Tift Merritt and Thomas Sayre: Four Walls, Four Songs
September 12 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
CAM Members: $75
Not-Yet Members: $100
Four Walls, Four Songs is a sound response to Thomas Sayre’s visual work, a reflective hymn exploring the burned, brushed, rusted and razed layers of Sayre’s Four Walls. Merritt draws directly from the artists’ friendship and their conversations to make a plainspoken sound exploration with the materials, the visuals, the spaces between and the questions they pose.
Tift Merritt is a Grammy-nominated musician who wanted to be a writer until her father taught her guitar chords and Percy Sledge songs. She has toured around the world with her sonic short stories and garnered a reputation for making her own way and setting an interesting artistic table. The New Yorker calls her “the bearer of a proud tradition of distaff country soul that reaches back to artists like Dusty Springfield and Bobbie Gentry.” Don Henley, with help from Mick Jagger, kicks off Cass County with a cover of her song Bramble Rose. Taking time off the road to raise her daughter, Merritt began work on larger, site specific projects by way of collecting found objects in the abandoned asylum in her hometown as forgotten, essential language. Merritt has also collected artist interviews researching creative process and integrity on The Spark for Carolina Performing Arts and Marfa, Texas Public Radio. She is a Practitioner-In-Residence in collaboration with the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University and lives in North Carolina with her daughter Jean.
Thomas Sayre is an American sculptor and painter. He designs and builds public art projects and private commissions all over the world. His current work includes large paintings made with tar, smoke, gunshots, welding material, earth, and fire. Sayre is a founding principal of the multi-disciplinary design firm Clearscapes, alongside architect Steve Schuster. The team designs numerous civic, educational, and museum buildings.
Thomas sculpts, paints, and produces commissioned work. His art is housed in collections across the globe from Thailand to Tennessee. He has exhibited his work in a number of private galleries and public museums, including Cheryl Hazan Gallery in Manhattan and the Contemporary Art Museum and the North Carolina Museum of Art, both in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1995, Sayre received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from North Carolina State University.