Q&A: How to Edit the Arts Beat with Elle Perry

Elle Perry, writer and Arts & Culture Editor for The Daily Memphian

Elle Perry, writer and Arts & Culture Editor for The Daily Memphian, like really creative. Read the Q&A from our interview available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

ZACK: So I am joined by Elle Perry. Elle is the Arts and Culture Editor for Daily Memphian. You've been there for about almost seven years now.

ELLE: Yes.

ZACK: When I think about arts reporting in Memphis, I think of you immediately. I read your visual arts exhibition previews, and it really keeps me in the know. I was kind of craving a place to find that in Memphis and in an easy, accessible way. So I had to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

ELLE: Thank you. And thank you for reading.

ZACK: So as an arts and culture editor, what drew you to wanting to cover the arts?

ELLE: I think I've always been interested in arts. I'm pretty much a generalist. So visual art, music, film, literature, theater, dance. I feel like I have a broad base of knowledge. So I like to kind of really go into rabbit holes and just dive in when I talk to folks. I can kind of pinpoint two things that are pivotal as far as me and art.

And one was in third grade. I had a speech therapy teacher, and she lived in Germantown, and the area where I grew up was probably the opposite of that.

But she took me to see The Nutcracker. That's something that I think my taste has kind of broadened more so from The Nutcracker. But if you offer me the opportunity to see The Nutcracker, I'm going to be like, yes, let's see The Nutcracker. And then, in college, probably the kind of cliche of the broke college student. I was interested in art, but I found myself going to a lot of openings. It's like, oh, there's art, and there's also wine and cheese and it's free. And I could just—

ZACK: That's my favorite part.

ELLE: I could just hit up like—I can go to five art shows in a night and it's fun. So those are really the things that I kind of think of as starting points. I've covered more things than art. But I keep finding my way back to it. And I found that I really enjoy talking to folks who are making art about their process and what they created. And we're just seeing the end product. But how did that happen?

ZACK: Yeah, I find that very fascinating, obviously, because I have a whole show about it. When you're talking with artists, what have you learned about artists? If you could kind of summarize a big takeaway from talking with artists.

ELLE: It's interesting because you think there's like a standard experience, but there's not. I talked to a lot of folks, and one of the questions I ask is, when did you know you're interested? And for a good number of folks, it's like, it's always like when I think of myself as a writer, it's like I've always been a writer, but in a lot of cases, it's their parents and their family members who that influence comes from.

But then I also talk to folks who are like, “no, nobody in my family knew what I was doing or had any kind of interest in this. I just found my way to it.” But I always like the human part of the stories, and I think what comes across a lot, I found, is just the folks who were wanting to put their experiences or these feelings or thoughts into the work they create. It's a conduit. It's a medium. It's like, if I'm making the song, if I'm making a painting, if I'm writing a novel, it's coming from some place. And I want to put these feelings and thoughts and just these things that are in my head. I want to put this into the world.

ZACK: So I love that you have a Substack. "Things I Saw This Week." And you launched it like five years ago and I've noticed you're very consistent with it. How do you keep being consistent? Because blogging and putting out weekly content that's hard on top of having a full time job.

ELLE: Yes, I've tried really hard to be consistent. A long time ago I used to have a fashion blog, and that was a really fun experience for me, because it allowed me to do things that no one was going to pay me to do this, but I'm really interested in this. And it became a point where I started out. It was me asking like, “hey, can I cover your event?” To people inviting me to things. And it was like, I really wish I could, but I don't have time to go to this. I have work or something else. But it's just something that I gues—I don't want to say obligation—I do feel kind of obligated to the fact that that lives kind of more on the aggregation side.

I have got prompted to actually be more expressive with it. So I have tried to do that. But yeah, there's a couple hundred people and every time I'm surprised like, “oh, y'all are still here.”

ZACK: Would you consider yourself a curator?

ELLE: To a certain degree? So the reason why the newsletter came about, it's kind of funny because I do this in my job. I also am a digital producer at work. I have kind of slash slash slash. As far as my job duties, I always find myself in that somehow.

ZACK: I'm the same way. I started out as a journalist and I wrote my articles and then took my own photos, social media, and then did layout sometimes.

ELLE: This is not a bash, but it's like people find out like, “oh, you're good at this. Let's get you to do this”. I'm like, okay.

So there was a publication, it was the L.A. Times. They had this article about, hot chicken is everywhere. Everybody saw this headline. [A consensus] was like, ugh, hot chicken is stupid. But the actual story that this headline didn't really showcase well was it was about the story of Nashville hot chicken—there is a black family in Nashville and the kind of lore is it's like a scorned lover who makes the husband's, I think, chicken really hot to get back at him.

But he likes it. I believe the guy's family ends up making—I might have some of these details wrong—but essentially, it was like a revenge thing, but the LA Times story that was about how Hot Chicken Is Everywhere. It was about this black woman who was related to that family who originated it, had a food truck that had hot chicken in L.A., but wasn't really having as much success as she had hoped.

Meanwhile, the folks who were kind of copying the hot chicken were going like gangbusters. So it was a really good story. But if you saw the headline that was like, hot chicken is everywhere in LA, you can be like, well.

ZACK: Yeah, that's boring.

ELLE: I don't really use Facebook anymore. But when I did I would share articles and kind of excerpt like, this is why you should read this. This is why this is interesting. And so the newsletter became a way of me doing it. So like, okay, on its face, you might not actually want to read this, but this is why you should. And so it became an aggregation and I read too much and there's always random stuff. So here are five things.

ZACK: So does that help you hone your observation skills? What are you looking for or does it just come to you when you're out there consuming media?

ELLE: I know it feels like to me, it definitely helps because at work part of my job is writing headlines and this is the social media text and that kind of stuff. So I do think that helps with that. It's like, why would I read this? Because you as a writer you're like, “I spent six months on this story. Clearly I want somebody to read it.”

ZACK: Please read my story.

ELLE: So like us choosing the right photo and choosing an appropriate photo. But also not making it being cheap or sensationalized, but also this person is telling a really compelling story. So what is interesting enough that I can get somebody to engage with it in a way that respects them and respects the writer.

ZACK: Yeah. How do you get those interesting stories out of people? Because sometimes when you interview, it can be difficult to get to the core of something. How do you draw that out of people?

ELLE: It's always funny because people apologize for being long winded, but I almost always prefer that to the person who was like, yep. And you're like...

ZACK: I love long-winded. I mean, it kind of sucks to transcribe. But there's always something in there.

ELLE: No, I was like, please go off on a tangent because otherwise this is going to be super dry. I feel like over time I've talked to enough people I've figured out how to—okay you got to draw it out some more and sometimes it's like, it is what it is. There's not a whole lot that you can just make materialize. But in some cases you can kind of almost see the twinkle in their eye and be like, “okay, let me keep talking about this. This is what they want to talk about. This other stuff.” And so it's really just over time, just repeatedly interviewing folks and just like, “okay, they're not enjoying this. How can I kind of make this experience better for them?”

ZACK: Were you a curious kid growing up? Were you creative? What do you think led you to journalism?

ELLE: Definitely nosiness. I consider myself an introvert, but this gives me a way to go talk to somebody. You can be just total random person. Like, hey, I'm going to ask you all these personal, intrusive questions and have a reason to and I feel like a weirdo about it, even though sometimes you do feel like a weirdo. It does give you the kind of freedom and power to just have conversations with folks where maybe if I was in a different line of work, I wouldn't feel empowered to go talk to somebody I didn't know as easily. You kind of have a mask like, “I'm a reporter.”

ZACK: When I was a reporter, I liked being the one that listened rather than talked because I consider myself—I wasn't the best talker. So I really honed in on my listening skills. Have you found yourself to be a good listener? How do you develop listening skills?

ELLE: I'm a good listener. I think people will pick up on it because I'm the person that randomly meets the person and they're telling me all this personal stuff and in my head I'm like, “whoa, okay, clearly you trust that I'm not going to just go tell everybody or you feel a comfort level or something that you're just like, look, let me just get this off my chest.”

But I definitely think so. I think that is something that I work at to where I, if I feel like I'm interrupting too much, where I'm like, okay. I think I am good at listening to people, but I also want to just not rely on that and actually put some thought into it and be like, okay, “just hear them out and not try to insert yourself too much.”

I am kind of wary of like, “well, this happened to me.” And maybe they do want to hear that. But kind of gauging whether or not that's something they want you to be relatable to them or just like, “no, I just want you to listen to me. I don't care.”

ZACK: Yeah, I get that. You were talking about you love going out to exhibitions. You'll hit five in a night. What are you looking for when you're going out to exhibitions? What do you hope to see?

ELLE: That's a good question. I have specific things, so I really like texture a lot. So if something looks like I can go up to it and just, it feels tactile that's something that is attractive to me in a piece. And I don't know where it comes from, but I definitely feel like I was the kid in a store that wants to touch the marshmallows and stuff like that and it's like, “no, you can't touch it.” And obviously don't touch it in the artwork, but that kind of thing, when people joke and say intrusive thoughts. So kind of that, I actually like abstract a lot. I think figurative is beautiful and I get a lot of joy out of that. But a lot of times I do like when things are much more kind of open to interpretation versus just this is a painting of this, which is, obviously people have put a lot of time into craft and are very skilled. But sometimes I do like the kind of really abstract kind of messes with you. You can turn your head to the side and look at.

ZACK: Like the surreal kind of things. And you've been a lifelong Memphian, right?

ELLE: I am from Memphis, almost the whole time I have lived in Memphis.

ZACK: And seeing all this art from local Memphis artist, do you think Memphis has a certain type of—I don't want to say brand—but do you feel like there's a theme that you see that keeps recurring in Memphis art, or is it just completely different all the time?

ELLE: I think I see different sorts of things. I feel like maybe you have one generalized color, brightness, a lot of bold colors. I don't necessarily see a lot of super muted works. And maybe that's kind of a through line. There’s definitely different types of backgrounds. We mentioned The Art Round Up—there's so many different total different pieces that folks have right now, which is exciting or that are coming up. That's exciting to me.

ZACK: Are there any galleries right now, newer or old, that kind of excite you that you think are putting out really fresh work?

ELLE: I do like Sheetcake. They are cycling in artists. Both locally and not local but every month or two we have a new big exhibition that's up. I would encourage folks to see the college galleries because I feel like though sometimes they're under the radar. U of M has several spaces where you can see art obviously, Rhodes does, CBU does. There are some really interesting and thoughtful works that are up. I haven't seen this in person yet, but Artifacts is a Black owned gallery in White Haven. It's Jamond Bullock who's a local muralist. And he does live painting. I haven't gone because the opening dates have kind of coincided with just being booked and busy.

ZACK: There's a lot of gallery openings. People don't realize every weekend there's something opening.

ELLE: He has a Black History Month one, and it's local artists. I'm pretty sure. But yeah, there's some different artists that are up. The museums are always going to have really nice works. Crosstown always has good shows and they're big shows as far as spatially. Obviously Brooks, Dixon, they have things that are worth your time. They have nice progranming. But, David Lusk, I would say, because I feel like sometimes just because of location is kind of tucked away a little bit. There's some really cool works that are coming in there. I probably named all of them versus what you asked, but no.

ZACK: It's good. More exposure for them, right? And we were talking about the Brooks and I noticed that you did a talk with Andrea Morales. How did you get involved with the Brooks and involved with that talk?

ELLE: They just asked me honestly, I think because I'm a journalist and I cover art was why they asked me, specifically because, Andrea is a photojournalist, and I think also because I'm a Memphian and it was very something that was cool about that exhibition in those big museum spaces sometimes, especially because it's photography. So the places and people are Memphians, are Memphis places. And just thinking about that, I went to something recently that had a lot of places, photographs that were places that don't exist anymore. And so that was something that was in the back of my head a lot, was that photography has in chronicling history, an archival kind of thing.

So, her work is really beautiful and artistic and thoughtful. It’s nice to have different perspectives when you're looking at photography and obviously visual art generally, but I really enjoyed it. That was, I think, my first time doing it. It was cool because I got to do the docent training for that. Which people do, obviously. But I hadn't personally done it. So they're like, “if you want to do the docent training.” I was like, “yes, sign me up, let's go.” And so that was a cool experience.

ZACK: So why do you think it's important for you or anybody to go out and consume art? Why is that a thing that you have in your life?

ELLE: I think we need things that make us question things. We need things that are beautiful and invoke joy. We need things that are thoughtful and provocative and just—I don't know where the quote came from. Well, you probably have heard it, when the person's like, “I don't want people to just have the retail art on the walls. I want them to have weird stuff and unusual and  bright, that somebody made something that.” I would like to get across that art can be approachable. I know, and there are reasons, obviously, historically, museums and other places where folks are like, “this is not for me.” And I think there's a lot of work that people are doing to combat that.

And I think in some cases there's more work to be done. But even Sheetcake uses the Art Money platform, which is like, “hey, you can pay in payments.” And something that I enjoy in spaces where like, yes, there might be something that's $30,000, but here's something that's $100. And just from personal experience, I know, for some artists, if you talk to them, they will work with you on purchase like, “hey, I have $50 right now. Can I work out something with you?”

ZACK: Just get it out of the house.

And do you have a creative practice? Do you do anything outside of writing?

ELLE: Well, I'm doing stuff outside of journalistic writing, which is kind of interesting. So my background is journalism, but I went and got another master's degree because that's what people were doing in the pandemic. Going back to school. And that was data visualization. But there is still some kind of—there's a little art in here, but my undergraduate minor is English. And that was a really kind of hard shift whenever I started taking the journalism classes and the English classes, because the English professors were like, “why are you writing like this? This is not a paragraph.”

ZACK: You can't use AP style.

ELLE: “And you only got one sentence here. This is not a whole paragraph.” And I'm like, “yes, it is.”

ZACK: It gets the point across.

ELLE: And so the things that I'm working on now are a novel and a script. And so that's kind of hard right now just because I feel like I'm using 100% of my brain for work. And so you can't use 50% of your brain for the not-work so you have to use 100% of brain for that too. I don't want to be robotic. I get teased sometimes because I could be having a whole conversation and still write my story because I know the lead needs to be this and the direct quotes need to do this and I need to get to this by this point.

ZACK: There's a formula.

ELLE: It is pretty much a formula. I feel confident to say I'm a good journalist, I'm a good writer, but sometimes I can autopilot and I can't do this with the new mediums yet because I'm not there yet. So, I've made a lot of progress. And part of it, progress for the future of that is to put stuff out there, share stuff, more than the kind of close knit group of people that have seen it, critiqued it, and given me feedback and read it.

And so, yeah, I guess the progress now is showing the work, but also to get to a point where I can more have kind of more routine now and that's something that I always want to put the amount of effort into it, but where it feels kind of more natural to me versus “oh, what should go here” versus “direct quote goes here, let's kind of do that.”

With the other stuff I'm more of a listener or a viewer. So visual art, I really just like to take it in. Music, too. Love to just take in the other mediums too, which I feel kind of fuel it in different ways. I saw Collage Dance do “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which is their ballet adaptation of a novel. And so I’m thinking about “oh, this is the part where—spoiler—this happens.” And I'm like, “oh, okay.”

ZACK: That's really interesting. I have to know what your novel and script are about. Or is it under lock and key for now?

ELLE: I can tell you about the novel. So one of the books that I feel was very much life changing to me—there are two and one is “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson.

ZACK: I read that this year.

ELLE: I love that, especially as “oh, this is true, but it reads just like a novel.” It's like, you can do that kind of thing—that was mind blowing, but also, just the stories. And then, “The Color of Law,” which is about—they kind of go together, which is kind of depressing. You're talking about redlining and things, but these people were trying so hard to break down these walls and people want a more just society. But there's always somebody that was just like, “no.” And I was like, “oh my God.” It is kind of heartbreaking. Sthere is kind of a Great Migration sort of feel, based in the 70s, 80s, so kind of drama.

This is the novel, some of it is comedic, but this is more talking about female relationships, talking about movement and just women. The script is comedy. It is about female relationships, too, but more of kind of reinvention. And it's present day based. So just learning about the present and it being important and I'm not really giving you the elevator pitch exactly. They are totally different from each other. And to be honest, I feel like the novel in my dreams would be a film, but I am interested in it living on pages first and just having it as a book and then like, “yeah, we can adapt it to a film.” Awesome.

But that is something that is kind of, I don't know, there's some more exploration work to do there, but there's many, many pages that are written. And so, that's what I'm excited to explore. And I think all these things kind of go together. So me seeing these art shows and exhibitions and things and seeing the bright colors on the walls and seeing the ballet and seeing the concerts and different things—really it just feeds into my personal things.

ZACK: Yeah, I agree. I love reading artist biographies. Those are some of the most interesting stories to me. That's how I get plot points and things. Is there anything from media that just keep you writing?

ELLE: I am trying to read more craft stuff because I have a writer friend who's like, “that's part of the work you have to do. You have to read about how to do the things. And not just read.” “I'm going to read another novel.” No, you have to actually read how to write the novel as well.

And so that is part of it. I am still in the phase where I do want to just read other things and just see how folks approach things generally. And it doesn't have to be in the same medium. I'm working on a book. But watching a film and being like, “oh, okay. I could do that with this person that I'm writing about. They're kind of like that. I could do that with them.” And so I've looked at some scripts and things just to see. I do like to kind of break down, this is how they made this film, this is how they made this book. And just think about how it applies to the things that I'm working on or things where I’m like, “oh, I didn't know you could do that.” Because the book kind of has dual protagonists, which is probably more painful on the writer side. But I'm like, “no, I really want to have different points of view.” And so like, “okay, somebody has done this before.”

ZACK: Yeah, there's books with seven. So many different points of view. While you're reading these craft books, are there any things that you have implemented into your writing routine or do you have a writing routine?

ELLE: I'm working on it. I'm supposed to have been reading—what is it—The Artist's Way?

ZACK: I could do a whole episode about the Artist's Way.

ELLE: I got to read it. So I have a friend who's academic, and we were like, “we're going to read this over the summer,” and I'm sure she's read it. And I got to a certain point, and I just need to build more of the daily practice. I've been trying to do some social media and stuff a little bit less and kind of redirect, because you're spending so much time just kind of scrolling and just endlessly kind of not really paying attention to anything, and like, “oh, that was an hour. I was just looking at people's outfits.” Which I like outfits. So it's okay to look at outfits.

ZACK: Yeah, it'll give you inspiration for characters. And it's art. You're consuming art when you do that.

ELLE: Fashion is not included in the mindless scrolling because we need a look.

ZACK: We kind of touched on this a little bit, but if you had all the resources all the time in the world, what would be your dream project?

ELLE: Ooh, well.

ZACK: That's my favorite thing to ask people.

ELLE: Dream project. I always find myself learning something new and kind of going really deep into it. Part of my interests are things of local interests, and it doesn't have to be. It can be fictional. It doesn't have to be nonfiction and things. But I do want to have more things that kind of tell the story of the area in different ways, I mean, it can be fiction, but just a documentary, a movie, a book. So I saw the movie that has SZA and Keke Palmer, “One of Them Days.” It's very cool. I'm not going to give you any spoilers, but it's very an L.A. movie. You come in and you're high up and you see palm trees and they zoom into one of those characters at work. But it's very much situated in this specific place, and I really like works that do that. I interviewed somebody recently who basically said, when things are really specific, they're universal.

And I like that. At the Grammys, Doechii, she was like, I'm from Tampa. There are other people who are as talented as me in Tampa. Like me coming from Tampa. And so, I feel that way about Memphis. I think that's really cool because you feel like you know the place when you see it on the screen and just like, “oh, I want to do that for Memphis.” That has been done. But I want to do that personally from Memphis. I want to make the movie and the book where you’re like, “oh, I feel like I've been there. I've never been there. I get it.”

ZACK: Yeah, I would 100% watch that. That sounds really cool. I want to thank you for coming on the show. I think you are super cool. I look forward to your articles on the Daily Memphian all the time. You really are doing really good work on making sure art is visible. And you don't just do surface level you, you show all the different galleries. And so thank you. Thank you for your work.

ELLE: Thank you very much.

Where to find Elle

Instagram: @elleactually