Details from the studio of Carroll Cloar, Part of the exhibition at AMUM 

In His Studio: Carroll Cloar June 8 – September 7, 2013 

I am half writer and half painter. If an artist is honest, he cannot really paint anything he does not feel deeply. "The Garden of Love," Carroll Cloar, unpublished manuscript

After traveling the world seeking inspiration, Carroll Cloar came to realize that he wanted to return and draw inspiration from the place he loved—the South. It was home.

The exhibition "In His Studio: Carroll Cloar" at Art Museum University of Memphis (AMUM) is from June 8 through September 7. AMUM will feature some of the artist's earliest work, his reconstructed studio, and materials from the University of Memphis Libraries Special Collections providing a glimpse into Cloar's working methods through his writings, photographs, drawings and sketches.

While a student at the Art Students League in New York, Cloar sent home for photographs of various relatives and began a series of lithographs based on the land and people of East Arkansas. These lithographs earned Cloar his earliest recognition as an artist—the Art Students League awarded him a McDowell Traveling Fellowship in 1940, and one lithograph was exhibited at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.

"In His Studio: Carroll Cloar" will feature these early lithographs from 1930 to 1947 along with family photographs and stories in the artist's own words pulled from the Carroll and Pat Cloar Collection.

When Cloar returned to the South in 1953 and 1955, he was again drawn to his childhood memories and the landscape around Earle, Arkansas, but changed from somber lithographs to paintings in casein tempera with a more colorful palette. By 1956 his first one-man show opened in New York to critical acclaim.

Within 3 years he purchased an old frame house on South Greer in Memphis. Cloar redesigned the façade and interior, turning the front part of the house into his studio—the studio that will be reconstructed in AMUM for the exhibition "In His Studio: Carroll Cloar." He kept his studio utilitarian except for covering the walls with newspapers, a bullfight poster from his travels in Spain and his Army Air Corps jacket. He lived and worked in this house until his death.

To celebrate the artist Carroll Cloar, who was born one hundred years ago in 1913, several institutions are organizing exhibitions of his work including:

• "Early and Rare: Selections from the Carroll and Pat Cloar Collection" at Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries June 6 – September 15, 2013.

• "The Crossroads of Memory: Carroll Cloar and the American South" at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, June 8 through September 15, 2013

• "Carroll Cloar: Southern Raconteur" at David Lusk Gallery (paintings, drawings, lithographs) 7 June – 27 July, 2013

• "Crossing Place, The Carroll Cloar Drawing Collection" at Christian Brothers University, Sam and Beverly Ross Gallery, May 31 – July 26, 2013

• "Carroll Cloar Native Son" at Mid-South Community College June 14 – July 19, 2013

Transportation of Carroll Cloar's actual Studio to AMUM HERE
	Edwin G. Frank, Preservation and Special Collections Librarian