Alex Leme, regular readers of the Oxford American and this blog may recall, was named by OA as a “new superstar of Southern art” in its February issue. Now you can see Leme’s work in person at the Butler Center Galleries’ Atrium Gallery, in the Arkansas Studies Institute.
“Small Town: Portraits of a Disappearing America” features photographs Leme made in Cotton Plant to record the vanishing farm community in Monroe County. There, amid the crumbling buildings and empty storefronts, Leme said he found that, “The sense of purpose that once accompanied steady, meaningful work has long since vanished.”
Leme, of Little Rock, was born in Brazil and is both photographer and a student of art history. He’s exhibited his work internationally, and in 2010 he won an En Foco New Works Fellowship for his work capturing dying small towns in the U.S. He is also the art editor of UALR’s “Equinox Literary and Art Journal.”
The show will run through Aug. 25.