Pond is thrilled to welcome Memphis-based, collaborative group, Mellow Mountain Coalition to Fayetteville for their most recent installment of hyper-energetic, maximalist paintings. Mellow Mountain Coalition is Hamlett Dobbins and Tad Lauritzen Wright, two artists who have exchanged, redacted, and transformed one another's paintings in the spirit of friendship for nearly two decades.

As the artists lay down visual "riffs" for one another to respond to, figures and forms mutate into aggressively psychedelic images that are comic yet eerie. Having accumulated hundreds of paintings on paper, Hamlett and Tad cannibalize their paintings into new, "exquisite corpse"-like collages. The paintings in Rainbow Trees are new works that contain fragments of past works, representing a celebratory pause in the ongoing, collaborative cycle of Mellow Mountain Coalition.

Hamlett and Tad are powerhouses of contemporary Southern painting with extensive careers behind them; is this the game they play to stay sharp? Do their dueling creative forces transcend the painterly powers of one man? Or is it an excuse to get together weekly in Hamlett's shed and tell each other stories while listening to Ween and Gangsta Boo?

We don't know! Ask them yourself over a beer at the opening on Friday, January 31st, from 5:30 - 8:00!

Mellow Mountain Coalition began in 2008 when Hamlett Dobbins and Tad Laurtizen Wright began passing a sketchbook back and forth. They have since exhibited at the University of Mississippi, Atlanta's Whitespace, Piedmont College, Belmont University, David Lusk Gallery, and Concordia University. Hamlett and Tad live and work in Memphis, Tennessee.