, with Roy Craven, John Kacere with Howard Thomas Lamar Dodd Atlanta Art Institute, with Ben Shute Jacksonville Art Museum with William Parker Howard Thomas Sculpture with Ralph Hurst, Fred Holchum University of Florida extension art course, 1955

Membership (per Artists of Old Florida ) Arts Exhibition Club of Jacksonville, name later changed to Jacksonville Arts Club Florida Federation of Art Jacksonville Art Museum Florida Artist Group Florida Art Teachers Association

Exhibits (per Artists of Old Florida ) Arts Exhibition Club of Jacksonville, Packard building, Riverside Drive, October 1946, best oil in show, Party Dress, oils, Samantha, Under the Shadow of the Almighty, watercolors, Jessie's Transfer, Coal Car, Decks Arts Exhibition Club, 1946, 1st prize, oil, Party Dress, 1st and 3rd prizes, landscapes Jacksonville Arts Club Annual, May 1947, landscape watercolor, 1st prize, It Doesn't Look Real, 2nd prize, Old Trees, 2nd prize, oil still life Jacksonville Arts Club, Fall Exhibition, November 1947, at American School of Art, East Adams Street, oils, The Young Chemists, The Nativity Jacksonville Arts Club, Spring Exhibition, May–June 1948, at Children's Museum, Riverside Avenue, honorable mention, Autumn Leaves Southeastern Annual at High Museum of Art, as a Georgia artist, October 1949 Florida Federation of Art, annual meeting, Gainesville, November 29 to December 1, Chamber of Commerce award, Wharves Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit, February 1951 at Art Club of St. Petersburg, Wharves Gainesville Association of Fine Arts, April 1952 Audubon Artists Group, New York City, 1952 Southeastern Annual, Atlanta 1952-53 Terry Art Institute, national art scholarship contest for 1952 high school students, awarded to her student, Marjorie S. Jones of Jacksonville, out of 79,418 entrants, with $500 to Memphis Wood Florida Federation of Art Annual, November 1954, Jacksonville, Palm Beach Art League Award Ringling Museum of Art, 1955, Fifty Florida Painters, oil, Girl Carrying Christmas Packages Florida Federation of Art, Stetson University, DeLand, January 1955 Jacksonville Art Museum, joint exhibit with Charles Brown, February 1955 St. Augustine Art Association, March 1956, judge Florida Federation of Art Annual, Jacksonville Art Museum, 1956, award, Woman with Bird Florida Artists Group at Norton Gallery of Art, May 1958 Florida Artist Group, 9th Annual Circuited Exhibition, 1958-1959, an oil, Spring Green Florida State Fair, Tampa, exhibited between, 1956-1962 Florida Craftsmen Exhibition, 1963, award Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1964, 2nd award Webb Gallery, Winter Park, January 1966, Voices of the Night, Composition in Beige, Green Old Lions, Big Blue, The Earth, Lunar Focus, Woman, Big Red, The Past is Present, Earth Sea and Sky Contemporary Art Gallery, St. Petersburg, May 1970, one woman exhibit of "complex, cohesive wall hangings" Jacksonville Art Museum University of Florida University of South Florida Tampa University Jacksonville Art Festival for seven years New York World's Fair