Staff
UrbanArt
Staff
John Weeden, Executive Director
jweeden@urbanartcommission.org
John Weeden received his BA in Art History from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997. He completed an MA in Contemporary Art at the Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, after which he finished another MA degree with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York state. He has worked in London, Paris, New York, Scotland and Memphis in the field of contemporary visual art, including Delta Axis and the Memphis Brooks Museum. He has also organized numerous freelance exhibitions locally and internationally. Among the museum catalogues to which he has contributed writing or production assistance are 'Les annees pop,' Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001, and 'Highlights of the Brooks Museum,' Memphis, 2004. In 2004 he founded Lantana Projects, an international artists’ residency program in Memphis, TN. Most recently, Weeden worked towards the cultivation of future leaders in the arts as Assistant Director of the Rhodes College Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts (CODA). As Executive Director of the UrbanArt Commission, Weeden currently works to further the organization's mission to create a dynamic, vibrant and nuturing community through art and design.
Elizabeth Alley, Director of Public Art
Elizabeth Alley, Director of Public Art, has been with the commission since 1998 and is currently overseeing public art projects for MATA and the City of Memphis, working with the Public Art Oversight Committee on the City of Memphis Public Art Plan, overseeing artwork conservation and maintenance, and developing a plan for project evaluations. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Memphis in 1998, where she graduated with honors. While at U of M, Elizabeth interned with the Ledbetter Lusk Gallery and the Memphis Arts Council. Elizabeth is also an artist who shows her own artwork regularly and in 2007 she was commissioned to create the Fine Art Poster honoring Spain for the annual Memphis in May Festival.
Laura Caroline Johnson, Project Coordinator
lcjohnson@urbanartcommission.org
Laura Caroline Johnson, Project Coordinator, began with the commission in August of 2007. Her first project is the Fletcher Creek Park Project, part of the City of Memphis' Percent-for-Art Program. Laura Caroline received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History with a minor in French from Rhodes College in 2006. She was a selected speaker at the Rhodes Women's Studies Symposium, in 2006, for her thesis work on the French Feminist Movement and its relation to the work of French Impressionist painters of the period. Before returning to Memphis in 2007 to begin work for the commission, she spent a year interning in Washington, D.C. with the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Curatorial and Registrar's Offices.
Catherine Blackwell Pena, Administrative Assistant
cblackwellpena@urbanartcommission.org
Catherine Blackwell Pena received her BFA at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2004 and an MFA at Memphis College of Art in 2008. After leaving MU, Pena has actively sought to raise environmental awareness in her artwork. In order to better understand how humans interact in and with the natural world requires her to step out of the studio and into the world. With a desire to connect with a large variety of people, Pena employees a variety of art forms ranging from performance art, installation art, sculpture, video, photography, and public art to reveal alternative vantage points to her viewer. Pena actively shows her work nationally and recently participated in the Urban Art Commission’s 10th anniversary show with a project titled Duv-tal which incorporated the design and installation of bus stop seating.