Project Overview

A Whitehaven Story | Whitehaven Library

For this project, artist Lester Merriweather developed a permanent alternative to his usual medium of tape applied directly to the wall and created metal relief sculptures for the interior of the Whitehaven Library. His subject matter is Whitehaven itself: its people and places. He collected photographs from Whitehaven residents and combined images in drawings that were blown up and cut out of ¼” stainless steel, which was then painted black.

About the Artist

Lester Merriweather

Lester Julian Merriweather is a Memphis, TN based visual artist. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He holds an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BA from Jackson State University.

Merriweather has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. at various venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC, TOPS Gallery, Powerhouse Memphis, Diverseworks in Houston, and the Atlanta Contemporary. He has also exhibited abroad at the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland.

He recently served as the Curatorial Director of the Martha & Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis and on the Board of Directors for Number, Inc. independent journal. He also served as a founding member of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council and the artsAccelerator Grant Panel.

He currently serves on the Collaboratory Memphis project and on the Advisory Panel for the CLTV.