I ll grant you this: In the last 10 years or so Mark Nowell, metalworker
extraordinaire, has been about as aboveground as an underground artist can be.
He s designed office furniture for businesses and taken on a number of
commissions for private collectors. Still, the champion of the Art Farm and
the driving force behind Bluff, Memphis irreverent arts quarterly, is an
artist first and reluctant businessman second. He s managed to tread the fine
line between selling out and buying in with edgy aplomb. His large sculpture
The Open Container, which stands in front of the Towery Building on Union,
however, has drawn the ire of someone who obviously thinks Nowell s filthy
capitalist artwork is something less than a masterpiece. The words Fuck
Corpret [sic] Art were recently spray-painted on the piece. In the words of
Marcel Duchamp, Now it is finished.
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