spotlight
Nossi College of Art hosts the International Type Directors Club Travelling Show. The Type Directors Club, a leading international organization dedicated to the support of excellence in typography, will be previewing the latest and greatest in type design at Nossi College of Art and Design. This show features the very best examples of printed matter, packaging, logos, fonts and movie titles, and typographic trends. It also provides an invaluable resource for designers and scholars worldwide. This prestigious show in Nashville is free and open to all, especially those with a keen interest in how language is used in our everyday lives and in both print and screen. This year’s show features 242 winning entries from 20 countries including the U.S., England, Germany, Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands. The 56th Annual Type Directors Club Travelling
New! O Gallery is now open in the Marathon Village business district, one of the city’s growing hubs for artists, photographers, boutique breweries and a hit television show. With her second gallery now open, contemporary artist and smallbusiness owner Olga Alexeeva is serving up some of the city’s hottest new entertainment in art. Just wait until you experience Olga’s exciting and surprising concepts. With a coffee and wine bar, music and theatre stage, and film projector, O Gallery will feature great music, fine foods, and exciting combinations of visual and performing art.
Show is on view at the Nossi College of Art new campus,
590
(in the Madison area) through August 12, 2011. www.nossi.edu
With two O Galleries and celebrating her twenty-year anniversary living in America, Olga Alexeeva says it doesn’t get much better than this. She attributes her success to her background as an accomplished Russian actress and her insatiable curiosity and tenacity for accomplishing her dreams. O Gallery is located at Marathon Village, 1305 Clinton Street, Suite 120. Open daily and by appointment, 615-416-2537. Check details online and stay tuned for new, surprising events! O Gallery is also located in the historic Arcade, showcasing local artists each month at the First Saturday Art Crawl.
Cheron
Road, Nashville, TN 37115
www.OgalleryArt.com 14 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
A Tribute to
photo: © alan messer
Bill Johnson
Artist | Designer | Graphic Genius Nashville Remembers a Legendary Art Director
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...artist, heavy smoker, good dancer, storyteller, typographer, and one of the toughest, moodiest, kindest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. - Alan Messer, photographer
Anne Brown, The Arts Company
Bill and I met in the 1980s when I asked him to include his Grammy Award album work in an exhibit called Art Covers Nashville Music, an inaugural exhibit in the then-new Nashville Convention Center. We remained friends ever after. Once his friend, always his friend. He called in 2005, a few years after his retirement from the music business, to see if we would include his own personal work in my gallery. His work was shockingly full of color, with subjects of interest to his personal life—New Orleans, the beach, his beloved wife and granddaughter, and cats that he lived with and observed as Yin and Yang—all rendered in the characteristic clean, exacting, and bold style of his career as an art director. His technique was accomplished and meticulous, suggestive of the work of Alan Katz. One very important thing to be said about his personal artwork: as you see the samples of images on these pages, remember that he never sketched them to begin with. He laid each color separately, never using white paint, never letting one color touch another, never using masking tape to separate one color from another—but always using a #2a brush and Arches paper. NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 23
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Bill’s distinguished career as a Grammy Awardwinning art director for CBS Records-Nashville began with his stint as Art Director with Rolling Stone in the early heady days of the magazine in the 1970s when their offices were still in California. There he worked with all of the big guys in music, art, pop culture, photography, and politics featured in the magazine. He redesigned the original Rolling Stone logo to the one still used today. He enlisted artists and photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol, and Richard Avedon for projects he produced for the trend-setting magazine. Bill moved with Rolling Stone to New York City in 1978 and soon after joined CBS Records-New York. From there, he was recruited by Virginia Team to join her artistic staff at CBS Records-Nashville in the 1980s, recommending him as Art Director when she left to start her own business. He remained there into the 1990s and won two Grammys, one for Roseanne Cash’s King’s Record Shop and one for the O’Kanes’ Tired of the Runnin’.
Rosanne Cash: King’s Record Shop
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The O’Kanes: Tired of the Runnin’
He redesigned the original
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logo to the one still used today.
Bill was a meticulous and exacting artist in his own right. It was always about the art, his family, and his friends, never about him. Alan Messer, Photographer
Bill Johnson was an artist, heavy smoker, good dancer, storyteller, typographer, and one of the toughest, moodiest, kindest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. He was an old school art director and typographer. Armed with a grease pencil, Exacto knife and spray mount, Bill would design and mark up a layout and set type. We worked on dozens of album covers for CBS/Sony. Outside of the office Bill was a sweetheart holding court at his kitchen table with Camels and joints, family, dogs, food, and friends. He loved to work hard and to have fun. When he came to dinner, Bill would get a sketch pad and draw caricatures. He carried pens and pencils and viewed the world through his round rimmed glasses. Bill loved life and the love of his life and soul partner, Cynda. He was a good man, an American original with a heart so big that he loved everyone. 24 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Roy Wunsch, former President & CEO, CBS Records-Nashville
Bill Johnson had a wonderful delicate nature regarding his ability to speak with an artist. Many artists assume the record label is going to force the artist to do his/her bidding relative to the album cover . . . especially their first album. It takes a gentle hand to explain what and why. The last thing we want to happen is the artists getting mad at the label over a misunderstanding of the marketing need for a great cover. Bill Johnson was great at that type of healthy label/artist communication. Back in the day, a company like CBS Records-Nashville had forty to fifty people, plus a few specialists who worked with the company to help promote certain artists who appealed to audiences with a more broad range than is typical in Nashville. He was able to “walk the walk and talk the talk” when it came to being at home with music artists—and artists in general. Virginia Team, Retired Art Director, Team Design, Inc.
Rosanne Cash, Recording Artist
Bill Johnson knew all facets of art. In particular, he had a great sense of type, of type design. Bill and I first met when he was working with Rolling Stone in the California years, and I was freelancing with them. I never forgot the time he saved me on a project I was working on. There was a technical problem which only he could solve. He was so good at the mechanics of type in those days when everything was cut by hand. He sat right down and got it done. I told him if he ever needed me, just call. He was an incredible artist with a big smile, a big heart, and lots of talent and know-how.
Bill was the most sensitive, least egotistical art director I’ve ever known. He was all about the ART. He only cared about the most creative, most beautiful, most artistic statement, not about whether he got credit or whether it reflected his personality. Of course, paradoxically, he won a Grammy for Best Art Direction for my album cover for King’s Record Shop, just for being totally in service of what was best and most artful. I loved Bill.
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The entire world of people who truly care about art has lost a devotee, a fellow worker in the fields, and a sweet companion.
Holly Gleason, Nashville-based Writer & Publisher
Another wild creative, bon vivant, curator of love and people, a believer that the pictures had to be as potent as the music. A charming smile, a fearless sense of finding more in the crassest product. He was a genius, a smart ass, a mutterer, grumpy, and excited. Mostly though, he was the keeper of one of the greatest loves I’ve ever seen: he and his wife, Cynda, burned with attraction and appreciation, grace and possibilities. To see them was to know what love is.
photo: © alan messer
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 25
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A pretty, petite, green-eyed blonde spitfire of a woman, Maddox has a certain velocity to her speech when she speaks about her paintings. She comes across as a woman on a mission who has struggled to find her niche and now wants to broadcast her imagery far and wide. She also rides a Ducati motorcycle and is the first artist ever who has figured out a way to incorporate once-live insects into lasting pieces of art.
When we met and chatted in her new downtown studio, she was working on a new series of paintings of tarpon and bonefish (which she will be going to catch in Belize this winter.) She told me that growing up in Tennessee she had gone by the name Amelia but changed it to A.D. when she started painting trout in Wyoming. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t want people to know that she was a female. She takes it as a compliment when people can’t believe a woman paints these strong and bold paintings of fish. Since men have almost exclusively dominated the genre of fly-fishing fine art, it’s no wonder that A.D. is content to be counted among them. But the truth is, there is no one to compare A.D. Maddox to—she has found her own take on the classic fish painting with some really strong collaboration along the way.
Firehole Rise, Oil on Belgian linen, 30” x 36”
She takes it as a compliment when people can’t believe a woman paints these strong and bold paintings of fish. When you initially moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from Middle Tennessee, how did you start your painting career?
I started painting t-shirts and Western art. I was 28. I couldn’t get into a gallery. They were not going to make wall space. So I got crafty. I started painting furniture. I figured if I couldn’t get on the walls, then I would get on the floor. So Beth Overcast from Center Street Gallery comes by, and she sees what I’m doing, and she said, “Can you paint trout? Trout really sell.” I’d never been fly-fishing before so I thought, what do these things look like? My first trout are anatomically horrendous. But I painted that one, it went on the floor and sold for like a thousand bucks. And a career was born! How did you get into painting the trout skin patterned pieces?
Golden Rainbow, Oil on Belgian linen, 24” x 24”
Joe Daniels launched this great magazine in 2003 called Wild on the Fly. He held a competition of photos of different patterns of fish skins taken very close up. I thought, I gotta paint trout skins! Loved them. I thought, this is great. Women will buy them because they match the interior of the room, and they think it’s great they’ve got this abstract piece, and the guys are like, yeah I have a brook trout on the wall. It was a way of getting into the cities and doing abstract art while staying true to the fly-fishing theme.
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 31
Do you consider yourself fairly prolific?
No. I’m not, but I’m working on it. Every single piece I do is an experiment, and I push myself to explore different ways to work the paint. I paint in the aesthetic tone band, which is a very high frequency of energy. Time disappears, and a concentrated flow of energy releases onto the canvas. That’s why my work is so collectible . . . every piece is unique as it’s painted in a new unit of time. The trout skins are the exception—on those I vary the palette, but the designs stay true to the patterns of the trout. Do you always paint from photographs?
Yes and no. I keep my head very clear, and then I just go and I attack this work, and if I could call it magic in a lot of ways, I’ll do that. I’ll call it magic. I do the best I can with what I’ve got. Every piece is an experiment because they all make me uncomfortable. Will you ever get tired of painting trout?
No. Right now I’m challenged by the anatomical views of the trout and the different ways to capture it with exploding colors and seeing how far I can stretch it without losing my audience.
On Crystal Creek, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”
Snack, Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”
Bend in Stone, Oil on canvas, 22” x 28”
Feeding the One, Oil on canvas, Triptych, 18” x 52” 32 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Not Over Yet, Oil on linen, 30” x 40”
Guise of a Brook, Oil on linen, 16” x 20”
Custom One, Oil on linen, 22” x 28”
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Every piece is an experiment because they all make me uncomfortable.
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I watched the video where you strapped your canvas to the front of your Ducati motorcycle. What did you learn from that?
I learned how to ride my motorcycle and get production done at the same time. That’s the only reason I did it. So are you done with that experiment?
No, I have a brand new mount made for the Ducati down here. Will I ride again and do another bug splat series? Yes, but only if it’s going to be different. Nothing can escape that grueling work of the unknown where you step out there and know that this beautiful piece is going to emerge. No matter what stages of ugliness a piece goes through, I still know that it’s going to turn out a masterpiece. After heading out west to find herself as an artist, A.D. Maddox has come home to build her empire, and her canvases are “flying” off the walls. She is hard at work painting every day with her own unique and signature style. Her paintings are powerful, colorful, explosive, and filled with vibrancy. Much like the woman herself, the work is bold and beautiful. My advice? Get an A.D. Maddox painting while you still can! www.admaddox.com
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 33
Into the Blue, Oil on linen, 40” x 30”
The 73 National Folk Festival rd
by Sophie Colette
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This type of event, by design, programs the best music that America has to offer.
All photos courtesy the National Folk Festival
The National Folk Festival, one of the longest-running celebrations of the arts, is coming to Nashville for a three-year tenure in September of 2011. Husband and wife team Garry West and Alison Brown, founders of Compass Records, fought hard for years to bring the National Folk Festival to Music City. West says, “Nashville was selected over forty-three other host cities.” He adds that the historic music culture of Nashville, along with its large refugee population, helped win the festival for Tennessee. “The Music City brand is enhanced and reinforced by the festival. This type of event, by design, programs the best music that America has to offer.”
The large-scale outdoor event celebrates the roots and variety of American culture. Located at the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, it features a broad array of music and dance performances, children’s activities, regional and ethnic foods, alongside other activities. This year’s festival brings over two hundred fifty of the nation’s finest traditional performers and craftspeople. Nashville organizers are aware of the economic advantage that such a large-scale event will bring to the city’s 48 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
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tourism industry. West expects the festival to bring an audience of 60,000 or more attendees that will fuel between ten and twenty million dollars into local business. A local highlight of the festival is the Folklife Stage, curated by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It will present Nashville’s rich musical heritage through intimate interviews and performances featuring several of the region’s outstanding gospel, bluegrass, early country, singer-songwriter, and rhythm and blues artists. West believes that the festival will benefit Nashville audiences on a local level: “A city really learns a lot about itself through this type of event. Having been at several of these festivals in the past, I became aware of how special we are as a community and as a nation.” Among those participating will be first-call session musicians, shape-note singers, Bill Monroe band alumni, fiddle masters, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and premier soul and blues musicians. Beyond Music City, musical influences and dance traditions from every part of the nation are represented. The global reach of the festival is definitely the centerpiece of its offerings. West claims, “You will have this experience where you know what you’re seeing is the best. It will be the highest quality of music you can expect to find. You will be amazed by what you see.” He points out that “the very large ethnic populations” in Nashville helped bring the festival to the city. Audiences will be treated to authentic blues, gospel, jazz, polka, cowboy, bluegrass, klezmer, old-time, Cajun, rhythm and blues, mariachi, Western swing, zydeco, and more. The 73rd National Folk Festival will be at the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. This Labor Day weekend event is free and open to the public. Do not miss this one!
For a complete list of programming, visit www.nationalfolkfestival.com. NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 49
Mike Wolfe American Ride by Deborah Walden
photo: Kristin Barlowe
M
ike Wolfe, star of the hit TV show American Pickers, has blazed a trail onto the Nashville retail scene this summer. Wolfe recently christened a new location for his
world-famous Antique Archaeology store in Marathon Village. Since his opening weekend, Wolfe has helped revitalize the entire district. Wolfe’s neighboring retailers can expect his loyal audience of over five million viewers to continue to boost tourist traffic to the area. Wolfe’s power to breathe new life into places, objects, and even people
extends beyond the boundaries of Marathon’s faded brick walls. His anchor Antique Archaeology store in the small town of LaClaire, Iowa, brings hundreds of shoppers a day to an otherwise quiet outpost. American Pickers consistently ranks in the top ten cable shows on television, which has vaulted History Channel ratings to unimagined dominance. Most importantly, Wolfe has helped America look beyond the rusted, dusty surface of its old wares to awaken a Renaissance in vintage and antique collecting.
52 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
photo: jerry atnip
Wolfe recently carved time out of his busy travel schedule to give us a tour of his new location and discuss his passion for picking. He was gracious, friendly, and generous with his time. It was easy to see how Wolfe makes strangers feel at ease on his excursions through their property. His candor, unwaning enthusiasm, and kindness are his key to enter the barns, warehouses, and hearts of America.
When asked about the power of his work, Wolfe claims, It’s about the people. It’s all about the story.
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through the fence at a local orphanage daily to play with other kids on the grounds and eat lunch. Underweight and small, Wolfe was the target of bullies. For him, bikes offered a way to escape persecution and a platform for expression. “Bikes, to me, were the first opportunity for independence. Bikes were a way of expressing your individuality.” Because Wolfe rode his bike through alleyways to and from school, he began to notice the valuable goods that local individuals and retailers threw out in the trash. He discovered a talent for seeing the good in things that others viewed as mere waste. “I’ve always relied on my eye, and I’ve been gifted that way,” he says.
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He should know. His own story as a collector is the stuff of legends now. On a fateful day in Wolfe’s childhood, he stumbled upon a stack of old bicycles thrown out by a neighbor. Recognizing the sheer joy Wolfe found in his collection, his mother devoted the family garage to his new hobby of bike renovation and accumulation. The rest is history. After years of selling bikes, Wolfe branched out to the style of picking that made him famous. The real story, though, is just beneath the surface. Why, one might wonder, was Wolfe so drawn to bikes? He explains that growing up with a single, hardworking mom, he had a lot of time to himself and little money to buy things that he wanted. He recalls sneaking NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 53
photo: jerry atnip
intersection of bike and motorcycle culture. “Turn of the century, pre-1915, when they are just starting to experiment with suspension. The reason I like the continuation between old bikes and old motorcycles is that they are connected at the beginning. They are so similar.” Wolfe enjoys the overlap between vintage bikes and the birth of motorcycle culture because he sees an appreciation for the past in the exciting march of progress. He talks about art deco-style elements, linear detail, and vivid coloration with contagious enthusiasm. An appreciation for the creative use of the past infuses Wolfe’s work with meaning. A look around Antique Archaeology reveals bouquets of metal stars, motorcycles dotted with straw, faded signs, and weathered furniture. Wolfe’s world has its own aesthetic. “I love rust,” he exclaims. Unlike some dealers, Wolfe does not strip, refine, or repaint his finds. For him, the wear of time is part of the identity of the object. Things don’t need to be polished till they shine. It’s easy to see that Wolfe’s attitude towards the past reaches beyond objects. He prizes the stories that previous owners bring to their towering hoards of possessions. In spite of a retail market that focuses on teenagers and twenty-somethings, Wolfe cherishes objects saved for decades in the quiet lives of elderly, rural folk. Describing what attracts him to a new purchase, he claims, “It can just be the history of the individual. I sometimes keep from a pick just to remember that person by.” photo: jerry atnip
A walk around Antique Archaeology quickly reveals that Mike Wolfe is putting together a puzzle of American history. Each object in his collection seems to unlock some romantic narrative to the past. Overlooked people, places, and things have a voice in Wolfe’s universe. He has made a career out of finding treasures where no one thought to look for them. Wolfe’s enterprise is a revolution for the world of collecting because he has shined a light
Wolfe’s world has its own aesthetic.
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I love rust, he exclaims. photo: jerry atnip
on the value of once-discarded items. “It’s the art of finding something out there, the art of the deal,” he says. Pointing to a weathered sign, he claims, “I get the same feeling finding that billboard as someone finding a Rembrandt.” Piece by piece, Wolfe is assembling a collage of our culture. Traveling the nation like some Jack Kerouac of vintage goods, he is writing a spellbinding story about who we are and where we come from. Antique Archaeology is located at 1300 Clinton Street, Suite 130 (Marathon Village), 37203. www.antiquearchaeology.com
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 55
Tryptic 2 of 3; Ink, acrylic, and graphite on canvas
Myles Bennett by Emme Nelson Baxter
C
onjure in your mind’s eye an artist whose work appears to be inspired by Rorschach-test prints, Francis Bacon, and Cubism. The art is produced on raw canvas that has been folded, unfolded, and sometimes pleated. Small
sets of angel-hair-thin graphite ripples counterbalance and calm the frenzy of the other images.
Myles Bennett doesn’t refer to himself as a painter. Nor does he call himself an architect, although he has a degree in the field. He is neither a sculptor, tailor, printmaker, nor weaver—despite the fact that he is obsessed with “material.” Yet to a viewer of his work, Bennett is all of the above. While he would never deign to utter this for fear of sounding presumptuous, the most apt tag to describe this young man is “artist.” NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 59
His aim is to allow the constitution of the materials he uses to be the generative force of his work. “As a graduate in architecture, my interest in construction and materials has had a major influence in my paintings,” Bennett begins. His process brings to the foreground the method of applying materials, the tools of application, the structure of surfaces—whether it is the grain, folds, or pores. Whether the result is a figure or a field of textures, “The goal is to create a tactility that reflects an associational reading, that reveals a relationship between the structure, the hand, and the image,” Bennett concludes.
Bennett’s collection generally falls into four groupings: figurative two-dimensional pieces, graphite lines on folded and hand-sewn canvas frames, hanging canvas corsets with photography, and arranged canvas-covered blocks stationed on the floor. The common thread of each medium is the artist’s quest to follow the “materiality” of the elements he uses. His figurative work includes painting in which the figures appear to be origami-inspired: bisected, trisected, inverted, and convoluted like humanoid beasts from the worst nightmare. They are not carefully rendered with brush to neatly gessoed
Now a Brooklynite, Bennett was raised in Nashville. He grew up around artists, learning the gallery trade by helping his father, Bill Bennett, cut moldings and such in the frame shop above Bennett Gallery’s exhibition space. There he learned to wrestle with canvas, which today he loves to fold, to pleat, and to over-articulate its random bumps and pocks.
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I want to work with something, versus on it,” he notes of his use of unprimed canvas. “I want to give the canvas the credit. Really, the only reason I’m making figures is that the canvas reminds me of skin with pores and a sensual color. Figure on My Coffee Table; Ink, acrylic, and graphite on canvas, 29.5” x 31.5”
photo: samuel zide
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60 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
surface. They are born out of Bennett’s first contact with the canvas, a gesture with a brush that leaves an image. From there, the artist folds the canvas onto itself—hence the Rorschach reference—creating a mirror image. He then studies the inkblotlike cast to identify human elements, such as a hand or ribcage, emerging from the chaos. As he begins to draw out that image, others appear, and he incorporates a variety of media to complete the piece. In some cases, that means picking out dried, plastic, Arp-like dregs of acrylic paint from the bottom of a glass jar and gluing them to the canvas. He may then refold the canvas, pleat it, and even unravel bits of it. Inevitably, he completes the look with fine graphite lines that follow the grain of the virgin canvas like straightenedout rings of a tree. The result meshes improvisation with the discipline of origami and rigidity of graphite. At age 28, there’s nothing about this dark-haired, bearded artist wearing black fitted t-shirt, black jeans and navy sneakers to convey his Catholic school and boys’ prep-school background. But the foundation is there. Bennett is well read and thinks critically. He often pauses before answering a poser—as if waiting for the left hemisphere of his brain to catch up to the right side. Unselfconsciously, he rakes his right hand through his dark curly hair, stretches back, takes a draw off his cigarette before answering. Sometimes, his seriousness melts into quiet humor. Recalling his rigid education, he jokes: “After being in an all-boys school for four years, can you blame me for wanting to paint naked women all day?”
Judy; Acrylic, ink, and graphite on canvas; 38” x 38”
Fine Arts teachers Rosie Paschall and Jim Womack were two of his champions at Montgomery Bell Academy, where he spent his high school years. “Rosie gave me permission to make a mess, and Jim turned me on to architecture,” Bennett recounts appreciatively. Womack led Bennett and another student on an academically eyeopening Frank Lloyd Wright tour of Chicago. Paschall, meanwhile, encouraged Bennett to pursue Rhode Island School of Design. Bennett did attend the prestigious RISD, completing the intense program with degrees in architecture and in fine arts with an emphasis on printmaking/ painting. As he studied architecture, he tended to avoid focusing on great designers but instead found inspiration in authors of literature, from Proust to Virginia Woolf. While painting, he keeps his eyes on his own work and lets music serve as a muse. “You know in ten seconds if you’re emotionally connected to a song. People know in five seconds about a piece of art. I realize it can take a while longer with my work.”
Close-up Knit Figure 2; Ink, acrylic and graphite on canvas; 56” x 60” NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 61
While his passion for architecture was intense, he came to prefer the
materials of the artist versus those of the architect. Today he disciplines himself to work regular daytime hours at his workspace in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The work is physical. He moves from wrestling and folding sometimes-unwieldy canvas to hunching over a table, arduously drawing scores of wafer-thin black lines with a pencil. He does not use technology in his creation process, preferring to label himself a bit of a Luddite. “People want work done by hand,” he says. Bennett’s art is worked. It is thoughtful. He makes a point to meet every person who has bought a painting, relieved that they understand that “it’s not a piece of interior decor.” He wants them to know that they are part of the work. Many of those clients are architects. “I draw outside the lines, working a language that excites them.” Folded Split; Ink, acrylic, and graphite on canvas
He makes a point to meet every person who has bought a painting, relieved that they understand that it’s not a piece of interior decor.
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He focuses on developing one work at a time, typically starting with a figurative painting, then moving toward the more three-dimensional pieces before ending a series with a final figurative work. The process does not always go smoothly. “If I am stumped, I’m doing something right,” he maintains. “I’m excited when I get pissed off. It’s kind of a relief. Because I’m doing something that’s uncomfortable I’m going down the right path.” Bennett’s work has already been shown in many cities across the United States but predominantly in Chelsea and Brooklyn, New York; Nashville, Atlanta, and Knoxville. His next group show opens August 16 at Lyons Wier in Chelsea. He is represented in Nashville by Bennett Galleries.
www.Bennettgalleriesnashville.com
Double Fold Double Pleat 2; Acrylic, ink, and graphite on canvas, 60” x 76”
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 63
photography
Jim Blythe
Seriously Close Up!
W
hen Nashville Arts launched its Second Annual Photography Competition last April, we were happily surprised by the quality of the images submitted. One image in particular, full of abstract color and otherworldly shapes, compelled us to dig a little deeper. This month, we are proud to reintroduce to you Jim Blythe, a photographer with a truly unique vision of the world.
The idea for these photographs came from a Christmas present from my brother, a bottle of chiles and spices in olive oil. I placed this on my kitchen windowsill and almost immediately noticed how beautiful it looked in the strong backlight of the winter morning sun. In the next three years, what began as a few pictures of this bottle turned into over three hundred photographs that I felt were worth saving and many hundreds more that I discarded. At first I was still using film, but in the course of this series switched enthusiastically to digital. For the past several years I have shot with a Canon EOS 40D Digital SLR. I am still amazed at how many different pictures could come from one bottle of chile peppers, many of them looking nothing like each other or even like anything normally visible in the bottle. Of course, eventually I began to look for other subjects and began creating my own bottles, using many found objects, like flowers, twigs, slices from fruits and vegetables, marbles and stones, parts of fish and lobsters, pieces of fabric and plastic, corn silk, and so on. Although I have tried artificial lighting, I am never as satisfied with the results as with the natural sunlight, especially when it arrives at a steep angle in the fall through spring, since nothing else can produce the same intense yet diffuse lighting.
Although my photographs cover a wide range of subjects and styles, which you can see on my website, I have worked most in recent years on the Floating World series, which consists of macro photographs of various organic and inorganic materials in bottles of oil. In addition to the literal meaning of floating objects, the series title alludes to the Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, “pictures of the Floating World,” which depicted the urban demimonde of the Edo period (1603–1868), and also to the Japanese homophone “Sorrowful World,” the Buddhist earthly realm of suffering.
My titling of the photos tends to be obscure and idiosyncratic. I don’t like things called Untitled, yet I cringe at obvious or literal titles (although I’m not above violating this rule, as in Aurora Borealis), especially because I think of my work as having a largely abstract appeal, and I don’t want to limit the viewer’s response to it. As a result I often pick a title from mythology (usually Hindu or Greek), poetry (most often Ginsberg or Eliot), literature (most often Joyce or Pynchon), music, or art that refers to something I see in the picture, although I don’t expect anyone else to understand. You can contact Jim Blythe at jmblythe@memphis.edu.
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 69
Seriously Close Up
Naga.
I find this to be a very dramatic photo, with the small white flower striking serpent-like at the viewer and the abstract patterns of purple fabric in the background. 70 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Medea’s Poisoned Dress. Earlobe on the Deep. I liked how the light transformed the relatively colorless lobster gill into a glowing green-gold object and the contrast of this with the brilliant red flower in the background.
I like the contrast of the patterned white flower with the fuzzy reds and browns of the object at the bottom and the red and yellow leaves at top left.
Fadograph of a Yestern Scene.
For this photograph I used a bottle that had many horizontal facets, which slightly distorted and broke up some of the subjects.
RocanĂĄ #2.
I am particularly fond of the lower portion of this photo; the suspended pansy makes the effect quite dramatic.
Bop Apocalypse. When I am done photographing a bottle I dump it into a five-pound plastic jar, which creates endless strange forms.
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 71
beyond words by Marshall Chapman
Cornbread or Rolls?
Photo: Anthony Scarlati
T
hat’s a question that gets asked
a lot around Nashville. And unless I’m at Rotier’s [Restaurant], I usually have a hard time answering it. But at Rotier’s, the answer is easy.
“Rolls!” I say, without hesitation. Sometimes I drift by Rotier’s in the mid afternoon when it’s quiet and peaceful. I usually grab a newspaper to read or talk to Margaret Anne (whose parents founded Rotier’s in 1945) or Eddie Cartwright who’s been working there for over twenty years. “You doin’ all right?” Eddie asks. “Oh, I can’t complain,” I say. Eddie is good at reading customers. He instinctively knows when to leave you alone and when to engage in conversation. One recent afternoon, I ordered fried chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes (with brown gravy) along with the requisite rolls. (I like to save the rolls for last, so I can savor them as you would a crème brûlée. ) “What about dessert?” the waitress asks. “These rolls are my dessert,” I reply. The waitress raises an eyebrow and moves on. I’ve been eating at Rotier’s for over forty years. Ever since they had pinball machines (that paid) back in the late 60s, early 70s. You’d think after all that time, I’d become immune to their rolls, but it seems my appreciation has only grown with the years.
Artworks include statues, masks & ceremonial regalia from all major ethnic groups of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Much of the collection is museum-grade By Appointment
615.790.3095
“Oh, my God!” I call out, as I bite into my first buttery roll, still warm from the oven. Later I engage Margaret Anne in conversation. “Tell me about the rolls,” I say. “Well, a couple of years ago, we tried to upgrade and switched to a specialty brand, but our customers complained. ‘What’s happened to your rolls?!’ they asked. So we went back to the old brand.” “What brand is that?” “Bunny Bread. It’s now owned by Lewis Bakeries in Evansville [Indiana].” I ask to see a box. Margaret Anne brings one from the kitchen. It has a picture of a smiling bunny on it. ORIGINAL ENRICHED FLAKE ROLLS – BROWN ‘N SERVE, it says. “What about the butter,” I say, laughing.
williamdarrellmoseley@yahoo.com
“Well, we brush the rolls with butter while they’re browning, then we serve them up with little individual containers of butter.”
Gallery 427 Main Street Franklin, TN 37064
I realize I have never opened one of those little individual containers. I can’t imagine adding more butter to the already buttery rolls. Why mess with perfection?
Mail P.O. Box 1523 Franklin, TN 37065
www.tallgirl.com
NashvilleArts.com | August 2O11 | 73
theatre
Shakespeare in the Park: “The sky’s the limit!” by Jim Reyland
T
his year the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s 24th Annual “Shakespeare in
Centennial Park” features Romeo & Juliet,
a familiar tale, an enchanting evening of theatre under the stars.
Shakespeare in the Park happens like a sunset, each and every summer, not only in Nashville but in communities all across America. In Middle Tennessee, the NSF has provided one great Bard moment after another in Centennial Park since 1988, where 10,000–15,000 people have gathered, picnic in hand, for twentythree straight years. The NSF continues to reinvent itself, bringing Shakespeare alive to a new and loyal audience. David Wilkerson directs this summer’s show. “I am thrilled with my cast for Romeo & Juliet. Emily Landham will be Juliet, and Matthew Raich is playing Romeo. An incredible supporting cast includes Martha Wilkinson (Nurse), Chip Arnold (Lord Capulet), Shannon Hoppe (Lady Capulet), Jeff Boyet (Friar Laurence), and Peter Vann (Mercutio). Music will play a large role in the storytelling, and I’m blessed to have people who are not only accomplished actors but also accomplished musicians. These include Ben van Diepen (Tybalt), Tom Angland (the photo: rick malkin
Shannon L. Hoppe as Rosaline in Love’s Labor’s Lost, 2010
Matthew Raich as Romeo and Emily Landham as Juliet, Romeo & Juliet, 2011 photo: Jeff Frazier
Prince), Brad Brown (Peter), Randy Lancaster (Montague), and Mr. Boyet. The Apprentice Company, in addition to filling some very important roles, also has the vital task of helping us create a threedimensional, living, breathing world.” Classical Shakespeare on a contemporary stage requires Romeo & Juliet director David Wilkerson to orchestrate myriad theatrical choices, like where the story should be set, its tone and intention. “This story is about opposites, contradictions, dualities—love and hate, war and peace, black and white, life and death. I wanted a setting that itself contained similar contradictions, which led
photo: roger gibbs
Production of The Winter’s Tale, 2005 78 | August 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
anything goes
Molly Secours Writer, Filmmaker, Activist When and where are you most happy?
I love that afternoon nap where I ask the question and I wake up and I have the answer. What characteristic do you like most about yourself?
I can find the opening to laugh at just about anything. What characteristic do you like least about yourself?
My first instinct is to say doubt. What characteristic do you think other people would say they like most about you?
I am interested in other people. I want to get right down to it, what wakes them in the middle of the night. Maybe I’m just nosey! Is there a phrase that you use a lot?
I have two: “Head up, heart open” and “What is the grief beneath the grievance?” I feel that is the question that will get to the bottom of most any conflict, dilemma, sadness.
photo: Gaby Aguirre-Iriarte
Who would you most like to sit down and have dinner with?
I would like to have dinner with George Clooney, an intelligent man with a heart for social justice. And Eduardo Galeano, a Latin American writer/poet. Do you have a favorite artist?
Woody Allen, early work, later work. I’ve seen Midnight in Paris twice and probably going again this week. I love everything about it. Nashville’s very own James Threalkill’s paintings fill my house.
A French Canadian Yankee, Molly has been writing, speaking and making films about social and racial justice for, well . . . a
Who has inspired you along the way?
long time. In her spare time Molly contracts with non-profits
I saw the movie Reds about 26 years go, and I erupted into tears over this movie. Warren Beatty is someone who has had a profound impact on me.
raise funds (and awareness). When she is not working on her
and/or socially minded organizations to make videos that help most recent documentary, House Of Alchemy she also teaches mediation skills to high school students in partnership with
What talent would you most like to have?
Nashville Conflict Resolution Center. Video clips, speeches,
I wish I could sing! I’d be an R&B, blues singer. Also I wish I could play the accordion.
and writings can be found at: www.mollysecours.com
What’s your most treasured possession?
What would surprise people to know about you?
Over my fireplace, the painting of the lady sleeping by David Sandori, a Peruvian artist.
I can get my feelings hurt easier than people think if I feel I’m being misunderstood, and I am very sensitive to criticism.
Any regrets along the way?
What do you aspire to?
That I have not been able to know my nieces and nephews on a daily basis. I wish I had been more a part of their lives.
Saying something or pointing to something you’ve never heard or thought of. Something that impacts you, hopefully.
What are you most proud of that you’ve done?
What have you learned along the way?
I feel good about having done the Faces of TennCare, a fourteenminute documentary. And the fact that it managed to maybe help a few people live.
What I’ve really learned is that in the middle of the night when it gets quiet and lonely there are no Democrats and Republicans, mostly just people who are scared of the dark.
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