2009 December Nashville Arts Magazine

2 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 3

December 5- December 31 The Annual Holiday Arts Market

Affordable. Exciting. Fresh.

ŠMartica Griffin

December 5 - January 30 Winter Walls

Annual holiday affordable art group show . I

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December 5 - January 2 Whitney Wood

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 5

Jonny Silva's Uncomfortable Reality at Ovvio Arte, through December 13

A stone’s throw from a rusting freight rail sits an unlikely, one-story, stone building. Juxtaposed between the former factory buildings of a hosiery company, Ovvio Arte looks more like a magical hobbit cottage than the gallery, studio and performance space it houses. It is also home to artist Jonny Silva’s first one-man show, Family Tree.

Family Tree is a somewhat unsettling collection of acrylic paintings that are somewhere between the classic painting American Gothic and the characters of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. The people in these strangely haunting paintings give the impression that something is not quite right. His characters look uncomfortable in their own skin, something Silva wants viewers to interpret on their own terms.

The soft-spoken Silva, 33, is a modern-day Poindexter who possesses great intellect and, quite possibly, artistic genius. He is devoid of any arrogance or self-congratulatory mannerisms, and it’s obvious he is very comfortable talking about his work and lifelong love affair with art.

At age 14, he moved with his family from Los Angeles to four acres and a log cabin in Spring Hill. The radical change frightened the transplanted teenager, leaving a lasting impression on his psyche. “I was scared and felt very strange,” he says of the transition. “My work is always about the awkward displacement that occurs within the family,” he says.

It is Silva’s ability to capture discomfort and conflict that allows viewers to understand the art on their own terms. His use of exacting backgrounds, oddly placed objects and animals provides for many layers of interpretation. “I like to leave ambiguity for the viewer,” he says of his work.

Silva believes it is the paint that directs the nature of each work, feeding off the artist’s feelings.

“Paint has a life of its own,” he says. “During the course of painting, I cry; I laugh; I have conversations—the painting itself is revealed as I go.” Silva paints in his studio behind the gallery at 427 Chestnut Street, a creative hotbed for other artists.

His characters remain in the viewer’s, mind, almost as if they are trying to tell you something or continue to provoke thought.

Jonny Silva’s perspective of the untidy emotions of daily living is exactly the reason his star continues to rise among those who love art.

“I’m very much still a student.

Art is a lifelong process. I want to be a good painter.”

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 11

On the Horizon

Hume-Fogg

An Urban School Creates A Sanctuary For Young Artists To Grow

by Lindsey V. Thompson In the center of downtown, right on Broadway, sits a striking edifice.

Its stone structure resembles an ancient castle and, with a history nearly a century long, has become a Nashville landmark. However, this building is most known to the approximately 900 students that roam its halls every day as Hume-Fogg.

Hume-Fogg became the city’s first public school when it was established as a vocational school in 1912. In 1983, the school changed gears and transformed into Nashville’s first Academic Magnet, with a focus on the liberal arts. Hume-Fogg’s academics are unparalleled within Tennessee and have gained national recognition, including being ranked twenty-eighth best high school in the country by Newsweek magazine.

Nonetheless, Hume-Fogg has excelled beyond the world of academia.

On the first floor of this four-story building, there is a large and expansive room with walls plastered with student artwork dating back decades and supplies and materials stacked high into massive towers. In the center of the room, there is always the same woman shouting instructions like “access the right side of your brain!” “push the color!” and “draw what you see!”

At Hume-Fogg, the visual arts program, headed by veteran teacher Mrs. Pamela Bergman, has become one of the school’s many strengths, due equally in part to the program’s talented teacher, the school’s artistically inclined students, and the creative milieu. The art program has become an important part of many students’ lives, including seniors and Advanced Placement (AP) art students Sophie Diehl, Mika Agari, and Alina Malinauskaite.

Sophie Diehl

“I think of art like eating. I don’t feel right unless I’m doing something creative,” says Sophie Diehl. For Diehl, creating has always been a natural and organic experience, as commonplace for her as breathing.

Diehl recalls that one of her earliest memories of art occurred long before she could read or write. She would illustrate the images and have her father transcribe the story for her to create a picture book.

This innate affinity for art has stayed with her into maturity, and she is currently in her second year of Advanced Placement art. Last year, she worked on a drawing portfolio with a concentration inspired by childhood memories. This year, she is working on a 2D design

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portfolio. While she hasn’t officially declared her concentration yet, she notes that several of her new pieces have been portraits with realistic faces and surrealistic elements in the background, a style she says conveys the way that others view that person and the way that person views him or herself.

Her school and classmates have been a great influence for Diehl.

“The kids all work really hard, no matter what the subject is,” says Diehl, “so whether it’s math or art, they’re still devoting their entire mind to it.” This culture and standard of taking work seriously gives Diehl an added drive to put all she has into every creative effort.

“The kids who are really involved in the art program develop a sort of camaraderie…based on the fact that we’re all in art together.”

Diehl’s support extends beyond the classroom into her home, where she says she is truly thankful to have a supportive and inspiring family. “There’s an environment in my house that encourages individuality,” says Diehl, who admits that she descends from a line of “pleasantly quirky people.”

Diehl practices other forms of expression outside of school. She has been playing the piano for nearly ten years and heads her independent clothing line Io, which she recently began selling at a store called Local Honey. She also takes classes from local artist Ray Stevenson, whose thoughts on the methods of art have particularly struck a chord with Diehl. “The process of painting is basically like you’re trying to fix something,” she says. “You just keep fixing and fixing until finally you reach the moment when you’re like, ‘Hey, it’s fixed.’”

In the future, Diehl has aspirations to become an environmental engineer. This profession, she says, would combine her need to create spatially, think logically, and help the environment harmoniously.

“…talent comes as much from practice and discipline as it does from natural ability.”

Mika Agari

If you asked a seven-year-old Mika Agari what she wanted to be when she grew up, you would get a variety of responses ranging from poet, astronaut, teacher, lawyer, doctor, ballerina, and artist. Almost a decade later, Agari’s wide range of interests hasn’t waned.

“I have a few…well, a lot of ideas,” she says. A number of these ideas, she says, are inspired by her biracial background. “The fact that my dad is Japanese and my mom is American and the merging of cultures is a really interesting thing to try and portray.”

For example, one of Agari’s favorite pieces is one she did of her younger brother Yoshi. She used a red, white, and blue motif, which mimics the national colors of the United States and Japan. She drew from each country’s flag by putting a star pattern in his hair and circles in the background to represent the contrast and fusion of her family’s cultures.

As a junior, Agari worked on a drawing portfolio with a focus on her family members. Currently, she is toiling on a 2D design portfolio with a concentration she describes as “portraits from life.” People Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 15

and movement have always been Agari’s subjects of choice. “I feel you can see [people’s] personalities through the way they sit or their expressions every day.” These seemingly commonplace things, she says, are revealing of people’s individual personas.

While she traces back her inspiration to her father’s Japanese background, Agari says that it was her mother that first influenced her to pursue art. Agari remembers admiring “these awesome, crazy doodle things” that her mother would draw. When she was young, she would work to imitate those doodles.

Since, Agari has worked to develop her own style and voice. She says that her talent comes as much from practice and discipline as it does from natural ability. “I never stopped drawing, and other people did, because they came to a point where they had to practice to get better.”

As for her plans later in life, she has toyed with the idea of writing children’s books and illustrating them herself. Still, Agari hasn’t ruled anything out. Perhaps she will become all of the different occupations she dreamed of as a little girl. “But I’ll always have [art],” she says, “no matter what I choose to do.”

European heritage and even speaks five languages fluently—English, French, Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish.

Malinauskaite says that she is especially inspired to create art with different or unusual mediums and subjects, especially to convey or represent a larger social or introspective idea. For example, when given a class assignment to paint a reflection, Malinauskaite was most inspired to recreate the inside of her refrigerator. “It was personal and weird,” she says. The painting shows her own reflection in a large pot surrounded by the foods that line her refrigerator.

Malinauskaite’s extracurricular activities are numerous and widespread. She has been actively participating in gymnastics for eight years and has competed to level eight of ten levels. She no longer competes but now coaches younger gymnasts. She is also a HumeFogg cheerleader and a member of the National Honor Society.

Taking advantage of her exposure to different cultures of the world, Malinauskaite has ambitions to become a United Nations ambassador. This year she is participating in the Model United Nations, where she represents the African country Namibia.

Like so many others, Malinauskaite is grateful to be able to attend a school like Hume-Fogg. “When you go here, you find your niche. You figure out what you like to do, and it’s really encouraged,” she says. “We have so many talented individuals, and everyone is encouraged by each other to pursue different activities.”

Alina Malinauskaite

When Alina Malinauskaite and her parents immigrated to the United States from Lithuania, they had fantasies of the land of opportunity and the American dream dancing in their minds. “[My parents] wanted to come here and give their family the things they never had,” she says, “and give their kids more opportunity to grow up and do something profound in life.”

The metropolitan location of her school is another added plus for Malinauskaite. “We get to experience Nashville as tourists would like to experience it every single day.”

Malinauskaite is a firstyear AP art student and is working on a 2D portfolio. She describes her concentration as her view of Lithuania as she grows older. “My family and everyone are always changing, so I’m documenting that change from my early years to now.” Although Malinauskaite has lived the majority of her life in the United States, she strongly identifies with her Eastern

Lindsey Victoria Thompson is a junior at Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet, where she is studying the literary arts with aspirations to pursue a career in writing.

She is currently Assistant Editor for the school newspaper, The Knightly News, and is proud to spotlight her school and peers in this feature piece.

16 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Beth White

Whimsical Silhouettes

“I take a black piece of paper, and then I cut away what I don’t want…”

by Tony Lance | photography by Jerry Atnip Think back to the first time you saw a Cirque du Soleil performance.

Remember how it made you rethink what it is to be a circus? Beth White’s astonishingly intricate silhouettes are doing the same thing for the centuries-old practice of paper cutting. She is redefining the art.

Historically considered a poor cousin to photography and portraiture, silhouettes—the name comes from Etienne de Silhouette, the miserly finance minister under Louis XV—once provided an affordable alternative to those more-expensive art forms. And the stereotypical image many have of a silhouette (also called scherenschnitte in German) is the child’s profile hanging in an oval frame on Grandmother’s bedroom wall.

And White’s modest, understated description of her own work does little to alter that view. “What I do is take a black piece of paper, and I draw the image I want on the back. And then I cut away what I don’t want,” she said, even as the pieces hanging around her on the walls of her Sylvan Park condominium bespeak a more complex origin.

What White really does is render beautiful, sophisticated images using elaborate patterns that she painstakingly cuts away using a No. 11 X-Acto knife while wearing jeweler’s glasses. The result is art with a wow factor, which has appeared on album covers, book jackets, her own line of greeting cards, and in private collections around the world.

Perhaps in homage to the heyday of silhouettes in the nineteenth century, many of White’s pieces have a wistful, yesteryear quality to them. “That’s my favorite period,” said White, a Maryland native who came to Nashville in 1973 after graduating from Tulane. “I like the ‘40s, and I did some ‘50s work, and I’ve done modern silhouettes too, but I don’t like them as much. They don’t have the charm.

The nineteenth century was a charming era,” she said.

Recurrent motifs in White’s work, particularly in her earlier pieces, include women, cats, and open windows with curtains wafting in a Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 21

gentle breeze. “The windows started as a way to layer things; then you have to put somebody in front of them, and women are more fun to do than men. They’re more sensual, and they have more curves; they have more things—physical features, clothing—that you can work with in silhouette. And cats have a sensual thing to them that I really like.”

The layering that White refers to has become the defining quality of her work. “When I first started doing silhouettes, they were twodimensional, like silhouettes are—everything sitting right next to each other,” said White, who has a degree in printmaking. “That’s what I started with. And then I did a piece for Garden Design magazine, and I thought ‘I want her on the other side of the fence.’ And then I realized I could do that with the pattern, and I began layering. That’s when I started taking it from twodimensional to, visually, three-dimensional.”

Following this creative breakthrough, White entered the most productive—and exhausting—phase of her career. “A typical piece takes about 60 hours to design, cut and clean up. I used to do ten a month.

Can you fathom that?” she asks. “And then I’d sell them for $100 apiece, because I was just so happy to be selling my art.

I was working so much that I’ve seen some pieces from that period that I have no recollection of cutting.”

The prolonged intensity predictably took its toll. “I started in 1975 and I worked for 15 years. Then one day I woke up and stopped. I just felt that I’d said it; I’d done it. I was finished with the medium at that point,” White said. “I took a straight job, with health insurance and everything. Then 15 years later to the month my agent in New York called and asked if I wanted to try it again.”

With a job as an elementary school art teacher to fall back on, White agreed to begin working again, with the understanding that she would pick and choose what she wanted to do. “I think that’s how I went under all those years ago. I was doing anything. I was doing too much, too fast.”

And then her eyes light up with a sudden realization. “I just remembered why I quit 15 years ago! That’s so funny. It was because the fax machine came in. When I quit, technology was ramping up, and all of a sudden everybody could have everything immediately. And they’d say ‘Send me the drawing yesterday.’ And I couldn’t do that.

And the pressure of that was really something I didn’t want to play with any more. All of a sudden instead of having a month to do a commercial piece I had a week. And my work doesn’t lend itself to that. So I left it for that reason, because of technology.”

“I don’t like how fast this world is going. I understand the pleasure of doing things slowly by hand—I like it that Jethro on NCIS [the television show] is building a boat in his basement without power tools. I totally get that. We don’t have that luxury any more. People want everything fast.

“This is not an art form for the technology age,” White said of her work. “People will say, ‘Well, can’t you just draw it?’ And I say ‘Sure I can just draw it but I like to cut it.’ It’s the cut edge that’s interesting.

The drawn edge and the cut edge are two different images. A cut edge is crisper; it’s more defined. A pencil edge, or even an ink edge, has a bleed to it, if just a tiny bit. You can’t fudge with a cut edge. It’s either right or it’s wrong.”

She pauses and thinks for a moment, then looks at a grouping of silhouettes on her dining room wall. “We’re losing this,” White said, pointing to them. “There’s something to be said for craftsmanship. And this has a lot to do with craftsmanship. I cut very well, and I draw very well. I don’t do a lot of other things well,” she said, smiling. “I’m very specific in that. But that’s part of developing a craft, and it takes time.”

With that White appears to realize that her special blend of artistry, dexterity, and patience might have had difficulty finding satisfactory expression had she been born into today’s fast-paced world. “People today can do a lot of things a little bit. Our culture encourages that.

But I’m definitely detail-oriented. It’s a curse and a blessing, I guess.

This, my art, is turning it to its best side. I was lucky to find an outlet for my detailed obsessiveness,” White said.

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Literature

Positively William Gay

by Katie Sulkowski | photography by Anthony Scarlati

“I think writers have to have a touchstone. The rural landscape is mine.

Sometimes I write scenes just to get to write a summer storm.”

–William Gay When I took that first tentative step up into William Gay’s cabin in

Hohenwald, time seemed to stand still. In the big space of his living room full of both classical and popular novels, my nervousness paled under the weight of the situation I found myself in, talking with one of the great authors of our time. A wood-burning stove burned fresh-cut cedar. Objects throughout the home told half-stories belonging to their quiet owner. Hanging by the back door was a bundle of dried peppers, the garden long since overgrown. On the freezer door was a black-and-white postcard of James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause. Just beyond that, a thinly rendered pencil drawing of Faulkner as a young man.

Make no mistake about it, this is William Gay’s world; I am a fan, and he knows it. In between sips of coffee, Gay lit many cigarettes.

And when his cup was dry, he refilled, and we carried on talking.

William Gay grew up in Grinders Creek near a deserted mining town—a place where he bases his well-known fictional wasteland, the Harrikin. From an early age, Gay has read voraciously and knew he wanted to become a great writer. No one in his hometown thought a man from Hohenwald could have a literary career. It’s poetic that the literary community at large has dubbed Gay the heir to the Faulkner legacy.

“When I started to write about rural Tennessee, it felt as if something clicked. When I started writing about things I was absolutely familiar with, it came closer to working.”

It positively worked. In a decade, Gay’s literary resume has gone from diminutive to demonstratively impressive. His award-winning short stories have been published in America’s most prestigious publications—The Atlantic Monthly, Oxford American, and Harper’s to name

a few—and have been widely anthologized. He has authored three novels: The Long Home, which won the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize; Provinces of Night; and Twilight, which was named the best book of 2007 by Stephen King. In 2007, Gay was named a USA Ford Foundation Fellow. On the horizon are Gay’s widely anticipated fourth novel, The Lost Country, and the film Provinces of Night with Kris Kristofferson playing a main character.

More than accolades, what matters to him most is writing a great scene and finding that key word that opens up the scene. As a narrator, he’s like a quiet old oak observing for hundreds of years at a time—a single human life too brief to study or tell the story. To add to that, Gay is masterful at opening lines. They’re perfect.

Being in William Gay’s world, it was as if I stepped right into any one of his novels. I could have expected Nathan Winer Jr. to come out from behind the cabin to go ginseng hunting. Normally it’s just he, accompanied only by the characters in his imagination. Today, Gay was ready for us with a flowing pot of coffee and an endless stream of cigarettes. I was contemplating my first question.

Where does your love of language come from?

I think sometimes you’re just born with something like that. My parents were great people, but they had no education. They were sharecroppers growing up on farms. They had maybe third-grade educations. By the time I entered school, I was scuffling trying to find books. I seemed pretty occupied with the written word. At some point it occurs to you, maybe you could write.

When I wrote The Long Home, I wanted it to be a myth some old man told you sitting in the yard. I wanted the same quality of myth that some of the old music had. I did consciously work toward that.

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I like humor in stuff that I write. I always liked Mark Twain; there was quite a bit of humor in everything he did. Huckleberry Finn is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

I was always impressed by writers who were poetic. Most of the writers I admired I thought could have been poets. Thomas Wolfe—you could arrange some of his stuff in meter, and it would read like poetry.

When I was a kid, I liked to read poetry. Thomas Wolfe’s language was really poetic in that way. When I first started trying to get published, I used to get a lot of criticism from editors who’d say I used too many metaphors and similes and quasi-poetic stuff. I should just tell a story. But I kept on doing the same thing. I was really impressed when I first read Cormac McCarthy. His language is like that, almost poetic sometimes.

What about Hemingway?

I like some of Hemingway. There’s some beautiful writing in A Farewell to Arms. When I was a kid, everybody was trying to write like Hemingway—everybody was writing that hardboiled fiction. Everybody wanted to be Hemingway. He was a celebrity.

I sense a love of Steinbeck in your work.

Yeah, The Grapes of Wrath I remember being one of my most influential books. I think almost all my politics were formed by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In what way?

I don’t know, populism. I’m like an anti-conservative. The Grapes of Wrath was a really compassionate book, identifying with the underdog.

Where does the creative process start for you?

What fascinates me is creation. Where stuff comes from like The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner—what made him do it? Why was he driven to do it? Even Faulkner couldn’t explain it. He tried, but even he did it just because he had to do it. He didn’t know why he did.

The moment of creation is interesting to me—even songs. I read a lot about Dylan. I think the guy is one of the few geniuses around anymore.

I’d like to know what triggered those songs and where they came from.

Do you know how the story ends before you begin?

What makes great literary fiction? What do you enjoy?

I haven’t really thought about that before. I read all kinds of stuff.

Stuff that’s not great literature. I read a lot just for entertainment.

But literary–I have different standards for literary writers. I think what I look for there is the same thing I try to do when I write. I want to depict the scene—whatever vision that the writer had—I want to depict it in a way I believe it, but at the same time I want the language to be impressive, make you think. The way a great poem stirs your imagination. Those are pretty high standards and not a whole lot of stuff meets them, at least in contemporary fiction. Like James Joyce and Faulkner and folks like that.

I have a pretty firm idea in general how it’s going to end. I don’t know specifically how it’s going to end. Sometimes it’s like a gift that you get. You’ve thought about something for a long time, and then one morning you wake up and it’s kind of clear in your head. The ending of Provinces of Night was written, but the woman who edited the book at Doubleday thought it should have an epilogue. She said, “I want you to write me a beautiful epilogue.” And that’s kind of a tall order. You can write an epilogue, but it might not be so pretty.

The Long Home is probably the most complicated plot that I’ve ever done. It was hard to work out the end of that book. There were several things going to happen at the same time, and the logistics…it was complicated moving everybody around, and it took a lot of work.

When do you know a book is complete?

I’m not sure that you ever know that for sure, like a definitive version of it. If I could go back and change things in some of my books, I

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would do some edits. Not anything major. I would do some tweaking.

But to answer your question, you know on some subconscious level or something. By the time you get to the end, you’ve got a picture of it in your head, and when the manuscript that you’re working on matches the picture in your head as closely as you can get it…when you get as close to that as you feel you’re capable of doing, that’s it.

Also, everything has to be resolved. Whatever situation you’ve gotten the characters into, you have to get them maybe not necessarily out of it, but they have to understand where they are or what they’re doing.

And once you’ve done that, you’re pretty much through with it.

If there were one book you could have written, what would that be?

The trouble with questions like that is I’ll tell you off the top of my head, but tomorrow I’ll say, oh man I can’t believe I said that! But I’m torn between All the King’s Men and As I lay Dying. I think As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, is pretty much the perfect book.

Is being part of the Southern gothic style something you think about when you write?

No. To shape something like that, at least for me, turns it into work.

People who read books are pretty smart. They can tell when you’re being phony, and they can recognize honesty. I think I like Southern gothic just because I read so much of it when I was a kid. I read the early stories of Truman Capote, which were really Southern gothic.

There was a book called A Tree of Night and Other Stories, and they were also gothic. They reminded you of Edgar Allan Poe; they were spooky and dark. One of the great moments of my life was in the drugstore when I was a kid. If I had any money, I’d look at the paperback rack, and I found a book called A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. It was the best 35 cents I’ve ever spent.

In several of your stories you write about a place called the Harrikin. Is that a fictional or real place?

It started out as a real place. It was a big part of the southern part of this county—it used to be owned by [a big] corporation. There used to be iron furnaces where they made iron and shipped it out. It was a little town almost, but I guess when the ore was depleted, they moved everything out.

The people there had to leave too. It just deteriorated. It couldn’t be developed, because it belonged to this company, so it just grew wild. I used to go down there for ginseng. Actually I just liked to wander around. It was a really interesting place. It was interesting trying to figure what their lives were like, the struggles of the people who lived there.

How did Provinces of Night materialize?

When I wrote Provinces of Night, I thought it was a short story. I wrote a scene about the boy, and I got so interested in him and how he wanted to write for a magazine. All the time I was working on this book, I was listening to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, folk music from the 1920s and ‘30s. There was a banjo player from West Virginia, Dock Boggs, on there who was really interesting.

His songs were really dark. He was a dark guy. And he [the grandfather] took on some of Dock Boggs’ characteristics. I made him an ex-musician then, instead of a demolitions man.

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Who are some of your favorite characters that you have created?

Probably my favorite is Bloodworth and his grandfather in Provinces of Night. I’ve written a bunch of spooky characters, and if I said they were some of my favorites, people might think I need some psychiatric care. The guy Dallas Hardin [The Long Home]. Or the kinky undertaker or hired killer in Twilight. I like Edgewater [The Lost Country] because he’s different from his environment. He sort of wanted to be a writer.

Can you tell us how Twilight came about?

Twilight came from a thing I saw on the news. There had been an undertaker—I think he was in Franklin, actually—who had been caught doing some atrocities with dead bodies, dumping garbage cans into coffins and that kind of stuff. And I wondered if a guy was respectable, you know like upper-middle-class income, what he would do to protect that reputation. So I wrote a story about a brother and sister who had discovered that their father was mis-buried, and they tried to blackmail this guy. But then I saw it wouldn’t work as a short story, and I wrote Twilight. That was the easiest of the books that I did. I think I was laying brick or maybe working as a carpenter during the day and wrote it at night. I wrote it really quickly, maybe three months or something.

Stephen King named your book Twilight the best book of 2007.

How did that make you feel?

Really surprised, mainly. I had no idea he even read the book. I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly, and I always read his column. I read from 10 up to 1. I was shocked when I saw my name.

The South you write about no longer exists—what do you think happened?

I don’t know. I think it was drugs and television. I think when people began to get TVs, and people could see situations on TV like the Cleavers, the regionalism began to kind of slip away. Things were becoming more generic. Especially with the Internet. Everybody has access to everything. It all seems to be becoming one global place.

You said that good writing needs to have depth, and it ought to be about things that really matter. What really matters to you?

What really matters to me when I write something is to evoke a scene, to find whatever word works that’s like a key that opens up the scene.

If I wrote a good line or good scene or complete story, there was no feeling like that; it was better than alcohol, drugs or sex or anything.

You go around high for hours, because you accomplished what you sort of set out to do. And I think the most important thing is to write a scene so whoever’s reading it recognizes it. They may not recognize the actual situation, but the emotion, whatever emotion the scene evokes.

Nashville Arts Magazine would like to give our sincere thanks to Landmark Booksellers for their assistance arranging this interview.

Landmarkbooksellers.com Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 31

Original drawing by Joseph Sulkowski

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Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 33

65 South, Exit 69, Moores Lane (west), Mallory (turn right) Behind the Shell Gas Station

Wine

On The Vine

Belle Meade Winery Unveils Its 2009 Vintage

by Lizza Connor Bowen Nashville has one more good reason to raise a glass, as the city celebrates the opening of Davidson County’s first and only winery, the Winery at Belle Meade Plantation.

Over the clanking and corking of bottles at the Winery at Belle Meade Plantation’s packaging room, Belle Meade Plantation president Alton Kelley, along with six others from the plantation staff—whose typical duties include developing educational initiatives, fundraising, planning special events and coordinating ticket sales—have rolled up their sleeves to make sure the sweet elixir is ready for the winery’s grand opening on November 16.

“It’s a family effort,” Kelley says. “This is how most wineries operate, with everyone pitching in. We’re no different,” he says. This dedicated crew started at 7 a.m. from the winery’s ground control, a cramped 10 x 30 room with a minimum of seven folks packed in and laboring. It takes both man and machine to produce the four inaugural bottlings. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of new filtering and bottling equipment, including two 1200-gallon holding tanks, are housed here to aide in the vinification. Over the course of the day the staff will dress over 4000 bottles for Nashville’s first and only winery.

The addition of a local winery adds an air of sophistication to the city recently named “America’s Friendliest” by Travel + Leisure magazine.

It’s a natural fit for Nashville, says the plantation’s vintner Brian Hamm, because simply put, “Wine is fun.”

Hamm, a decorated winemaker with over 40 international awards to his credit, was tapped to help develop the winery’s signature wines: Carriage House White, Bramble Blush, Muscadine and Blackberry.

Hamm describes his personal philosophy of winemaking with community in mind: “I make wines to share with family and friends, and for people to enjoy and drink now,” he says.

The Winery at Belle Meade Plantation partnered with Keg Springs Winery, Hamm’s family-owned farm located just south of Columbia,

photography by Matt Coale

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 35

Photographs by Anthony Scarlati

36 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

This writer’s nose and palate are by no means those of a sommelier. However, we at Nashville Arts Magazine thought it would be interesting to pit my amateur taste buds against those of the professional, Belle Meade winemaker Brian Hamm.

On a Thursday morning at the plantation, we uncorked a bottle of the Blackberry.

Hamm filled our glasses and instructed me to give the wine a swirl around the bowl to “release the aroma.” Next, we dug our noses into the glasses and heartily inhaled (something Hamm doesn’t recommend doing in public, mind you). Here’s our take on the bouquet:

Photographs by Anthony Scarlati

The Taste Test

above:

Lizza Connor Bowen and winemaker Brian Hamm

Lizza: Hints of tangy, sweet fruit.

Brian: Black cherries.

Next, Hamm told me to sip slowly and generously, allowing the liquid to spread across my tongue for the full range of taste. First impressions as follows: Lizza: Strawberry pie, cherries and a pomegranate finish.

Brian: Tart cherries with a blackberry sweetness on the back end. This is great with anything salty.

Next on our agenda was the Bramble Blush. Hamm rinsed the glasses and warned me that the young wine might still be in “bottle shock,” meaning it might require some aerating to relax the flavor and integrate the aroma and texture. But I was willing to take the risk.

Thus, I sniffed: Lizza: It smells acidic, a little like pink grapefruit.

Brian: Light fruit and alcohol scents. I can’t put my finger on it, but the fruit might be currant.

As for the taste: Lizza: Tart. It’s got a bite. It’s light. I’d serve it at a spring or summer brunch.

Brian: Light alcohol taste, distinct fruit flavors and a clean finish.

At the conclusion of our tasting, Hamm had one final word of advice for the novice and vin connoisseur alike: “Don’t let good wine go to waste.” Bottoms up!

Bottles are reasonably priced around $18 and exclusively available for purchase in the tasting room. The tasting room, open seven days a week, will offer classic pairings of chocolate truffle and assorted cheese straws with each pour. Weather permitting, an outdoor wine garden, with plenty of seating for those who want to uncork immediately, will be available for use adjacent to the tasting room.

“Entertaining with fine spirits is one way of welcoming people to Nashville,” Kelley says. “With the addition of the winery, we are upholding a Southern tradition that goes back 200 years at Belle Meade Plantation.”

38 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Painting

Quang Ho

Attracted to Mystery

by Kami L. Rice Internationally collected master artist Quang Ho made his

first sojourn to Nashville in early November. Teaching a week-long workshop to local artists and lecturing at Montgomery Bell Academy, the confident yet unassuming Ho sought to impart his philosophical approach to painting to area artists who were enthusiastically appreciative of the opportunity to learn from him.

“Art is a byproduct of my search for what is true as a painter, as a person,” Denver-based Ho says, describing his approach to his work. He says the first part of his career was about improving ability, but now he wants “to explore the concept of what it means to me, explore things on a whim. My painting is never about a message.”

Born in Vietnam, where he was drawing by age 4, Ho immigrated to the United States with his mother and siblings in 1975. Now in his mid 40s, Ho says he’s having more fun painting than ever. He resists being restricted to painting in one particular style, preferring stylistic experimentation instead. “Style or technique is more about handwriting. Content or structure is much more interesting,” he explains. “I’m not searching for a style. I’m searching for surprises.”

below:

Harmonies of Blues and Greens, 48x24

Photo: Anthony Scarlati

right:

Figure in Scarlet, 20x20

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 41

“I’m not searching for a style. I’m searching for surprises.”

left:

Kitchen Atmosphere, 12x12

above:

Harmony of Lemons, 36x36

bottom left:

Primaries Arrangement, 36x36

He acknowledges that this stylistic exploration can be counterproductive, because most galleries want artists to paint in one consistent style. “There’s something disingenuous about that,” he insists. “The artists I talk to want to experiment and grow, and they can’t do that if they’re locked into a style.” Whether realism or abstract work, Ho says, the real essence of painting is the dialogue between shapes, tones, colors, textures, edges, and line.

Attracted to mystery, Ho prefers not to paint the Rocky Mountains or even ballet dancers, for example.

Their beauty is too obvious, necessitating no need to search for it. Instead, he prefers painting a scene like the stand of trees and bushes at the edge of his Nashville host’s yard. Part of the mystery there, he explains, is in the question, “How do you selectively crop that so it becomes a good composition?”

Ho loves Nashville and appreciates the camaraderie he witnessed here among artists, something he says he doesn’t see anywhere else. He also observed that “the artists here that I’ve met are heavily influenced by the landscape, which I would be too. It’s beautiful here.”

One of the week’s workshop sessions took Ho and his students to Radnor Lake, where Ho encouraged the artists to paint less-obvious images. They see the lake, he explains, while he sees the lake through the trees.

Ho enjoys sharing with fellow artists all the things he has learned along the way, including things he wishes he had known before he started painting. “I enjoy getting some of these ideas across and seeing students’ faces light up,” he smiles. “It’s liberating.”

42 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

above:

The Irish, 30x20

right: Vietnam below:

Market, 24x24

Pacific Dusk, 24x30

bottom:

Magnolias, 30x30

bottom right:

Snow Trees

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 43

Dance

Ballet to Burlesque

by Gabrielle Saliba | photography by Lawrence Boothby

A faint quiver is threatening to give me away. I’m doing my best

not to move until the time for this pose is up. All the artists here know I’m a trained dancer, so it’s a point of pride for me to remain perfectly still while they sketch. Knowing that in a few more seconds they’ll have to put their pencils down, the sound of hurried hands drowns out Lionel Richie’s Ballerina Girl.

Out of my tutu and into my pasties! It’s a quick change for me as I am pulling double duty to model for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. I’m posing as both a ballet dancer and as my burlesque alter ego, Bianca 13. Lolly and Larry Lehman (local performance artists and the host and hostess of this monthly art gathering) asked me to trot out my ballet skills before donning the regular tassels and rhinestones that are customary for their models to wear. I’ve made the transition from classical to kitsch before and, fortunately for everyone here at The 5 Spot today, this metamorphosis will take only five minutes. The first time took years.

I was nine when my mother decided she’d had enough of my being under foot in the kitchen. It was the slickest surface in our home, so I was constantly sliding and twirling in my stockinged feet while the other six people in my family had to dodge my flailing limbs if they wanted to eat. Off I went to dance class while they enjoyed the reclaimed linoleum.

That was a couple of decades ago, and I’m still dancing. If dancers were still retiring at the ripe old age of 23, I’d tell you it was just a few years ago, but the dance world is constantly being redefined.

Mature dancers are no longer an oddity. Granted 33 isn’t old, but it’s certainly past the time when a dancer is faced with the matter of getting a “real job.” It’s a very similar situation to what so many musicians face in this town. You’re talented, but it’s not keeping the lights on.

I had been living and performing in Chicago for six years when life’s big questions began to loom before me. Turning 30 was on the horizon. My artist’s lifestyle was beginning to fail me as I developed a hunger for things I had not desired before, like furniture and health insurance. The non-profit modern dance company I had co-founded

“It was time to get creative. I decided I’d try anything that came my way.”

promised to be a success but not financially. Where was the value in my talents? Then one day I went to set a dance on my company, and I had nothing to say. My muse had fallen silent. Paralyzed, I strained to hear her calls.

Directionless and confused, I returned to the home I had been assigned by the universe—Music City, U.S.A. It didn’t really make sense to me or anyone I knew at the time, but it was the only clear signal my heart could register. Besides, it was only going to be for a month or two.

Some time passed before I realized that I was actually going to stay in Nashville. I could have easily picked up with my old life in Chicago, but I felt like there was more to Nashville than what I grew up with.

When I decided I couldn’t live without dancing any longer, I looked around to find my place in this city. The only professional opportunities I knew of were Nashville Ballet (where I trained growing up) and Opryland. I was too old for one and couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for the other (I’m not “jazz hands” oriented). It was time to get creative. I decided I’d try anything that came my way.

This open attitude found me competing as a Titan’s Cheerleader Finalist, teaching ballet at Ms. Cathy’s in Brentwood, undulating in a pool of water for the Actors Bridge production of Metamorphosis, dancing as the “other woman” in the video for Cadillac Sky’s Born Lonesome, and choreographing for Marcus Hummon’s Atlanta.

Ironically, these disparate opportunities began to challenge me artistically in a way I hadn’t been challenged in Chicago.

Then I found burlesque, the art of the striptease. The community was diverse, well-supported and welcoming. There was a creative allure about everyone’s numbers. A good routine had an element of the unexpected. Gypsy was right, “You gotta have a gimmick.”

It’s what makes it an art form and not a trip to Ken’s Gold Club.

Somewhere between the glitter and the gams I found the intersection of performance and art. I was reborn.

Burlesque is about maintaining interest, not just showing skin. The audience is as much a part of your dance as the steps themselves. If you don’t have their attention, you don’t have an act. Unlike in traditional theater, these people can politely disregard you and strike up a conversation while you perform. This is why I love Nashville audiences. They’ll let you know where you stand. They are constantly inundated with the world’s best entertainment, and if you’re going to dance here, you have to be able to compete with that. Just dancing around in a unitard is not going to sell tickets.

Women make up the largest part of the audience for burlesque shows.

It’s the rapport I developed with these women and my fellow dancers that has brought me back to my love of teaching and studying traditional dance techniques like Graham and Horton. Most women will tell me one of two things after seeing me perform: they used to dance, or they’ve always wanted to dance. There is a pervasive sense 46 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

of loss that accompanies these statements that I find relatable to my own experience with dance.

These conversations began to happen so often that they finally became the inspiration I needed to open a dance school. The traditional dance school model seemed in need of an update. Why were so many girls growing up dancing only to forsake it when they crossed the threshold of adulthood? How had we alienated boys and young men from movement? Studios had become trophy-centric or intensely technical. While these are both great focuses, they don’t seem to engender an enduring relationship with movement.

“Burlesque is about maintaining interest, not just showing skin.”

Nashville has been very welcoming to new ideas in regard to dance.

My business partner Emily Masters and I opened Studio 1406 in East Nashville with all of these things in mind. We foster an environment that encourages students to think for themselves while being careful not to disregard proper training. I’ve also begun work on a program specifically for women to regain their relationship to movement. Haute Dance is designed for women with little or no dance experience. The objective is to help create a bridge between the world of pedestrian movement and the steps we see glorified on stage.

I’ve returned to my own practice and to professional dance with a rejuvenated spirit and a quieter mind. I now seek to temper my craft with both a nod to the expression my soul wants to manifest and to the audience that has agreed to be its witness.

As an artist I’m more interested by my calling today than confounded by it. I want to tread where art and entertainment meet without pandering to one or forsaking the other. Today that middle ground is modeling and dancing for the Dr. Sketchy’s audience. Tomorrow it could be anywhere. www.studio1406dance.com Gabrielle will be performing The Goon Presents Burlesque at The Belcourt Theatre on December 10.

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 47

50 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Feature

Brother Mel A Life in Color

by Sophie Collette | photography by Jerry Atnip This month Nashville Arts Magazine traveled to St. Louis, Missouri.

photo Jerry Atnip

We visited the studio of nationally renowned artist Brother Melvin Meyer. Many readers will recognize Brother Mel’s name and work from numerous downtown Nashville buildings and from his prominent place in The Arts Company collections. The thriving relationship between Brother Mel’s studio and the Music City began by chance years ago.

“Art is not easy work.

Art is an everyday, all-day work” above:

Peru in the 1970s, acrylic on canvas, 48”x 96” Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 51

above:

Plein-air acrylic on canvas from summer painters trip

The Arts Company owner, Anne Brown, stumbled upon Brother Mel’s work while visiting a friend in St. Louis. Brother Mel had never sold work outside of his own gallery, which is run by the Marianist community to which he belongs. He was at first reluctant to exhibit his work in another location in spite of Brown’s intercessions. Eventually, Brown relates, “a relationship and a friendship of trust” developed between them, and Nashville has been a more colorful city ever since.

Brother Mel, as his name implies, belongs to a Catholic order called the Marianists. A teaching order, the Marianists believe strongly in living in the world and engaging others through their community as educators. Preferring to be called “brothers” instead of “monks,” they encourage study of the arts and literature. Brother Mel joined the Marianists at age 19 after attending one of their high schools in St. Louis.

He considers his affiliation with the order to be a providential one, since his religious life through the Catholic Church has determined the arc of his career as an artist.

This December, Brown will launch her monograph on Brother Mel at The Arts Company. She, too,

below:

Brother Frank, acrylic on canvas, 1970s

above:

Watercolor, 28”x 36”, 2009

credits his involvement with the Marianist community as the defining element of Brother Mel’s work.

After years of familiarity with the artist’s paintings, sculptures, and mobiles, Nashville Arts decided to introduce a more intimate portrait of Brother Mel by taking readers to his own territory.

The bright colors, simple designs, and powerful emblems of his art had done little to prepare us for the whimsical yet humble environment that we encountered. A day spent in Brother Mel’s studio seemed to be a day snatched from time, a brief interlude in a lesscomplicated universe. Brother Mel’s gentle spirit and calm demeanor seem to have modeled the people and places around him into a community in which even strangers feel at home.

Driving into the Marianist campus, visitors are welcomed by a tall, freestanding sculpture of a sleeping boy. Reclining with his arms folded behind his head, one ankle lazily resting on the opposite knee, this figure prepares curious travelers for the unexpected playfulness that hides behind the campus walls. Passing the high school for boys and community chapel, one arrives at Brother Mel’s self-assembled studio. A dark wooden structure, it is situated in a veritable playground of a sculpture yard. In a small garden outside the door, Brother Mel has planted his own metal sculptures of

above:

Plein-air acrylic on canvas from a 2009 series of still life paintings

painted steel flowers. They pop up from loose soil alongside real marigolds and grasses.

Inside, one finds a gallery that is reminiscent of Willy Wonka’s factory.

Vivid colors, swirling mobiles, an open, spiral staircase enliven a bright and busy space. One feels prepared to meet the eccentric magician or carnival master who presides over this fantastic, colorful realm.

Then, out steps Brother Mel. A quiet, white-haired man of 81, he paces slowly from his workshop.

Uncomfortable talking about himself and eager to get back to work, he is serious, sweet, and accommodating.

“Art is not easy work. Art is an everyday, all-day work,” he says, “I would rather be working than sitting. Art is not about talking.” The surprising element about meeting Brother Mel is his quiet, humble manner. He has heart problems and must walk slowly, intentionally. He has experienced tremendous loss in the death of family members and two of his beloved assistants. He is emotional and caring. Two years ago, he was summoned back to St. Louis from travel because of the death of a close friend and work assistant. He says of his five-hour drive home, “I cried every minute of the way back for over five hours.”

below:

above:

Plein-air watercolor from 2009

Mother and Child, stone, 1960s

Brother Mel’s studio overlooks the community graveyard of his Marianist order. In it, colleagues are buried alongside monuments to friends and the ashes of a former student that Brother Mel himself placed in the ground. It is a sobering environment punctuated by the Stations of the Cross welded in steel by the resident artist.

Anyone familiar with Brother Mel’s art is aware of his colorful guitars and polka-dot bicycles. They also know his broken, tortured, elemental crucifixes. Brother Mel presents the paradox of personalities that breathes life into such complex and diverse images. He is kind, jovial, happy. His twinkling eyes and slow laughter infuse his world with a beatific glow. Yet he is world-wise, experienced, receptive to the sadness and sorrows of others. These strata of his psyche make Brother Mel a complicated, rich individual and lend him an emotional maturity that gives his art character and soul. He claims, “Art is an outgrowth of what the person is. I’m a happy person.

The feeling of being happy finds its way into the art.”

Brother Mel can boast of an artistic training and heritage that few other artists in Nashville or even the world

might be able to claim. While completing his M.A. in art at the University of Notre Dame, he took courses with Jean Charlot, a master of the Mexican Renaissance muralist movement who worked alongside Diego Rivera. He sculpted with Croatian master Ivan Mestrovic, the first living person in history to have a solo exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

After completing study at Notre Dame, Brother Mel began a Grand Tour of Europe on a motor scooter. He exclaims, “Now that was an education, believe me!” While in France and Switzerland, Brother Mel studied stained glass art with Jacques le Chevallier and Yoki Aebischer, both innovators of modern geometric and expressive techniques in religious art. below:

Collier's Chair, acrylic on canvas, 48”x 48”,1970s

These teachers, along with his natural instincts and prerogatives, define Brother Mel’s formal vocabulary to the current date. His powerful geometric patterning and intense coloration speak to his pedigree as an artist trained by masters of twentieth-century modernism.

A lover of Cezanne, Picasso and Van Gogh, he speaks intelligently and expertly about art. “Some of Cezanne’s apples,” he says, “are more religious than a crucifix.” He admires the personal and artistic endeavors of these painters, claiming, “They are dynamic, as I would like to be.”

Brother Mel is prolific, to say the least. He and his assistants Greg, Lyn, and Brother Brian get to work every morning at 8 a.m. Break for coffee at 10 a.m. Lunch at 12 p.m. Break for coffee at 3 p.m. below:

Western Landscape, Plein-air, acrylic on canvas, 1980s

54 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

opposite page top:

Abstract watercolor and mixed media, 48”x 96”, 2009 below:

Spain, acrylic on canvas, 36”x 36”, 1980s

above:

Abstract watercolor and mixed media, 48”x 96”, 2009

below:

Acrylic on canvas, 36”x 36”, 1980s

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 55

“Art is an outgrowth of what the person is. I’m a happy person.

The feeling of being happy finds its way into the art.”

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 57

58 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

opposite page:

Dean Dickson: A snow-covered fence post on a slope across the valley from Breckenridge Ski Resort.

Photography

below:

below:

Melissa Cross: A winter snowstorm blanketed Nashville in 2003

Jerry Atnip: While on assignment on the Olympic Peninsula

and provided a soft frame around the Victorian home of Glen

of Washington, I discovered this statue. As the snow fell, the

Durdin and Roger Sanders in Historic Edgefield.

sculpture was transformed into a study of individual shapes.

The White Stuff A Snow Covered World

Overnight, the skies have sifted powdered sugar over sleeping

houses—the world has become a delicate confection. Leaves are crystal-coated gumdrops, and in the sunlight fields glow white like soft cream. The first snow of the season—sometimes the only snow of the season—transports us directly to childhood’s miraculous gate.

Someone shakes the tiny snow globe of the earth. The atmosphere whirls and glimmers in response. Snowflakes tumble, cascade, fall on the fingertips of eager, outstretched hands or stick to the lashes of dancing wide eyes. Catch them on your tongue. Dust them from your coat, and hurry on.

Make me a snow angel. Throw me a snowball. Build the tallest snow fort on your street. This month we celebrate snow. We conjure it up from memories of winters past. For December, Nashville Arts Magazine asked some of our favorite photographers to share their images of the white stuff. So let us take you down memory lane. Let your imagination sink and slosh over these pages. Let go of your winter worries. In short, let it snow!

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 61

above:

top right:

Dean Dixon: A loosely

Byron Jorjorian: Early morning

crafted picket fence in Aspen

after the first snowfall

makes it mark on the snow in the morning light.

62 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

left:

Cameron Neilson: This was taken for a nonprofit, and I

was already late for work, but I saw this owl on the aspen tree on my way to work, and these gigantic wet snowflakes from a late winter/early spring storm falling in the early morning light. right:

Byron Jorjorian: Snow on this maple leaf signifies the

end of fall and the beginning of winter, far right:

Bob Schatz: Canyon Road, Sante Fe

right center:

Tamara Reynolds: This is a little boy about 4

years old who lived up the street from me. All the kids were out playing early that morning. I believe it was the winter of 2000 or 2001. We were sledding on Jocelyn Hollow Circle in the West Meade neighborhood. That is the road. We had so much snow that year that the streets were only passable by sled. right bottom:

Dean Dixon: Trucks on the Trans-Canada

Highway near the Banff National Park in Alberta seem minuscule against the dominating mountain terrain. bottom center:

Robin Hood: John Oliver’s Pioneer Cabin in

Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I took this around 7 a.m. bottom left:

Bob Schatz: Doorway in Sante Fe

64 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Places

A Great Place to Hang

These Nashville Spots Invite You to Hang Out

by William Williams | photography by Matt Coale Nashville offers numerous comfortable hangouts where you can

enjoy a coffee, glass of wine or meal, all the while admiring quality art and a pleasant setting.

These places are like mini art galleries, highlighting the works of local creative types. Though the art, color schemes, furnishing and

conversation pieces do not distract visitors from enjoying their beverage, book, or best friend, they do add to the ambience of the spaces, making them all the more inviting.

So take your laptop, magazine or book and enjoy one of the following—solo or with a friend for a stimulating chat. Good vibes are key to these hangs.

Pizzereal www.pizzereal.com 203 N. 11th Street Nashville, TN 37206-2702 (615) 226-2206

Paul Koumanelis, the affable owner of this Five Points pizza restaurant, started his business five years ago this past October with minimal art highlighting the interior space. Since then, the walls of his popular east-side pie joint have been transformed into an art gallery of sorts. “I’m a songwriter myself, so I decided I would like to give my [creative] neighbors a shot,” he says of mixing visual and culinary art at Pizzereal.

Koumanelis—who is of Greek descent, speaks fluent Spanish, charms customers with his dead-pan humor, and makes a tasty pepperoni pie too—says his eatery showcases about 50 pieces of art from Nashville artists, with another 20 or so from local children. “I strictly show local artists,” he says.

Though Koumanelis appreciates art, he says he will stick to crafting and delivering mouth-watering pizza. “You know I wish I could draw a straight line but I can’t,” he quips.

68 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

The Good Cup www.thegoodcup.com 2181 Hillsboro Road Franklin, TN 37069-6223 (615) 591-2326

This Grassland-area café is perhaps Williamson County’s most bohemian hang. With its earth tones, concrete flooring, low lighting and eye-catching art, The Good Cup lures visitors—and, particularly, regulars—into sitting and staying a while. “They always sit in the same place,” owner Amanda Taylor says of her dedicated customers.

When this writer visited, The Good Cup displayed the dramatic work of local artist Laura Amstutz, whose ten large and three small pieces enliven the cozy Good Cup space. Recently, Taylor installed some photos by Kara Orendorf and Jennie Schut’s mixed-media creations.

Taylor got her start in the café world by helping a friend open a coffee shop in Thailand. “That’s how the passion started,” she says.

On January 1 of this year, Taylor bought The Good Cup from previous owner Anne Sale and began her tenure as barista boss.

Art is a key element of The Good Cup vibe. Of note, Taylor focuses on local artists, with their works playing nicely off the muted earth tones and slightly rustic feel of the inviting space. “This is such a community-based space,” Taylor says of her café’s interior. We’ll toast to that with a latte.

The Nashville Jazz Workshop www.nashvillejazz.org 1319 Adams Street Nashville, TN 37208 (615) 242-5299

The Nashville Jazz Workshop ranks as one of the city’s most overlooked hangouts, in part because the facility from which it operates is both off the beaten path and an unconventional space. Within the NJW confines are offered instrument lessons, the city’s most impressive jazz CD library, and the hip Jazz Cave, a live-music venue that reminds patrons of the classic listening rooms found in, say, New York City and San Francisco.

Throughout the facility, located at the Neuhoff complex in East Germantown, are books, CDs, musical instruments, contemporary furniture, and lots of visual art (most for sale), with these elements combining to create a vibe that invites attendees of a jazz concert or students receiving lessons to stay a while and soak in the atmosphere.

“When we have a [concert], the artists get 100 percent of their sales,” says Lori Mechem, co-executive director of the NJW with husband Roger Spencer. “And we ask them to leave a piece.”

It’s a perfect arrangement, one that allows the workshop to showcase some wonderful art during about five shows per year. Artists include James Threalkill, Brian Parker and potter Timothy Weber. The latter has 13 clay and wood pieces, collectively called The Spirit House, in the Lobby Gallery. “People walking in here go ‘wow,’” Mechem says of Weber’s work. “It’s so different [in that] it’s not pictures.” A Threalkill painting of an upright bassist is not to be missed. Nor is the hangout vibe in this underrated Nashville gem.

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 69

Rumours Wine & Art Bar www.rumourswinebar.com 2304 12th Avenue S. Nashville, TN 37204 (615) 292-9400

Rumours is now a 12 South institution, and there is no questioning the appeal of the quirky restaurant’s stellar food, wine, art and service.

These elements combine—within a cozy atmosphere, no less—to create an ambience unlike any other in Nashville. At Rumours, the focus is on the feel and flow of three distinct and quaint spaces—a front window-splashed entrance, a middle bar area, and a back main dining room.

“Rumours has its own personality,” says Whitney Ferre, who co-owns the business with Christy Shuff. “And the art on the walls, the art in the glass, and the art on the plate all radiate a very dynamic and approachable vibe.” That vibe features a cozy central room highlighted by a tiny yet welcoming bar and a fireplace. Ferre and Shuff have chosen a color scheme (using shades of blue and red) that is soothing in night lighting.

Dunn Bros Coffee www.dunnbros.com 401 Church Street Nashville, TN 37219 (615) 252-2567

Dunn Bros Coffee offers one of downtown Nashville’s most distinctive hangs, for various reasons. The downtown café just celebrated two years of operation, and its devotees can opt to enjoy a latte or espresso in the main seating area (which is well suited for observing downtown’s bustling Church Street/Fourth Avenue intersection) or retreat to a middle room with large video screen or a secluded back room.

For reading, sipping and chatting, D-Bros offers both cushioned chairs and standard tables, all surrounded by some wonderful local art. Adding to the ambience is a micro-roaster, looming near the main entrance and commanding attention, as its diminutive form is quite unlike that of a standard-sized coffee-bean roaster.

Rumours offers 16 pieces of art, four of which Ferre created.

Christine Buchanan crafted the other 12 large works with birds as the theme. “It is so fun to watch people react to the artwork and leave with so much more than full bellies,” Ferre says.

Good times are born of a good hangout. And Rumours welcomes those who want to sit and enjoy quality wine and stimulating conversation. “Just recently the entire cast of the Nashville Opera’s production of Tosca was on the patio,” Ferre says. “They sang Happy Birthday to a diner. His wife said she would never forget that birthday. They transformed the place with their song.”

Kevan and Fawn Ker, the pleasant husband-wife ownership team, deserve credit for creating a cool vibe. “Our visual art is very important to the atmosphere of our shop,” Fawn says. “We do not charge commission to our artists if they wish to sell their pieces. And although the artists display their work here for two months, every piece is missed when the rotation changes.”

As of this writing, the collection included eye-catching photos from Michael P. Bullis (his shot of a camera is amazing), floral paintings from Kathryn Vago, and photos of flowers courtesy of Rob Lindsay.

In December, Dunn Bros will offer the In.FORM.AL Art Show featuring 11 local artists. “When we decided to open up a coffeehouse in downtown,” Fawn Ker says, “we envisioned an oasis—a place where everyone downtown, working or residing, could come and ‘get away from it all.’” The Kers have succeeded.

70 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Batter’d & Fried Boston Seafood House Wave Sushi Bar batteredandfried.com 1008 Woodland Street, #A Nashville, TN 37206-2815 (615) 226-9283

Matthew Charette may live in Nashville but a piece of the likable restaurateur’s heart will always remain in Massachusetts. His chocolate-stained Boston Red Sox pennant is proof.

Charette is the owner of various East Nashville restaurants/bars, but his Woodland Street-located Batter’d & Fried Boston Seafood House is noted for its New England flare and vibe. Step inside and you immediately realize that Charette, a native of Palmer, Massachusetts, cheers for the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics and Patriots, not to mention carrying a passion for the Boston skyline, classic colonial architecture, and the Massachusetts shipping industry. Charette’s Batter’d & Fried/Wave Sushi Bar (two eateries in one) likely offers Music City the best collection of Boston memorabilia. Larry Bird and Dropkick Murphys fans will be moved to tears.

Ugly Mugs Coffee & Tea www.uglymugsnashville.com 1886 Eastland Avenue Nashville, TN 37206-2542 (615) 915-0675

Don’t be fooled by the Ugly Mugs moniker. The eye-catching interior of this East Nashville hangout, which opened in August 2008, is anything but unattractive. In fact, Ugly Mugs even delivers an almost New York City industrial-space edge, with its concrete floors, exposed mechanicals, sleek furniture, and very masculine color scheme.

Wife and husband co-owners Courtney and Jarod DeLozier have hit a caffeine-fueled home run with U-Mugs’ inviting space. “[We] tried to make it feel like a work-home coffee shop,” Jarod DeLozier says.

Slate blue walls allow art of any color to pop, according to Courtney DeLozier. As with many cafes, art is a key theme. Showing as of this writing was the attractively understated photography of Kate Mills.

Scheduled for December is the work of Jessica Hill, a local painter.

“We’re getting to the point where we’re screening the artists more [than when we opened],” DeLozier says. “We’re getting so many more requests.” Understandable, as Ugly Mugs is a very popular relaxation spot. On a recent Thursday mid-morning visit, this writer found the Eastland Avenue coffee house bustling with customers.

Jessica McCurley and Laura Baisden say they visit about four times per week. “Jessica comes here to study,” Baisden says. “I come here to get my social fix for the day.”

Ugly Mugs’ space is bathed in natural light, courtesy of glass-dominated garage doors that can be raised to let the breeze inside. Various ceiling fans keep the interior comfortable. “Our whole vision was to create a community place to hang out,” DeLozier says. Consider that vision a success.

With its tiny space, abundant wall art, and thick-wood tables and chairs, Batter’d & Fried reminds visitors of old-school New England fish joints and cafes. Of note, Wave Sushi Bar builds on that Northeast diner aesthetic, while also featuring fascinating Asian visual elements, including origami, sumo wrestler art and Far East figurines (a tiny tiger taking down a hippo is an oddly playful example). The combination of the two vibes—along with the menu of fried New England seafood and more-healthy sushi and salads—simply reinforces the distinctive flavor of this popular east side hangout.

Transplanted Bostonians and long-time Nashvillians alike obviously have embraced Charette’s quirky creation, as they flock to enjoy tasty seafood and a cold Yazoo beer or hot green tea. No doubt, the support is humbling to the down-to-earth Charette. “I love Batter'd & Fried because it is my little piece of where I grew up,” he says, “and a great place to hang up all of my memories.”

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 71

Theater

The Vibe Is Cool, the Musical’s Hot at the Boiler Room Theatre

by Jim Reyland | photography by Rick Malkin An interview with BRT founding artistic director Jamey Green

You hear about it all the time. The shy, reserved, almost invisible artist climbs from his lair, hungry and propelled by new relationships, to launch himself, suddenly and undeniably, upon an eager world. When Jamey Green got together in the ‘90s with Joe Correl and Kathy Shepard to transform Michael Bouson’s Avante Garage! (an improv troupe) into a theatre company, little did they know how high they could fly, eventually opening their own theatre space and writing a new, original musical every six weeks. Every six weeks? Slow down there, Hammerstein, you’re gonna hurt yourself.

Jamey Green

Jamey says, “The thing that based our first theatre solely on original work was...money. We couldn’t afford rights for big musicals, so we wrote our own. It’s difficult to describe the schedule we undertook over

that next two and a half years. It was an à la carte dinner theatre as well, so we prepped the food, started a show, cooked at intermission, then finished the show, cleaned up...then started writing the next show, which would go into rehearsal, all within a two- or three-week window. I believe all the material is preserved, either on video or in book form or both. Some was pretty...hmm...not so good. Some was really pretty good...fresh...not perfected but creative.”

So how did a cooking and cleaning almost improv group become the Boiler Room Theatre?

“I really wanted a theatre company that would become a significant contributor to the arts in Middle Tennessee. Not just for patrons but for performers, musicians, technicians, writers, etc. One part of me was reluctant to start another theatre. The work is intense and the money...not good. But I promised myself that if I had the opportunity to do so in my hometown I would jump on it. Calvin Lehew had the space at The Factory. So the idea was to have a theatre that combined a lot of my past experience, not to mention that of the co-founders, my brother Corbin Green and Lewis Kempfer, as well as Teresa Howell and resident director Laura Skaug. Our idea, our mission artistically, was to produce lesser-known but worthy musicals, original works, and mix in an occasional classic musical and/or play. In general I think we stayed with that. Some compromise has been necessary for our survival.”

So you make your way to Franklin and end up making camp in a pretty creative space?

“The Boiler Room was originally just that: the boiler room for that factory. Built in 1928 or 1929, it served as the power center for Allen Manufacturing, Dortch Stove Works, Magic Chef and Jamison Bedding. The Factory is a special place—first because the Depression-era industrial look was preserved and second because Calvin Lehew is a landlord committed to the arts.

The Christmas show is always the highlight of the season at Boiler Room—a chance to exercise the muse, says Jamey.

“It’s always interesting to see what you can do in a short period of time. Much of this Christmas show is inspired by old Avante Garage!

Christmas offerings. It’s a way to celebrate the Christmas season with BRT friends, sing a bunch of Christmas songs, and make audiences happy! It’s always a leap of faith. Fortunately now though, Boiler Room has built an audience that comes to the Boiler Room because it’s the Boiler Room and not completely basing their decision on the specific show we are doing. Obviously there are exceptions. Grease will most certainly do better box office than, say, Hamlet the Musical.

Even so, Hamlet and Hamlet the Musical are among my personal favorites. But yes, while new works serve a pragmatic purpose in that 74 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

one does not have to deal with rights holders, they are also that thing that a writer must get out, exercise as well as exorcize.”

Jamey and friends have created a place and a space that continues to honor the theatre arts with distinction. The passion is equal only to the talent and dedication to excellence. If you haven’t experienced the BRT you’ve missed a ride.

A Hard-Boiled Christmas by Jamey Green and Lewis Kempfer runs November 28–December 23, 2009. The 2010 BRT season includes Fiddler on the Roof, The Fantasticks, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Nine, Rent, and Christmas Belles.

Boiler Room Theatre, 230 Franklin Road, Building 6, Franklin, Tennessee 37064 615-794-7744 boilerroomtheatre@yahoo.com. Also check out BRT on Facebook!

Mark Cabus is a one-man Chirstmas Carol

A Christmas Carol Mark Cabus talks about his one-man epic adventure

Anyone who really enjoys theatre has a personal top ten of their all-time greatest theatrical experiences. Mark Cabus and his one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is very high on mine, and, as I’ve come to find out, I’m not alone.

The one-man A Christmas Carol—did it come to you in a dream?

“No, I wish I could say that, like Athena, it popped fully formed into my head, but it was a long time in gestation. Years ago, I saw Patrick Stewart’s solo A Christmas Carol when I lived in L.A., and despite the fact that he is a marvelous actor, I, unlike so many, felt the play wanting. It just didn’t deliver the goods, in my opinion. It was too spare, too Spartan. I wanted more drama!”

With your dramatic goal fully in view, how did you get there?

“We presented the play at Darkhorse Theater in December of 1999.

It was a six-month process of editing and re-editing Dickens’ novella down from 98 to 56 pages and 36 characters. We worried that even this was too long, but I felt to cut more was to clip the story of its internal energy, its baroque spirit. Dickens’ language is so bizarre and eccentric, and most stage productions lose his extraordinary phrasing in their adaptations. I wanted to retain that wording, so I was stuck with a full two hours and twelve minutes worth of monologue! Who does that sort of thing? I mean, really! It’s masochistic.

But on another level, probably the greatest challenge is sustaining a performance for that length of time. There is no downtime. Even during intermission, I’m backstage flipping through my script, going over my lines, organizing and reorganizing the performance

in my head. It’s simply a quick respite in the middle of a 20k marathon. I rehydrate, and then go—all the way to the finish line.”

You have an abridged student version on tour as well?

“We estimate I’ve performed for over 12,000+ Middle Tennessee students in the past six years. I’m heading out again on November 30, and if anyone wishes to book this easily managed production of A Christmas Carol for their school, business or private party, they should call Kristin Horsley at (615) 687-4291.

“With Jim Carrey tearing up movie screens in a highly-aggressive approach to Dickens, I hope Nashville audiences will return this season to see and hear the story in its original language and in its original context, a holiday ghost story with all of its quirky spookiness intact.”

Performances are December 17, 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m and Sunday, December 20, at 4 p.m. at the Belmont University Black Box Theater.

Tickets are online at TicketsNashville.com or at the door. Just look for “Naked Stages” or “Mark Cabus in A Christmas Carol. They sell quickly, so get yours early. I’ll take two, front row please.

Jim Reyland is the producing artistic director of Nashville’s Writer’s Stage Theatre. His newest play, ARTICLE 4: starring Mark Cabus and directed by Barry Scott, runs November 4–14, 2009 at Writer’s Stage. Info at www.writersstage.com. He is also president of Audio Productions, Nashville. www.audioproductions.com jreyland@audioproductions.com

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 75

The Lone Pine in Winter, Lakewood, New Jersey, 1945 Israel Litwak, 1868-1960, Oil on Canvas

Israel Litwak immigrated from Russia in 1903 and settled in Brooklyn where he had a long career as a cabinetmaker. Forced into retirement at the age of 68, Litwak decided to try his hand at painting. He painted almost exclusively landscapes, mainly views of New York and New England copied from postcards and photographs. His bright, almost Fauvist palette, as well as his imaginative stylization, made those subjects his own. Litwak became one of the most successful selftaught artists on the New York scene during the 1940s and 1950s.

faded from view. It was not until the 1990s, many years after his death at the age of 92, that his work began to regain recognition.

The owner of this wonderful painting that is titled, dated and signed along the lower edge will be pleased to know that the current market value of this work, based on auction records of similarly sized works and of similar subject matter, would be in the $5000 to $7000 range.

Linda Dyer serves as an appraiser, broker, and consultant in the field of antiques and fine art. She has appeared on the PBS production Antiques Roadshow since season one, which aired in 1997, as an appraiser of Tribal Arts.

Photo: Anthony Scarlati

His earliest works were in pencil and crayon on wood panel.

He then switched to oil paint on canvas at the suggestion of his dealer. The switch led to difficulties with his landlady, who found the smell of turpentine disagreeable. In an effort to appease her, Litwak sketched his compositions on canvas during the winter and then spent the summers painting them in, when the windows of his apartment could be left open.

Litwak lived to enjoy a career with steady gallery representation, museum shows, and press coverage that lasted into the 1960s. Nevertheless, he

If you would like Linda to appraise one of your antiques, please send a clear, detailed image to antiques@nashvilleartsmagazine.com. Or send photographs to Antiques, Nashville Arts Magazine, 644 West Iris Dr., Nashville, TN 37204.

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 79

Nashville Arts Magazine | December 2009 | 83

Anything Goes

Dennis Morgan What characteristic do you most like about yourself?

What are you going to be when you grow up?

Consistency, the routines that I have been able to establish in my life, with the help of others, of course.

Not planning on it. Not going to do it.

And what do you like least?

John, Paul, George and Ringo; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John— but not necessarily in that order.

Who has most inspired you?

That I can’t become invisible.

What was the last book you read?

Who is your favorite artist?

The Last Night of the Earth Poems by Charles Bukowski.

Salvador Dali—in particular the Invisible Bust of Voltaire.

Who would you most like to meet?

What are you most proud of?

Jim Henson of Muppets fame.

24 years of marriage, 25 years of Little Shop of Morgansongs, 31 years of hit songs.

Why Nashville?

Ernest Tubb’s record shop, Broadway, the songwriters. I love Nashville.

Which of your songs are you most proud of?

My Heart Can’t Tell You No by Rod Stewart, or the one I’m about to write.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I wish I could fly. A little more hair on top would be good too.

Are you happy with where you’re heading?

I’m happy whether I know where I’m heading or not. I’m going to get there, might as well be happy about it.

What’s your mantra?

Get quiet and think.

What’s it like being you these days?

I’m trying to learn something new every day and to keep it all moving forward.

What talent would you most like to have?

I’d love to be a puppeteer or a cartoonist.

What is your most treasured possession?

Buddy Boy King the Magnificent Dog. Dennis Morgan has written so many hit songs he struggles to remember them all, but he is quick to tell that he is grateful

What is your greatest regret?

That I didn’t have a BB gun when I was mooned in Springfield, Missouri.

for every single one. Along the way this Nashville tunesmith and publisher has written River of Love for George Straight, I

Describe your perfect evening.

Knew You Were Waiting for Me for Aretha Franklin and George

June Bug and I are in bed with our three cats, two dogs, a good movie, and fresh batteries in the remote.

Michael, I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool for Barbara Mandrell and George Jones, and hundreds more.

Dennis lives with his wife, June, in a log house in Fairview. They share their house with Buddy Boy King the Magnificent Dog, Ellie, and three cats.

You have five minutes left to live; what are you going to do?

Say goodbye to my loved ones and get ready to go on a wonderful journey.

84 | December 2009 | Nashville Arts Magazine

Nashville Arts Magazine November 2009 Crossword Across 1 Ole Miss rival, familiarly 5 Emulates Eminem 9 Musical composition 13 Where Otello premiered 14 Bailiwick 15 Sugar source 16 1966 James Mason, Lynn Redgrave British comedy 18 Keystone State port 19 Anatomical ring 20 1997 Jim Carrey farce 22 “___ the glad waters of the dark blue sea”: Byron 23 Innkeepers, e.g.

24 Stable color 27 Family man 30 Brad of Burn After Reading 31 Eye rakishly 32 Spruce up 34 ___ judicata 37 1954 William Holden, Grace Kelly Korean War flick, with The 41 Dry, as wine 42 Swelling 43 Like some juries 44 Toward sunrise 46 Completely 48 Egyptian solar deity 49 Stockpile 51 Natl. Humor Month Notes:

PuzzleJunction.com

53 1990 John Larroquette, Kirstie Alley comedy 57 Aquarium fish 61 Spoken 62 1939 John Wayne western classic 64 Margarita fruit 65 Skin feature 66 Bizarre 67 Carefree 68 Seasoned sailor 69 Bob Hoskins' role in Hook Down 1 Funeral arrangement 2 Balm ingredient 3 1969 Gregory Peck space epic 4 Viewpoint 5 Dust remover 6 Seed covering 7 Persian spirit 8 Hacienda room 9 Spotted wildcat 10 1991 Dennis Hopper, Barbara Hershey flick 11 Eastern Christian 12 Prophets 13 Entertainment co. inits.

17 Sail support 21 Safari sight 24 Sticks up 25 Fairy tale villain

Copyright ©2009 PuzzleJunction.com

26 1935 Hepburn film from Tarkington’s prize-winning novel 28 Basilica part 29 Film genre 30 Hamster, at times 33 Catchall abbr.

35 River to Donegal Bay 36 A ___ of the times 38 Painter’s plaster

39 D.C. time zone 40 1966 Heston, Olivier historical film 45 De-Lovely actress Judd 47 Running behind 49 Detergent plant 50 Song from West Side Story 52 River to the Rio Grande

54 Stamp sellers (Abbr.)

55 Ancient colonnade 56 Charlie Chan creator, ___ Derr Biggers 58 Evaluate 59 Farm unit 60 1965 Ursula Andress film 63 Acquire

Solution on next page down : 1 Cather, 2 Bloody, 3 Sparta, 4 Jay, 5 All, 6 Fiat, 7 Feral, 8 Anklet, 9 Menu, 10 Adam Bede, 11 Sip, 12 Ste, 14 SSS, 18 Kea, 22 Coward, 25 Dais, 26 Oreos, 29 Ades, 30 MSN, 32 No sir, 34 Arson, 36 Elisa, 38 Steele, 39 Stunt, 41 Joel, 42 Uncle Tom, 43 Oner, 44 Tse, 47 Totter, 50 Lariat, 51 Apiece, 52 Season, 55 Nehru, 57 Eng, 60 Xeno, 61 Rear, 63 Opt, 64 Fed, 65 Ate, 67 MTA, 68 AOL. across : 1 CBS, 4 Jaffa, 9 Mass, 13 Alps, 15 Alien, 16 Edit, 17 To a Skylark, 19 Nape, 20 Horse, 21 Talcum, 23 Edt, 24 Ado, 27 Leo, 28 Bam, 31 Ryan, 33 Ara, 35 Tweeds, 37 Osiers, 40 Alden, 41 Just So Stories, 44 Tonie, 45 Sounds, 46 Secret, 48 Nne, 49 Alas, 53 Ell, 54 Lon, 56 Tre, 58 Ape, 59 Exeter, 62 Noria, 64 Fate, 66 The Magpies, 69 Eton, 70 Erato, 71 Taco, 72 Demo, 73 Rural, 74 Ten.

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