MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – Memphis and the Mid-South are full of talented people with a solid musical legacy. But this area is also full of incredible fine artists who make this city even more beautiful.

In this week’s 5 Star Story, in our continuing quest to highlight the things that make us proud, meet an artist who traveled thousands of miles to make Memphis her home and whose public art is already well known to many.

From the “I Love Memphis” mural in the Crosstown neighborhood to the glittering “Love Doves” in Overton Square, Kong Wee Pang is putting her mark on Memphis. Kong Wee, whose native language is Malay, says the glitter is a touch of New Orleans, where her husband is from originally.

“Sequin is perfect for the space to (make the whole environment more vibrant).”

The “Love Doves” mural was the first public art piece in Memphis that Kong Wee and her husband, artist Jay Crum, created under the pseudonym Taro Pop Studio.

“Because of that piece, we’ve been getting invited to so many different places to install some kind of same material art,” she said.

Those “different places” include installations in Denver, Auburn, Austin and Nashville.

Since moving to the Bluff City 23 years ago to attend the Memphis College of Art, the Malaysian transplant has transformed mundane city surfaces into things of beauty, like the glittery mural under the Interstate-40 overpass on Main Street.

“So hopefully, this mural that is gonna help connect these two bridges together, the South Main and North Main, and revitalize that North Main area‚” Kong Wee explained.

Just steps away from that mural inside the Renasant Convention Center is another Taro Pop masterpiece representing what Kong Wee called Memphis’ endless growth and music history.

“Then we still want to capture the music. […] So we’re using the Memphis Mississippi River bridge to form the reflection, to form the blue guitars,” she described.

Kong Wee also created the 2022 River Arts Fest poster and just this year, she was invited to showcase not only her talent, but also her country of origin for the 2023 Memphis in May poster.

She explained what that painting represents: “Malaysia is a rainforest, so every morning you wake up, you will see the rainforest, the water drop, drop on the ground. So that kind of reflects my past. So when you squint your eyes you start to see that the city of the twin towers, famous Malaysia from the west. So the east side is more like a rainforest, very natural, so the hummingbird is part of… the element. Our national flower is hibiscus.”

In addition to public art, Kong Wee is a fine artist whose work has been shown in galleries around the world. Her current medium of choice is watercolor, a sort of metaphor for life.

“And so the watercolor that I use and also is part of the, kinda like Chinese idiom (speaks Chinese) means that remember where is original, the water that you drink, where you come from. So, that watercolor is kind of like opening up the abstract-like thinking; sometimes you don’t know who you are but you’re thinking you know. Water is kind of the medium that you want to control, you always want to control, but (you can’t). So what is in between that control and not control?” she theorized.

“Sometimes, I don’t even know that one stroke will form something, but there might be too much water. That means I have too much thought behind the painting.”

Kong Wee is also a design artist for companies like Planned Parenthood, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and FedEx, to name just a few.

Sometimes she immerses the technology from that aspect of her work to create fine and public art. The Summer Arts Garden in front of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, on display until October, is a great example.

“I spent so many times in Overton Park so I wanted to do my best to create this art garden piece. So when I create this piece, I also inject some AR (Augmented Reality) you can scan so the creature comes out from the umbrella,” she explained.

But whether her art is digital, three-dimensional or on canvas, Kong Wee’s Memphis masterpieces inspire us all to open our hearts and imagination, like a painting she created that, on first look, appears to be a large flower.

“So for the piece, the bird is hidden, the hidden bird in the flower but you see the first thing is like, ‘Oh, there’s a flower.’ But, if you’re using your heart to see something, you will see even more the hidden message,” she said.

Kong Wee Pang makes us proud she’s made Memphis home.

To learn more about Kong Wee Pang’s art, click here.

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College of Lake County (CLC) is expanding its approach to the arts with its first artist-in-residence, Mundelein-native Cristina Chopalli. She is one of four artists showing works at “Home,” the upcoming fall art exhibition Aug. 25 to Sept. 21 in the Robert T. Wright Gallery of Art at the college’s Grayslake Campus.

Chopalli always knew she’d create art. After getting her master’s in fine arts degree in creative writing, her method was originally supposed to be through words. After graduating, she began writing a memoir and traumatic parts became difficult for her to write. So, she paused the project and turned to painting.

With no formal training, Chopalli soon entered her paintings for gallery exhibitions and made it her full-time career. Her paintings feature layers of brightly colored acrylic paints, overlapping together to form familiar shapes and figures with bold lines. She says she’s always surprised by what she finds in the paint.

“The sprawling canvas fills with colors, movement and joy,” Chopalli says about her latest painting. “After a couple of hours, the colors and shapes enter into a meditative flow and combinations blossom.”

Chopalli describes her work as intuitive. She starts by painting what she feels without overthinking it. Many of her works come to her during meditation or in a dream.

As an artist-in-residence, Chopalli set up her art studio at CLC’s Grayslake Campus. She has a number of works in the exhibition, but the one she’s creating during her residency at CLC is wider than she is tall, bursting with colors and organic shapes. Along with the opportunity to showcase her work, Chopalli has enjoyed her time at CLC because she has the chance to speak to interested students about her work and their career goals.

“I enjoy exchanging thoughts on all types of art with college students and faculty who stop by while I work,” Chopalli said. “I’m hopeful to have a good variety of my work together because it really has a collective narrative. When people see my work, for me, what’s important is that they find whatever it is that they’re looking for. There is not just one message or right or wrong.”

The opening reception is Friday, Aug. 25 from 5:30-7 p.m. Artists Taehoon Kim, Michael Litewski and Ilse Miller will also share their personal visions of home.

“The “Home’ exhibition offers a diverse group of artists with unique takes on the metaphorical idea of home,” said Art Gallery Curator Ann Rintz. “It features non-objective, abstract and realistic art by four artists of various backgrounds and at different stages of their creative careers. I find that diversity creates a more dynamic exhibition.”

Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

About College of Lake County

College of Lake County is a comprehensive community college committed to equitable high-quality education, cultural enrichment and partnerships to advance the diverse communities it serves in northeastern Illinois. Offered at three campuses in Grayslake, Vernon Hills and Waukegan or online, college classes are affordable and accessible to help each student achieve academic, career and personal goals. More than 70,000 students graduated with degrees and certificates since the college opened in 1969. College of Lake County is the only higher-education institution ranked among the top 15 best places to work in Illinois by Forbes in 2019 and is a national leader in many areas, including campus internationalization, sustainability and conservation.

Museums and art organizations around the globe are putting their best foot forward this fall with fresh takes on outdated histories and new, thrilling discoveries. Outside the well-trodden hubs of Los Angeles and New York, the coming season boasts a vibrant celebration of women artists, from historically misunderstood figures to contemporary creators. The work of Native and Indigenous artists is also the subject of growing, overdue attention. And of course, it wouldn’t be a fall art season without a few boldface names getting deliciously ambitious retrospectives. Here, CULTURED selects 12 shows worth the trip this autumn. 

“Choreographies of the Impossible” 
The 35th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo
September 6-December 10, 2023 

The four-person curatorial team behind the 35th Bienal de São Paulo—Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, and Manuel Borja-Villel—has compiled an ambitious show based around the theme of resilience. It includes the work of 120 artists, from rising talents like Igshaan Adams, Dayanita Singh, and Luana Vitra to historical figures such as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Wifredo Lam. The city will also host an action-packed slate of museum and gallery exhibitions. Don’t miss “Indigenous Histories” (October 20, 2023-February 25, 2024) at Museu de Arte de São Paolo Assis Chateaubriand, an ambitious presentation of Indigenous cultural production from around the world.

“Mickalene Thomas/Portrait of an Unlikely Space”
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
September 8, 2023–January 7, 2024

In something of a departure from her vibrantly decorated paintings and photographs, Mickalene Thomas has created an installation that imagines living-room-like interior spaces during the pre-Emancipation era. Inspired by a miniature painting of a formerly enslaved woman, Rose Prentice, who lived from 1771 to 1852, the artist places engravings and daguerreotypes of Black women, men, and children in dialogue with her own work and the work of her contemporaries.

“The World’s Quietest Concert Hall” by Annika Kahrs
Schering Stiftung, Berlin
September 13-November 27, 2023

What do gravitational waves sound like? German artist Annika Kahrs makes art out of that question. Her intriguing piece, Gravity’s Tune, is inspired by the sound created when two black holes orbit and collide. The culmination of over three years of work at the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), this new sound and video performance (coinciding with Berlin Art Week) is based on a 2015 scientific breakthrough, when experts converted cosmic waves into acoustic signals for the first time.

“Niko Pirosmani” 
Fondation Beyeler, Basel
September 17, 2023-January 28, 2024

Though this exhibition started its tour at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art earlier this year, the survey of the Georgian modernist, 1862-1918, hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. The show represents a rare opportunity to see a large body of work by an artist who enjoys cult status in his home country. Pirosmani is a self-taught enigma who spent his life doing odd jobs, from working as a railroad conductor to a dairy farmer, and rose to prominence posthumously. Discover some 50 paintings in what is described as the largest exhibition of the artist’s work to date.

“The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans” 
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
September 22, 2023–January 15, 2024

While art lovers swooned over the first retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, at the Whitney Museum in New York earlier this year, the octogenarian artist was busy curating an unprecedented show of her peers. “The Land Carries Our Ancestors” features some 50 living Native American artists working in the U.S. Quick-to-See Smith has supported the visibility of Native artists for decades, despite a pitiful lack of attention from the established art world. Now, she shares the spotlight with figures including Marie Watt, Gerald Clarke Jr., and Cara Romero. 

“Marina Abramović”
The Royal Academy of Arts, London
September 23, 2023–January 1, 2024

The twice-postponed retrospective of Serbian artist Marina Abramović is one of the season’s most talked-about art events—and rightly so. The performative and participatory nature of the exhibition resulted in multiple pandemic delays, while also stoking anticipation for the artist’s live performances. Expect to see restagings of pioneering works like The Artist is Present and The House with the Ocean View. “No two visits will be the same,” promise the organizers.

“Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800” 
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
October 1, 2023-January 7, 2024

Women artists have always been integral to Europe’s artistic and cultural production. They just haven’t gotten appropriate credit for it. While the Baltimore show’s organizers acknowledge they are joining a wave of new scholarship on women in art history, they claim that other “investigations remain largely focused on an elite group.” This show, co-organized with the Art Gallery of Ontario, is distinguished by its wider aperture, embracing artistic, cultural, and entrepreneurial innovations by both acclaimed and lesser-known women through 175 objects. Works range from portraiture, sculpture, tapestries, drawings, metalwork, and more.

“African Modernism in America, 1947-67” 
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
October 7, 2023–January 7, 2024

This traveling exhibition revisits important ‘60s presentations of modern African art in America to consider how the fruitful dialogue shaped art history. Curators are zeroing in on the transcontinental exchanges between African artists and American patrons, artists, and cultural organizations amid the context of the Civil Rights movement, decolonization, and the Cold War. The show, co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and Fisk University Galleries, includes work by 50 artists from Papa Ibra Tall to Suzanna Ogunjami. 

“Marisol: A Retrospective” 
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
October 7, 2023–January 21, 2024 

This retrospective, organized with the Toledo Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art, digs into an artist described by the curators as “the most intriguing and least understood artist associated with Pop art.” The show surveys the 60-year career of the Venezuelan-American Marisol, 1930-2016, who became famous in the 1960s for her striking assemblage sculptures influenced by Pop and Pre-Columbian art. The exhibition also revisits her post-1970s work, when the artist fell out of the limelight.

“Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit”
Bourse de Commerce, Paris
October 13, 2023-February 2024

The Tate Modern-organized retrospective, which begins its international run amidst Paris’s fall art fairs, has our attention. The in-depth show will include a sure-to-be-memorable presentation of the artist’s “Kandors”—sci-fi fantasy cities under bell jars—in the Bourse’s spectacular rotunda, as well as Kelley’s final work, Day is Done, 2005. Plus, visitors will get a better understanding of Kelley’s highly influential but lesser-shown drawings, photographs, and writings.

“Mark Rothko” 
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
October 18, 2023-April 2, 2024

The Fondation Louis Vuitton knows how to do a blockbuster exhibition—and Mark Rothko’s first retrospective in France promises to be no exception. Mounted in time for the opening of the Paris+ by Art Basel fair, the show gathers some 115 works from major institutions, encompassing the artist’s early figurative paintings as well as his iconic and influential abstractions. The exhibition will also include the first “Rothko Room,” from the Phillips Collection, completed in close collaboration with the artist in 1960. 

“Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris” 
The Barnes, Philadelphia
October 22, 2023–January 21, 2024

If you haven’t seen the arresting work of French artist Marie Laurencin, 1883-1956, in person, this fall offers a ripe opportunity. Although historically best known as the lover of Apollinaire and a secondary member of the Cubist movement, Laurencin developed a distinct artistic style and became part of interwar Paris’s vibrant lesbian literary and artistic network. For her first solo American museum exhibition in 30 years, the Barnes will bring together more than 50 paintings that offer discreet evocations of queer affection and a uniquely “sapphic modernity.”