The 8th annual one Night Stand will be hosted Saturday.
Photo by Courtesy Erin Abbott
This Saturday, Amelia Presents and the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council will sponsor the eighth annual One Night Stand Art Show at the Ole Miss Motel.
The One Night Stand selects 10 artists to show their work at Oxford’s iconic motel. Each artist will have their own room and will get to be their own curator for their motel room gallery. This year the artists include: Evan Baroffe, Adrienne Brown, Dorothy Collier, Kate Freeman, Megan Hurdle, Lo-Fi, Hilary Maslon, Kate Roebuck, Laura Roebuck and Lamar Sorrento.
“I have had artists come from Los Angeles and Brooklyn before, but this year they are all from the South,” said Erin Austen Abbott, owner of Amelia Presents.
Erin Austen Abbott started the art show eight years ago while she was living in Los Angeles. She started the show in order to give her friends who were artists a place to easily show their work. After a successful show at the Beverly Hills Motel, she then moved back home to Mississippi and began working with The Ole Miss Motel.
“Erin has done an amazing job with this show,” said Kate Roebuck. “She attracts people who are doing really great things and provides artists at all levels a place to show their work. Whether this is their first show or they have been in many galleries before, they have a great opportunity to get their work out there.”
Until this year, Abbott accepted only submissions from artists to participate in the show. However, Abbott chose to send individual invitations to artists this year.
“It did not really have the curated flowing feeling that I envisioned for the show,” Abbott said. “So, I decided to make it invitation only. Artists are welcome to show me their work to be considered, but I narrow it down on my own to 10 people.”
The style of show is different from that of most gallery showings. The artists get to choose what they want to use in their motel room gallery and what their main theme, if there is one, will be.
“The main difference in the One Night Stand and other shows is the spontaneity,” Roebuck said. “With other shows there is so much time to calculate what you will have and how it will look. But, with this show, it is like renegade rock ‘n’ roll style. You come in with a loud bang and hopefully you go out with one.”
Junior art major Victoria Barrera believes the show makes for a compelling experience.
“I went to the show last fall, and it was so much fun seeing how each artist transformed their room into basically their own gallery,” Barrera said. “It was neat seeing all these different artists with different concepts come together in this one show and make it one of my favorite things to go to.”
With each artist’s room, Abbott tries to create a flowing feeling causing the viewer to keep moving to each space to see what else unfolds.
This year the show features mostly paintings. From surrealism to folk art, each artist will have the chance to show and sell his or her work to the Oxford community.
The art show has attracted attention from artists around the country.
“When you have something really cool, people will find it,” said Wayne Andrews, director of the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council. “And Erin has that.”
One artist whose attention the show grabbed is Lamar Sorrento. Sorrento is world-renowned for his folk art, and the One Night Stand is the only show he does all year. He has been in the show for a few years and is now considered almost a staple.
“He is as eclectic as the show itself,” Abbott said.
While showing their art, the artists also have a chance to sell it. The art generally goes pretty quickly for most artists. Some artists sell more than others, but in the eight years of the art show Abbott has never had an artist not sell anything.
“I think that if an artist provides a lot of their lower price-point work, it sells really well,” Roebuck said.
Abbott hopes to expand to host a second annual show in cities such as Nashville, Portland or Brooklyn, N.Y., in the next five years.
