
photograph by willy bearden
Martha Kelly is surrounded by her art during her December booksigning for M is for Memphis at Burke’s Book Store.
Last month, Martha Kelly released her latest picture book, M is for Memphis, with a packed book signing at Burke’s Book Store. She wrote and illustrated the alphabetical tour through the Bluff City’s sites as a follow-up to her first picture book, P is for Possum: Love Letters from the Old Forest.
M is for Memphis came about after Burke’s co–owner Cheryl Mesler suggested that P is for Possum, published in 2020, deserved an urban companion. Kelly’s first book is a collection of rich watercolors capturing her walks through the Old Forest in Overton Park and documenting the landscape of the Mid-South. Where P is for Possum serves as an ode to nature, Kelly’s newest release forced her to hone her skills by turning her attention to the cityscape around her.
“I’ve been in the Memphis Urban Sketchers since it started,” Kelly tells me during a brief respite from her busy December. Not only did she release a new book, but she also had art on display at the Winter Arts Holiday Market, and her exhibition “Faulkner’s Trees” is on view through January 2025 at Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s home museum in Oxford, Mississippi.
She is quick to shout out local artist Elizabeth Alley, who began the Memphis chapter of the Urban Sketchers, saying that her practice with that group helped refine her skills in architectural drawing, a necessity for her newest book.
“It was fun to do something a little more urban, a little more broadly [about] the city than the escapism of the forest,” Kelly says. It was a departure for her, she admits; trees are usually the start and finish of her artistic process.
“I spent the first couple of early years of my career painting on my grandfather’s farm,” she remembers. “My dog loved it. We went to the farm four or five days a week.”
The artist’s work was a process. Kelly says she began thinking of the alphabet of the city about two years ago, and in that time, she also worked sketching — and, eventually, painting — its different scenes.
“It felt a little like a jigsaw puzzle,” she says, remembering laying out the alphabet of her book, realizing some letters might be more challenging than she initially expected, puzzling out how to include hidden gems alongside community favorites. Most of all, Kelly continued to push herself out of her comfort zone — from the leaf-littered forest trails and onto the cement of city sidewalks.
“I have a slightly apologetic author’s note at the beginning, saying that I left out things that I love because I just have so many pages and so many words to work with,” Kelly admits with a laugh. No matter how exhaustive, no list can catalogue all of Memphis’ wonders and curiosities.
“Clearly I cheated on x — I used Stax,” Kelly says. “There were certain letters I knew would be a problem, and there were some letters where there were 15 things I could’ve done and I had to whittle it down to about four.”
The artist clearly spent no small amount of mental and emotional energy working out the complexities of her “jigsaw puzzle” of a project. It speaks to her commitment to her craft and to the assignment itself. How exactly does one illustrate Memphis using only 26 letters as a framing device?
“Q in Memphis is not a problem,” Kelly laughs, though she somehow managed not to include this book reviewer’s favorite barbecue spot. “I chose a list of barbecue places and everybody in the world is going to have an opinion about what I left off of that page. That’s one of the national sports, in Memphis anyway — talking barbecue and what places make it and what places don’t.”
Though Memphians may disagree (often and vocally) about their favorite places, there’s room for everyone at the table. There’s just not room for everything on the page.
And what beautiful pages they are — Kelly’s paintbrush seems to capture Memphis on those rare and perfect spring days. The Southern sun shines off the glass storefront of A. Schwab on Beale Street and the stained-glass windows in the historic Clayborn Temple. Deep-green shadows pool beneath magnolias at Elmwood Cemetery, seeming to suggest quiet contemplation. Kelly’s artwork is dazzling, and she has trained her eye to look beyond the first thing she notices. In her hands, Memphis is seen lovingly and honestly.
Kelly’s brief asides might be the best element of M is for Memphis. She makes sure to point out Rufus Thomas’ boots, and she notes that Crosstown Concourse is dog-friendly. It’s these whimsical personal flourishes that make M is for Memphis an authentic portrait of a city.
The book does not set out to tell some imagined definitive “true story” of Memphis; rather it reads like a series of postcards sent to a close friend. It’s Kelly’s attempt to show the reader Memphis as she sees it, to show what she loves about this multifaceted city by the mighty Mississippi.
Or, as the artist herself puts it: “It’s my sketchbook journey through the city.”