Spring Arts Guide 2024: Art by Design
ABIGAIL MORICI | MEMPHIS FLYER
With winter melting away, now is the time to spring into the arts as new exhibits, performances, and happenings begin to pop up all over town. So be like the groundhog and come out of your hidey-hole. Spring has sprung, Memphis.
Art by Design
After a pandemic pause, ARTSmemphis is bringing back its Art by Design fundraiser, a five-day series of events highlighting Memphis’ interior design community. At the core of the fundraiser is the gallery showroom where just over 20 designers will have created vignettes of living spaces. There will be arts activations, music, food, and more, during the showroom’s hours.
“It’s a great way for people to come and not only maybe get inspiration for their own houses, maybe buy a few things, maybe learn about some new Memphis artists they may not know about, but also to support our process,” says Elizabeth Rouse, ARTSmemphis president and CEO. “Most of our work is really focused on raising money and then granting it out and supporting arts organizations and artists in a variety of ways, and so this is just a really unique opportunity for interior designers, who in some cases are competitors, to come together for Memphis and to showcase their own work, which is very different.”
This will also be the first year that Art by Design will implement its Emerging Designers program, through which it will waive the vignette fee for regional emerging designers Colin Chapman, Brittney Murckson, Journee Kelly, and Baylor Pillow. “We really see this as an opportunity to help strengthen the interior design field in Memphis and bring that community together,” Rouse says.
Designer Carmeon Hamilton created this program in 2020, and even had designers prepared to participate, before the event was canceled due to Covid. Laquita Tate was one of those initial emerging designers, but she will now be joining Art by Design as a “fully emerged designer.”
“We were able to at least get together and plan some things out [in 2020],” Tate says. “I was able to see how some things work behind the scenes, which helped me, and so I’m just really excited to be able to do this even now, four years later.”
Ultimately, though, Tate hopes that people will come out to the event for the sake of community. “Memphis is rich with a variety of different types of arts here,” she says, “and people might miss out on some of that with some of the other things that are going on currently in the city, but that should be the most important piece: Come out, support us, support the city of Memphis, and support the arts.”
Art by Design will have several accompanying events in addition to the showroom, such as Dinner with Designers, The Art of Mahjong game night, Cocktails by Design, and a special speaker. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit artsmemphis.org/art-by-design.
Art by Design will take place April 3rd to 7th at Agricenter International.