The Summer Art Garden: A Flash of Sun

Memphis-based artist and designer Khara Woods presents A Flash of Sun, an installation of sun-drenched shades, dazzling patterns, and geometric sculptures. Woods incorporates her signature tile-like shapes and hypnotic motifs, reminiscent of houndstooth and other textile patterns, with swirling rays. Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, Summer in the South (1903), with its vivid, lyrical descriptions – “Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill / The sky smiles down...”– the installation captures summer’s vibrancy and joy.

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Two modular wooden sculptures crowned with translucent cast acrylic honor Wheeler Williams’s Spring and Summer (1961), which once stood on the plaza’s pedestals. As the sun moves, light filters through the acrylic, casting colors across the museum’s facade. Woods’s interest in poetry and the sound of jazz, which is often played in her studio, instills the designs with a spirited rhythm. This Summer Art Garden warmly invites visitors to relax and soak in the sun.

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All exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art are underwritten by the MBMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Kay Clark, the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust, and Maggie and Milton Lovell, with generous annual funding from Anonymous, Gloria and Kenneth Boyland, Holly and Paul T. Combs, Deborah and Bob Craddock, Eleanor and William Halliday, Debi and Galen Havner, Sally Hergenrader, Jay and Kristen Keegan, the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust, Carl and Valerie Person, and Bill Townsend.

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