- U of M Momentum page for all projects: https://momentum.memphis.edu/
- Momentum page for Tiger Vets: https://momentum.memphis.edu/project/2967
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgykorMK_cY
“Yesterday I shared a picture of myself on Facebook from 2010 when I was deployed to Iraq --- I served 7 years in the Army as an artilleryman --- and one of my classmates commented, ‘I was still in middle school then!’ Most of the 600-plus veterans attending the University of Memphis are older than the typical student, and I’m one of those. We’re trying to balance a lot of adult responsibilities and are just at a different place in our lives than, say, most 18-year-olds. I’ll be graduating in May with degrees in History and Political Science, with plans to go to law school, but meanwhile one of the ways I’m trying to help fellow student veterans is by raising funds for a library of textbooks to check out and use free of charge. Not every GI receives a stipend for books, so this can make a big difference for some of the men and women who have served this country. We started the project back in August and as soon as it ends on December 1, we’re going to look around to see where we can get the most bang for our buck. It’s important to me to be involved in something that has a direct impact on helping veterans. I try to live by the adage: ‘Leave it better than you found it.’” Joey Scott, President of the University of Memphis Student Veterans Association
“I’m always listening to the news to see what’s going on; that’s where a lot of my work originates: with social issues. Many things happen in our world, and some end tragically, but we don’t have to focus on despair. We can have hope that peace will come. That’s the concept behind ‘Peace Descending’, the painting I have in this show. It depicts a dove bringing an olive leaf to an outstretched hand. I’m not saying that every day is going to be sugar and sunshine, but I believe every situation is solvable. I’m a realist, but I’m also a very hopeful person.” A few works from the Carl E. Moore website: Carl E. Moore, Artist & Designer
"I eat and sleep, and that’s why I’m so tall. I’m in Kindergarten. First, I was 1, then I was 2, then 3, then 4, and now I’m 5. I’m gonna be 6 and 7 and 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21. Then I’m gonna turn old. When I grow up, I want to be a police flyer. That’s a policeman with a car that flies around in the sky. My sister's name is Lylah. She’s light brown and I’m medium brown. I knew she was gonna be a girl. She crawls around and laughs at me, and I play with her. She’s one year old and she can stand up by herself. I’m gonna teach her how to walk."
"I've survived a lot of things in my life. Some days you wake up and things are good, some days not so good. But you just deal with what is. You can't let your situation control you; your circumstances shouldn't dictate who you are. You're in control of your response to the world."
“I was still nursing my daughter when I found a lump in my armpit and the doctor decided to do a biopsy. I’ll never forget the phone call telling me I had cancer. You just don’t expect it to happen to you. Surgery, chemo, and radiation followed, and of course my hair began falling out in clumps. When the time came to shave my head, our whole family did it together. Once I was bald, I decided to get a henna artist to create a design on my head: a cross with flowers. It looked great. Then, instead of remarks like, ‘Oh, you poor girl!’, people came up to say, ‘Oh wow! That is so cool!’ It was a way to add beauty to the craziness. I'm a 5 year survivor now!” Henna designs & photos (below) courtesy of Beth Kitchen of New World Henna ---
“I played recently in Greenville, South Carolina, for the second time this year. After the most recent show, a guy came up to me and said, ‘Hey Chris, do you remember me? I’m Chip. I was here with my wife the first time you came through and we really loved the set, so I came back out tonight.’ I said, Great! Thanks for being here!’ Then I looked around and asked, ‘So where’s your wife?’ He said, ‘Funny you should mention that. We broke up. I came out tonight to hear you play, and the silver lining ---if there is one--- is that she actually came out too, independent of me. We both risked seeing each other for the first time since the divorce, just to hear you play.’ That was the weirdest compliment I got on tour. I guess if anybody needs a soundtrack to sitting next to their ex in a weird silence, I'm your man.” Chris Milam
“I had always painted, from the time I was six years old, but when I told my family that I wanted to be a professional artist, my father said, ‘No, no, no. You’ll be living off of us the rest of your life. You’ll never be able to support yourself.’ So that was out. For fifteen years I worked as a private investigator and made a good living, but then one day a horrible hurricane, Hurricane Chantal, went through Houston. I woke up in a hotel room and thought, ‘Where am I and what am I doing here?’ In that moment I decided, ‘Okay, I’m going to jump in with both feet. I’m just going to do something at 40 years of age. Fail if I will or must.’ I knew I could always go back to what I had done, but I never did. Since 1992 I’ve worked with the design community to get art into people’s homes. I want my paintings to live with people; I don’t really want to have them on a sterile wall in a gallery and hope for the best. Designers who are decorating a space take my work to their clients, and then purchases are made. I do commissions all the time and ship to all parts of the country. “Even though my father hadn't encouraged me to go into art, he ended up being very proud of me. Right before he died I delivered a painting to someone near Chattanooga, then drove straight to his house in Knoxville for a visit. He asked if I had sold the painting. I told him I had, and he asked, ‘How much was it?’ I took the check out and put it in his hand. It was $6000. His eyes told me everything I needed to know. Then he said, ‘Well, I guess I was wrong.’ I’ve never had a regret about my decision to pursue art. If you love something, go ahead and do it. If you don’t, you’ll miss your window of opportunity.” From the website An Apartment in Paris: Patti Smith can be contacted through DCI Galleries, 776 East Brookhaven Circle.
See her work here: http://anapartmentinparis.net/artists/patti-smith/ Commercial Appeal article: Works by Patti Smith on display at Trezevant (10/24/2012) “The doctors didn’t think I could get pregnant at all because I had gone through several rounds of fertility treatments with no success, but when I was 33 years old, I became pregnant with triplets. I was scared at first because I was having multiples, but then I truly embraced it. Taylor, Jordan, and Kirsten were born 10 weeks ahead of schedule and spent their first 5 weeks in the NICU. Then, when they were released---well, nothing could have prepared me for bringing home three babies. I didn’t get more than three hours of sleep a night for the first year. Fortunately, I was younger then, so I could handle it --- I’m sure I couldn’t do that now!
“I felt both blessed and overwhelmed to be the mother of triplets. I stayed home with the babies, extended family pitched in, and my husband worked two jobs to provide for us. I knew from the beginning that Kirsten had some issues, but when she was diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy at 5 months of age, the pain in my heart was almost unbearable. There was guilt too, wondering whether I should have had the fertility treatments and whether her problems were my fault. “The triplets are 19 years old now. There have been many hardships along the way---surgeries, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and more---but I’m thankful for my wonderful children. Every night as I lay my head on the pillow, I ask God for strength and thank him for every blessing. I’m especially thankful for Kirsten’s great attitude and her amazing compassion for other people.” “I was born with this disability [spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy], but I try to live my life to the fullest every day, the best way that I can. One of the struggles I deal with is friendship. Sometimes it’s hard to relate to peers who don’t live the way I do. A lot of them already have boyfriends, and they can go out and do things that I can’t. I’ve never had a boyfriend, and it can be hard to have friends too. I had a couple of good friends in high school, but one of them is in college now and busy with her own life, so we don’t talk much anymore. I spend most of my time with my mom and brothers---we’re very close--- but I also spend a lot of time alone with my music and writing. I’ve learned how to look within myself for my own happiness rather than rely on other people to provide it for me. I’ve noticed that with a lot of people my age, if their boyfriend or another friend upsets them, they think their lives are just ruined; they can’t go on. But it’s not like that for me. I don’t like drama. That’s not the way I live. I just do my own thing, which may not be what other people do, but it’s what I do and it makes me happy. I mentioned writing, which I’ve done since first grade. That’s something I can put my entire self into. It allows me to create a world where I don’t have to think about anything else. It’s helped me process a lot of what I’ve gone through recently too. If I’m feeling a certain way, I’ll do personal writing (using my phone and iPad), but I also enjoy writing fanfiction. And I like reading biographies and researching politics and historical characters.
“I graduated from high school in May and would like to study journalism in college, but I kind of got derailed. In April, I was accepted at ________, but they won’t allow me to have an assistant in the classroom. I had one for the entire 12 years I was in elementary and high school, but [the University] discouraged me from even having someone there to help me get around campus. They said they would assign note-takers in each class, but I need help getting all my things out every time. It would be tough having to ask classmates to do that for me every day, so I figure maybe attending college isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. The reasoning, I guess, is that they want students to be more independent in college, and they feel that having an assistant hinders that. It’s complicated. So anyway, I’ve decided to take online classes instead. I think I can do well with those.” “I’m new to Memphis and new to Tennessee. As an independent artist, I basically do everything by myself, so I did my own booking for the month-long tour I just finished in October. I scheduled the last show of the tour in Tennessee, but I kinda didn’t do the math. I just thought, ‘Well, I live in Tennessee, so that’s cool. It’ll be a quick trip home after I’m done.’ But it turned out that Johnson City is on the opposite end of the state. It was a learning experience. I found out the hard way that just because you have two gigs in Tennessee doesn’t mean they’re going to be close to each other. In New Jersey, where I’m from, everything is close together. And all the states are pretty close to each other too. Not the case in Tennessee. Yeah.” Stephen Chopek
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