Nick CAVE Kelly HARWOOD Andee RUDLOFF Joe B. ROWLAND 2017 PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION
AVAILAB LE AT
615.297.0971
EXT. 5014
SMILE Debuted Statewide in Nashville New and Minimally-invasive Surgery for Myopia (Nearsightedness) is First Major Advance in LASIK Technology in 25 Years, Reducing Dependence on Glasses and Contacts which causes the corneal shape to change, permanently changing the prescription. SMILE has a proven track record of success. It has been used internationally since 2011 and more than 750,000 procedures have been performed worldwide. Dr. Wang noted that currently, the procedure has not been approved to treat large amounts of astigmatism and cannot treat farsightedness and that LASIK is still a better option for a majority of the patients seeking laser vision correction.
The first major advance in LASIK technology in 25 years, the SMILE procedure, was performed in Nashville recently at Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center by its director, internationally renowned ophthalmologist Dr. Ming Wang, Harvard & MIYT (MD, magna cum laude); PhD (laser physics). “We are extremely very excited to be the first again to introduce the next generation laser correction procedure to the state, helping out patients with this new and minimally invasive procedure,” said Dr. Wang. Myopia is a common eye condition in which close objects can be seen clearly but distant objects are blurry without correction. LASIK and PRK have been the main stay treatments for myopia for over two decades. But SMILE, which stands for SMall Incision Lenticule Extraction, has unique advantages over LASIK. The SMILE surgery is minimally invasive as the surgeon needs only to create a small, precise opening to correct vision. No flap is needed. The laser incision is smaller than 5 millimeters for SMILE, compared to approximately 20 millimeters for LASIK. This helps the cornea to retain more of its natural strength and reduces
the risk of rare flap complications. Dry eye after SMILE is also reduced compared with LASIK, as nerves responsible for tear production during the cornea remain more intact in SMILE. One of the state’s first SMILE patients was Margaret Coleman, 34, a manager of the world-famous Bluebird Café, in Nashville, which was prominently featured in the ABC TV drama Nashville, among others. Ms. Coleman has had poor eyesight all of her life, legally blind in both eyes without correction. Ms. Coleman’s 3D Laser SMILE procedure went beautifully and she is thrilled to have her crystal clear new vision and newly gained independence on glasses or contacts and being one of the first patients in the state to receive SMILE! “I am so happy!!!” exclaimed Margaret at her postop visit. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the VisuMax Femtosecond Laser for SMILE procedure for -1 to -8 D myopia with up to 0.5D astigmatism. During a SMILE procedure, a femtosecond laser with precise short pulses is used to make small incision in the cornea to create a discshaped piece of tissue. This tissue is then removed by the surgeon though the opening
Dr. Ming Wang, a Harvard & MIT graduate (MD, magna cum laude), is the CEO of Aier-USA, Director of Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center and one of the few laser eye surgeons in the world today who holds a doctorate degree in laser physics. He has performed over 55,000 procedures, including on over 4,000 doctors. Dr. Wang published 8 textbooks and a paper in the world-renowned journal Nature, holds several US patents and performed the world’s first laser-assisted artificial cornea implantation. He established a 501c(3) non-profit charity, Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, which to date has helped patients from more than 40 states in the U.S. and 55 countries, with all sight restoration surgeries performed free-of-charge. Dr. Wang is the Kiwanis Nashvillian of the Year. Dr. Ming Wang can be reached at: Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center, 1801 West End Ave, Ste 1150 Nashville, TN 37203, 615-321-8881 drwang@wangvisioninstitute.com www.wangcataractLASIK.com
TINNEY CONTEMPORARY
©Andy Harding
CLOUD WITNESS NEW WORK BY ANDY HARDING November 18 - December 23, 2017
237 5th Ave N . Nashville 37219 . 615.255.7816 . tinneycontemporary.com
5 T H AV E N U E O F T H E A R T S DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE
PUBLISHED BY THE ST. CLAIRE MEDIA GROUP
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Editorial Interns SARAH EVERETT Belmont University MIA GUTIERREZ Belmont University SARAH KAITLYN KUHN Belmont University
Columns HUNTER ARMISTEAD FYEye MARSHALL CHAPMAN Beyond Words ERICA CICCARONE Open Spaces LINDA DYER Appraise It RACHAEL MCCAMPBELL And So It Goes JOSEPH E. MORGAN Sounding Off ANNE POPE Tennessee Roundup JIM REYLAND Theatre Correspondent MARK W. SCALA As I See It Nashville Arts Magazine is a monthly publication by St. Claire Media Group, LLC. This publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one magazine from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office, or by mail for $6.65 a copy. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first name followed by @nashvillearts.com; to reach contributing writers, email info@ nashvillearts.com. Editorial Policy: Nashville Arts Magazine covers art, news, events, entertainment, and culture in Nashville and surrounding areas. The views and opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $45 per year for 12 issues. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, issues could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks. There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Call 615-383-0278 to order by phone with your credit card number.
IAN ROSS A PROLIFIC MURALIST, INSTALLATION ARTIST & PAINTER presented in collaboration with The Studio 208
DECEMBER 2 - 22
Detail of “Lost in the Canopy” (Acrylic and Spray Paint on Canvas, 36“x48”) ©Ian Ross 2017
PLUS, ART GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
THE
arts
COMPANY
FRESH. ORIGINAL. CONTEMPORARY.
2 1 5 5 t h A v e o f t h e A r t s N . N a s h v ille, TN 3 7 2 1 9 • 6 1 5 . 2 5 4 . 2 0 4 0 • th ear ts compan y .com
5 T H A V E N U E O F THE ARTS • DOWNTOWN NASHV ILLE
HISTORY EMBR ACING A RT
Zeus, 36” x 48”
K E L LY
H A RWOOD
December Featured Artist
202 2nd Ave. South, Franklin, TN 37064
•
www.gallery202art.com
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615-472-1134
THE RYMER GALLERY presents
Unconstrained
Paintings by Lela Altman
December 2–30, 2017 The Rymer Gallery / 233 Fifth Avenue / Nashville 37219 / 615.752.6030 / www.therymergallery.com
5 T H AV E N U E O F T H E A R T S DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE
On the Cover Nick Cave
December 2017 20
Soundsuit, 2016, Mixed media, including vintage toys, wire, metal, and mannequin, 84” x 45” x 40” See page 30.
Features
70 The Professors at Cumberland Gallery
20 Here and Now Cuban Artists at Ceiba Gallery 27 Exploring the Subtle Power of Nature Jason Brueck’s Animal Kingdom
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30 Nick Cave A Psychological FEAT. 38 Let It Snow! Artists’ Snow Globes Capture the Human Condition with Glass and Water
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74 Where Art Frames Architecture Endeavor Fine Art 77 Nashville Opera’s Maria de Buenos Aires 79 Gilda’s Club Impacting Lives Through the Healing Power of Art
44 Andee Rudloff Paints It Forward
84 Vanderbilt’s Nobel Laureates: A Visual Tribute to Discovery and Innovation at Vanderbilt University’s Wond’ry
48 2017 Nashville Arts Photo Competition
Photograph by Gina Binkley
54 Q&A with Jill McMillan Executive Director Arts and Business Council 56 Pray to Love Anne Goetze at Monthaven Arts & Cultural Center
22 Collector’s Choice 76 The Bookmark Hot Books and Cool Reads 83 Poet’s Corner 86 As I See It by Mark W. Scala
62 Kelly Harwood
66
Columns 16 Crawl Guide
58 Art for Anton & Anton’s Art A celebration of Anton Weiss at Haynes Galleries 66 Painting with New Eyes: Monique Carr’s new works listen to the language of land
58
90 Art Smart by Rebecca Pierce 94 FYEye by Hunter Armistead 98 NPT 102 ArtSee 104 Sounding Off by Joseph E. Morgan 105 Beyond Words by Marshall Chapman 106 My Favorite Painting
All I Want for Christmas Is... UNDER CONTRACT IN 21 DAYS
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With heartfelt gratitude we wish to thank all of our incredibly talented artists who share their amazing work here at The Copper Fox Gallery.
291 JONES PARKWAY | $3,750,000 European style home on private lot. Cooks kitchen with Calcutta Gold marble. Walnut hardwoods, theater, resort pool with slide, cabana, outdoor kitchen, fireplace & bath.
We are blessed and grateful for the oppo opportunity to show their art and share their stories with patrons throughout the year; who are inspired by the artists’ creativity and design. Warmest thanks from all of us at The Copper Fox and may all of our artists, friends and visitors enjoy a peaceful holid holiday season full of grace, inspiration and creativity.
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A Fine-Artisan Gallery Located in the Historic Village of Leiper’s Fork, TN 4136 Old Hillsboro Road 37064 www.thecopperfoxgallery.com (615) 861-6769
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Publisher’s Note
A Great City Deserves Great Art Our annual photography competition is always a highlight of my year. I make no secret of the fact that I love photography, and it is a real pleasure for me to sit and spend time with the hundreds of images that are entered. This year entries came from all over the world, literally, and the quality of the work reached new heights. We asked Jackie Heigle, Professor of Photography at MTSU, to judge this year’s entries, and her top ten choices can be found on page 48. I, too, had many favorites. This entry by Maria Fernanda Lairet from Caracas, Venezuela caught my attention with its playful vibrant colors and mysterious composition. Kudos to all who entered. You can view all of the entries (over five hundred) at Nashvillearts.com. Andee Rudloff is a Nashville treasure. An artist without an ounce of pretension in her work or personality. Community conscious, socially aware, and eternally optimistic best describe this human dynamo. When asked why she always wears rose-colored glasses she will tell you that it is how she prefers to view the world. Andee is truly one of the reasons that Nashville is such a great city and you can meet her on page 44. Holiday greetings to all of you from all of us! Paul Polycarpou | Publisher
BENNET T GALLERIES Featuring New Works From
PAUL WEBER
Trinity, Oil on panel, 20” x 24”
Cup, Oil on panel, 16 1/4” x 12”
2104 Crestmoor Road in Green Hills, Nashville, TN 37215 Hours: Mon-Fri 9:30 to 5:30 • Sat 9:30 to 5:00 Phone: 615-297-3201 • www.bennettgalleriesnashville.com
December Crawl Guide Franklin Art Scene
Friday, December 1, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Egan Snow & Brice Snow, Blend Studio
Kelly Harwood, Gallery 202
Experience historic downtown Franklin and enjoy a variety of art during the Franklin Art Scene. Gallery 202 is exhibiting new work by Kelly Harwood (see page 62). Hope Church Franklin is showing whimsical faux taxidermy animals for children created by Stephanie Carpenter. See acrylic and mixed-media work by Amy Anderson at Williamson County Archives. Academy Park Enrichment and Performing Arts is displaying acrylic and oil paintings by Yara Stagner. Imaginebox Emporium is featuring the original illustrations created by Cory Basil for his young-reader novel The Perils of Fishboy along with Basil’s paintings. Enjoy work by Michael Boyle at Savory Spice Shop. Shuff’s Music and Piano Showroom is presenting paintings by Mike Moyers, which range from plein air and impressionist to abstract and conceptual. Tazikis is showcasing both realistic art and art for children by Christopher Hanna. At the Farmhouse- by: Zula & Mac find unique painted purses by Judith Bohorquez and artisan jewelry by Linda Burns. Sharon Register is exhibiting at Moyer Financial. Franklin First United Methodist Church is highlighting artwork by students of Independence High School during their Nativity-themed evening. For more information and the trolley schedule, visit www.downtownfranklintn.com/the-franklin-art-scene.
First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown Saturday, December 2, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Enjoy an evening of art under the lights on 5th Avenue. The Arts Company in collaboration with the Studio 208 and the Nashville Walls Project is presenting work by Ian Ross, a prolific muralist, installation artist, and painter. Tinney Contemporary is exhibiting Cloud Witness, an exhibition of new Heather Moulder, Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery works by Andy Harding, which is deeply inspired by the history of matter around us. The Rymer Gallery is showing Unconstrained by Lela Altman. The Browsing Room Gallery at Downtown Presbyterian Jennifer Bronstein, Hatch Show Print Church is unveiling Cary Gibson’s Declaration of Independence: What I will become is not what I have been, a mixed-media installation that continues an exploration of fragmenting national identity. In the historic Arcade Blend Studio is hosting an artists’ reception for Cycle of Creation, new mixed-media paintings by twin brothers Egan Snow and Brice Snow. Blue Fig Gallery and “O” Gallery are also participating.
Andy Harding, Tinney Contemporary
Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery is showing Moonlightin’, an exhibit of work by Hatch designer-printers Celene Aubry, Devin Goebel, Cathy Batliner, Heather Moulder, Jennifer Bronstein, and more. For parking and trolley information, visit www.nashvilledowntown.com/play/first-saturday-art-crawl.
Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, December 2, from 6 until 9 p.m.
relinquishing control. For the opening-night reception from 6 until 9 on Friday, December 1, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Larissa Maestro has composed a piece of original chamber music to accompany the first thirty minutes of Hypnagogic. Mild climate is hosting a closing reception for Iowa native John Dilg’s show of paintings based on nature and the state of our planet and wilderness. Open Gallery is unveiling Displacement, a collaborative show by Lipscomb University graduating seniors Hannah Thomas and Brady Bates. abrasiveMedia is holding a closing reception for Repeating Patterns by Lorne Quarles. The reception features pop-up dance performances of The Gray Area directed by Windship Boyd, co-choreographed and played by Darius Cal and Saul Rodriguez, and a live mini-recording of The Mixer. At East Side Project Space enjoy a group show of Red Arrow Gallery artists. For more information, visit www.artsmusicweho. wordpress.com.
Boro Art Crawl
Friday, December 8, from 6 until 10 p.m.
Julia Martin, Julia Martin Gallery
Anne Siems, David Lusk Gallery
Megan Lightell, Zeitgeist
From Hagen to Houston to Chestnut and beyond, Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/ Houston offers a broad range of artistic experience. Zeitgeist is exhibiting Megan Lightell’s Saving Space, an exhibit of large-scale paintings and small studies that preserve the beauty and mystery of public and private properties protected by the Land Trust for Tennessee. Channel to Channel is featuring Lush Interiors by St. Francis Elevator Ride. See a new exhibition of paintings by Anne Siems titled Inquiry at David Lusk Gallery. Julia Martin Gallery is presenting Hypnagogic a solo exhibition of new work by Julia Martin, which shows a style that is freer and more animated than in past works and explores the concept of achieving clarity through
The Boro Art Crawl takes place in and around Historic Murfreesboro’s Downtown Square. Participating venues include Center for the Arts, Concert Productions, Murfreesboro City Hall Rotunda, Jimmy Fox Insurance, Vibe Nutrition, Green Dragon, Two Tone Gallery, Mayday Brewery, Murfreesboro Art League, Moxie Art Supply, Dreamingincolor, Sugaree’s, Quinn’s Mercantile, Funtiques, Let’s Make Wine, Simply Pure Sweets, The Boutique at Studio C Photography, and The Write Impression. For more information visit www.boroartcrawl.com.
East Side Art Stumble
Saturday, December 9, from 6 until 10 p.m. Take a drive down Gallatin Pike to Red Arrow Gallery for a group show of gallery artists. See colorful abstract work by Bongang at Southern Grist Brewery. For updates on the East Side Art Stumble, visit www.facebook.com/ eastsideartstumble.
Nick Stolle, Red Arrow Gallery NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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FRENCH K I N G . C O M 615.292.2622 office
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WORDS Kathleen Boyle
Here and Now
Cuban Artists at Ceiba Gallery through January 7
Sheyla Paz Hicks, Teatro Nacional-La Havana
“T
he function of the gallery is to teach visitors about different cultures and to promote diversity through the arts with our exhibits,” stated Jorge Yances, director of Ceiba Gallery. Nestled in Woodbine’s Plaza Mariachi, Ceiba Gallery is part of the Hispanic Family Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to elevating the city’s Latino community. “We feature artists from all over the world but particularly those who are from or have strong ties to countries in Latin America,” explained Yances. Yet even with this relatively specific scope that directs his curatorial practices, Yances still faces a recurring hurdle that both challenges and motivates the exhibitions at Ceiba Gallery: adequately conveying the breadth of artistic diversity that is occurring within the Latin American art community itself. “Unfortunately, many people too often generalize Latin cultures simply because of the common Spanish language,” recognized Yances. “But what they don’t understand is that the art is very different between countries even in the same regions of the world. We like to showcase these artistic differences in our exhibits and through free public programs in the gallery.” The latest exhibit at Ceiba Gallery is titled Here and Now and features the work of two artists of Cuban descent: Joaquin
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Pomes, who continues to reside in Cuba, and Sheyla Paz Hicks, who relocated to Nashville from Cuba seventeen years ago. In maintaining the interest of artistic diversity, Here and Now is an exhibition that demonstrates how artists can maintain very distinct aesthetics despite sharing similar heritage. Yances considers himself quite fortunate to show Joaquin Pomes in Nashville. Having been introduced to his work through an art dealer based out of Washington, DC, Yances noted that political complications hinder the access to and transportation of artwork from Cuba to the United States. However, such efforts are worth the process, for the opportunity to view Pomes’s artwork is truly a rare treat for the Nashville community. Pomes’s pen-and-ink drawings are advanced linear abstractions that meld elements of geometric pattern, planar figuration, and symbols into compositions that dance between indigenous and surrealist imagery. A self-taught artist with an advanced degree in Industrial Economics, Pomes began drawing as a hobby when he was a child. It wasn’t until a family friend shared Pomes’s drawings with painter Antonio Diaz that he was encouraged to exhibit his work in the public sphere. The collection of Pomes’s drawings on view for Here and Now
Joaquin Pomes, Mi Torre de Babel, Ink on paper, 15”x 11”
offers us examples of both his works in color and in black and white, the latter of which is his preferred palette due to “white representing light and the coming together of two colors, and black [as] the sum of colors.” Measuring in dimensions that do not exceed a standard leaf of newsprint, Pomes executes an impressive congregation of deliberate marks so minute in detail that their sum, though stagnant, is active in its address of deep artistic precision and thus concentration. Pomes’s work articulates planning, as though he makes no mistakes in forms that first seem to be happenstance meanderings tangled in intricacy, testaments to the mysteries of a calculating mind. Joaquin Pomes, Cerradura de la Vida, Ink on paper, 21” x 15”
Offering a strong contrast to Pomes’s drawings is an assortment of digital photographs on canvas by Cuban-born, Nashville-based artist Sheyla Paz Hicks. Delivering to her viewers glimpses of “a day in the life of a Cuban,” Paz Hicks takes photographs of everyday urban scenes witnessed during her various visits to Cuba over the last decade. Highlighting subjects such as classic cars, merchants, and cityscapes, Hicks’s work is inspired travel photography informed by a local’s eye, with a further-enhanced neon color palette to exude the heat and vibrancy of Cuban culture. “I hope that my work enlightens people to learn more about our culture,” Hicks has said about her artistic motivations. “I want people to visit Cuba and see it with their own eyes, and hopefully this exhibit will inspire them to do so.” na
Sheyla Paz Hicks, Sin Titulo
Here and Now is open at Ceiba Art Gallery in Plaza Mariachi through January 7. For more information, visit www.ceibagallery.com.
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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COLLECTOR’SCHOICE
Photograph by Rob Lindsay
JOE B. ROWLAND, INVESTMENT ADVISOR
paintings to other walls and literally seeing them in a different light. Like the best collectors, Rowland buys what he loves, and each work of art has a story. He’s conscious of value, but does not worry much about space concerns. Paintings cycle on and off walls, around the house, and to his new home in Palm Springs, too.
WORDS Margaret F. M. Walker
J
oe Rowland, Senior Vice President of Investments for Raymond James, is the type of person art teachers smile upon. He showed an early aptitude for art and, while in another profession, has become a consummate appreciator, patron, and collector of art. Walking into Rowland’s home, the overwhelming sense is that he is a man of excellent—and eclectic—taste. Clean, modern architecture provides a versatile setting for numerous twoand three-dimensional artworks. He takes advantage of this canvas for the collection, if you will, frequently moving
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In the living room, one immediately will notice a kinetic sculpture in the style of Alexander Calder, perched in front of a window. Complementing it is a lithograph by the master, hanging above the fireplace. The largest painting currently in the room, Fair by John Gibson, pops with its vibrant blue and mesmerizes you with its subject of three balls, subtly unfinished, as though sitting on a ledge. Perfectly balanced, they appear still, in defiance of their round shape. Rowland, who went to school for architecture but then turned to business, has always had a keen eye for design. He keeps a file of particularly inspiring magazine clippings from Architectural Digest and other publications, and he realized only after acquiring Fair that he had filed away, years prior, a magazine clipping with another work by Gibson.
Helmut Koller, Rooster Composition on Orange, 2001, Acrylic on canvas, 39” x 67” John Gibson, Fair, 2008, Oil on canvas, 48” x 66”
Three works by Kit Reuther hang within the home and reflect the artist’s growing shift from realism to abstraction. Shown here is Landscape with Fruit, 2001, also currently in the living room. Another balanced work, it contrasts hyperrealist grapes with a neutral, abstracted landscape. In the master bedroom, the painting by Russian artist Andrei Karpov is a scene of humorous activity as the portly figures do various calisthenics.
Robin Wassong, Moon Face, 1996, Oil on board, 32” x 24”
In Rowland’s kitchen is a vibrant Helmut Koller painting of three roosters on an orange background. It has a strong pop-art feel to
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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Kit Reuther, Landscape with Fruit, 2001, Oil on canvas, 40” x 36”
Virginia Derryberry, Anomaly, 1994, Oil on canvas, 30” x 22”
“
Like the best collectors, Rowland buys what he loves, and each work of art has a story.
to be through his constant watching, at home and in his travels, for works that resonate. His first paintings were bought off the street in Rio in 1987. He has a continued fondness for them, and they are still on prominent display amongst more recent purchases. Adrei Karpov, Gymnastics, 1992, Oil on canvas, 48” x 60”
it and enlivens the space. This is one that often is traded out for the space in the living room where the Gibson currently hangs. Rowland notes how, for all this bright painting’s similarities, an observant viewer can see the differences among the three roosters. Rowland has a true love for art, surrounding himself with it in his home and socializing often at local arts events. In 1992 he chaired Artrageous, a precursor to today’s art crawls that was a benefit for Nashville Cares. Rowland’s collection has come
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I asked Rowland what is on his wish list. Are there particular pieces to which he is attuned and always on the lookout for? It is clear from the wonderful variety of his collection that he enjoys the mid-century aesthetic. I was not surprised to learn that a Matisse lithograph and an Ellsworth Kelly are high on his list, as is a Fernando Botero. Always on the lookout for a new work to acquire and enjoy, Rowland has a continued appreciation for the paintings and sculptures around his home, seeing new details in them through time and enjoying their beauty daily. na Contact: Joe.rowland@raymondjames.com
CORRINE COLARUSSO Stack of Twilight | 84 x 66 inches | 2016
A Branch of Anne Daigh Landscape Architect
S h a k i n g th e Twilig ht Through January 4, 2018 Galerie Tangerine is free and open Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM 615 454.4103 Located at 900 South Street, Suite 104
ww w.g a leri etangeri ne.c om
A L L T H E B E S T I N F I N E J E W E L RY 5101 Harding Road Nashville, Tennessee 37205 615.353.1823 s cindiearl.com
Photograph by Jason Myers
EXPLORING the Subtle Power of Nature
WORDS Peter Chawaga
Jason Brueck’s Animal Kingdom
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t may seem counterintuitive to describe the image of a great whale floating above a glowing forest in the fog as “subtle,” but Nashville artist Jason Brueck makes a case that Animal Kingdom, his new series of digital images, combines minimal context and maximum effect. “When putting together Animal Kingdom, I wanted to create a nuanced sense of man versus nature,” Brueck explains. “The truth of the matter is that the world is a shrinking place, and I wanted to create images showing that harsh reality without shoving it in the viewer’s face. I’m a big fan of the less-is-more approach, and when you allow someone to draw their own conclusions, on their own time, it’s much more likely to leave an impression.”
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personal photos and found images in Photoshop, cutting out each individual piece and then layering those pieces on top of one another. With that base, he darkens, fades, blurs, and colors the images so that they blend together in an unlikely but cohesive scene. This approach to subject construction seems to be a common thread throughout Brueck’s work, which often blends disparate images. His Pin Ups series features 1960s calendar girls dropped into the settings of other famous works, like Washington Crossing the Delaware. His series Space & Beyond depicts astronauts in unlikely natural settings. But it’s a process that has yielded particularly strong imagery for Animal Kingdom. In one image from the series One Small Step, a chimp emerges from a space capsule recently landed in the middle of the woods. Though it appears as a non sequitur, many viewers will find that it pulls at something within their imaginations.
One Small Step
Through stark juxtaposition of animal and context—a white elephant tromping through the Arctic, a tiger stalking through a dilapidated city, a flaming buck on top of a banquet-hall table—Brueck throws the viewer into the middle of a fantasy without explanation. It’s an approach meant to elicit the viewer’s own imagination. “It’s my hope that when people see my work, they are slow to process, letting the environment and its inhabitants take form,” says Brueck. “I want people to have questions. I want debate as to what they see versus what their husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend sees. Giving away the plot line too soon or too easily often ruins the experience.” To create these subtly affective images, Brueck combines
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“I think One Small Step is a good representation of the message I’m trying to convey,” Brueck said. “Of course, many will see it and recall how chimps were used to ‘man’ the first space shuttle launches . . . By taking an ironic, manmade machine and placing it in a feral, rustic landscape, occupied by its first pilot, I think it forces the viewer to question how we’re the ones out of place that need to respect natural boundaries. “Thought has always been my primary objective when creating new work,” Brueck says. “When someone sees my work, I want them to think. I want them to laugh. I want them to discover something the second time that they didn’t see the first.” The provocation of thought, a standard that inspires Brueck’s approach and process, is clearly evident in Animal Kingdom and its confounding, context-free take on natural images. “I hope that when people see my work, Animal Kingdom in particular, it gives them that moment of pause to think about their part in the grand scheme of things and the opportunity they have to affect real change,” Brueck concludes.
Glory Days
Dirty Apes
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The truth of the matter is that the world is a shrinking place and I wanted to create images showing that harsh reality without shoving it in the viewer’s face.
The Breach
War & Peace
Brueck’s art is sold in galleries around the country, including ones in St. Petersburg, Florida; Austin, and Chicago. He has exhibited at the University of Michigan, Texas A&M University, and Drexel University, among others. His work and that of his wife, artist Kate Harrold, is sold locally through their Raven & Whale Gallery at the Idea Hatchery in East Nashville. na To learn more about Brueck and see other images from Animal Kingdom, please visit www.alterimagesart.com.
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CAVE
NICK
Photograph by Gina Binkley
WORDS Audrey Molloy
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You go along for years knowing something is wrong, then suddenly you discover that you’re as transparent as air. At first you tell yourself that it’s all a dirty joke, or that it’s due to the ‘political situation’. But deep down you come to suspect that you’re yourself to blame, and you stand naked and shivering before the millions of eyes who look through you unseeingly.
A Psychological
FEAT.
Photography by James Prinz
—Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
Frist Center for the Visual Arts through June 24
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n imposing human-like form stands erect on a white pedestal. It is clad in an impressive two-piece ensemble whose surface has been consummately adorned with an array of silvered reflective buttons. The arms and feet of the garment’s inhabitant are shrouded in elongated fabric, its face a massive flat, circular form whose dark fibrous facing swirls hypnotically. This extravagant material composition completely cloaks the armature, or figure, which occupies the form so bodily— rendering an encounter with this flamboyant exterior decidedly psychological. This ambiguous sculptural form, Soundsuit (2017) by artist Nick Cave, is one of several works included in Feat. at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, a survey exhibition of phantasmagoric sculptural works and garments by Cave which quietly romanticize material identity. The Chicago-based artist is best known for his sensorial and absurdist wearable assemblages comprised of repurposed objects and craft materials—referred to by the artist as “soundsuits”—whose formal impetus is as a type of armor against racially motivated police brutality. Feat. is a continued curatorial approximation of Cave’s investigation into the preciousness of materiality and its latent function to simultaneously conceal and reveal. In this exhibition, Cave has eschewed former sensorial displays, electing instead for a quieter and less polemic trajectory of works constructed over the last decade. Rescue (2014) figures a ceramic basset hound and vintage
Soundsuit, 2016, Mixed media, including vintage toys, wire, metal, and mannequin, 84” x 45” x 40”
settee canopied beneath a net of metal flowers and ceramic birds, a material thematic repeated in the nesting synthetic headpiece of Soundsuit (2012). This motif is likewise apparent in the four massive wall panels which comprise Wall Relief (2013), a chaotic sculptural detritus of strung crystals, afghan textiles, gramophone components, and disparate porcelain ware, all composed within a densely structural floral framework. A textural embodiment of Cave’s sculptural work, Wall Relief grapples with the material multiplicity of the sculptural Soundsuits but disavows the inherent tension of “concealing” in its immediate disillusioning relationship to the wall.
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Soundsuit, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Nick Cave. Photo: James Prinz Photography
Soundsuit, 2015, Mixed media, including vintage washboard, buttons, synthetic hair, fabric, metal, and mannequin, 100” x 24” x 16”
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Soundsuit, 2015, Mixed media, including enameled can lids, macramé, shoelaces, plastic beads, metal, and mannequin, 99” x 32” x 27”
Architectural Forest, 2011, Bamboo, wood, wire, plastic beads, acrylic paint, screws, fluorescent lights, color filter gels, and vinyl, 136” x 372” x 192”
Notably, more politically urgent works from recent years, such as TM 13, (2015)—a sculptural work which figures a black man in a hooded sweatshirt, who, ensconced in beaded netting, and which was constructed in direct reference to the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012—do not appear. Rather, Cave softly surfaces the visual language of identity politics in earlier works like Untitled (2014), which figures a cast bronze arm extending out from a cacophonous pile of white linen folds, and a Soundsuit from 2012 which employs early African masquerade stylization in the form of sequins and crochet patterning. It is in these works which the black body figures most readily, albeit subtly, and that his implication of weighted material reference quite physically alludes to interior identities. It is the enigmatic selection of Soundsuits on exhibit in Feat. where Cave’s investigations of material identity is most psychologically tense. Exhibited along a long raised runway in one of the Frist’s more narrow rooms, ten of Cave’s monumental Soundsuits are staggered at various discursive angles. A seemingly hyperbolic assortment of festoons, buttons, beads, wires, ceramic vessels, knitted crochet, pipe cleaners, vintage toys, upholstery,
amalgamated thrift items, and icons of collective nostalgia, have been interwoven to form idiosyncratic edifices for human containment. A Soundsuit from 2015, constructed from enameled can lids, shoelaces, plastic beads, and macramé, is one of the more abstract and resplendent suits on display and which digresses quite entirely from the human form beneath. Certainly, despite the suits’ extravagant exterior materiality, the complexity of this work is manifest in the inherent function of a garment—to concurrently conceal and reveal the body. This ideology is iterated concisely in Blot (2012), perhaps one of the more surprising works in the exhibition. Breaking from the established quietude and object staticity upheld throughout Feat., this video work images a Soundsuit in action. In it, an amorphous figure enveloped in a multi-threaded suit of black raffia—a fiber extracted from palm trees native to tropical Africa and Madagascar—transposes upon itself in the stark whiteness of a single channel projection. The central figure contracts and extends volatilely from the center of the frame, intermittently revealing grasping hands and feet out from
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Rescue, 2014, Mixed media, including ceramic birds, metal flowers, ceramic basset hound, and vintage settee, 70” x 50” x 40”
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Soundsuit, 2012, Mixed media, including beaded and sequined garments, fabric, metal, and mannequin, 110” x 25” x 12”
Certainly, the repeated allusion to the necessary occupancy of these works by a body, and their relative lack of ascertainable identity, work well to construct a psychological mystique as to who and why a body might don these garments. Given the known origin of these works as armour for the black body against racially profiled police violence, there is plainly a social provocation. Yet, Feat. in its differentially quiet, still curation does not overtly call to racial injustice as it introduces an experiential element wrought with personal culpability.
implicates attendants in an actionable viewing experience whereby notice of the self is a cognizant and accountable instrument antecedent to accessing the work. Feat. is an interrogation of materiality, identity, and the causal relationship of those multitudinous solutions Cave has exhibited for his viewers. na Nick Cave: Feat. is on view at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts through June 24, 2018. For more information, please visit www.fristcenter.org.
Entering the exhibition, visitors and patrons encounter a large wall affixed with a psychedelic wallpaper culled from a detailed photograph of Cave’s work. Upon it, the title Feat. refracts distorted faces of museum-goers in its mirrored surface. Referent to the abbreviation of “featuring” or a “feat of work,” this reflective introduction demonstrably
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Photograph by Gina Binkley
the folds of its shaking material vessel. It is not dissimilar in form from a Rorschach blot.
Soundsuit, 2017, Mixed media, including wire, bugle beads, buttons, upholstery, metal, and mannequin, 110” x 63” x 23”
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Rêves D’Automne, Oil on canvas, 24” x 24”
107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 • 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com • Follow us on
at York & Friends Fine Art
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The globes bend the senses, allowing any viewer to ‘be the giant peering into the amusing little worlds of mortal predicaments.
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WORDS Karen Parr-Moody
Traveler CCXC
Let It Snow!
Artists’ Snow Globes Capture the Human Condition with Glass and Water Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art through January 14
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lizzards roar brutally into Pennsylvania each winter, covering the landscape in their snowy embrace. Winds reach gale force, and snowfall is measured in feet, not inches. The landscape is left muted with snow after these blizzards subside, a visual that inspired Pennsylvania artists Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz after they moved to the state in 2001. “Unlike hurricanes, the devastation of a blizzard is muted by its power to cover,” Martin says. “Even as trees fall and structures collapse, they can become integrated
Opposite Page: Night Sky
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The Orchard at Night
into a new landscape which the storm has transformed, morphed, and simplified.”
Martin’s art into her own work, and he wanted to do the same with her work.
Sixteen years ago, as they trudged through snowdrifts surrounding their new home, Martin and Muñoz weren’t sent spinning like wayward snowflakes. Rather, the storms sent them in a clear direction: They began creating snow globes as their canvases, thus parlaying objects commonly viewed as trinkets into fine art.
“What began as sort of a shared-space problem evolved into a serendipitous collaboration,” Martin says. They “delved into the hinterlands” when they moved to Pennsylvania, entering a renaissance phase, as well as experiencing culture shock.
Within these sculptures, snow creates blank artistic platforms onto which the artists produce landscapes and convey their existential musings with Lilliputian figures. Visitors can discover these mysterious worlds in miniature at the Snowbound exhibit that will run through January 14 at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art. The show is paired with the museum’s “Holiday Lights” extravaganza. The exhibit will include eighteen snow globes and several large-scale photos depicting surreal scenes. It was curated by Brian Downey, the museum manager of 21c Nashville, a property of the 21c Museum Hotels group that installs contemporary art museums in its hotels. Martin and Muñoz met in 1993 at an art exhibit in New York City and married about a year later. They shared a studio space in the city, but were working separately on art—that is, until Muñoz found that she wanted to incorporate aspects of
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“We experienced some very hard winters during which we sometimes felt like our house was a boat frozen in an ice floe. It was not as bad or as funny as Charlie Chaplin starving in his cabin in The Gold Rush or as dire as a real ship being caught in an ice floe, as with the Shackleton expedition. But the move affected us. It was wonderful being stuck in the snow, but it was also lonely and strange.” The snow globes borne of this experience are nine inches high and six inches in depth and width. The artists use malleable clay to form the bases and then dry them in an oven. That model becomes a rubber mold that is used to cast the final mold in white polyurethane. Being miniature worlds, the globes contain landscape elements, such as trees, houses, and benches made of various materials. The Lilliputian figures that populate these landscapes are mostly store-bought, but are often adapted to scenes by being cut up and reassembled. These scenes are painted with model enamel paint, then assembled and covered in several coats of UV-resistant resin.
Traveler CCCXVIII
Traveler CCCV
Traveler CCCIV
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It was wonderful being stuck in the snow, but it was also lonely and strange.
The final artwork is unlike anything else. The globes bend the senses, allowing any viewer to “be the giant peering into the amusing little worlds of mortal predicaments,” Martin says. What Martin calls “serendipitous distortions” exist due to the convex nature of the glass globe, along with the water. Objects that are farther away appear much larger. Taller elements, like trees or houses, appear to bend. If the viewer changes his or her perspective, the distortions will change as well.
This, in part, explains why their snow globes have had an artistic lifespan of sixteen years. “Blizzards have the powerful attributes of an atmospheric demigod, one that inspires fear and wonder and imposes its will upon all,” Martin says. “Blizzards are sublime. They are tempests in our teapots.” na Snowbound is on view through January 14 at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art. For more information, visit www.cheekwood.org. To see more of Walter Martin’s and Paloma Muñoz’s art, visit www.martin-munoz.net.
Photograph by Deborah Feingold
“But the snow globes are more than tiny dioramas,” Martin says. “They also have a latent potential. By giving the globe a shake, you can energize its kinetic component. Then you see what you have really encapsulated is a facsimile of weather.” At their poetic heart, these snowy tableaux illustrate the various phenomenon of human existence, the key one being ambiguity. “Ambiguity is the one we are most comfortable with,” Martin says. “Another recurring emotion might be described as laugh-out-loud resignation, a.k.a. gallows humor.” He continues, “The scenes are modest things, sort of like ephemeral thought bubbles or like sketchbook drawings for ideas that never get fully realized.” Snow is so much more than an atmospheric phenomenon for Muñoz and Martin, and blizzards never fail to inspire them.
Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz
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The first major exhibition to explore the various ways American artists responded to the First World War.
Through January 21
Organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
World War I and American Art at PAFA was made possible in part by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and from the Henry Luce Foundation. The PAFA Presenting Sponsor for this exhibition is the Exelon Foundation and PECO.
Downtown Nashville 919 Broadway Nashville, TN 37203 fristcenter.org/wwi #WWIFCVA
The Frist Center is supported in part by the FRIENDS OF AMERICAN ART and
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Gassed (detail), 1919. Oil on canvas, 90½ x 240 in. Imperial War Museums, London. Photo © IWM Imperial War Museums, Art.IWM ART1460
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Photograph by Nina Covington
WORDS Sara Lee Burd
A
ndee Rudloff doesn’t care to take up any particular titles. Her card reads painter, consultant, and curator, and she’s always looking to grow opportunities. She pulls from her array of experiences gained through myriad positions in the arts. With one foot in Nashville and the other in Bowling Green, Kentucky, she’s a seminal figure of the arts in our region. Rudloff’s boldly colored murals filled with interlocking geometric forms can be found around the nation. However, at any given time you can check her website and find an opportunity to pick up a paintbrush with her in Nashville. Triumphantly committed to all things local, Rudloff sources all of her paint and supplies locally. She’s not just about painting walls. The artist approaches functional public art as a way to promote cross-generational conversations, business, and of course, community. Recently taking a leap into printmaking, she continues to push herself as an artist. It is in the context of Rudloff’s constant flurry of adventures in art, and also her escalating concern for working artists in Nashville, that we began our conversation.
AndeeRudloff
Paints It Forward Sara Lee Burd (SLB): Did you always know you were going to make murals?
be a lot of different things. It could be a school, a church, a business, a neighborhood, a town . . . it changes.
Andee Rudloff (AR): In some ways. I grew up in a house where people worked all the time. If I wanted people to see what I was up to, I had to put it somewhere they could see it.
SLB: Recently you’ve added a new mode of making. What inspired you to take up printmaking?
As an art student in college preparing for my senior show, I questioned putting my work in the gallery. It was open only when people are at work. I was super inspired by people like Keith Haring. He really talked about murals as being the most democratic way of taking art in. It is open to everyone and all interpretations. We both think about working-class people and allowing them to experience art on their own. One thing that separates me from a regular muralist is community interest, the vision to want to build the project with the community that I am in. When I use that term “community” it could
AR: What really, really started it was Trump’s ban on refugees. I could not be OK with that. I was nauseated, angry, and didn’t know how I could help, but I grew up in a town where our international center was thriving. Thirty percent of the population of my little town in Kentucky was from another part of the world. We all felt like we could learn from each other. I had been thinking about prints. I had drawn this mosaic heart that was looking at you in disbelief. At the same time it was fierce, like I’m not backing down. Then I have this script in the background. I guess you could call it street lettering. I put “Love” above it. I
rented the Platone print shop and hired them out of my own pocket to teach me. I’m doing it partly because I want to take a painterly approach to printing. I thought we should put it on T-shirts, but not keep the proceeds. We found a program at the International Center of Kentucky-Bowling Green where they were providing immigrants and refugees training on electric sewing machines. At the end of the class they receive the machine. All of the money from the T-shirts went to support that program. SLB: I see that democratic spirit Haring discussed in your printmaking. It’s another form of art that can be disseminated easily. Visible on T-shirts on the streets and on prints within people’s homes. There is a sense of community that comes from that. AR: Yeah, I don’t want my art to be too precious. That’s why sometimes I paint
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Photograph by Stacey Irvin
enough knowledge of what goes into this, or if the financial support for all of those efforts is even there. SLB: Do you think there is more the city or state could do to make Nashville a place where artists can live and work?
on the most random objects. I want people to see it and interact with it. SLB: Over the years, what has been your experience as a woman working in painting? AR: When I first started coming to Nashville, I’d see favorites like Myles Maillie, Red Grooms, and Paul Harmon. I didn’t really see women artists out there until Sherri Warner Hunter, whose sculptures were really inspiring to me. I thought, yeah, I’m going to work big, too. I’m going to do this!
When I show up at some places people expect me to be a male. They see the name Andee, and then here comes this excited, happy, covered-in-paint girl. It’s sometimes hesitation like oh, wait . . . is she going to be able to do this? People know me more now than they used to do. I can tell the difference. I used to walk in ready to paint, and I’d be dismissed because there were two men there. I was definitely thought of as less than. Constantly being told to work harder. I’m up for work, but then there are other factors. I’ve had it happen a lot where maybe I should be the person at the table, but the one who has a
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dress from such and such place has that place. She’s palatable. This has made me become fiercely private. There is a growing community of female muralists. I don’t know how many of them are making a living full time as artists, and I honestly don’t know all of them. The idea that we all know each other is long gone. The people that I see getting hired for larger projects are male, but I hope there will be more women. SLB: The Nashville standard of living is rapidly changing. How do you think this affects the arts? AR: I’m feeling very desperate to make sure that we do not lose our community. It’s not just that fear; it’s also excitement about what we have. I’m one of the few female artists who have been able to make it in the arts. When you see friends dying, you start to value every moment you get to do what you want to do. I hope that more people who want to get to do it. We are putting arts out there as a reason to come to Nashville whether music, theatre, performing and visual art. I can’t say that every organization is seeing the same rush of sales or ticket purchases, though. Nashville is doing everything they can to tie things in, but it takes a lot of time and space to make this happen. I don’t know that there is
AR: If you take a poll of artists’ zip codes, you are going to find that they are already moving out of the city. The development of “affordable” housing in Nashville is still way more expensive than it used to be. We need space for our stuff, and space is getting more expensive. Some can’t even afford an apartment in town anymore. Living outside of Davidson County means we need to open up our grants and give mandates to businesses to buy art from people living within 100 miles. We can maintain that local voice. Cheekwood used to have community art projects where ten to twelve artists would get together to make something . . . like the “Three Little Pigs.” We loved it! We got paid; we learned from each other, and we had fun. The next project was not as hard because we had all built our skill sets on the job. If we can’t find those big community projects that we all get paid to do, we still need opportunities. I see a lot of programs that appeal to new and emerging artists. I feel there are fewer programs there to assist mid-career and established artists. Paid apprenticeships that leverage the skills of both artists could help. SLB: How do people find opportunities in the arts? AR: I suggest you contact the person who is doing stuff. It’s that simple. When people contact me, they don’t know if I can help them but maybe I know someone who does. I started using #DoStuff. I think that pretty much encompasses what I do to get from one thing to the next thing to the next thing.
SLB: Do you have any guidelines to shape your professionalism?
I’m always wearing overalls, and I get accused sometimes of looking like a farmer. I can’t think of a better metaphor for what I am doing. I’m doing nothing more than going out and going up and down the rows every day, every day, every day. It doesn’t get monotonous, because I always encounter something new. It is about going out and doing the work.
Photograph by Stacey Irvin
AR: If I accept a job for less than it is worth, then that is going to continue to happen. I slowly go into things making sure people know what they are asking me to do. I put a value on it. I never ever start it out with “this is how much I am going to charge.” I always start out with a conversation. What I have found is that these turn into big and bigger opportunities for me to educate someone on what they are actually asking an artist to do and also what the value of that is. If one project isn’t panning out, I reach out to the next one and the next one. Sometimes an avalanche of work happens, and sometimes it is time for me to dream something new. SLB: How do you manage requests from charities and fundraisers? AR: I’m cautious about it. I don’t want the work to become devalued. I don’t want someone to chuckle at one of my shows saying, oh I got that for $80 at a charity auction. I encourage artists to do multiples, do prints, something that can be easily replicated. At an auction there is not that time to really discuss process and connect with it. It just doesn’t pan out. If I feel strongly about an organization, I have limited-edition prints I can donate. I don’t think the original work gets its moment to shine in those sorts of arenas. People just can’t afford to give away original art. SLB: What about working without compensation in other arenas?
AR: I used to sit on committees for free. Then I started to realize, hey, that’s four hours of my time. I’d see my ideas reflected, but I am wondering, why did I do that? Now, I’m a consultant and I charge for my time. I’m happy to be part of a committee but at an hourly rate. SLB: How are you bringing the fight? AR: I don’t want us to get ignored because we are local. I don’t want to get ignored because I’m 5’3” and female. I may come in bubbly and smiley, but there is grit in this dog! I’ll be as nice as I can be until I realize, wait, that isn’t right. I want to be part of the solution. Don’t ignore the contributions of working artists. Don’t ignore the doers, those who don’t have a platform but are there turning the wheels. I’m taking vitamin B every morning. I’m out here doing it. I love being an artist, and I don’t want to stop. na
Photograph by Stacey Irvin
Photograph by Nina Covington
For more about Andee Rudloff, visit www.chicnhair.com.
2017 Photo competition sponsored by
Nashville Arts Photo Competition This year’s competition saw over five hundred local, national and international entries. Here are the top ten chosen by our guest judge Jackie Heigle, Associate Professor of Photography at MTSU. All entries can be viewed online at www.nashvillearts.com.
B. D. Scott
First Place - $500 cash prize
This formally constructed image of complementary color, exquisite lighting, and exceptionally tactile detail and form becomes a powerful lyrical expression approaching that of music and opera, thereby evoking similar emotions and response. 48
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Photograph by Priyanka Modi
Jackie Kerns Heigle, Guest Judge Jackie Kerns Heigle is an Associate Professor in Photography and the new Curator for the Baldwin Photographic Gallery at MTSU. Originally from Memphis, Jackie received her BS in Journalism/Advertising from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her MFA from the University of Memphis. Her personal work explores the American vernacular and landscape, utilizing a variety of alternative approaches to photography, including pinhole photography, wet plate photography, and Hockneyesque multiimage composites. Jackie resides part-time in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Buddy Jackson Second Place $300 Chromatics Gift Certificate
I chose this image, again, for its evocative composition of light, form, color, and environment. It is beautiful to behold, successfully references the Dutch mastery of similar subject, color, and light. The punctum, the kicker of this image, is the tattoo on the leg.
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Sainadh Mallula Third Place $200 Chromatics Gift Certificate
Technical perfection in capturing light, color, and movement at a fair, so this image has a nostalgic pull. However, again, I relate my reading and experience of an image to the times in which we are living. This past year saw airlines under attack for policies and actions in overbooking . . . In this image, every choice of the photographer resonates for me—which ride, which moment. Notice the empty seat, the airplane emblems . . .
Honorable mentions in their own words‌
Sarah Taylor
Chris Parsons
I was drawn to how the water made his body seem like an obscured oil painting. Taken in Florida with 120mm color film.
The tintype process fully captures the detail and symmetry of the natural world while embracing the beauty of imperfection.
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Jerry Park I took this shot on a recent trip to Wales, England. These are storage sheds on the beach at Teignmouth, on the English Channel coast.
Renee Lowery This photograph was taken in the dining car of a restored antique train.
Robert Greenberg This photo was taken in the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Southern Colorado. On seeing this particular dune I was struck by the graceful curvature and the light falloff as it came over the edge. NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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Jo Fields Standing Together: Friends traveling a well-worn path into a misty and uncertain future in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, symbolizes our deep, interdependent and timeless relationship with nature.
Grace Parker A lone spot of light illuminates laundry hanging to dry, a spot of color among the shadowy rooftops of Phnom Penh.
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Jill McMillan Executive Director, Arts and Business Council Not one to shy away from a challenge, Jill McMillan recently packed her bags and moved to Nashville to fill some rather large shoes. As the new Executive Director of the Arts and Business Council, McMillan is following in the footsteps of the gracious and heroic Casey Summar. Not an easy task for mere mortals, and yet McMillan jumped feet first right into the deep end, sink or swim. And swim she did. The Boston transplant has quickly settled into her new role and is charting new courses for the organization. Resetting the controls is her forte, and we cannot wait to see where she guides the ABC. For more information, www.abcnashville.org.
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WORDS Paul Polycarpou PHOTOGRAPHY Jerry Atnip What’s it like being you these days?
Contemporary Art—she was a master class in leadership.
It’s exhausting, but so exciting. I basically changed my entire life in the last six months. From living alone in Boston and being in a long-distance relationship, working at the Institute of Contemporary Art and taking public transportation everywhere, to moving down to Nashville, learning to drive again, moving in with my boyfriend, getting a puppy, and starting a new job, it’s been a complete one-eighty. Fun, and a total dream, but exhausting.
What’s your greatest extravagance?
What do you like most about Nashville? I love the openness of the people here and the willingness to collaborate. So what do you like least about our fair city? People don’t use turn signals when they’re driving. As a newbie, how do you feel about this incredible growth spurt the city is experiencing? I think the expansion has led to a great energy in the city. The reason people are coming here is that they see the potential that exists here. It’s only going to get better. Describe a perfect evening? Dinner at home with Ethan and our puppy. We also like to go to concerts, an evening at the theatre. How does Nashville rate as a cultural city? I think we are a cultural city on the rise. I’m not sure I would say it is world class yet, but we’re getting there. The talent is definitely here. What talent would you really like to have? I’d like to be an artist. More specifically, I’d really like to be able to sing well. I sing in the car, the shower, dancing around the living room, but I’m not a great singer. So when you’re alone in the car, what are you listening to? I gravitate towards singer/songwriters like Sara Bareilles or Ben Rector; or indie pop/rock like Best Coast, Alvvays, Jimmy Eat World, The Killers. And if I’m in the mood, I’ll bust out the eighties power ballads. If not Nashville, where would you live? The Twin Cities appeal to me, but if we’re talking anywhere in the world, probably Cinque Terre in Italy. Which Nashville artists have you gravitated towards? I’m still learning about the art community here. I’ve seen great work here, but I don’t know enough to pick out favorites. What do you consider one of your best qualities? I’m pretty easygoing under pressure. I can turn off the anxiety and roll with what needs to be done. I try to be mindful of the moment.
Theatre and concert tickets! And travel. So who would you like to have coffee with? In the art world that would be Jenny Holzer. I’d like to talk to her about how she is using her voice as an artist to impact social change. Also, Connie Britton and Amy Poehler. I love both Friday Night Lights and Parks and Recreation and think they would be so fun to just hang out with. What are you really bad at? I’m pretty bad at cooking. I can follow any recipe and have something turn out, but I’m not very good at coming up with things on my own or planning meals. Are you a night person or a morning person? Absolutely a night person. If I had my way I would stay up to 2 a.m. and sleep in till 10. What would most surprise people about you? That I am fluent in German. A little rusty now. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would that be? I have an awful sweet tooth that I think I inherited from my father. I wish I had a little more self-control when it comes to sweets, but also chocolate is just so good, I can’t help myself. What can you not leave the house without in the morning? My cell phone and my coffee. Coffee’s a ritual thing for me; it lets me know the day’s about to begin. What’s your wish for the Arts & Business Council? That it really becomes the resource hub for the creative community. What’s your favorite color? Cerulean blue. What are you most proud of? I’m most proud of the risks I have taken. I have strong gut instincts, and I follow them. I’m confident in my choices. I’m proud of that. What’s your mantra? Fortune favors the bold. If you’re open and willing to new opportunities, they will find you. What’s your favorite word in the English language? Bonkers—it’s a good expression of crazy without being too positive or negative. Why should art and business exist in the same sentence?
I started out thinking I would do film and television marketing, but here in Nashville working in the music industry appeals. Either way, it would still be in the arts. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
They are mutually beneficial to each other. To be a good business person you have to be innovative and creative and problem-solve, which are a lot of the same skills artists have. And artists need those business skills, accounting, finance, management, to have a successful career in the arts. And that’s why we’re here.
Who have you most admired?
Do you like country music?
The immediate answer is my mother; she is someone I always look up to. And Jill Medvedow, my director at the Institute of
No, not really, I mean I like some of it, but it’s not my first choice on the radio. na
What other profession appeals to you?
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Photograph by Ron Manville
Pray to Love
Anne Goetze
Monthaven Arts & Cultural Center through January 5 WORDS Amanda Dobra Hope
“A
ll of us look for purpose and inspiration in our lives. For me, this has given me both and enriched many areas of my life.” That about sums it up for Anne Goetze, Leiper’s Fork artist, in speaking about her current work Pray to Love, which has made its way back to Nashville after a journey around the U.S. The exhibit, inspired by and featuring Goetze’s aunt, a life-long closed-cloister nun with the Visitation Order in Annecy, France, made its original Nashville area debut at the Customs House Museum in 2015. The exhibit’s (as well as Goetze’s) journey began when Mother Superior stumbled upon an article about the show in Nashville Arts Magazine and asked Goetze if she would like to show the series at the monastery in New York. Since then, the exhibit has made its way to monasteries and religious universities all over the United States. When I ask if there are plans to travel internationally with the exhibit after coming home to Nashville, Goetze says, “It needs sponsors to get it to Annecy. It needs the Pope.” Considering our current and very forward-thinking Pope, I imagine this to be a very achievable dream.
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Bird in Hand, 2015, Ashes, oil, archival ink on canvas, 40” x 30”
Pray to Love depicts the consistent acts of stillness by the nuns, as well as the quiet and peaceful landscapes that make up the town that surrounds them. It invokes something in its audience that goes beyond schedules and technology and the busyness and “doing” of our outer lives. When I ask Goetze what she admires most about her aunt and the other nuns, she says, “How tough these little women are. How they live is not easy. Anyone who tried to do that for a few months would find it tough. They are doing it day in and day out.” It bears noting that what she admires most is the stillness and contemplation we all need in order to live complete and whole lives as humans being. As our culture is currently largely adjusted to the act of doing, it’s no wonder we find being so difficult and have such respect for those who practice it in the extreme. As a result of this respect, Goetze’s work on this series demanded a process as powerful as her subjects. “It starts with the photographs, and then everything else is done by hand. I do use digital nowadays, but only because it gives me the freedom to go larger than I could with traditional
Madonna & Child, 2014, Ashes, oil, archival ink on canvas, 30” x 20”
film processed in a darkroom,” she says. After that, she adds layers, glazes, and then oil paints. As we delve further into her process, Goetze reveals that when she is creating, she carefully studies the photo to decide which parts she wants to bring out and which parts she wants to subdue. I can’t help but continue probing into her process of these hauntingly reverent pieces, so I ask her if she ever notices a recurring theme in the aspects of the photos she chooses to augment. “The light!” she exclaims. “The light from a crack in the doorway or the light reflecting off of the large crosses. The light brings me a peace within what I’m doing and reminds me of my own faith.” If you’re interested in bringing more stillness into your own busy life, I urge you to make your way to Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center in Hendersonville, where you can let the energy of these powerful pieces infuse your soul through January 5. na For more, visit www.monthavenartsandculturalcenter.com. See more of Goetze’s art at www.facebook.com/AnneGoetzeArtAndPhotography.
The Blue Pail, 2015, Ashes, oil, archival ink on canvas, 40” x 30”
Sequence V, Acrylic on canvas, 56” x 74”
Haynes Galleries presents WORDS Annette Griffin
Art for Anton & Anton’s Art A celebration of Anton Weiss
E
ach mind develops distinct abstractions. For years, the painter Anton Weiss chiseled his into metal and canvas, offering the autocracy of his energy a place to rest. The tension of this work lay within the depiction, or arrest, of arrant release. In their current season, Haynes Galleries is celebrating this paradox as a tribute to a spirit that can never be captured. As a child, Weiss spent three years in a Russian concentration camp; it took six months for him to escape after his mother had. Their reunion and sponsorship to settle in Middle Tennessee, engendered by various charities, later allowed him to take up tutelage in the arts. He enrolled in the prestigious Art
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Last Remnant, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 48” x 48”
Watercolor (Triangles), Watercolor on paper, 22” x 30”
Fortitude #2, 2009, Acrylic, steel, aluminum and copper, 55” x 35”
Students League in New York, but found it suffocating and left to study under famed post-war painter Hans Hoffman. He returned to Nashville invigorated by his mentor’s teachings and became a luminary of abstract expressionism. In recent years, Weiss’s health has declined. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s has left him in need of indefinite care and is compelling community members to take action. “The long and the short of it is that we hope we can do something positive for Anton,” says gallerist Gary Haynes. “My mother had Alzheimer’s, so I have an interest in that terrible disease. And I have an interest in art and people who do it well, and Anton has done it superbly.” Haynes has made a call to artists for the donation of original paintings, which will be auctioned alongside Weiss’s work in order to “create a little chaos and excitement.” Haynes Galleries’ approach to all this is refreshingly sensitive. Proceeds will go to offset Weiss’s medical bills, and there is heartfelt appreciation for the artist throughout the organization. When I visited the gallery, an assistant knelt on the floor to lay his tools out before me. She presented each one as you might show a small moon to your beloved.
“Look,” she said, pointing to the shining faces bitten by friction. Handmade or altered, each instrument lays claim to the artist’s intimacy. These objects are now on display at the Franklin location, composed as still life. As with intimacy, the correlative between abstract expressionism and Alzheimer’s indicates subterranean systems. In this wilderness, we may uncover a glimpse of the sublime so devastating as to render one inert—but the countenance of our mystery is subjective. Gary Haynes spoke of a visit Weiss made to the gallery after they had hung his work, saying, “When he came and saw all the things that he created, his eyes lit up and he was happy.” A mind can remain in a state of arrest for only so long, even in illness. We can only imagine what Weiss is seeing now. na On December 7, Haynes Galleries will host Art for Anton & Anton’s Art, an auction in the Houston Station Hall Gallery to raise funds for Weiss’s care. For more information, visit www.haynesgalleries.com.
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Fine Art & Gifts
by Olga Alexeeva & Local Artists
www.OGalleryArt.com
Olga Alexeeva, Blue Eyes, Acrylic, 48” x 60”
Olga Alexeeva, artist and owner, is available for commissioned works for home and business Art classes by Olga are conducted weekly
615-416-2537
Open 7 Days a Week • Monday-Saturday 10-6 • Sunday 11-5 1305 Clinton St. Ste. 120 • Nashville, TN 37203
Photograph by Kristine Potter
Kelly Harwood Gallery 202 through December
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Peninsula, Acrylic on wood panels, 8” x 54”
WORDS Gina Piccalo
T
hrough the open door of Franklin’s beloved Gallery 202, beyond four large, light-filled rooms filled with the work of twenty-five Williamson County artists, Kelly Harwood sits at his easel contemplating a cow. A large table next to him is busy with containers of brushes and palette knives. His paint palette is within arm’s reach, wet with a dozen dabs of color, all of them destined for the doe-eyed bovine staring out from a large canvas. Her wide black muzzle is painted with the precision of a photograph. Harwood knows he’s getting close to finishing because the animal has started to really look back out at him. His studio walls are alive with other furry faces, from the self-possessed glance of Fabio the Scottish Highland cow in one corner to the studied gaze of an orangutan in another. “This one is called Keeping the Milk Cold,” he says, chuckling
at his latest cow, who stands in a pond up to her udders. “Sometimes the title sells the painting.” Harwood is a self-taught, self-described country boy from Gadsden, Alabama, who is as capable with a palette knife, sculpting large-scale acrylic abstracts and bold floral still lifes, as he is with the fine brushes he’s using on this animal’s gaze. And his gallery, in the historic Federalist home of the late painter Walter Bunn Gray, has become a hub of Franklin’s art community since it opened in 2010. His work, often commissioned by private collectors and interior designers, sells right off his easel. On this cool October morning, the gallery’s front door is open. Passers-by drift in and out. In a few days, though, the place will be crawling with art lovers, drawn to Franklin’s monthly Art Scene, an art crawl started by Harwood and his longtime friends Ira Shivitz, an ophthalmologist, and gallery manager Jim McReynolds.
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try on the styles of famous artists, from 19th-century French impressionist Edgar Degas to the drip paintings of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. “It really challenged me to broaden my style,” Harwood says. Almost immediately, he had a market for his work, selling to friends and later to interior-design clients. When he couldn’t afford paints or canvases, he used cardboard and paper. “I would roll up some paper in the shape of a flower and then press it into the paint and press it into the canvas,” Harwood, 53, recalls. “I didn’t have paint brushes or tools. I was being creative anyway.” Harwood came to Nashville in the late 1990s and spent a decade as an interior designer at J.J. Ashley’s Interiors in Franklin. Today, he paints almost every day, preferably in the evenings, surrounded by the music of Jack Johnson and the windows that overlook a leafy back yard. When he’s not creating a specific commissioned work, he paints from memory, drawing on imagery from his Alabama childhood, his love of animals, and even his penchant for floral arrangements. Zeus, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”
“The idea was to have artists that were not represented, show their work,” Harwood says. “Now we’ve got the word out there that we support local artists and they don’t have to go somewhere else to be seen.” Today, every business in downtown Franklin is clearing some space for art, and even established artists want to be involved. The event grew so popular so fast that the Downtown Franklin Association had to take over organizing it. “I don’t know if it could go any better,” said Harwood. Harwood grew up the youngest of five, expecting he’d work at the same Goodyear tire manufacturing plant that employed his father and grandfather. He always had a talent for drawing but didn’t know how to make a living at it. Then, when he was 19, his elderly next-door neighbor encouraged him to
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Harwood’s abstracts are reflections from his childhood summers spent at his grandparents’ house on Weiss Lake in northeastern Alabama. They’re textured and sublime in grays, whites, blacks, blues, and something called “Naples yellow.” “I paint as if looking at the land from being in the water rather than looking from one land to the other,” he says. “I’m actually visualizing being on the water or in water.” He may spend weeks layering, then scraping off paint and moving it around the canvas until the scene settles into being. “At the final stages I’ll do glazing and thin down my paints and wash it,” he explains. “That gives you a little more of a dreamy feel and softness to the painting. Sometimes it gives it an ethereal tone.” Harwood’s talent for painting bold textured florals in acrylic
Meditation Lake, Acrylic, 48” x 60”
New Dawn, Acrylic, 60” x 60”
Walking with Shaman, Mixed media, 48” x 48” collaborative painting with Jim McReynolds
comes from his years as an interior designer creating giant floral arrangements for Williamson County’s Heritage Ball. He works as fast as each layer dries, adding layer upon layer, and sometimes gesso. “They connect to it when they see the brush strokes and the palette knife movement,” says the artist. Harwood has painted animals for years, including commissioned pet portraits. While visiting his home in Maui, he paints sea turtles and whales. A couple of years ago, his friend McReynolds, who happens to own a field of cows, suggested he try bovines.
Simple Elegance, Acrylic, 20” x 16”
“They come alive on the canvas,” he says. “They look back, which is a really exciting process.” na Harwood’s work will be featured during the month of December at Gallery 202 in Franklin. For more information, visit www.gallery202art.com.
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WORDS Megan Kelley
Painting with New Eyes: Monique Carr’s new works listen to the language of land York & Friends Fine Art
|
December
Watercolor brushes from China become juicy new textures when infused with acrylics, or the heaviness of Tennessee air reflects in the drips that pour through a painted reflection. Influence intertwines with Carr’s own strong voice, translated into a fusion of global experience feeding deeply personal responses to the local landscapes of her Tennessee home. The works always feel centered, however. Her own curative approach to painting the outdoors lends clarity to her visual voice as she works through multiple images. Mixing her colors before she goes out to paint allows Carr to focus on the environment and the experience of plein-air, while still preserving her own aesthetic and unique vision. “I keep a simple palette,” Carr explains. “I want to explore these colors, not spend my time outdoors mixing.” The choice gives a cohesiveness to the images: In their language of pre-determined palettes, each painting expresses a visual dialect that reflects the identity of that particular region and allows Carr to give intention to the nuances of each individual landscape.
Monique Carr
R
elentlessly curious, Monique Carr is driven by exploration—the physical kind, as she travels the globe and her own Tennessee landscape to experience the elements, but also the artistic kind, her marks influenced by the aesthetics of each place. “Going to countries is so different,” she says. “All the colors and the little things, the little experiences, food and music . . . you come back with all these differences absorbed. What you would take for granted, you see with new eyes.” The work responds in unexpected ways, often in the influence of color choices but also in material and technique.
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With their language secure, Carr can focus solely on the visual character of the work. Her underpaintings are often done in transparent acrylics, the swift-drying sealant allowing the light of the canvas to rise, luminescent, through the final images, preserving fickle moments of passing light and specific feelings that initially caught her breath. As these prepared surfaces dry, Carr prepares for her oil-based work, studying the images and their surrounding landscapes to identify places to preserve darks, carve into paints, and allow areas of underpainting to accent through the more opaque oil. “I look around me; I memorize the most important percent, and then I give in to the painting and forget the rest.” By streamlining her process, Carr can take time to pause along the way, listening to the sensory voices of each place and incorporating them into her chorus. “When I paint outdoors, the water, the winds, the birds, the sounds all increase my energy.” The key, she says, is to step outside of her own expectations and step fully into the environment, opening herself to the unique aspects of each place and the needs of the painting. “I close my eyes and relax. Painting can
Et cetera, Acrylic, 30” x 30”
Misty Blue, Oil, 24” x 24”
Unexplored Territory, Acrylic, 32” x 48”
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Hazy Morning, Acrylic, 24” x 24”
Hide and Seek, Acrylic, 24” x 24”
be stressful, but listening makes me simplify—in my feeling, in my work.” Returning into painting, Carr is focused, refreshed, clear. The movements happen quickly and beautifully. “I literally dance with the work through the brush. There is a fine line between the rhythm of sound and the rhythm of painting; they are intertwined. Listening makes the work more expressive.” The works are resolved as much as possible on site, their energy preserved in the freshness of painting in the moment. Any later return is only to visit for a few minutes, a footnote of process to simplify and edit out extraneous elements. “When I work from a scene, I ask myself what attracted me, why did I want to paint that; why did I like it? I try to bring that into focus, to explore that. But I try to leave as many places as possible”—the drips and marks that occur naturally during the painting, the evidence of the elements of the outdoors and its effect on her decisions—“to let them be as they are.”
Blue Lagoon, Oil, 40” x 30”
As final punctuation—whether added at the finale or in the middle of joy—Carr confesses that each painting holds a tiny exclamation mark: “It is my trademark!” Just as she slows down in the process of painting—honoring the painting process with the attention of time and focus—the playfulness of finding a solitary mark invites audiences to slow down also and reenter that space with her. “To find it, they really have to look. All the while, they are looking at this landscape and getting to know the land more.” na New work by Monique Carr is on view during the month of December at York & Friends Fine Art, located at 107 Harding Place, Nashville, Tennessee, open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please visit www.yorkandfriends.com.
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NeLLie Jo
Bowie Park, Nellie Jo Rainer, oil, 18 x 24
NellieJo@NellieJo.com www.nelliejo.com
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Leonard Koscianski, Lost in the Woods, 2010, Oil on canvas, 46” x 64”
“
By suggesting specific resources related to a student’s particular interests and work, I find I am constantly expanding my own art knowledge base, and that is very beneficial when I am in the studio.
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WORDS Noah Saterstrom
Professors The
at Cumberland Gallery through December 23
H
ave you ever asked an artist what they think about a work of art? You never know what you’re going to get. Some artists are naturally articulate, some not; some talk a line of heady art lingo; some are resolutely antiintellectual. But artists who teach are often another story. Years of group critiques, lectures, and demonstrations are filtered through, and enhanced by, years in the studio experimenting, playing, taking risks, and testing personal resolve. Empty art-speak is of no use to students and neither is faux-punk detachment. Teachers need to deliver good useable ideas, destabilizing questions, and (when required, and sparingly) blunt criticism to dozens of students. Surely, this has to affect the teacher’s own artwork. Right? I went to Terry Thacker’s studio to ask that very question of him: Does he see evidence of his teaching in his work? He thinks that . . . well, actually, I still don’t know just what Terry thinks about the intersection of art and academic practice—mostly because we immediately started talking about his work, his questions, his curiosity; his approach, my approach, my work; his influences, our lives, our families. Our studios. Conversation was swift and informative. In time, the nature and content of the conversation answered the unasked question. There are, of course, many kinds of art teachers. One kind of teacher is a reservoir of knowledge, accumulating and retaining names of artists, titles of works, historical trends, eras, and -isms. Another is more of a rushing stream: improvisational, responsive, swift, and ceaseless. Both are useful for students. The third kind—the stagnant, unyielding curmudgeon—is good for no one. Or at least very few. The Cumberland Gallery has opened a show called The Professors featuring the work of six artists who are, or have been, professors: Cheryl Goldsleger, David Kroll, Terry Thacker, Marcia Goldenstein, Leonard Koscianski, and David Lefkowitz.
David Kroll, Owls and Vase, 2017, Oil on linen, 32” x 28”
Of the six artists, three are retired while three are still teaching; one is a department chair, and one is a Professor Emeritus. They have all shown widely, have work in private and public collections, and are visible nationally and internationally. If we accept the emerging, mid-career, and established trajectory, all these artists fall easily into the latter category. Whatever academic titles or professional adjectives are used to characterize these artists have been earned through decades of studio practice and thousands of hours of critiques and discussions.
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Not long out of grad school, I was a dishwasher at a restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. The painter Robert Godfrey (with whom I was friends) came into the restaurant with two of his academic colleagues. He called me over to introduce me, and as I was wiping my hands on my apron, he simply pointed at us in turn and said, “Painter, sculptor, sculptor, painter.” In that simple gesture, he neutralized the social hierarchy between a dishwasher and a scholar by leveling us all as artists before whatever we might do for a paycheck. When you’re a teacher and an artist, the most important thing is where you put the slash, he’d say. Be an “artistslash-teacher.” According to Thacker, a professor is “one who professes . . . through an exchange within a community of others . . . each individual within that exchange is artist, colleague, teacher, and student.” Each individual. This view allows for an interchangeable relationship between student and teacher. Cheryl Goldsleger refers to the teacher/ student exchange Ch as reciprocal. “Good er yl students often offer Go lds insights into other artists’ leg er, works or processes that enrich me Abs ence , 2017, and my work.” Wa
what artists he keeps close, he not only had a list already in mind, but could move through them chronologically. This opens another question: Does teaching force artists to keep thinking? On a practical level, teachers have to do class preps and research. As Goldsleger said, “By suggesting specific resources related to a student’s particular interests and work, I find I am constantly expanding my own art knowledge base, and that is very beneficial when I am in the studio.” The research component of teaching means that the act of teaching is a form of extended study for the artist. But study comes with the risk of not enough play. Spend too much time in the classroom rather than the studio and you may become less a studio artist and more a studio art historian. You feel the slash beginning to move in front of ‘artist’.
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er
Teaching was never David Kroll’s primary focus or vocation. “I believe I would be doing the same painting without my time teaching,” Kroll said. “After et graduating from school, I m dia did carpentry. I think that had in ” , 12 a direct influence on my painting.” d oo nw sin o Carpentry gave him a reverence for craft e r , t n e m x, oil, pig and skill which informed his future art work— and his teaching. He went on to teach a material-based The role of the teacher is not only to impart knowledge, course in the increasingly concept-based curriculum of the but to initiate that fluid exchange of ideas that allows Art Institute of Chicago. even the teacher/student archetypes (or should that be student-slash-teacher?) to go squirrelly. It’s not linear or On a practical level, of course, teaching provides a fixed. Typical perhaps of a studio artist, the art teacher stable income, as well as access to expensive equipment, embraces variability as the creative force. printing presses, computer programs, and technology that might be out of reach for artists in their own studios. Thacker’s abstract(ish) paintings have more in common with Giotto than Greenberg’s Modernism. He is closer to There are as many reasons for artists to teach as there Beckett than to Pollock. Unpredictability is not a stylistic are for them not to teach. But why collect these artists choice, but a natural byproduct of his curiosity, which together for a show? What do Marcia Goldenstein’s remains stalwart against indoctrination. When I asked him
David Lefkowitz, Tangle # 24, 2007, Oil on wood panel, 10” x 12”
Terry Thacker, Six Strong Women, 2017, Oil on panel, 24” x 18”
high-altitude ethereal landscapes, David Lefkowitz’s spatial experiments on cardboard, David Kroll’s brooding portraits of objects, Cheryl Goldsleger’s analytical mixedmedia works, Terry Thacker’s cinematic abstractions, and Leonard Koscianski’s narrative vignettes have in common? Is the only common ground the fact that they have been artist/teachers? Maybe; maybe that’s enough. Go decide for yourself. Or see David Lefkowitz, Marcia Goldenstein, and Terry Thacker’s panel discussion at Cumberland Gallery on December 16 (11a.m.) and ask them. I’m thinking they will have plenty to say. na
Marcia Goldenstein, Red Cloud Band, 2017, Oil on linen, 36” x 36”
The Professors is showing at Cumberland Gallery through December 23. For more information, please visit www.cumberlandgallery.com.
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WHERE ART FRAMES ARCHITECTURE
IN the GALLERY
Endeavor Fine Art WORDS Catherine Randall Berresheim
E
ndeavor Fine Art not only features work from internationally acclaimed artists—this gallery offers a full range of artistic services. From consulting and commissioned pieces to custom framing, delivery, and installation, the firm does it all. Owner Brenda Linscott and partner Tige Reeve are master designer factotums. EFA clientele’s spaces include commercial, residential, and healthcare. “I meet with the designer and architects and become
Jill Shwaiko, Watching Out for the Birds, Bronze sculpture, 9” x 12” x 5”
Didier Lourenco, Brooklyn 2, Oil on canvas, 60” x 48”
Tige Reeve, Reclamation 1, Mixed media on board, 40” x 32”
part of the team,” Linscott says. For her, this creative process is like a puzzle in form and function, where only after getting a sense of the customer’s tastes and needs does she begin an art package and floor plan.
Artists represented by Endeavor Fine Art include Tolla Inbar from Germany, Didier Lourenco from Spain, Ray Tigerman from Arizona, bronze sculptor Jill Shwaiko, and Tige Reeve. Endeavor Fine Art is open by appointment. na For more information, visit www.endeavorfineart.com. Sculpture by Tolla Inbar, Emotions, Bronze sculpture with patina, 24” x 72” x 22”
Brenda Linscott
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
“I’m always trying to find the ‘it’ factor,” she continues. The ‘it’ is the combination of elements of scale and spatial relationship. Whether in a home or a hospital hallway, each environment is envisioned from the viewer’s point of perspective, and EFA considers how it will look as they journey through the area and the exquisite art that frames the space. “I want everyone to have an interesting experience—those who work there as well as those who visit there,” Linscott says. “I’m like a conduit between my clients and my artists.”
THEBOOKMARK
A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS
Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: Fifty Years of New York Magazine The Editors of New York Magazine If you are one of those stylish people who keep stacks of New York Magazine strewn around the house, consider this a permanent replacement or the perfect gift for someone who just seems to have everything. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the magazine, this gorgeous coffee-table book is packed with content from these last 50 years.
Improvement: A Novel Joan Silber Fiction-lovers rejoice! Joan Silber has written a novel that is perfect to curl up with next to a fire on a cold day, cup of tea in hand. Her artfully rendered, relatable characters and delicate prose propel the intricate plot of Improvement and will stay with you for quite some time.
Community Education
Avedon: Something Personal
The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920–1970
Norma Stevens, Steven M. L. Aronson
Martin Salisbury
At last, the lens has been turned around onto legendary photographer Richard Avedon—a man who helped define American style and culture with his celebrated portraits. This intimate biography was written with the help of Avedon’s longtime business partner and would make the perfect gift for any artist in your life.
Let’s face it, we all judge books by their covers. Those who appreciate books as objects of beauty will want to get their hands on The Illustrated Dust Jacket—a beautiful object itself that contains a visual history of the art that catches your eye on bookshelves.
We’ll take coal in our stockings, as long as it’s char-coal.
Gift certificates for spring Community Education classes available online. December ACE Ad_Nashville Arts.indd 1
W. 11/8/17 11:53 AM
Photograph by Anthony Popolo
Nashville Opera’s
Maria de Buenos Aires
WORDS Joseph E. Morgan
T
he origin of the word “tango” seems lost in the mists of time, but it surely emerged in the amalgamation of African and Spanish cultures in the La Plata area (Argentina and Uruguay) of South America. Although in its earliest use the tango was closely related to the Cuban habanera, by the 20th century the music and dance as we now know it had emerged from the arrabales (suburbs) and spread to the barrios (slums) of Buenos Aires. As a couple’s dance, it is considered to be a sexualized and stylized expression of machismo culture in the male’s stance of confidence, danger, and sexual optimism, constantly contrasted with the passive, if not oppressed, female partner. It was with this history in mind that on November 10–12 the Nashville Opera gave a steamy, sold-out, and wait-listed production of Maria de Buenos Aires, Ástor Piazzolla’s “little tango opera” (tango operita). The production was held in a transformed Noah Liff Opera Center, featuring an immersive cabaret setting complete with cocktails and candlelight. Written in 1968, Piazzolla’s work sets a modern, surrealist libretto by the Uruguayan-Argentinian poet Horacio Ferrer. Although Ferrer’s narrative is not always clear, the symbolic imagery, a mix of religious and nostalgic images filtered through the harsh realities of life in the barrio, can be beautiful and quite poignant. As such, the title character is simultaneously a heroine, a prostitute, an embodiment of tango, a Christ figure, and a Madonna figure who was, as the Payador informs us, “ . . . born on a day when God was drunk;
that’s why three crooked nails hurt in her voice . . . She was born with a curse in her voice!” Nashville did very well by casting the extraordinarily charismatic Mexican mezzo-soprano Cassandra Zoé Velasco for the title role. Her instrument exuded a dramatic warmth with a sensitive but exacting intonation. In contrast to Maria, the character of the Payador is a “gaucho itinerant singer” that functions as a dangerous poet and narrator throughout the work. He was played with zeal by baritone Luis Alejandro Orozoco, a veteran of the part. Baritone Luis Ledesma played a remarkably creepy El Duende, a kind of spirit goblin that accompanies Maria throughout her life. The first act deals primarily with Maria’s life, culminating with her death at the hands of a “Chief old thief,” while in the second act she is condemned to hell (which turns out to be Buenos Aires), and she dwells there as a spirit. This act and the opera culminate with her redemption; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to herself, bringing the plot (like Dante’s hell) into a closed circle, except that now Maria’s prayer “Our Maria of Buenos Aires, forgotten art thou amongst women,” has changed to “…portent art thou amongst women.” If Ferrer’s libretto is circular, it is perfectly written to accommodate Piazzolla’s score, which features one dance after the other and each impossibly more beautiful than the last. Piazzolla’s specialized chamber ensemble includes the Con’t on next page
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authentic instruments of tango, a 38-button accordion called a bandoneon, a violin, flute, and guitar. For this production, Nashville Opera brought in Rodolfo Zanetti to perform on the bandoneon, and his performance was spectacular. Particularly in the fifth Scene, the Fuga y misterio, which is a huge fugato featuring a twelve-bar subject in four voices, Zanetti and the ensemble performed with delightful abandon. Music Director Dean Williamson was positively beaming as he led the ensemble through this virtuosic piece. Violinist Christina McGann, Guitarist Paul Brannon, and Flutist Deanna Little also deserve recognition, not only for technical virtuosity (of which there was much) but also for their musicality. Under John Hoomes’s ingenious staging, the tango becomes more than just a character in Maria’s life; it is a structural component of the society in which she lives. In her youth, it seduces her (as a child she was played beautifully by Zazou France Gray), and as she grows the dance claims her even as she claims it. Anthropomorphized by tango artists Mariela Barufaldi and Jeremías Massera, across the evening Maria is embraced, isolated, ostracized, swindled, comforted, crucified, and redeemed by the tango. Although she is redeemed at the end, Maria is simultaneously reborn into the same circumstances where she died, closing a never-ending circle of oppression from within the dance, effectively turning a lieto fine into a broader tragedy and moral message—yet another generation is forced to live and die in the face an oppressive, machismo culture. When one considers the almost daily allegations of sexual misconduct committed primarily by male cultural and political leaders, the contemporary, if not timeless, relevance of Ferrer, Piazzolla, and Hoomes’s message is undeniable. na
Photograph by Anthony Popolo
On January 27, Nashville Opera returns with a production of Hercules vs. Vampires at TPAC, which they promise will be “a fantastic night of over-the-top fun.”
Molly Tuttle
1938 Martin 00-42
GUITAR LOVE FIND IT AT
PHOTOGRAPHY John Partipilo
WORDS Bob Paxman
Gilda’s Club
Impacting Lives Through the Healing Power of Art
H
annah Greene and Arbor McRoberts create some eye-popping art that will likely hang in a renowned gallery someday soon. They can rightfully declare that their earliest works were first displayed on the Clubhouse wall at Gilda’s Club Middle Tennessee in Midtown Nashville, which provides support and other essential programs for cancer patients of all ages, free of charge. Budding young artists Greene, now 21, and McRoberts, 15, could easily be termed beneficiaries of the Gilda’s Club expressive arts workshops as well as the organization’s numerous support and networking groups. Both have battled cancer from a young age and are currently in posttreatment phases.
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“
When you’re going through a rough period, whether you’re four years old or in your teen years, it’s that place where you have that family that will listen to you and is very caring and non-judgmental. It gives you a sense of hope. —Hannah Greene
Art instructor Jill Mayo and Patti Cryer
Greene’s talent has already been recognized by the Wilson County Fair, which chose her art for the official fair poster in 2012. McRoberts, who works mainly with markers, finds his inspiration in the mediums of street art, urban art, and graffiti. Their stories serve as literal living proof of the link between self-expression and dealing with a devastating disease. Megan Ingram Forshey, Program Manager at Gilda’s Club, is totally on board with the concept of art as therapy. “There is a correlation,” Forshey says. “A big part of what we’re doing has always been expressive art.” That is especially crucial for the Gilda’s Club teen population, in Forshey’s view. “When expressing feelings just through discussion is difficult, art provides that outlet that is so helpful and important, even more so for teens than your average adult,” she assesses. “A lot of times, people find it hard to put into words what they’re going through. Sometimes, they can express that through any kind of art modality. And often, when they get their hands busy, they get their mouths busy as well, so they start to tell their stories and support each other in a non-traditional support environment.” Twice a month on Monday evenings, Gilda’s Club Middle
Jill Mayo, Patti Cryer, Maria Duvall, Irene Trompeter, Nancy Kaylor, Joyce Choate, and Anne Edwards
Tennessee hosts a support group, Been There Done That, specifically for teens that have been diagnosed with cancer. “That group is where Hannah and Arbor processed much of their experience with the help of multiple different types of artistic expression,” Forshey explains. “The art becomes the expression of the cancer experience itself in some cases. But at other times, it simply serves as comfort and a distraction of sorts so that some important and difficult conversations can be had in a group setting.” The Gilda’s Club expressive arts programs are led by volunteers who share plenty of skill and experience. “Our volunteers come to us through a variety of ways,” Forshey says. “Some hear about us through our members and reach out to volunteer in their specific area of expertise.” Often, the patients themselves will inquire about a specific class, and Gilda’s Club will seek out possible instructors at their request. The arts program has grown exponentially with the number of volunteers. “‘We opened our doors in 1998, and we have steadily added new volunteers and classes,” Forshey notes. “In the beginning, we had just a handful of volunteers.” Over nearly twenty years, that number has reached into the hundreds.
Joyce Choate and her mother, Anne Edwards
Drawing by Hannah Greene
Arbor McRoberts, Program Manager Megan Forshey, and Hannah Greene
The workshops run by the volunteers prove equally varied. “We offer all sorts of arts,” Forshey says. “We have clay workshops, acrylics, watercolors. Everything is group oriented.” Forshey adds that the workshop classes are essentially beginner level, with no prior experience necessary. “And we provide all the materials needed to participate,” she says. For Hannah Greene, the expressive art portion of the Gilda’s Club program became a true lifeline. She was first diagnosed around the age of four and will freely admit that she became almost completely non-verbal, at least for a time, a far cry from her present candid and insightful manner. “I was already interested in drawing because my uncle was a cartoonist for a newspaper in Florida, and he would teach me how to draw,” Greene recalls. “When I got diagnosed, drawing was a good outlet to express my emotions because I went through a period where I stopped talking for a little while.” She harkens back to a picture in one of her early sketchbooks, spawned from the moment she first caught a glimpse of an MRI machine. “I thought it was a machine to cut my head off,” Greene says, managing a wry, crooked smile. “So I drew it to look like a guillotine.” During her treatment periods, Greene began to further her interests in drawing through the Gilda’s Club art programs, where she received valuable instruction and support. “I didn’t have other things to do, so I drew a lot,” she says. “I started coming here, and it was very helpful to me. Then I became interested in painting somewhere around junior high, and that has grown since then. I have tried to broaden my horizons, so I like to work in all forms.” Like his counterpart Greene, McRoberts picked up drawing at an early age. He has developed a bold, striking style inspired by Nashville’s street scenes, preferring markers to traditional pen-and-ink and paintbrush. “I was diagnosed at 10, but I was drawing a lot before that,”
Mural art by Arbor McRoberts
he says. “My interest in drawing came from being in Nashville and seeing the artwork all over the streets and in the alleys. I really want to be part of that.” As McRoberts details his influences, he speaks with a focused outlook that seems wiser than his still-young age might indicate. “My influences came from watching cartoons and reading comic books and my dad being an art professor,” he explains. “And I read books by philosophers and historians just to get an understanding of how other people’s brains work.” During her toughest times, Greene uncovered a “comfort blanket” in the caring environment of Gilda’s Club. “When you’re going through a rough period, whether you’re four years old or in your teen years,” she says before a thoughtful pause, “it’s that place where you have that family that will listen to you and is very caring and non-judgmental. It gives you a sense of hope.” Along with that, a place to pursue your dreams. na To learn more about Gilda’s Club Middle Tennessee, please visit www.gildasclubmiddletn.org.
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EXPLORE • LEARN • CREATE Community Art Programs at Vanderbilt ADULT CLASSES FOR AGES 18 + Dance classes begin Tuesday, January 16, 2018 Art studio classes begin Monday, January 22, 2018 www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattart
http://studentorg.vanderbilt.edu/ danceprogram
POET’SCORNER
BY KORINNA GIST Korinna is a senior at the NSA Theater Conservatory and Southern Youth Advisory Board member. Learn more at www.southernword.org.
as a grandmother mourns if i could be like he was, bright and radiant i’d be the color yellow i would match the volkswagen bug trailing behind me the sun would beat onto my pastel pigment i would never see blue again but like the ghostly footprints i’m following a yellow sense is lifeless to me, unobtainable from my grip i slept alone last night, as i have for the past month but somehow as i reached my hand over i felt a different emptiness lying beside me or maybe that was his spirit still holding on downstairs i hear my daughter plead for his return her cries fill our house with a blue sorrow it is now cold out and the snow falls light like feathers into his rose gold steel home as i stare at his stone engraved name i feel his love and happiness i feel yellow and i pray that god keeps him warm this winter
Background photograph by Jack Spencer
Vanderbilt’s Nobel Laureates: A Visual Tribute to Discovery and Innovation
Al Gore (Nobel Prize 2007), Combustion
at Vanderbilt University’s Wond’ry WORDS Kathleen Boyle
“Y
es, but it’s complicated,” artist Robert Lavieri laughed after pausing to contemplate his response to the question, “Do you think the link between creativity and the sciences is under acknowledged?” Lavieri is an artist who holds bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and philosophy and a PhD in pharmacology from Vanderbilt University— his pause is reflective of a seeming divide that haunts the arts and sciences, as though popular perception has labeled the two unrelated. “People tend to oversimplify because that’s how human minds work. It’s easy to see someone as a ‘scientist’ in a lab working by themselves running experiments, but creativity is actually the most important aspect. If you’re a scientist who thinks you know all of the answers, you aren’t going to try anything new.”
Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Prize 2006), The Flood
Of course, a stereotype for an untamed, disorganized artist—an opposition to the methodical researcher—can be made as well. To Lavieri, such a gap is not only inaccurate, but it is also a source of motivation for his artistic process. Being a well-read scientist and a self-taught artist, he recognizes the presumptions that accompany both fields and challenges each through visual art grounded in scientific inquiry. Lavieri creates prints on canvas based on molecular forms. In his process—a combination of digital photography, graphic design, freehand drawing, and digital art—the foundations of his images begin as structures rendered from raw data of biological molecules via various computer-software programs. He then further manipulates
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Stanley Cohen (Nobel Prize 1986), Epidermal Growth Factor and Receptor
the palette and shapes to appeal to his personal aesthetic. The result of these efforts is nothing short of enchanting. Positioned against a stark black backdrop, Lavieri’s vibrant abstract forms represent a span of complementary hues that flood his canvases like the free-floating cosmos meandering through an infinite night sky. So imaginative is his artwork that one cannot help but think such images are pure abstractions, labors in geometric exercises that will not relent until the artist achieves satisfaction. And, in a sense, this exchange is present, yet there is more at stake than line and color. There is also more at stake than reference to scientific form.
Earl Sutherland, Jr. (Nobel Prize 1971), Cyclic AMP
At the heart of Lavieri’s work resonates a deep commitment to curiosity and sincere gratitude for those who have labored in the name of progress. “Everything I’m doing is building on the work of countless people in numerous fields—not just scientists, but computer programmers, artists, and scholars,” stated Lavieri. “I am genuinely thankful that they exist; it’s because of them that I get to do what I do.” Lavieri first had the idea to create artwork based on molecular formation during his freshman year of college. After viewing a number of protein structures, he could not help but acknowledge their physical beauty, a realization that is almost ironic given that such structures are invisible to an unaided eye. Lavieri decided to expose more people to the images of molecular formation by creating visual art reliant upon this data. In doing so, he and his work also bridge the perceived disconnect between art and science, and thus prompt dialog that suggests interdisciplinary continuity.
Max Delbrück (Nobel Prize 1969), 4-Way Stop
This interdisciplinary interest is one that is also upheld by Vanderbilt University. Perhaps, then, Lavieri’s latest exhibition has found a most suitable home on campus in a gallery of Vanderbilt’s Wond’ry, a building dedicated to “facilitat[ing] transinstitutional collaboration between students and faculty from all schools, levels, and disciplines.” Lavieri’s most recent exhibition Vanderbilt’s Nobel Laureates: A Visual Tribute to Discovery and Innovation is inspired by the discoveries of Vanderbilt Nobel Laureates—Max Delbrück, Earl W. Sutherland, Jr., Stanford Moore, Stanley Cohen, Muhammad Yunus, Al Gore—whose careers have made substantial contributions to the well-being of humankind. Such achievements encourage Lavieri to continue his artistic pursuits. “Most people will never see that which can’t be viewed by the naked eye. This is what drives me. I try to provide people with something to see that wouldn’t be practical on their own.” na Lavieri’s exhibition Vanderbilt’s Nobel Laureates: A Visual Tribute to Discovery and Innovation is on view in Vanderbilt’s Wond’ry building through January 1, 2018. For more, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/thewondry. See more of Lavieri’s work at www.rrlavieri.com.
Stanford Moore (Nobel Prize 1972), Ribonuclease with RNA
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BY MARK W. SCALA
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
ASISEEIT
Mark W. Scala Chief Curator Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Courtesy Tiernan Morgan
Report from Venice:
Emotional History
Art
Damien Hirst, Pair of Slaves Bound for Execution, Painted bronze
in
A
s the Frist Center organizes its upcoming exhibition of Roman art from the British Museum, I am thinking about art both as a window onto history and as a distorting mirror of how we have gotten where we are. One still occasionally hears classicists react to contemporary art by demanding, “But will it stand the test of time?” The implications are that old art survived because it embodied enduring values, or that it at least has lasting significance because it was collected and treasured, sometimes over millennia, and that today’s values are temporary—not validated by the accumulated wisdom of the ages. The rejoinder to this query is that the circumstances of art’s creation have always been situational. The best that an artist of any time period can do to earn a place in history is to capture the intersection of the inner and social world with authenticity, skill, and perceptiveness. It is the prerogative of future generations to decide if an older artwork still has relevance, or at least offers an interesting perspective or exemplary reflection of past ideas and ideals. This is not to say that artists needn’t think about history, both as something to which they contribute and as a subject that can be represented for its contemporary pertinence. In Venice, a city where the weight of the past is both excruciating and exhilarating, one cannot help thinking about these questions of history while viewing the magnificent sixteenth-century paintings in the Accademia, or the brilliant ornamentation on the façade of Saint Mark’s Basilica. At the recent Venice Biennale, an event that brings together contemporary art from around the world, I was not the only one thinking about history. Something about being an artist in the Biennale, particularly for those representing their countries in national pavilions, often inspires installations that show a deep political and historical imagination—a means
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of situating one’s nation among nations. This sometimes involves a kind of doubleness: One may speak about one’s country with the voice of an insider while at the same time assuming a bird’s-eye perspective, capturing its particular set of conditions and linking it to bigger histories, in ways that are not always flattering. And so we have Mark Bradford’s transformation of the Jeffersonian/Palladian architecture of the American Pavilion into an abstract meditation on the elastic lessons of myth. In his installation Tomorrow Is Another Day, visitors encounter sculptures that relate to the Greek characters of Hephaestus and Medusa, both victims of jealous gods whose stories stand for injustices suffered at the hands of oppressors across time. Throughout the exhibition, abstract paintings and sculptures feature dazzling topographical views composed of layers of paper and paint that have been torn, peeled, and pitted. Their
In case anyone mistakes these works for antiquities, we see a range of contemporary allusions, such as logos of today’s luxury items and a barnacle-encrusted bronze Mickey Mouse. This mocks the entertainment industry’s tendency to bowdlerize the past—to make of it a sanitized preview of the present, à la Disney, turning our desire for the validation provided by history into a spectacle and a joke. So, in Venice, I saw three ways of recasting cultural legacies to reflect on our current moment and on our destiny: Bradford’s use of tortured abstraction as a metaphor for cultural entropy; Bruskin’s dark prognostications of a future derived from the dismal record of government control, past and present; and Hirst’s evisceration of the supposed authority of archaeology, history, and science, turning it into an ironic fiction. While historians craft narratives rooted in fact, these artists imagine a more subjective and transient view of history, depicting the connective tissue of human emotions as they float through time. na
Grisha Bruskin’s installation at the Venice Biennale
A vaporetto ride to the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana takes us away from the Biennale to the independent exhibition Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, a much-hyped over-the-top show by the British artist Damien Hirst, known for his extravagant and often ironic disquisitions on money, death, and taste. Hirst has realized a monumental conceit, a large-scale and expensive production of putatively ancient sculptures that have been supposedly salvaged from the treasure ship The Unbelievable. The centerpiece is a 54-foot-tall Demon with Bowl, a huge headless sculpture that dominates the central courtyard of the palazzo. In perfect keeping with the ship’s name, this gigantic replica of a nonexistent precedent has all the spurious classicism of a giant yard ornament. Throughout the exhibition are other sculptures purported to be from cultures around the ancient world that, the fable goes, had been collected by the wealthy ex-slave Cif Amotan II (an anagram for “I am a fiction”) and were bound for his private museum when the ship sank off the coast of Africa. A significant part of the production is a National Geographic–style film showing the undersea “salvage” operations that brought the objects to the surface.
Mark Bradford, Medusa from installation Tomorrow Is Another Day
Across the Giardini, the gardens of Venice, is the Russian Pavilion. Here, Grisha Bruskin’s installation Scene Change comprises what the artist calls a “collusion” (yes, a Russian really used that word, without obvious irony!) between the contemporary and the archaic. Rolling together references to state power, terror, and surveillance, the installation includes a range of sculptural figures. Some suggested herms from the ancient city of Palmyra, and others robots, but the majority were composed of processions of working-class figures, recalling the slaves in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or mechanized humans toiling under Stalinism. Overseeing these statuettes are icons of a new order: ominous overlord robots, soldiers monitoring the crowd with binoculars, surveillance drones, archaic idols with antennas, and terrorists with bombs strapped to their torsos, seeking the anonymity of the crowd. At once comic and foreboding, Scene Change advises that the patterns of history are not easy to break as they wend their ways through twentieth-century ideologies toward a trembling future.
Courtesy Tiernan Morgan
distressed surfaces echo the history of violent transformation that is often associated with humanity’s equation of territory with power, marking today’s battlegrounds of class, race, and gender with the patina of ruined antiquity. For me, this evokes Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire, which illustrates the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. The sequence of paintings serves as a cautionary tale for nineteenth-century viewers who may have thought that American civilization could avoid the consequences of its own hubris. Bradford’s more abstract meditation on history and myth provides an archetypal backdrop for the potential devolution of our own sublimely damaged reality—one that is internalized rather than illustrated.
Vanderbilt Commodore Orchestra Caleb Harris, conductor, and Emily Krasinski, associate conductor
Saturday, December 2 • 7 p.m. • Ingram Hall The Vanderbilt Commodore Orchestra brings together undergraduate and graduate students from all of the schools of Vanderbilt, as well as members of the Nashville community who are united in their love of making great music. Concert will include Otto Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor Overture, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, Op. .21, and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto No. 2, Op. 18, featuring Heather Conner on piano.
2400 Blakemore Ave. Nashville, TN 37212
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January 9-14 @ TPAC
Jose Llana and Laura Michelle Kelly in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I, photo by Matthew Murphy
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ARTSMART
A monthly guide to art education
TENNESSEE ROUNDUP High School Students Discover Confidence through the Power of Poetry
POL School Competition
When considering high school activities that typically ignite students’ school spirit, we tend to recall the rush of a campuswide pep rally or the sound of the school band playing from the bleachers of a home game. Across Tennessee, students are currently cheering on one another through another type of competition: poetry. In its 14th year, the national Poetry Out Loud (POL) program invites all public, private, and homeschool high school students to memorize and recite the works of classic and contemporary poets in a fun classroom competition. For many students, this is a first-time interaction with poetry. The poems give them an opportunity to engage with completely new perspectives of the world or find surprising reflections of their own story woven throughout powerful, timeless classics.
Courtesy of State Photography
Similar to the National Spelling Bee, the POL competition begins at the classroom level to see who will then compete at the Tennessee 2018 POL competition, held at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on March 10, 2018. The state champion will receive $1,000, along with a trip to represent Tennessee in Washington, DC, at the National POL Finals, competing against 52 other high school students from across America. The National POL Champion will receive $20,000—an honor received by Tennessee’s state champion Anita Norman in 2014. POL provides the unique platform for all students to succeed, and because of this, students are often impressed by their own abilities. “I learned that I enjoyed poetry—a lot,” says Marquavious Moore, Tennessee’s reigning State Champion. “I’m known as the ‘football guy’ at my school, and it surprised me, and others, that poetry would be a big part of my life.”
by Meredith Callis Arts Education Special Projects Coordinator
As the complimentary materials are aligned with NCTE ELA (National Council of Teachers of English – English Language Arts) Standards, teachers of all subjects can easily teach the content by itself or in addition to other lessons. If you know of a school or educator that would be interested in Poetry Out Loud, refer them to the Tennessee Arts Education website for registration. You can also contact Meredith Callis, Tennessee’s Poetry Out Loud State Coordinator at meredith.callis@tn.gov.
Students competing in the 2017 POL State Competition with their Hatch Show prints
ARTSMART Video Field Trip to Audry Deal-McEver’s Studio Several months ago, I was attending one of Nashville’s amazing arts and craft fairs. Having grown up in a small town, the only craft fairs I was privy to were hosted by the local church. Between the baked pies and cookies, they usually sold crocheted potholders and burnt wood boxes with words such as BREAD and TATERS. As you can imagine, I was in complete shock when I experienced my first craft show here in Music City. I fell in love with the weavers, the potters, the painters, and printmakers, just to name a few. Since first attending, I always make it a point to go. Recently, I decided to bring those artists into my elementary art room via video. As I wandered the stalls, I began collecting cards of the artists whose work I admired. Once home, I’m not ashamed to admit that I did a little online stalking to see just what their work and their story were all about. One such artist who really struck a chord was Audry DealMcEver.
Audry Deal-McEver
Audry is a Nashville potter whose work is intriguing because of the beautiful shape of her pottery and the stunning surface design. I knew immediately I wanted to share her work with my students. In an effort to expose my wee artists to artists beyond the “dead white dudes,” I thought she’d be perfect to film and interview. Little did I know just what an amazing teacher she is to boot! After an email exchange, Audry kindly agreed to host me in her home/ studio for a few hours one hot summer morning. I was warmly greeted by her and her feline fam (being a cat person myself, I took this as a good sign). After offering me a mug of tea, Audry took me to her amazingly organized and cozy pottery studio. We chatted for a bit and I shared my idea with her: to capture a contemporary artist “in the wild.” For my young students, their exposure to artists is usually the children’s books I read. It’s hard for them to imagine that as being a reality. By filming Audry, I wanted to bring an artist’s experience to life.
Thank you so much, Audry, for inviting me into your home and studio. I know my students will love learning from you. Might I suggest a carving of TATERS on your next piece?
by Cassie Stephens Art Teacher Johnson Elementary
Photograph by Juan Pont Lezica
Audry’s studio
What I didn’t discover in my online lurking is that Audry was a teacher for many years. As soon as I set up my tripod and got the camera rolling, she naturally and beautifully explained the process of creating her work. What I loved is that she shared the process from beginning to end: from the wedging of the clay, throwing on the wheel, surface design, glazing, and even firing! I felt like I was taking a crash course in all things pottery. I know that my students will not only learn so much from her but also gain an appreciation for her work: the effort, imagination, and dedication that go into creating each piece.
Photography by Mimosa Arts
ARTSMART
Anna Gorisch sets the stage for each group’s performance, asking them to describe clues that might show who the villain is
Youth Awakened Gorisch. “We’re exploring themes that have some universal depth, but you always want to be coming back to the work of art.” Playing off advice from Pulitzer-winning playwright Marsha Norman—“when experimenting with ideas, if you find something that makes you uncomfortable, you’re onto something”—Gorisch decided to explore the idea of a villain as a complete human being.
“This is not acting class,” says teaching artist Anna K. Gorisch, an accomplished performer and playwright. “And we’re not just sticking them on a yellow bus to go and see a performance.” Instead, ArtSmart uses the principles of Aesthetic Education as a way to engage and empower students as active theater-goers, tapping into the intimate and magical bonds between performer and audience. Recently, Gorisch worked with teachers and students at Shayne Elementary in preparation for TPAC’s Sleeping Beauty, an interactive, multimedia treatment of the classic fairy tale created by David Gonzalez.
In the first of three lessons for fourth-graders in Caroline Marks’s classroom, Gorisch led students in building a foundation for exploring fairy tales and the creative process. Starting with the initial question “what kinds of characters do you commonly find in fairy tales,” students walked around using interpretive movement and a sudden freeze-frame “snapshot” to reflect characters ranging from a prince/princess and a fairy to a villain. The focus was on the body and facial expression and a descriptive follow-up discussion beginning with the phrase “I felt like . . . ” As villains, student responses ranged from the expected (“I felt evil”) to the abstract (“I felt the need to hide or get smaller, to be stealthy so they couldn’t see me.”).
“I begin by exploring the work of art, in this case Sleeping Beauty, looking for elements that resonate on a deep level, and then use those elements to create a line of inquiry that provides the foundation for the lessons that I bring to the students,” says
As students work through the activities, they become more engaged, more invested. “Sometimes the kids will lead you,” says Gorisch. When asked to describe kinds of villains, the students offered typical answers, including robbers, bullies, and
Photograph by Drew Cox
The great joy of learning lies in discovery. Since its inception in 1981, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s ArtSmart has enriched classroom curriculum and helped students discover the tools they need to have a meaningful encounter with a live arts experience. This deeper drive is facilitated by TPAC teaching artists who arrange three visits to participating classrooms at no cost to schools.
by DeeGee Lester Director of Education The Parthenon
ARTSMART
Students discuss what might cause a villain to go bad
After presenting their tableau, the group listens as their peers describe their observations and interpretations
kidnappers, until one boy mentioned a tornado as a possible villain. “It was a surprising response,” says Gorisch, noting the human tendency to offer human names and traits to devastating weather phenomena such as Hurricane Katrina.
prevention from leaving the group. Other responses focused on anger built over a lifetime of being misunderstood, disrespected, or bullied themselves. One student suggested that a kidnapper may be someone who was not able to have kids.
Building on their movement and snapshot freeze-frames, students next worked in teams of four to six kids to create their own freeze-frame, capturing the moment of a villain in action. Prompted by the reminder that “you are the author,” each group created their own scenario and offered to the class the precise moment when their villain is doing something bad, holding those poses to communicate so the audience can interpret clues of both the moment and the characters involved. Students in the audience reflect their understanding of the scene with comments, each starting with, “I noticed that . . . ”
In the first day of their three in-class activities, these students utilized their own creativity and critical-thinking skills to see and appreciate characters as more than flat and one-dimensional, but as having levels of depth. Awareness of a level of depth for each of the characters in a performance gives these young audience members a special connection to the material and the creative process of both playwright and actors. In contrast to passively watching a movie or television show, they can embrace the power of live performance as a robust and magical give-andtake between actors on the stage and the audience members surrounding them in the dark.
One group focused their scenario on the actions of a bully threatening another student for his lunch money. Without commentary, the audience understood the scene: the poses of both threat and submission by bully and victim and the active participation of bystanders laughing and pointing. In this scenario, the victim included a handmade prop: a piece of paper imitating a $5 bill.
Like Sleeping Beauty awakened by a kiss, TPAC’s ArtSmart has, over thirty-six years, awakened young people to a lifelong appreciation and love for live performance. For more information, visit www.tpac.org/education.
Following the presentations by each of the five groups, the class returned to their list of villains for discussion of the “why” behind acts of villainy. Gorisch goes through the list asking, “Why might someone become a bully, a robber, or a kidnapper?” Eager hands were raised as the fourth-graders offered their own understandings about the reasons for someone choosing negative, cruel, or violent acts. Their responses reflected a thoughtful consideration of choice and consequence as well as a surprising level of empathy. The children listed the need to belong, to fit in or be “cool,” as well as group peer pressure to participate or, as with gang activity, the proof of loyalty and the
Students creating a tableau of a villain in action
TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY BY HUNTER ARMISTEAD
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
FYEYE
ON E XHIBIT AT THE CUSTOMS HOUSE M USEU M IN DECEMBER
Instagram: @hunterarmistead
Tom Rice: Endurance in Form, A Retrospective
A Frame of Film, A Line of Words, Capture the Creative Culture of Our City
Lincoln Parish producer who writes songs, recovering addict
The Next Big Genius At 27, Lincoln Parish has already lived a lifetime or two on the road. And he’s been off the road for four years. At fifteen and already a virtuoso on guitar after picking it up only two years before, Parish was asked to join Cage the Elephant, whereupon he promptly co-wrote their first big hit, “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” In no small part due to Parish’s ferocious and hooky contributions and the songs he helped write, the Bowling Green band quickly became a powerhouse. Cage toured the world, played stadiums, and basically tore it up as Parish lived the whole rock-star existence, including partying and beyond. Nonetheless, he left the band in 2013 to pursue producing.
Trio Sleeping Birds, Limestone
Tamara Reynolds: Southern Route
The drugs that had seeped in while on the road came to dominate his life and almost took it. “I ended up in the hospital twice within a month. The last time my heart was going in and out on the table in the emergency room,” he says. The next day he went into rehab and has been clean since. That was July 2015.
Jefferson Street, Photograph
Veiled Abstraction: LA Bachman
Since then, Parish moved to Nashville and has been producing, which he started at 18, full-on. He has worked with Lucinda Williams (his favorite), Paul McDonald, Carrollton, Bash, Ten Minute Detour, and an eclectic mix of others. (BTW, you’re going to hear one song by Carrollton a lot—it’s the track behind NBC’s promo for the Winter Olympics.) When I asked him, Parish replied that he is an old soul. I agree. My good friend possesses a lot of preternatural wisdom. Parish lives his life for a big and well-defined purpose: “I want to make music that connects with people on a bigger picture. I want to make people feel things when they listen to music. Happy or sad and nothing in the middle. It gives us a reason to wake up and try and see what the universe holds.”
Snow, Mixed media on paper
Helping Around the House: Toys from the Museum Collection
Not that he doesn’t still have his demons. “Daily I struggle with staying out of my own head, but I’m much better at that than before.”
Model trains run every Sunday
Age 27 took Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin. Lincoln Parish is just getting started.
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200 S. 2nd Street In Historic Downtown Clarksville, TN 931-648-5780 • www.customshousemuseum.org Hours: Tues – Sat 10 – 5 • Sun 1 - 5
Featuring Some of America’s Top Bluegrass Talent
44th ANNUAL BLUEGRASS AWARDS SHOW & 35th NATIONAL CONVENTION
Join us!
The Co-op’s Holiday Open House Featuring the photography of Devi Sanford to benefit Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary Thursday, December 7 • 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM
February 1-4, 2018 Sheraton Music City Hotel 777 McGavock Pike, Nashville, TN 37214
1416 Lebanon Pike, Nashville, TN, 37210 • 615.242.0346 Hours: M-F 8am-4:30pm, Sat 10am-2pm
Lots of jamming and showcases!!! Schedule posted at www.spbgma.com Reserve seats available • Email stephanie@spbgma.com
The Joffrey Ballet performs “The Waltz of the Snowflakes” in Making a New American Nutcracker
New takes on The Nutcracker are as much a part of the holidays as, well, attending a performance of The Nutcracker. In 2016, Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet incorporated the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition (also the inspiration for Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City) into Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet. Instead of a world of sweets, young Chicagoan Marie dreams of a completed and magical fairground. Making a New American Nutcracker, airing Tuesday, December 19, at 11 p.m., shows how the company created the work and includes interviews with dancers, critics, and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former dancer himself. Tony Award-winning
Lady Antebellum performs on Live from the Artists Den
Dickensian also upends a popular holiday story, blending elements of A Christmas Carol and other works by Victorian superstar Charles Dickens. The story unfolds Saturdays at 8:30 and 9:30 p.m., beginning December 16. In the Call the Midwife Holiday Special on Monday, December 25, at 8 p.m., the nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House help Poplar through the coldest winter in 300 years. Last Tango in Halifax delivers its usual complement of daughter drama in a two-part holiday special, airing Sunday, December 17 and 24, at 7 p.m.
HOLIDAYS, MUSIC Christmas at Belmont returns this year with host Sheryl Crow along with nearly 700 Belmont University students, faculty, and special guests. Featuring holiday favorites and other music, the biannual performance was recorded at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and will be broadcast on PBS stations across the country. NPT’s premiere is Thursday, December 14, at 8 p.m., and the special will air several times over the holiday season. Tenor Rolando Villazón is the guest artist for Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, premiering
Friday, December 15, at 8 p.m. New Year’s Eve on NPT includes Live from Lincoln Center: NY Philharmonic New Year’s Eve on Sunday, December 31, at 8 p.m. This year’s theme is Bernstein on Broadway; guests include Laura Osnes and Chris Jackson. At 9:30 p.m., Austin City Limits’ Hall of Fame New Year’s Eve concert salutes honorees Roy Orbison, Rosanne Cash, and the Neville Brothers. On Monday, January 1, at 8 p.m., Great Performances’ broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert features guest conductor Riccardo Muti, musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. David Gilmour: Live in Pompeii chronicles the guitarist’s return to the Roman amphitheatre where Pink Floyd performed a legendary concert in 1972. The show airs Tuesday, December 5, at 8:30 p.m. Guitar hero Tommy Emmanuel is back with A Music Gone Public Special, premiering Thursday, December 7, at 7 p.m. and featuring his performances around the country. On Friday, December 29, at 11 p.m., Live from the Artists Den features Lady Antebellum performing in Manhattan’s United Palace. NPT welcomes your gift of support this season and all year long at wnpt.org. Enjoy our programming on NPT and NPT2, as well as 24/7 children’s programming on NPT3 PBS Kids.
Armistead Maupin, from The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin on Independent Lens
Courtesy of Armistead Maupin
REVISING TRADITIONS
choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, set and costume designer Julian Crouch, and Tony Award-winning lighting designer Natasha Katz are also featured.
Photograph by Joe Papeo
This is a month owned by holiday entertainment, but before we get into that, keep these profiles in mind. This Is Bob Hope, a new American Masters biography of the legendary comedian, premieres Friday, December 29, at 8 p.m. The documentary follows Hope’s career through decades and across various media, as well as on countless USO tours. Monday, January 1, at 11 p.m., The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin on Independent Lens features actors Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis, and Ian McKellen; and writers Neil Gaiman and Amy Tan—as well as Armistead Maupin himself—discussing his life and work. The film received an Audience Award at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival.
Photograph by Cheryl Mann
Arts Worth Watching
December 2017 Weekend Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30
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Saturday
am Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Thomas & Friends Bob the Builder Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Curious George Nature Cat Sewing with Nancy Sew It All Garden Smart Martha Bakes Ellie’s Real Good Food Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television noon America’s Test Kitchen pm Cook’s Country Kitchen Sara’s Weeknight Meals Lidia’s Kitchen A Chef’s Life Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Best of Joy of Painting Woodwright’s Shop American Woodshop This Old House Ask This Old House A Craftsman’s Legacy PBS NewsHour Weekend Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville
This Month on Nashville Public Television
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am Sid the Science Kid Cyberchase Sesame Street Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Cat in the Hat Curious George Nature Cat Tennessee’s Wild Side Volunteer Gardener Tennessee Crossroads Nature Washington Week noon To the Contrary pm Destination Craft with Jim West Music Voyager Curious Traveler Globe Trekker Roadtrip Nation Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi Travels with Darley Rick Steves’ Europe Antiques Roadshow PBS NewsHour Weekend Charlie Rose: The Week
Sheryl Crow hosts a holiday concert featuring Belmont University students and guest artists. Premieres Thursday, Dec. 14, 8 pm
Weekday Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 6:00
am Classical Stretch Body Electric Ready Jet Go! Wild Kratts Thomas & Friends Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Splash and Bubbles Sesame Street Sesame Street Super Why! noon Peg + Cat pm Dinosaur Train Ready Jet Go! Bob the Builder Nature Cat Wild Kratts Wild Kratts Odd Squad Odd Squad Arthur NPT Favorites PBS NewsHour
Nashville Public Television
Call the Midwife 2017 Holiday Special
American Masters: Bob Hope
Poplar endures the coldest winter in 300 years.
A look at the entertainer’s long career.
Monday, Dec. 25, 8 pm
Friday, Dec. 29, 8 pm
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Sunday, Dec. 10, 6 pm wnpt.org/events
Preview at Franklin Theatre
7:00 Great Performances The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed Live. Jeremy Irons narrates this 50th anniversary concert recorded in Toronto. 9:00 Mannheim Steamroller 40/30 Live 10:30 Human Nature: Jukebox in Concert from the Venetian Darlene Love and a seven-piece band perform with the quartet.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Anaheim, Hour 3. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Richmond, Hour 1. 9:00 NPT Favorites 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Music Row: Nashville’s Most Famous Neighborhood
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Anaheim, Hour 1. 8:00 Celtic Woman – Homecoming: Ireland A special recorded in Dublin, Ireland. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville Special A behind-the-scenes peek with stories and music.
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7:00 Finding Your Roots Southern Roots. Questlove, Dr. Phil and Charlayne Hunter-Gault. 8:00 NPT Favorites 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Infinity Hall Live Tedeschi Trucks Band.
7:00 Cat’s Attic – Yusuf Cat Stevens 8:30 David Gilmour: Live In Pompeii The guitarist returns to the Roman amphitheater, site of a legendary Pink Floyd concert. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Great Performances The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed Live.
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7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Soul of the Elephant. 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 NOVA 8:00 Christmas at Belmont Secret Tunnel Warfare. Sheryl Crow hosts this A World War I battle holiday performance strategy. featuring 700 students, 9:00 Supernature – faculty and guests. Wild Flyers 9:00 Great British Baking Defying Gravity. How Show animals become Christmas Masterclass. airborne. 10:00 BBC World News 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Joseph Smith: 11:00 Austin City Limits American Prophet Margo Price; A docudrama about Hayes Carll. the founder of the Mormon Church.
7:00 Music Row: 7:00 Tommy Emmanuel – Nashville’s Most A Music Gone Public Famous Special Neighborhood A show drawn from An NPT original the guitarist’s documentary about performances around the neighborhood’s the country. influence on the 8:30 NPT Favorites music industry. 10:00 BBC World News 8:30 Infinity Hall Live 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Tedeschi Trucks Band. 11:00 Suze Orman’s Recorded in Financial Solutions Connecticut’s historic for You Warner Theatre. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Age Reversed with Mirande EsmondeWhite
Sunday, Dec. 17 & 24, 7 pm
Wednesday
Thursday, Dec. 14, 9 pm
Tuesday
Last Tango in Halifax Holiday Special, Parts 1 & 2
Monday
Great British Baking Show: Christmas Masterclass
Sunday
Nashville Public Television’s Primetime Evening Schedule
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7:00 A Place to Call Home Boom! 8:00 Mormon Tabernacle Choir The famed choral ensemble performs in Salt Lake City with tenor Rolando Villazón. 9:00 Lidia Celebrates America Homegrown Heroes. Lidia has dinner with five veterans-turnedfarmers. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Live from the Artists Den John Legend.
Wednesday, Dec. 27, 8 pm
NOVA: The Day the Dinosaurs Died
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7:00 A Place to Call Home That’s Amore. 8:00 NPT Favorites 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Young Hyacinth A prequel to the beloved Keeping Up Appearances series.
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6:30 Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville Christmas show featuring Suzy Bogguss. 7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Tribute to Fred Astaire. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 1991 Christmas special. 8:30 Dickensian Jacob Marley is murdered on Christmas Eve. 9:30 Dickensian Inspector Bucket investigates. 10:30 The Songwriters Kim Williams. 11:00 Globe Trekker
9 6:30 Big Band Years A My Music special dedicated to songs from the Word War II era. 8:30 NPT Favorites
7:00 A Place to Call Home 6:30 Ray Stevens CabaRay Day of Atonement. Nashville Special 8:00 Celtic Woman – A behind-the-scenes Homecoming: Ireland peek with stories Recorded in Dublin, and music. this new special 8:00 Young Hyacinth features elaborate A prequel to the stage productions in a beloved Keeping Up celebration of Ireland’s Appearances series. centuries-old heritage. 9:00 Cat’s Attic – Yusuf 10:00 BBC World News Cat Stevens 10:30 Last of Summer Wine An evening of songs 11:00 National Park and stories with the Symphony – The legendary singerMighty Five songwriter, recorded in Images of Utah’s five Sept. 2016. national parks. 10:30 Journey in Concert: Houston 1981
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Knoxville, Hour 1. 8:00 Great Performances From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2018 9:30 Bare Feet with Mickola Mallozzi Waltzing in Vienna. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Independent Lens The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin. How the Tales of the City creator evolved from conservative Southerner to gay rights pioneer.
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7:00 To Be Determined 8:00 Influenza 1918: American Experience Influenza 1918. The epidemic that killed 600,000 people. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine
7:00 Sultan and the Saint How St. Francis of Assisi and the Sultan of Egypt worked to end the Crusades. 8:00 Secrets of Spanish Florida – A Secrets of the Dead Special Jimmy Smits narrates the little-known history of St. Augustine, Fla. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Independent Lens Meet the Patels.
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7:00 Nature Snow Monkeys. 8:00 NOVA Invisible Universe Revealed. The Hubble Telescope. 9:00 Aurora – Fire in the Sky 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Kendrick Lamar.
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for NPT, NPT2, and NPT3 PBS Kids.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show New Year’s (1970). 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Dickensian Martha Cratchit’s wedding plans are threatened. 9:30 Dickensian Honoria has a suitor. 10:30 The Songwriters Layng Martine Jr. 11:00 Globe Trekker Road Trip: Rust Belt Highway 2, USA.
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6:30 Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville Christmas show featuring Deborah Allen. 7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Christmas (1966). 8:00 Keeping Appearances 1995 Christmas special. 8:30 Dickensian Honoria learns of the family’s hardship. 9:30 Dickensian The Havisham’s New Year’s party. 10:30 The Songwriters Mac Davis. 11:00 Globe Trekker
Austin City Limits Hall of Fame New Year’s Eve
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7:00 A Place to Call Home Worlds Apart. 8:00 Christmas at Belmont Sheryl Crow hosts this holiday performance featuring 700 students, faculty and guests. 9:00 A Chef’s Life Holiday Special 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Live from the Artists Den OneRepublic. Recorded in Park City, Utah.
Live from Lincoln Center: New York Philharmonic
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 NPT Favorites 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Rick Steves Special European Festivals. The top 10 festivals across the continent.
7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 A Place to Call Home The Story of Cats: Into 7:30 Volunteer Gardener Cane Toad. the Americas. 8:00 NPT Favorites 8:00 American Masters: 8:00 NOVA 10:00 BBC World News This Is Bob Hope Day the Dinosaurs 10:30 Last of Summer Wine A new profile of Died. How an asteroid 11:00 Eric Idle’s The Entire comedian Bob Hope, killed the dinosaurs 66 Universe whose career spanned million years ago. A comedic musical eight decades and 9:00 Supernature – extravaganza starring numerous media. Wild Flyers the former Monty 10:00 BBC World News Crowded Skies. Python member. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:00 BBC World News 11:00 Live from the 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Artists Den 11:01 Austin City Limits Lady Antebellum. Tom Waits. Recored at Manhattan’s United Palace Theatre.
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7:00 Nature The Story of Cats: Asia to Africa. 8:00 NOVA Bird Brain. The brainpower of birds. 9:00 Supernature – Wild Flyers Masters of the Sky. The extremes of animal flight. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Ryan Adams; Shakey Graves
Visit wnpt.org for complete 24-hour schedules
7:00 Victoria on Masterpiece An Ordinary Woman. Will Victoria marry Albert? 8:00 Live from Lincoln Center NY Philharmonic New Year’s Eve: Bernstein on Broadway. 9:30 ACL Hall of Fame New Year’s Eve Inductees: Roy Orbison, Rosanne Cash, and the Neville Brothers. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Sword Smith. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
7:00 Antiques Roadshow 7:00 Last Tango In Halifax Naughty or Nice. Holiday Special 8:00 Call the Midwife Part 2. Holiday Special 8:00 Victoria on The midwives help Masterpiece new mothers during Brocket Hall. Victoria the coldest winter in faces rioters and suitors. 300 years. 9:00 Victoria on 9:30 Victoria Returns Masterpiece Season 2 preview. The Clockwork Prince. 10:00 BBC World News Albert visits. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:00 Start Up 11:01 Christmas at Juice Messenger. Belmont 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Tool Chest Makers. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
7:00 Last Tango In Halifax 7:00 Antiques Roadshow 7:00 Finding Your Roots Holiday Special Richmond, Hour 2. Funny Business. Part 1. Caroline must 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Garrison Keillor, Amy move house in time for Richmond, Hour 3. Schumer and Christmas; Gillian 9:00 Independent Lens Aziz Ansari. thinks she’s being Supergirl. A preteen 8:00 Amish Paradise haunted. weightlifter who is also Trouble in Amish 8:00 Victoria on an Orthodox Jew. Paradise. Masterpiece 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 9:00 Amish Paradise Doll 123. The teenager 11:00 BBC World News Leaving Amish ascends the throne. 11:30 Arnold Knows Me: Paradise. 10:00 Start Up The Tommy Kono 10:00 BBC World News Necklace or Neck Story 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Brace? A Japanese-American 11:00 Making a New 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy weightlifter who came American Nutcracker The Murrini Glass of age in WWII. Chicago’s Joffrey Maker. Ballet sets the piece at 11:00 Tavis Smiley the 1893 Exposition. 11:30 Scully/The World Show
Megan Lightell
Tracy Mitchell, Joe Smith, and Mitsy Clendenin
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Louisa Glenn and Devin Goebel
Morgan Shaw and Shimshon Racine
ARTSEE
Carleigh Thomas
Becca, Travis, and Annalise Pommer
Jake Oland
Emileigh Potter, Kay Kennedy, and Jonathan Terry
ARTSEE
Darrell Fulton, Lucy Stolen, and Roger Stolen
Lela Altman
Geoff Fitzpatrick
Greyson, Eric, and Alysha Irisari Malo
Sarah Conant and Brooke Timin
Lindsey Baldo, Michelle Phan, and Colleen Berry
Molly Geist
Heather Bond and Cy Winstanley
Sharon Lubovich, Sheryl Spencer and Alan Waddell
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN JACKSON
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Madeline McNew, Brian Biros, and Michael Dickins
Jalisa Sullivan, Adia Tigney, and Clarence Rucker
Richard Heinsohn
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Darrell Fulton, Lucy Stolen, Tommy Lawson, and Roger Stolen
Beth Inglish and Tina Gionis
Madeline McNew and Brian Biros
Michael R. Grine and Alan Waddell
Hollie Chastain, Chris Bruno, and Tiffany Ownbey
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SOUNDINGOFF BY JOSEPH E. MORGAN
Fright Night at the Nashville Ballet Just in time for Halloween this year, the Nashville Ballet put on a ghoulish double header with its revival of Director Paul Vasterling’s “dance drama” Lizzie Borden and a premiere of The Raven by Guest Choreographer Christopher Stuart at TPAC. These works, spooky enough by themselves, were unified by the presence of frightening shadow people who tended to sneak up behind and plant terrifying thoughts in an innocent person’s mind.
Courtesy of Karyn Photography
Stuart’s Raven is, appropriately enough, a Victorian affair which opens with the Narrator (Nathan Young) slumped beside his chamber door while behind him leers a portrait of his lost Lenore. While Julia Eisen’s Lenore is all beauty and civilized grace, Kayla Rowser’s Raven is angular and stubbornly birdlike. As the Narrator’s delusion increases (in an excellent physical expression by Young), Lenore and the Raven slowly merge into one creepily mimed “nevermore,” and the Narrator is left in an asylum permanently visited by one of the shadow people. Alessandra Volpi’s performance that evening of Franz Liszt’s Nuages gris still haunts me. Vasterling’s Lizzy Borden is set perhaps 50 years after The Raven, giving the true story of the grisly murder in Fall River, Massachusetts. (“Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks . . . ”) Almost as though it were a star vehicle, this production succeeds or fails on the performance of the title character, and Mollie Sansone’s sensitive rendition of Borden was an astounding success. She is aided greatly by the evil actions of her father (Jon Upleger) and stepmother (Katie Vasilopoulos), and of course the whole idea is given to her by a shadow person. Particularly powerful in Vasterling’s choreography is the appearance of the shadow person in the Hat Dance scene. Are these shadow people metaphors for mental illness? Dark poltergeists? Who knows. I’ll just feel better if I don’t see them again until next Halloween! For more information, visit www.nashvilleballet.com.
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Art Up Nashville is a comprehensive fine art service provider dedicated to the professional installation of items such as art and antique objects, heavy mirrors, posters and photographs. No job is too big or small. Our staff consists of museum-trained art handlers who for years have regularly handled precious, irreplaceable items of all classifications for museums and galleries as well as commercial and residential clients. Additionally, our staff is made up of artists who possess a special appreciation for art and whose refined aesthetic sensibilities optimize the clients’ experience.
www.ArtUpNashville.com
Coming 2018 Events: • Friends of Warner Parks “Honor the Earth” Art Show and Sale (April 20-22, 2018) • Visiting Artists Workshops: Colin Page and Charlie Hunter • Paint Your Heart Out workshops (September 2018) • Cumberland River Compact Art Show and Sale (November 2018) Membership open to all artists and supporters who embrace plein air painting and desire to support significant and vanishing landscapes. www.chestnutgroup.org
duncan@artupnashville.com 615-975-7577
Living in the weather ... For twenty years—from 1977 until 1997—I lived on the top floors of two mid-town high-rises. The first ten were at the Americana Apartments. And yes, I could write a book. (Several volumes, in fact.) At one point, my boyfriend, the art critic Dave Hickey, and my band (Jaded Virgin) lived at the Americana—Dave in 302, and the band in Hell Hole 305, which is what my drummer named it, since four of them were crammed into a one-bedroom. I was three floors up, in 704. I loved that apartment because it was on the top floor. The only thing above me was the swimming pool on the roof. I had no furniture to speak of. But after my song “Betty’s Bein’ Bad” hit the Billboard charts, I went out and bought a midnight-blue leather sofa and a Chinese porcelain lamp. Then, when the royalty checks really started pouring in, my financial advisor suggested I buy a place. So I began looking around.
Williamson County Culture
I almost bought a little house in Sylvan Park, but then noticed a new building going up across from the Americana. One morning before sunrise, I walked over to the construction site. After scaling the chain-link fence, I climbed some exposed concrete stairs to the eighth floor. Then I sat out on a ledge and watched the sun come up. I could live here, I thought. So I ended up buying that place—a two-bedroom unit with two balconies that became known as the Sky Palace. I lived there from 1987 until 1997. Long story short. In 1991 I met a man who later became my husband. For five years, we lived in the Sky Palace. Then we moved. He wanted a house for us. And had spotted one in the Richland– West End neighborhood. So we bought it. After a sixteen-month renovation, we called it our Born-again Bungalow. We lived there, mostly happily, for fourteen years. Then we got divorced. I continued living in the house for three more years. I will be sixty-nine in January. In China, that means I’ll be seventy. That’s because in China, your first birthday is the day you come out of your mother. But regardless, I am ready to downsize. And I’m done with gardening. It’s like I woke up one morning and someone had flipped a switch. So I bought a two-bedroom high-rise in a brand new building near Centennial Park. It has a salt-water pool, a weight room, and a spectacular roof-top lounge. But best of all, my unit is on the top floor with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony that faces west. I recently stood on that balcony, entranced as big gray clouds moved in from the west. Every now and then, a shaft of sunlight burst through one of the clouds. It looked like God was holding a press conference in the sky. Marshall Chapman is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, author, and actress. For more information, visit www.tallgirl.com.
BEYONDWORDS
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
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BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN
MYFAVORITEPAINTING GORDON GILTRAP, GUITARIST, COMPOSER
ARTIST BIO: Ford Madox Brown Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) was a British painter born April 1821 in Calais, France. His paintings often depict historical subjects in the Pre-Raphaelite style. As a young boy he showed great talent copying old-master prints. In 1835 Brown moved to Bruges to study with Albert Gregorius. Brown’s second wife, his first having died of consumption, often modeled for the artist and is seen here in The Last of England as the wife. The painting depicts an emigrant couple leaving England in search of a better life. It is displayed at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, England. Brown died aged 72 in London, England.
Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England, 1855, Oil on panel, 32” x 30”
I have been a lover of Pre-Raphaelite art since meeting my wife, Hilary, over
31 years ago. Hilary had admired that school of art for many years, but I had no knowledge of them. Little did I realize that I had grown up with one of its enduring images, Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World that hung on my grandmother’s wall in her home in London and one I had gazed on as a child. Twenty-eight years ago I embarked on a series of pieces inspired by many of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s work. My favourite of all their paintings was and still is The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown. The haunting image of a young couple leaving the comfort of the life they had known with their young child to seek a new life abroad speaks volumes on so many levels.
I shall leave the final words on the painting to the artist himself: “A young couple leaving Ireland during the great emigration movement. The husband is bitter and brooding over blighted hopes and severance for all he has strived for. Her grief is less cankerous, probably confined to the sorrow of parting. The circle of her love moves with her. In order to present the parting scene in its fullest tragic development, I have picked out a couple from the middle classes, high enough to appreciate all they are giving up, yet depressed enough in means to have to put up with the discomforts and humiliations incident to a vessel ‘all in one class.’ “ We are very fortunate to live less than a forty-five-minute train journey to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery where this beautiful painting hangs! na www.giltrap.co.uk 106
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
Gordon Giltrap
Courtesy VICAVERSAROBBIE PHOTOGRAPHY
This powerful image adorns the cover of my new album of the same name and is without doubt the finest album cover art I could ever wish for.
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