{"id":438155,"date":"2026-09-16T22:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/438155\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T22:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:34:08","slug":"new-art-on-main-exhibit-is-an-artists-catalogue-of-debris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/438155\/","title":{"rendered":"New Art on Main exhibit is an artist’s catalogue of debris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discarded umbrellas are easy to miss \u2014 crumpled in gutters, leaning against poles or stuffed into trash cans \u2014 to most, they\u2019re nothing more than litter. For Emily Lamberty, they became an unexpected source of inspiration. As she paused to capture these broken forms with her camera, the images began reflecting something deeper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The result is \u201cUmbrella Corpse: Retrospective + New Work Exploring the Depths of Resilience,\u201d a solo exhibition on view at Art on Main<\/a> from Sept. 10-26. It\u2019s a show about damage, survival and the strange grace of things that refuse to disappear quietly. It\u2019s also, somehow, a show about umbrellas.<\/p>\n

\"\"In \u201cThe Real Flex is a Meaningful Life,\u201d Emily Lamberty makes street debris feel strangely human. <\/p>\n

From Plano to the puddles of SoHo<\/p>\n

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THANK YOU!<\/p>\n

You’re all set.<\/p>\n

CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Emily is a Dallas artist<\/a> in the truest sense, though her path here has been anything but straight. She grew up in Plano after her family moved to the area in the early 1980s, spent her 20s in the Dallas art scene and hung her early work in group shows around town. Then, in 2009, she left for New York.<\/p>\n

She describes the time, with a wry laugh, as \u201ca character-building experience.\u201d Translation: it was hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like seven years of getting beat up,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

She moved nine times in two years. She weathered bedbugs, bad roommates and a layoff delivered moments after she mentioned how grateful she was to finally have health insurance. Somewhere in that chaos, the umbrellas found her. She had noticed something in the city \u2014 people walking through the rain with umbrellas already beaten, battered and broken, still gamely holding them overhead. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never seen anything like that growing up in Plano,\u201d she says. Then she began spotting the discarded ones.<\/p>\n

The tipping point came one morning on her way to work in SoHo. An oversized umbrella sticking out from a garbage can bloomed a whole scene in her imagination \u2014 some furious commuter wrestling the thing into the bin, defeated by the weather and the day. It made her laugh. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was when I was like, \u2018this is a thing. There\u2019s a story here.’\u201d<\/p>\n

A totem for the hard years<\/p>\n

What began as documentation deepened into something closer to devotion. The umbrellas became, in her words, a totem \u2014 small omens scattered across the sidewalk. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey became like messages from the universe to me,\u201d she says. \u201cI would see one, and I would know that something was about to come to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, the images carried sorrow. Friends started sending her photos of umbrella corpses they spotted, captioned \u201cthought of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like they were seeing me as broken and discarded,\u201d she admits. <\/p>\n

But a few years in, the meaning shifted. The umbrellas stopped being symbols of ruin and began to stand for endurance. Andrea Lamarsaude, who owns Art on Main, understood the pull immediately. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat drew me to Emily\u2019s work is the way something as ordinary as a broken umbrella becomes a symbol for something much bigger,\u201d she says. \u201cThe work is about vulnerability and resilience, but it\u2019s also about transformation \u2014 what we do with the experiences that have shaped us and how we find meaning in them. I think those are themes everyone can connect with in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The living and the dead<\/p>\n

The exhibition gathers 48 pieces drawn from hundreds of photographs taken between 2009 and 2016. Emily gives many of them titles pulled from how they struck her. One umbrella, neatly rolled and lying flat on the pavement, reminds her of a heart attack. Another makes her think \u201cdouble homicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may sound macabre, but she describes her work as resistant to \u201cspiritual bypassing,\u201d or the tidy insistence that everything is fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t have light without darkness,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Newer mixed-media pieces push past photography into the realm of ideas, shaped by her years studying feng shui and yoga. Wood-panel works with titles like \u201cCarrying the Wisdom Only Experience Can Teach,\u201d \u201cThe Real Flex is a Meaningful Life\u201d and \u201cShe Eventually Came to Understand\u201d read like koans left on the wall. There\u2019s even a string installation about time and space woven into a single thread, plus a family heirloom in the form of an Art Nouveau umbrella stand with a lineage stretching back generations.<\/p>\n

Poems under the same roof<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Sept. 16, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., the exhibition will welcome Dallas poets Dan Collins, Tim Cloward, Lisa Huffaker, Gabe Shapiro and Jean Lamberty \u2014 the artist\u2019s own mother \u2014 to read works responding to the show\u2019s themes. Emily handed each of them a small bundle of words: resilience, strength, empowerment, grief. <\/p>\n

For Lamarsaude, the evening embodies everything she wants the gallery to be. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love finding different ways for people to connect with art,\u201d she says. \u201cBringing poetry into the gallery gives us another language for exploring the ideas in Emily\u2019s work \u2026 I want Art on Main to be more than a place where people come in, look at art and leave. I want it to be a place where art starts conversations<\/a> and where different creative disciplines can come together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bring an umbrella<\/p>\n

The show also asks something small and meaningful of its visitors. Emily has partnered with Genesis Women\u2019s Shelter and Support<\/a>, which has offered free services to women experiencing domestic violence since 1985, and she\u2019s inviting guests to bring an umbrella to donate. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody offers you shelter under an umbrella, it\u2019s such a powerful gesture,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Donations are collected in her inherited umbrella stand. Before opening night, five had already arrived. It\u2019s a fitting close for a body of work about protection, damage and the stubborn will to keep going. Emily once thought this show would shut the book on the umbrellas for good. Now she suspects they\u2019ll simply follow her wherever she goes next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re just like a permanent totem for me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019ll just look different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUmbrella Corpse: Retrospective + New Work Exploring the Depths of Resilience<\/a>\u201d runs Sept. 10-26 at Art on Main (4428 Main Street, Ste. 200). The poetry reading is Wednesday, Sept. 16, 6:30\u20138 p.m. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Discarded umbrellas are easy to miss \u2014 crumpled in gutters, leaning against poles or stuffed into trash cans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8408,102,104,103,64,6362,15126],"class_list":["post-438155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-city-guide","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-events","tag-free-cheap","tag-immersive-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}