Welcome to “Featured Creatures“, Boils and Ghouls- I’m your horror host for the night, Scary Rob Boss..!
Well, I’m finally hung- uh, I mean to I say that my art show finally is at Playhouse on the Square!
I stopped by Overton Square last Thursday afternoon to hang the show upstairs in Playhouse’s 2nd Floor West Gallery that faces Cooper and Circuit Playhouse across the street.
It took me a couple trips to load in. Thankfully there is a ramp and an elevator and I had my con wagon in the car.
We’ve had a previous Mid-South Cartoonists Association group show in that gallery last year, and That Katie Jones had her fun and colorful “Welcome To The McPromised-Land” fast food/religion mash-up art show in the same space last month.
I got started with the largest wall of the space. This is where I was going to hang my larger canvas “scare-brush monsterpieces“. I unwrapped the paintings and spaced them out on the floor along the wall. I was really afraid I wouldn’t have enough finished pieces for this wall and was kinda stressing about it pretty hard since the last piece I was working on I was having problems with my airbrush and decided to just finish it up for this year’s Monster Market this October.
Thankfully the other hallway isn’t that long, doesn’t have a lot of spotlights for art, and I’d done several smaller acrylic marker paintings and signs. I used a few of each of those wood panels at each end and added a few promo and info signs in some of the open spaces and that did the trick.
I’d forgotten just how stressful putting together a solo show can be, especially one in a space this large. I honestly have experienced anxiety about the whole event and am super relieved that it’s all up now.
Only after everything in both hallways were up did I breathe a sigh of relief and started to enjoy being in the space. It really didn’t take me as long as I had thought thanks to their hanging system which made it easy to put items up and move around as needed.
The following night we had my opening reception for the art show from 5:30-7:30pm. Nicki helped me get my refreshments set up and put price tags on the wall next to each art piece. I was running a bit behind getting the price tags set up and printed (had stayed up the night before working on them and my latest “Drawing Funny” podcast), but they all were finally done. Nicki helped me add QR codes to the info cards for each piece that lead to my Square store, so hopefully that will help with sales.
I was happy to see forks from the MSCA and Beale Street Monster Club attend. As much as I’ve been pimping the opening for the show (and a few others sharing the info on social media and their email newsletters), I’ll admit that I was disappointed with the attendance- especially since the artist downstairs and I had coordinated having our receptions on the same night to try and help boost attendance. I did have a few folks that had come to artist Angi Cooper’s show downstairs- including her and her parents, but overall I probably had maybe a dozen folks there and that may be including me and Nicki.
Michael Cox, co-founder of the Beale Street Monster Club was the first to arrive and I really enjoyed talking about monster movies and horror hosts. He and his Monster Club partner Tony Kail have a lot of things planed for the group and it’s home base at A. Schwab’s on Beale, which features a Hoodoo/Voodoo museum upstairs.
Katie Jones showed up to the event with a present for me- a mini Creature From The Black Lagoon figure. He’s so tiny he fit in my pocket.
I had given her some McDonald’s Happy Meal toys to put to good use in her recent art show, and this little gill-guy is a great addition to my Gillman collection.
I’ve got a few older items hanging around in this show that I’ve had in previous group shows around town, but I also have several new pieces features at Playhouse this time.
I created several new airbrushed monster portraits and some new wood panel paintings and signs done in acrylic markers. You can see how I did them in some of my previous art blog posts here on my site.
I’ve really had a lot of fun doing these smaller monsterpieces and plan on doing more for the annual Monster Market and Memphis Monster Con. The panels are not only a blast to paint, they don’t take up a lot of space to store back home!
There are currently several art shows around the Playhouse space, including another horror themed one just around the corner from mine in the other hallway upstairs.
Plus a few downstairs, including one by artist Angi Cooper, who was having her opening reception the same day and time as mine.
I talked to her and her dad while they were hanging her HUGE show downstairs, and they came up to chat with me at mine. Her dad is a monster fan, too.
Our art shows will be up during the run of Playhouse’s production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street“, June 12 – July 12, 2026. I got to see them work on the sets and heard them rehearsing while I was hanging my show on Thursday and during the art reception on Friday.
Playhouse on the Square is located at 66 South Cooper Street (at Union) in Memphis, TN. My art show runs from June 6-August 2, 2026 upstairs in 2nd Floor West gallery.
My Bride and I hope you get the chance to check it all out!
Lin