PAST SPEAKERS

May 17, 2026 - Speaker was Richard Echols. In addition to being a talented artist, he is also Program Manager at the Urban Art Commission. He will be speaking on: "The Art In My Life"
He will be taking a deep dive into his artistic practice and philosophies. Do join us! This is our last meeting before our summer break.

Sunday, April 19, 2026, 2–4 pm
Tad Lauritzen-Wright, Tad, a Texan, received an MFA from the Memphis College of Art and a BFA from Wesleyan University. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States; and has been teaching art at the college level for over 20 years.

Sunday, March 15, 2026, 2–4 pm
Rose Marr, a well-known local portrait artist, will be talking about the influence of her mother Mary 'Mayfair' Matthew, who was a Folk Art painter and quilter. One of Mayfair's quilts was shown at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson and at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Sunday, February 15, 2026, 2–4 pm
Elizabeth Alley will talk about about ShapeShifter Art School and Gallery, how it started, and her involvement in it. The school is open to anyone interested in enriching their art knowledge and skills.

She will also talk about her own art practice and how it has been impacted by her participation in the Arctic Circle Residency. This unusual residency took place for two weeks aboard a schooner with 28 other artists and writers, giving her time to make over 150 sketches and the opportunity to experience the amazing landscapes and seascapes of the area around the archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean. 

Sunday, January 18, 2026, 2–4 pm
Carol DeForest will speak on the topic “Reinvention of the Artist: how to pivot from one aspect of your work to another.” The previously scheduled watercolor artist Cat Lencke was unable to make it.
Saj will be bringing more free art books, a gift from Cheryl Noland.

Sunday, October 19, 2025, 2–4 pm
Kate Roberts will speak. She is a sculptor primarily working with ephemeral materials. She received both her MFA and BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015 and 2010 respectively. She has completed residencies around the world including Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, and the Cite International des Arts in Paris. She has created large in situ ceramic installations in major exhibitions such as the Parcours Ceramique Carougeois Biennial in Carouge, Switzerland, the Korean International Ceramic Biennial in South Korea and most recently the Indian Ceramics Triennale in New Delhi, India. She currently resides in Memphis, Tennessee and is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Memphis.

Sunday, September 21, 2025, 2–4 pm
Casey Smith, a Memphis contemporary oil painter and musician, will speak. He specializes in bold, abstract oil paintings, album artwork, and commissioned pieces. He is also bass player in the band Ted Horrell and the Monday Night Card.

For more than two decades, he served as a visual arts educator to K–12 students in Germantown and Memphis, where he gained a reputation for his innovative lessons and ability to inspire confidence in young artists.

As co-founder of Casey’s Art Box, he combines his studio practice with teaching, offering classes in oil painting, palette knife technique, color theory, charcoal drawing, and mixed media. Casey also builds his own canvases and shares his process with students. Casey’s dual passions for making and teaching have positioned him as both a professional artist and a mentor, creating a vibrant hub where local artists, families, and collectors can learn, connect, and celebrate the creative process.

Sunday, April 27, 2025, 2–4
Memphis artist, curator, artspace owner and former arts administrator Mary Jo Karimnia will speak. Her art features rich, highly crafted surface patinas with glass beads, foil and velvety flocking on vintage and contemporary imagery, using these non-traditional art materials to produce an altered view.

She helped to found and is the former Director of the Crosstown Arts Residency Program. has gallery relationships with Sheet Cake in Memphis, TN, RO2 in Dallas, TX and PURO in La Paz, Bolivia. She has shown in the US and Bolivia and received grants, awards and residencies from ArtsMemphis, Urban Art Commission, and Mackinac Island Parks Commission.

Writing about her solo museum show Fold at Dixon Gallery and Garden in 2016 Fredric Koeppel said her work “... plays around the fringes of folklore and the transformation of the psyche through the magic of women’s work and the way it impinges on the ordinary.”  

Her website is maryjokarimnia.com.

Sunday, March 16, 2025, 2–4

Jorden Miernik Walker, photographer, graduate of the Memphis Academy of Art, and Outreach Programs Coordinator at the Dixon, will speak. 

Her photos, some enhanced with acrylic paint, feature chairs abandoned in various environments.

Her website is portraitofachair.com.

Sunday, February 16, 2025, 2–4 pm
Bradley Harris will speak on Artists’ Block defining it as a fear that affects all types of creative workers, and suggests proactive methods to overcome it rather than waiting for inspiration.

Sunday, January 19, 2025, 2–4 pm
Our speaker this month, Carl Moore, has exhibited widely in the Memphis area and around the country. He has received the Emmett O'Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration and the Tennessee Artist Fellowship award from the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts. His work explores everyday narratives through color and identity, by comparing ideologies about race and stereotypes to everyday perception of social and environmental culture. He uses media-based events as the primary theme of his work, by taking situations and reducing them down to their most basic conversation. He also uses color and content to redefine the social connection between people and their environment, by making color part of the compositional statement.

Sunday, October 20, 2024, 2–4 pm
Our speaker this month, Dimitri Stevens (BFA), Memphis College of Art), is a multimedia artist and educator from Oakland, TN. His formal abstract paintings and drawings deal with existential questions about matters coming into being on a physical, spiritual, and molecular level. His work has been shown at the James Lee House, Arrow Creative, The Dixon, and Nonesuch Gallery in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2014, Stevens received the River Arts Memphis Grant. His mural commissions are featured on walls around Memphis, and his work is held in numerous private collections.

Sunday, September 15, 2024, 2–4
Shannon Fagan will speak on the basics of generative AI systems, tools of use, and how artificial intelligence systems are affecting copyrights for visual art.  

Shannon grew up in Midtown Memphis’ Vollintine-Evergreen District, graduated from Central High School, earned a BFA in Photography at The University of Memphis, and completed a MBA at The University of Maryland.  His commercial photography career has focused upon lifestyle stock photography; licensing imagery for marketing and advertising use internationally.  He’s lived extensively in New York City, Beijing, Vancouver, Honolulu, and Memphis; and has a depth of experience in small business, photography production, copyright and unauthorized use, and financial & estate planning in the arts.

Sunday, April 21, 2024, 2–4
Memphis artist Gimpsie Ayers will talk about how creative practice is important to an artistic process, and how to foster and sustain those habits.

Sunday, March 17, 2024
Sculptor, Fletcher Golden, will talk about his work. Photo is of Fletcher at work in his studio on one of his horse sculptures.

Sunday, February 18, 2024
Artist Link member Jim Blythe is especially known for his macro-photographs, but he also does many other kinds of photos. He will speak about his work and demonstrate his process in creating the final photos.

Monday, February 17 2020
Well known Memphis painter, Matthew Hasty will talk to us about his experiences and development as an artist.

Hasty exhibits at the L Ross gallery. His bio there reads: “The work of Matthew Hasty seeks to peel away any feeling of pretense and insincerity to give the viewer respite from a cacophony of visual noise that floods the modern world. By portraying the inherent beauty of the local landscape of this region, the artist tries to create a reverence for the natural world and render a feeling of solace and order amidst the chaos of the everyday. The artist draws upon an inspiration from the landscape painters of the 19th century from the Hudson River School, such as George Inness, as well as numerous Russian landscape painters such as Arkhip Kuindji, Isaac Levitan and Ivan Aivazovsky.

“Matthew Hasty’s work may be found in collections all over the United States as well as France, Germany, Russia, South Korea, and Mexico.  One painting is off the coast of the Island of Grenada at the bottom of the sea.”

Monday, January 20, 2020
Artist Link member Angela Goza has exhibited around the world—in America, Venezuela, China, and Great Britain. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Memphis College of Art, and her career has included both commercial and fine art. She will talk to us about her experiences and development as an artist.