Several art events locally

Published 10:48 am Thursday, September 15, 2016

It is getting busy here in Oxford with football season, school activities and arts events in full swing.

This week, I will attempt to cover some highlights of what to do and see over the next few days.

Today is a big day with two openings at Southside Gallery, the Annual Membership party at the University Museum, and a showing of Oxford High School’s performance of the musical, Xanadu.

Email newsletter signup

If theater is your cup of tea, plan a trip to see Xanadu at the Kayla Mize Auditorium located at 222 Bramlett Boulevard in the current middle school.

Performances of this fun parody of the 80s movie about a roller disco directed by John Davenport will be held Thursday and Friday this week at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students.

For more information, please see  http://www.oxfordsd.org/Theatre.

After work you can stop by Southside Gallery to see two concurrent solo shows being exhibited there. Both Lucius Lamar and Jerrod Partridge have new work hanging in the gallery with their shows Fire Water Earth and Which Wert and Art, respectively.

According to Lamar, his series “pays tribute to Mary Mann Hamilton’s Trials of the Earth, written around 1930 but not published until 1992, which recounts her experience as one of the first pioneers to settle the Mississippi Delta.”

Partridge said he “considers art to be a dialogue between visionaries of the past and present that responds to ideas about the future.”

He took the title of his work from the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Lamar worked on his landscape series in an abandoned farm house with no running water or electricity using brooms, mops and shaving brushes.

Partridge’s works are all painted on paper he makes himself and includes a series of portraits illuminated by computer screens as well as some more symbolic works using metal leaf.

The reception will be held tonight from 6-8 p.m.

Also try to stop by the University Museum located on campus for their annual membership party this evening.

There will be refreshments, and guests can view the newest exhibition, The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston curated by the novelist Megan Abbott. This show features many color and black and white photographs some of which have never been shown before.

The reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. and is open to members and non-members.

If you are really ambitious, you can drive out to Memphis this weekend to participate in Art Paired: A Celebration of Fine-Craft and Finely-Crafted Libations put on by ArtWorks Foundation and held at the Racquet Club of Memphis at 5111 Sanderlin Ave.

The event is being held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $10 and includes sampling of beverages after noon.

The indoor art fair couples fine craft with finely-crafted libations.

For more information, go to www.ArtPaired.com.

ANDI BEDSWORTH is owner of Art To Go, which brings free art opportunities to children in the community.