Jane Braddock
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Nancy Rhodes Harper
Nashville Gems
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Kevin Rudolf
Michael Aurbach
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PUBLISHED BY THE ST. CLAIRE MEDIA GROUP
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Editorial PAUL POLYCARPOU | Publisher and CEO paul@nashvillearts.com SARA LEE BURD | Executive Editor and Online Editor sara@nashvillearts.com REBECCA PIERCE | Education Editor and Staff Writer rebecca@nashvillearts.com MADGE FRANKLIN | Copy Editor
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Business Office MOLLYE BROWN | 644 West Iris Drive, Nashville, TN 37204 Editorial Interns EMILY BLAKE | Vanderbilt University BROOKE BLUESTEIN | Belmont University DREW COX | Watkins College of Art, Design & Film ARA VITO | Belmont University JAKE TOWNSEND | Belmont University JARRED JOHNSON | University of Western Kentucky Design WENDI K. POWELL | Graphic Designer
Columns MARSHALL CHAPMAN | Beyond Words ERICA CICCARONE | Open Spaces JENNIFER COLE | State of the Arts LINDA DYER | Appraise It RACHAEL MCCAMPBELL | And So It Goes JOSEPH E. MORGAN | Sounding Off JOE NOLAN | Critical i ANNE POPE | Tennessee Roundup JIM REYLAND | Theatre Correspondent MARK W. SCALA | As I See It JUSTIN STOKES | Film Review 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 $5.05 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 Visa or Mastercard number.
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On the Cover Robert Durham A View from Rutledge Hill/Year of the Crane, 2015, Oil on linen, 60" x 40"
February 2016 42
46
Features
Columns
23
Nancy Rhodes Harper Whimsical Women
20
Crawl Guide
26
Sam Dunson _lack History Fills in the Blanks at The Rymer Gallery
50
The Bookmark Hot Books and Cool Reads
52
As I See It by Mark W. Scala
31
Nashville Gems Six Local Jewelry Designers Who Want to Make You Look Good
58
Open Spaces by Erica Ciccarone
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The Arts Company Selections from Four Contemporary Kentucky Folk Artists
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5th Avenue Under the Lights American Folk Art a.k.a. Contemporary American Art
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Kevin Rudolf Another Side . . .
60 Symphony in Depth A Star-Studded February at the Schermerhorn
54
Jane Braddock The Color of Words
76 NPT
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The Alba Collection After 500 Years of Art and Collecting, The House of Alba Brings Its Treasures to Nashville
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80 Theatre by Jim Reyland 81
Critical i by Joe Nolan
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Art Smart by Rebecca Pierce
88
Art See
90
Sounding Off The Nashville Symphony: Two Concerts and a Requiem
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Poets Corner
93 Studio Tenn Polishing the Centerpiece: Studio Tenn's Refreshed Design Highlights Poetic Core of The Glass Menagerie 70 Michael Aurbach The Last Laugh: Selections from the Artist's Secrecy Series
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www.cumberlandgallery.com
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Fisk University As Fisk University Celebrates Its Sesquicentennial, the Prodigal Stieglitz Art Collection Finds Its Way Home
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McLean Fahnestock The Submersion of the Known and the Exploration of Loss
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Beyond Words by Marshall Chapman
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My Favorite Painting
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Publisher's Note
A Great City Deserves Great Art I remember David Bowie when he was a snotty little kid playing the clubs and pubs in South London. He went by his real name, David Jones, back then. It was pretty obvious to all of us who were lucky enough to see him that he had talent, bunches of it. None of us, though, predicted the creative explosion he would unleash on the world. He pushed the boundaries in music, theatre, poetry, literature, film, and just about every other form of creative expression. He tackled gender prejudices head on and challenged all of us to rethink what we thought we already knew. What I liked the most about him was that he was utterly fearless in everything he did. He went for it, dove in the deep end, and didn't seek anybody’s approval along the way. I will miss him. I will also miss Pete Huttlinger, one of Nashville's best guitar slingers and a very gentle man. If you ever saw him play you'd swear there were several guitar players on stage with him, but it was just Pete. That's how good he was. One of the joys of working on this magazine is meeting new artists and being introduced to their work. Sometimes images are sent electronically, and sometimes the artists carry their canvases into our offices. Last week a young artist, McLean Fahnestock, stopped in to introduce herself and her work to us. I'm glad she did. Her work is intelligent, imaginative, and inspired. See for yourself on page 86. I love Bob Durham’s painting that graces our cover this month. A sock monkey scaling the Pinnacle building like a modern-day King Kong. I will never look at that building in the same way. Good art will do that to you. Paul Polycarpou | Publisher
February Crawl Guide Franklin Art Scene Friday, February 5, from 6 until 9 p.m. Gallery 202 is presenting ceramic artist Dave Pic'kell, who is exhibiting his saggarfired pottery, a method that involves using all Irene Veach, Williamson County Archives natural materials as opposed to glazes. Parks is featuring landscape artist James Redding and his realistic watercolors and acrylic work on canvas. Williamson County Visitor Center is showcasing crafts made by Narrow Gate Artisans. Williamson County Archives is exhibiting work by self-taught folk art painter Irene Veach.
First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown Saturday, February 6, from 6 until 9 p.m. The Arts Company is unveiling Contemporary Urban Folk Art from Kentucky: End of the Agrarian Tradition by regional urban folk artists Tad DeSanto, Joshua Huettig, Robert Morgan, and Bruce New (see page 42). The Rymer Gallery is presenting Sam Dunson’s new series _lack History (see page 26). Tinney Contemporary is opening Jane Braddock’s exhibition Drip Paintings (see page 54). The Browsing Room at Downtown Presbyterian Church is showing the first 30 photographic portraits in Cassie Ponder’s Portrait A Day. Visit Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery to view historic restrikes of original posters from the Hatch collection. In the historic Arcade, Blend Studio is hosting artist Tiffany Dyer Brown (Denton) and her exhibit mellow yellow/orange crush. WAG is showcasing Calhoun, photography by senior Joseph Newsome. Coop Gallery is presenting Taut, a new sculptural installation by Chris Boyd Taylor. Corvidae Collective is featuring the works of Stephen Watkins and Billy Martinez.
Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, February 6, from 6 until 9 p.m. David Lusk Gallery is showing Murders, Misfits, and Other Unpleasantries by Beth Foley and Day into Night by Veda Reed. Ground Floor Gallery + Studios is unveiling Resurface by Amanda Joy Brown (see page 68). At abrasiveMedia experience Th3 Anomaly, the world’s first gallery-sized graphic novel (see page 69). Zeitgeist is featuring Alicia Henry’s exhibition The Walk, and May I Help You? by Karen Barbour 20 nashvillearts.com
(see page 81). Fort Houston is exhibiting the best of the Visual Art Society from the Appalachian Center for Craft, including work by Elan Kandel, Glenn Coburn, Jessica Hagar, John Glass, Katherine Smith, Kathryn Craig, Mirrah Johnson, Natalie Novak, and Sara Wiggins. Julia Martin Gallery opens Megan Kimber’s exhibition Strata, a new body of work, which explores the shifting internal strata of self. Seed Space is screening the traveling international videoart show FOODS by Magmart, which explores the Stephen Watkins, Corvidae Collective lines between abundance and famine, anorexia and bulimia, body and soul. Channel to Channel is showcasing Echo and Blur by Heather Hartman (see page 91). At Refinery Nashville, see Omari Booker’s exhibit DiverCity?, inspired by his observation of the growth of Nashville. 444 Humphreys Street Pop Up is presenting Thrust, a collaboration by Nikki Kvarnes and Garland Gallaspy. The Packing Plant is showing Christian Vistan in Labada Ng Makata/Poet Laundry. CG2 Gallery is exhibiting Familiar Strangers, artwork by Christina West. Poverty & the Arts is featuring their artists' show Favorite Selected Works. Atelier Upton Salon is showcasing Half Diamond 4, one-of-a-kind jewelry by Tiffany Vargo, and new work by Lisa Jennings.
Boro Art Crawl Friday, February 12, from 6 until 9 p.m. Participating locations include Oaklands Mansion, Wall Street, L&L Contractors, Dreaming in Color, Hastings House B&B, Cultivate CoWorking, Daffodily Design, Let’s Make Wine, The Write Impression, Funtiques, Sugaree’s, Top of Block Salon, Moxie Art Supply, Murfreesboro Art League, Two Tone Gallery, Studio 903, Mayday Brewery, Center for the Arts, MTSU Student Photography Exhibit, MTSU Baldwin Photography Gallery, Rotunda City Hall and Megan Kimber, Julia Martin Gallery more.
East Side Art Stumble Saturday, February 13, from 6 until 9 p.m. Gallery Luperca presents The Old Testament of Kink, a new exhibition from internationally celebrated photographer Sebastian Smith. The Red Arrow Gallery is exhibiting This Is Our War, an exhibition focusing on drone impact and imagery, by 200 Maplewood High School Art Students and multi-dimensional artist Mahwish Chishty. Sawtooth Print Shop is showing work by printmaker Derrick Castle. Nashville Community Darkroom and Modern East Gallery are also participating. Happy hour begins at 5 p.m. at The Idea Hatchery with specials at Art & Invention, Fat Crow Press, John Cannon Fine Art, East Side Story, Haulin' Oats, Alegria, and more.
Sebastian Smith, Gallery Luperca
by Gracie Pratt
nancyRhodesHARPER Whimsical Women York & Friends Fine Art | February 9–29
The Actress, Oil on linen, 40” x 30”
Queen Bee, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”
Sunday Afternoon, Mixed media, 30” x 30”
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T
hey are ladies of intrigue with full, huge eyes lending a spark to the stories that their faces tell. There’s the sassy Queen Bee, the patient wine sipper, the contemplative Dream Queen, and the forgetful lady in blue. Portraying all the glory of a complex personality in their expressions and body language, they are irresistible: the ladies of Nancy Rhodes Harper. Harper’s paintings are characterized by a vibrant color palette, a variety that she refers to as a “harmony.” Over time her choice in color has become instinctive, blending rich jewel tones and soft neutrals for a striking signature style. Her technique is inspired by the work of Milt Kobayashi, and Harper has studied with him often at the Scottsdale Artist School in Arizona. “Milt’s work embodies everything I love about art,” Harper says. Harper’s own wispy strokes bear resemblance to Kobayashi’s reverent depictions of female life, yet Harper’s work stands solidly on its own with a dramatic inclusion of jewel-toned palettes and whimsical patterns. Sunday Afternoon, as an example, showcases at least eight different patterns, meshed against one another as lamp bases, couch cushions, and dress fabric. A face is crafted in deep purple tones, lifting out of a blouse seemingly made of dollar bills accented by a classic Peter Pan collar. Boasting the characteristic Harper style, the figure has oversized oval eyes, protruding lips, and elongated neck and legs.
Harper’s paintings are characterized by a vibrant color palette, a variety that she refers to as a “harmony.”
Go Ahead and Text Me offers another side to the Harper style, this one void of detailed patterns. It is more like Kobayashi, a muted pastel background enhancing a sleek, simply-dressed figure at a desk. But the modern, imaginative touches—a cell phone in the figure’s hand, a fluffy white dog with lopsided ears—bring the painting back into the world of whimsy. Queen Bee is regal and saucy, the depiction of a raw woman with power and the resolve to keep it. Harper used a pronounced cat eye to draw attention to the fire of her green eyes, made more intense by commanding eyebrows and jet-black locks. Her makeup is impeccable and yet achieved with wispy brush strokes that evoke a tenderness of human expression. Out of all of her ladies, Queen Bee is Harper’s favorite. For Harper, her work is the culmination of a lifelong interest in fashion. As a child she had access to art supplies through her father’s sign shop, which was nestled in the square of the small town in the Ozark Mountains where she grew up. Harper would often venture over to the neighboring drugstore to pore over fashion illustrations in the ads and articles of ladies’ magazines.
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Over the years, Harper’s family took precedence over her art. “My story is the same as many female artists who choose to raise a family: the art gets put on the back burner until the kids are grown and time once again allows for the luxury of creating. Now I am a working artist every day and love it.”
Nancy Rhodes Harper in her studio
Her work today is driven by her observations of women: their body language, facial features, and fashion trends. She is an astute student of the world around her, and yet she admits that the “fun” in her work comes from her ability to engage her imagination in capturing a face or figure. “I like to exaggerate the arms, legs, fingers, neck, and facial features . . . if possible putting the body into an unusual position to show off these exaggerations. The face is my favorite part, and I love building it and putting the finishing touches on the features. It’s like putting on makeup.” Her hope is that viewers of her work will feel a freedom similar to her own when she creates. “I hope the viewer will look at a piece and make up their own story of what they see.” Free from hidden meanings and symbolism, Harper’s “ladies” tell their own stories. na Harper’s work is on display at York & Friends Fine Art February 9–29. Located at 107 Harding Place, the gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.yorkandfriends.com. After Work, Oil on canvas, 22” x 28”
Gino, Oil on canvas, 24” x 24”
Go Ahead And Text Me, Oil on canvas, 24” x 24”
Photograph by Sara Harper
“I wanted to be a fashion illustrator, but coming from a small town in the Ozarks, my world was small . . . so I just went to college and studied art,” Harper says.
samDUNSON
by Cat Acree
_lack History Fills in the Blanks at The Rymer Gallery February 6–March 4 Sam Dunson is angry. Something has boiled up in him, and it’s an unfamiliar feeling. Last year’s tremendous Meet the Fergusons series was supposed to be an open-ended visual commentary on the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and an attempt to humanize both sides without getting political. But in the process of creating the mixed-media pieces that would become this series, Dunson started to get, “excuse my language, pissed off.” With police shootings, local and international terrorism, and growing national distrust, Dunson calls this maddening era “a new 1960s,” comparing it to a forest fire, a volatile force that many fear. “It’s almost like our culture is burning,” he says, “but once all of this burns away, what is this new growth going to look like?” In this way, Meet the Fergusons acted as a springboard for Dunson’s latest show at the Rymer Gallery, _lack History. The show will feature several paintings from Meet the Fergusons as well as new paintings and three-dimensional works.
Tête-à-Tête, 2015, Mixed media on board, 8” x 8”
Mama Interior depicts Dunson’s wife, daughter, and mother-in-law sitting in front of a home that has been decimated by a hurricane or a tornado. To observe the background destruction, the viewer is forced to “look past the family, look past history, look past the connection between people, in order to see the ugliness.” Other pieces ask, “Who is this? Who are these people?” His painting That Son of a … shows a black man standing in front of a burned-out gas station. His face is hidden by a cloud, a set of snarling lips, and a gold grill, like Magritte’s green apple. Many of the three-dimensional works are icons from these paintings, like this cloud that serves as a tangible and emphatic punctuation mark to the show. Dunson’s artwork has always required his audience to fill in the blanks, with familiar, albeit warped, imagery that piles symbols on top of symbols. Before now, he’s only ever encouraged discourse; now he’s strong-arming it. He’s telling us where to look, and he’s encouraging us to react to what we find. Some works will invite social engagement, as with play guns that will have YouTube URLs as their titles. “I’ve never been OK with being angry,” Dunson says. “That’s my nature, that’s my family.” But lately he’s started to look at his own 14-year-old son, a tall, strong, “very dark young man,” and knows that when his son walks out into the world, he’ll be met with judgment and misconceptions. “And that makes me angry.” And yet, Dunson remains disarmingly open and hopeful in his art. The conversation can, and will, happen. na Sam Dunson’s _lack History is on exhibit February 6 through March 4 at The Rymer Gallery. For more information visit, www.therymergallery.com. 26 nashvillearts.com
That Son of a . . ., 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 44” x 36”
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nashvilleGEMS
by Karen Parr-Moody
Six Local Jewelry Designers Who Want to Make You Look Good
G
old and silver lend handcrafted
jewelry a warm glow, and the creative hands of designers imbue it with soul. Such jewelry is the remedy for the winter blues and is the perfect gift for Valentine’s Day. Nashville is home to many fine jewelry designers; here are six who caught our attention.
Margaret Ellis Jewelry Metamorphosis Spring 2016 3-D Floral Necklace Handcrafted in sterling silver and bronze, 19” long with 1.25” - 1.75” flowers
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One thing I’ll do is take an old nail and put gold and diamonds on it. I repurpose objects and make them precious because of how I interpret them.
Gabrielle Friedman For the South African jewelry designer Gabrielle Friedman, there is an aesthetic relationship between the landscape of Cape Town, where she grew up, and her designs. “Cape Town is beach and mountains and a lot of African art,” Friedman says. “So my aesthetic is very organic, is very much based in nature.” Friedman’s mother was a Cape Town ceramicist who showed in galleries, so Friedman grew up with her influence, as well as that of native art. As an adult, Friedman pursued a career in art therapy, but about 25 years ago she began dabbling in various aspects of jewelry design. She has developed a technique that involves combining organic materials that are undervalued— pyrite, bone, or horn, for example—with precious metals and diamonds.
Oxidized sterling silver and 18k gold with sapphire beads
“One thing I’ll do is take an old nail and put gold and diamonds on it,” she says. “I repurpose objects and make them precious because of how I interpret them.” Friedman makes each piece individually by hand, so each is unique. “It’s sophisticated and it’s edgy and organic,” she says of her jewelry style. “A lot of my jewelry you could actually wear dressy, but if you wore it with a t-shirt and jeans that would be absolutely awesome. Everything I make I like it to be for life, for wearing anywhere. It’s very transitional.” Cumberland Gallery, 4107 Hillsboro Circle, will host a show of Friedman’s jewelry through February 14. For more visit, www.cumberlandgallery.com. Her work is also on view at www.gabriellefriedman.com. 18k gold cuff with diamonds Sterling silver cuff with diamonds Oxidized sterling silver cuff with diamonds
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Blue sapphire (14.82 carats) Diam gold onds (16. 95 carats), 18k white
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He is an Indiana Jones of the gemstone world, traveling to the hinterlands to discover rubies, alexandrites, and colored diamonds. Blue sapphire (6.01 carats) with diamonds
Wayne Roland Brown In 2014, a 392.5-carat sapphire called the “Blue Bell of Asia” sold at auction for $16.94 million, as reported in the New York Times. In January, a businessman reportedly procured a blue sapphire as large as a man’s palm at 1404.49 carats. Both gems were found in Sri Lanka, where the largest sapphires in history have been mined. The larger was sold by a Sri Lankan gem merchant who owns mines in Ratnapura, a city whose name means “City of Gems.” Naturally, Nashville gem dealer and jewelry designer Wayne Roland Brown is also familiar with the mines of Sri Lanka. He is an Indiana Jones of the gemstone world, traveling to the hinterlands to discover rubies, alexandrites, and colored diamonds. Wayne Roland Brown (center) with sapphire miners in Sri Lanka
Brown works with local and international clients in designing investment jewelry, such as a necklace pendant comprised of a large blue sapphire set in platinum and surrounded by diamonds. Craftsmen in New York and L.A. create the settings. Brown recently procured a massive blue sapphire from a mine in Ratnapura. He says its value is estimated to be in the $300,000 to $400,000 range. These are the kind of stones that quicken his pulse. “These are pieces that are not going to go down in value if you buy them right,” Brown says. “So it’s a lot of money to put in jewelry, but it’s also a good place to put money if you do it right.” Brown is available by appointment and can be contacted at www.gondwanalandopals.com. 33 nashvillearts.com
Using the shiny leftovers of the acrylic that serves as canvases for her paintings, Mary Mooney creates necklace pendants that are tiny works of art. Mooney’s method of painting is both abstract and technically unusual. She paints on the back of her canvases, which are made of museum-grade acrylic. She likens the process to painting in watercolor, by which an artist must have a plan, such as leaving white areas blank for later highlights (no master uses white paint to achieve this). Such precision tasks Mooney with creating smaller studies before painting the final piece. She then uses a band saw to cut these studies into the smaller shards that become pendants.
gold -filled chain
Mary Mooney
Paint ed m useu m-gr ade a crylic shee t, bra ss ba r, 30”
Photograph by Jacoby Photo and Design
Mary Mooney in her studio
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I look at the jewelry as a way for people to own a piece of artwork that’s original.
“I’ll get several pendants out of each of these miniature studies,” Mooney explains. She uses brass or aluminum findings to attach the pendant to a sterling silver or gold-filled chain. Each pendant is a small piece of a larger painting
“I look at the jewelry as a way for people to own a piece of artwork that’s original,” Mooney says. “When people buy artwork they usually own a house and have to have a space for it. It’s a bigger commitment than a necklace.” Intriguingly, her necklaces have names that sound like artworks, such as “Morning Fog” or “Champagne & Midnight Dancing” or “Dualities No. 1.” In another creative twist, Mooney has created “BFF pendants.” A play on the acronym for “best friends forever,” BFF pendants come from the same painting study, so they are of the same color palette and feature brushstrokes that continue from one pendant to the next. OAK Nashville, 4200 Charlotte Avenue, will host a trunk show for Mooney's pendants on Feb. 6, and her work can also be found at Wilder, 1212 4th Avenue North, or online at www.MaryMooneyArt.com. 34 nashvillearts.com
Painted museum-grade acrylic sheet, brass bar, 30” gold-filled chain
Photograph by Brett Warren
Triangle Chime Earrings Handcrafted in sterling silver, 1” x 1” x 3”
Mclaine Richardson of Margaret Ellis Jewelry
Jewelry designer Mclaine Richardson’s spring line for Margaret Ellis Jewelry, Metamorphosis, is about spring and rebirth, complete with a bevy of flowers. That’s not to say that these are the precious buds of Victoriana. Richardson was initially inspired by a loose contour drawing of flowers she saw on Instagram. But as she and the jewelry artisans worked on the line at the firm’s Cummins Station studio, it became clear that these would be a specific kind of flower in their non-specificity. “As we were making them I kept saying, ‘We need to make them less perfect. More imperfect,’” Richardson explains. “Because when we first started making them they were too literal.” As the process continued, the team gave the flowers more weight and texture—the line’s signature—to make them their own.
Charm Necklace Handcrafted in sterling silver and bronze 18” long with 1” - 3” charms
The results are lovely. There are necklaces created in all silver, all bronze, and a combination of silver and bronze. Then there is a silver flower bracelet that is engineered so that it won’t flip over due to the flower’s weight. (The flowers have some movement, however, as though they are blowing in the wind.) A happy accident of this collection was the use of rose quartz—it wound up being the top color forecasted in the famous Pantone Fashion Color Report for this spring. This blend of rose quartz and floral motifs fits in perfectly with Valentine’s Day, as well. “That definitely was not intentional,” Richardson says. “But it has a nice correspondence.” Find out more about the collection at www.margaretellisjewelry.com.
Amtrak Cuff Handcrafted in sterling silver and bronze, 2” wide
Double Cuff Handcrafted in bronze, 2” wide
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Pearls are like snowflakes—no two pieces are actually the same.That’s why I love to use them; they really inspire me.
Multi-color pearl wire bracelet, sculpted silver wire, multiple color freshwater baroque pearls, and crystal beads
Boulder Opal Necklace: Floral pattern boulder opal on silver setting with a Tahitian pearl, hand engraved sterling silver leaves, twisted silver wire, and labradorite beads chain
Sealy Xia It is strange to think that jewelry artist Sealy Xia hails from the northernmost province of China, the chilly Heilongjiang Province that borders Russia. Her jewelry speaks of spring, all leaves and color, rather than of sub-Arctic cold. Xia specializes in high-quality freshwater pearls, with their wide range of colors, sizes, and shapes. She also loves to use Biwa pearls and a type of pearls called Keshi, which means “poppy seed” in Japanese, with their thin, petal-like shapes. “Pearls are like snowflakes—no two pieces are actually the same,” Xia says. “That’s why I love to use them; they really inspire me.” Fifteen years ago Xia got her start with a more inauspicious material— glass beads from which she made some earrings. It was a catalyst. Since then Xia has taken many classes on jewelry and gemstones, including those from GIA, the Gemological Institute of America. Xia’s father was an artist, and she readily acknowledges his influence. One sees an artist’s hand in her bracelets draped in sculptural wire on which floats a constellation of colorful freshwater pearls. Then there is her use of metalwork to create dainty leaves for pendants. Fitting for Valentine’s Day, Xia has created the “Open Heart Pendant,” a torch-soldered piece made of silver, bronze, and copper that features a flame-painted copper heart. Her similar “Pearl Heart Pendant” includes a rose-toned freshwater Edison pearl. Sealy Xia’s work is sold at Franklin’s Gallery 202, at East Nashville’s Art & Invention Gallery, and at the gift shop of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. It can also be viewed at www.sealyjewelrydesign.com. Rising Sun Pendant: Torch soldered silver and copper, hand engraved, and flame painted copper
Anticlastic Wrap Bracelet, Bronze, 2” x 4” x 4”
Kinetic Leaf Earrings, Sterling silver, 2” x .5” x .5”
Fold Formed Lariat Necklace on Vessel 18k cascading leaf lariat necklace, 52” Fabricated bronze vessel 9” x 4” x 4”
Susan Thornton
Photograph by Tausha Ann Photography
Susan Thornton has graduate degrees in both textiles and jewelry making, two areas which come together magically in her jewelry design. Then there is the Donna Karan connection. Thornton once worked at a boutique for the high-end fashion designer, who was married to the late sculptor Stephan Weiss until his death. Thornton feels, like many, that Karan’s clothes sculpted the female body. “She was very much like an artist,” Thornton says of Karan. “I think working for that company was what really cemented my sculptural, curvy, comfy design sense. I like jewelry to be comfortable. If it doesn’t sit on your body and feel good, you might buy it, but you might wish you hadn’t later on.” There is much movement found in Thornton’s jewelry—gold leaves that swing around one’s neck and silver drops that look like sea anemones on her “Pincushion Ring.” Sculpture is also inherent in items such as statement rings with large cabochon stones or what she calls “Brooch Boxes,” which look like modern-day lockets. Thornton works in silver, gold, and bronze, and uses precious and semi-precious stones including pearls, diamonds, opals, amethysts, garnets, and, her favorite, moonstones. While she has a knack for creating statement pieces, Thornton assures women that wearing them is a breeze.
Bridge Ring, Sterling Silver, Alexandrite and Dichroic Italian Glass, 2” x 1” x .5”
“If you go to a jewelry designer, you can actually get things made and tailored for your own body,” she says. “I don’t think people realize that jewelry can be tailored like a fine suit. I do that for a lot of clients.” Learn more at www.thorntonmetals.com/jewelry.html. 39 nashvillearts.com
Tad DeSanto, Was or Not Was, Mixed media, 24” x 24”
by Matt Collinsworth
Where We’re Going Doesn’t Look Like Where We’ve Been Selections from Four Contemporary Kentucky Folk Artists The Arts Company
|
February 6–24
F
olk art in Kentucky and across the South has long been viewed as a product of the region’s unique and tortured agrarian mythology. To generations of urban and suburban collectors and scholars, this was art made by odd and ingenious men and women from far-flung, bucolic places that seemed simultaneously exotic and originally American. The same qualities that brought renewed attention to selftaught Kentucky artists like Edgar Tolson, Charley Kinney, and Helen LaFrance in the 1960s and 70s also led to an oversimplified categorization of their work as regional, rural, or other. A line was redrawn and darkened between fine art and folk art. This line, though, was an artificial construct, one generated by our basest intellectual tendency to sort and rank. But today, a new generation of folk artists has set about to finally obliterate that line as they challenge our concept of what self-taught art is and what it can become. The exhibition that opens at The Arts Company on February 6 presents the work of four such artists, Tad DeSanto, Joshua Huettig, Robert Morgan, and Bruce New. While these artists range in age from their thirties to sixties, they are all of a generation of folk artists in Kentucky who not only exist on the cutting edge but define it actively through their work. It is also important to note that none of these artists live in secluded, rural places. All four reside in or very near the state’s urban centers of Lexington and Louisville.
Tad DeSanto,You said what you said, you did what you did, Mixed media, 24” x 24”
Of this group, Robert Morgan (b. 1950) has been making art prolifically for the longest period of time. As a teenager, Morgan recognized that he wanted to be an artist. Growing up in Lexington, he spent time with the artist and his mentor Henry Faulkner and was active in Lexington’s alternative art scene in the late 1960s and early 70s. He traveled the country over the next decade, always gravitating toward avant-garde artists and underground cultures wherever he found them. Surviving the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and witnessing the carnage that it wreaked on many of his friends and loved ones was the primary motivating factor behind Morgan’s serious pursuit of art. In that catastrophe he found his voice, and he was moved to a life of art making and activism. It is, then, no surprise that he chose to make art from found objects. Robert Morgan takes the lost, broken, and discarded things of the world and makes them novel and magnificent. A Morgan assemblage may contain hundreds of individual items, and, taken separately, many of these objects seem selected for the
Bruce New, The Sun Alliance, Mixed media, 27” x 21”
“
In an age when the line between folk art and fine art is increasingly blurred, these four artists stand to ask if it should exist at all.
Robert Morgan, Tropic of Cancer, 2010, Found materials, 45” x 40” x 20”
sense of loss or pain that they appear to impart. But, joined together, they make something entirely new, a work that is often all about rebirth, exultation, and victory. Robert Morgan has earned his place as one of the most important self-taught artists working in America today. Tad DeSanto (b. 1947) developed an interest in art in his twenties. However, he did not begin to make art in a serious way until decades later, after his retirement. In the early 2000s, friends encouraged him to offer his work for sale at a local art fair in Louisville. To his surprise and delight, the work was enthusiastically received, and he sold numerous pieces. Since that day, making art has been a much bigger part of his life. DeSanto uses oil sticks and his fingers to paint on wood or
Masonite, and he often includes a variety of other materials. His paintings and collages sometimes include words or phrases that are directly related to the visual image. Though regularly drawn from personal sources, the works are far from didactic and are often open to an array of interpretations. DeSanto’s images are always clever and among the most visually innovative to be found anywhere. Bruce New (b. 1970) is one of the most exciting self-taught artists to appear on the scene in Kentucky in the past decade. New began making things as a teen. Working construction as an adult, he fell and was seriously injured. During his lengthy recovery, New became engrossed with art, using the local library in Richmond to explore art from every corner of the world.
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Joshua Huettig (b. 1978) began making art in 2007 after the death of his father. Huettig was born in Louisville, but his family moved to Nashville when he was very young. Looking for a change of scenery and inspiration, Huettig moved back to Louisville in 2008. He now works out of a studio in a renovated warehouse near the river, west of downtown. Huettig uses salvaged house paint and old sheets of plywood and lumber scavenged from the banks of the Ohio River to make his art. His chosen media produce work with unique
Joshua Huettig, Night Song, 2010, House paint on wood, 72” x 16”
Joshua Huettig, The Beginning, 2010, House paint on wood, 72” x 16”
Joshua Huettig, Native Song, 2010, House paint on wood, 72” x 16”
Out of the vast visual vocabulary that he developed, Bruce New settled on an intricate form of paper cut collage. In his works, figures and symbols are often cut and laid atop a background of pages assembled from a variety of books. The work is obsessive and meticulous in the best possible ways. Recurring numbers in most of the collages refer to dates significant in his life. He has experimented with colors over the years and has even produced some striking three-dimensional works. New’s work is instantly recognizable and has garnered attention and showings across America and Europe.
colors and textures, but these choices also acknowledge the impermanence of all things, the inevitability of decay. In terms of subject matter, Huettig tends to produce work in series that examine themes important to him. For instance, most of his paintings in this exhibition feature women with beehive hairdos and noticeable musculature, mouths open in song. Huettig explains that in these works he was exploring ideas of self-creation and liberation. Joshua Huettig is a rising star who will be an important artist for decades to come. In an age when the line between folk art and fine art is increasingly blurred, these four artists stand to ask if it should exist at all. Their work is all carefully conceived, fully intentional, and gloriously crafted. It’s as good as any contemporary art that one would hope to see. na Contemporary Urban Folk Art from Kentucky: End of the Agrarian Tradition opens February 6 at The Arts Company and remains on view through February 24. Nashville Arts Magazine Publisher Paul Polycarpou will host a discussion with collector and musician Kevin Gordon, exhibiting artist Joshua Huettig, and Kentucky Folk Art Museum Director Matt Collinsworth in conjunction with the exhibit on February 5 at 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.theartscompany.com. 45
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kevinRUDOLF
Words by Paul Polycarpou Photography by Rory White
Another Side...
S
ome people are self-propelled jet rockets, the tanks always full and the cylinders always firing. Kevin Rudolf is one them. The Hip Hop phenom was signed to Cash Money Records, wrote the anthem "Let It Rock" and sold a gazillion records. Along the way he worked with The Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne, Justin Timberlake, and Keith Urban. He’s as comfortable in front of the canvas (think Jackson Pollock) as he is in front of an audience, and he is about to change the way we eat with his innovative automated food enterprise. He has settled in Nashville and is loving every minute of it, at least for now. 46 nashvillearts.com
What’s your greatest extravagance? A few years ago it was Ferraris. I still love them, but for me it’s about the achievement, and once you achieve it sometimes you don’t really need it anymore. Who do you most admire? Richard Branson, Elon Musk. I admire people who go out into the world with a vision and accomplish it. What’s your greatest fear? Being normal, being average, and not going for my dreams. What are you most proud of? My son, of course, but as far as my career goes, the first time I had a really big hit song with "Let It Rock". That was a great feeling of accomplishment going from nowhere to being in the game. Sustaining myself off my creativity, I’m proud of that. What has your success meant to you? I get to do what I want every day. Which to me is what success is. Some days I win; some days I lose, but that’s up to me. What would you like to do over? Being a creative person is mostly about disappointments. You write a hundred songs to get one hit. You knock on twenty doors to get one yes. It’s the persistence in the face of disappointment that equals success. What characteristic do you most like in other people? Authenticity. People who do what they say they’re going to do. And if you’re on time, that’s great too. What do like least? I can’t stand fake; it’s such a turnoff. What are you listening to at the moment? Bob Marley, The Stones, Van Halen, Sade, Bruce Springsteen. Which Country performers do you like? Working with Keith Urban blew me away. We had a numberone song together. He’s a fantastic writer, player, performer. Why Nashville? I’d spent a lot of time in L.A., Miami, and New York. I wanted to try something different. I came to Nashville to do some writing, and I fell in love with the place. A good place to raise a family. It’s a very kind environment here; I like that. What advice would you give young people? Trust your instincts; do what you love. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it. Don’t chase the money ‘cause you’ll chase it away. Who would you most like to have a long conversation with? Chris Blackwell, who started Island Records. He signed Bob Marley and U2. I’d love to know what was going on in his head, what he was thinking, feeling when he got started. Such a special time in music.
Who’s your favorite painter? I love Basquiat. His work brings me back to early New York City where I grew up. I love street art and graffiti, but I also love Matisse and Picasso. Are you happy with where you’re heading? I’m at a point of transition. I’m working on some art projects, and I have a concept machine called the Burritobox, a burrito vending machine that’s part of a whole business around automated food. There’s a lot going on. I follow what excites me. What would surprise people to know about you? I’m so many different things: I cook, I love art, music, business, culture. I might be seen publicly as a hip hop guy, but that’s just one side of me. I’m multi dimensional, and I care deeply about everything that I do. When did you know that you were destined to be a musician? I was exposed to so much early in my life in New York. So much craziness at such a young age. When I was about twelve I told my parents that I wasn’t going to college and that I was going to be a musician. I was obsessed; it was my path. What’s the real truth about fame? It’s deceptive. It’s exciting to be recognized for your work. It’s a buzz to be recognized on the streets, but other than that it doesn’t really do anything. You can get hooked on that attention, and that can be a trap. What I strive for is recognition for my work more than fame. When and where are you the happiest? I think it’s about balance. It’s not just one thing. I love being at home watching a movie, being in the studio writing, or being on a business call and making things happen. What’s it like being you today? It’s a mix of studio work, forging a new identity musically, then I get to play dad and grill a few steaks. Right now I’m in launch phase. Life is long, and the process of reinvention is where I’m at right now. What do you want to be remembered for? I want to have an impact on the world. A meaningful impact. I want to make a dent. I want people to know I was here, and I want to do it on my own terms. For more information about Kevin Rudolf and upcoming shows visit www.facebook.com/kevinrudolf.
THEBOOKMARK
A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS
Be Frank with Me Julia Claiborne Johnson This charming debut novel will delight those who love quirky characters getting into wacky situations. (Did you like Where’d You Go, Bernadette? You might love this.) Alice Whitley, New York publishing assistant, is sent to the Bel Air mansion of eccentric literary legend Mimi Banning to monitor her progress on a much-anticipated novel. There, Alice meets Mimi’s 9-year-old son, Frank, an old soul with strange habits, and becomes fascinated with this unusual household. Who is Frank’s father? Why doesn’t Mimi leave the house? And will that book ever get finished? Read, find out, and enjoy.
While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent Into Madness
The High Mountains of Portugal
Eli Sanders
The author of the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi is back with another entrancing novel. As before, there’s a fable-like quality to the storytelling here: It begins in 1904 Lisbon, where a young man discovers an old journal with writings about an extraordinary artifact. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist with a fondness for murder mysteries picks up the quest. Fifty years after that, a Canadian senator returns to his family home in Portugal to mourn the loss of his wife, and the story that began decades earlier continues. Don’t miss this sweet, surprising, memorable tale.
Eli Sanders, the associate editor of Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger, won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the horrific events of one summer night in 2009 when 23-year-old Isaiah Kalebu broke into the home of Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper. As Sanders explores in his account of what happened next and all that came before and after, Kalebu’s behavior fit a growing pattern of instability and violence, all of which slid through the cracks of the mental health and justice system. You won’t be able to put the book down, and when you finally do, you’ll still be thinking about it.
Yann Martel
Free Men Katy Simpson Smith In 1788, in the wooded land of what is now Alabama, the paths of an escaped slave, a white orphan, and a Creek Indian cross. In the few days the men spend together, they commit a murder and become fugitives from the law. A French tracker named Le Clerc is sent to bring them in, and as he follows their trail, Smith digs into the backstories of these disparate characters. Back when this part of the South was a mix of European, American, and Native forces, people grappled with questions of power, race, forgiveness, and freedom—all of which are just as relevant today. Free Men is our First Editions Club selection for February, and Smith will be here on Thursday, February 25!
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
ASISEEIT BY MARK W. SCALA
Mark W. Scala Chief Curator
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
View from On High The Ambiguities of Drone Warfare
I
n his 2011 video 5,000 Feet Is the Best, Omer Fast opens a window onto one of the most contentious aspects of the war on terror: the use of missile-firing drones, which are controlled by operators thousands of miles from the site of impact. This technology is touted by advocates for its precision, reach, and for keeping its pilots out of harm’s way. At the same time, it has been criticized for occasional catastrophic errors, with questions being raised about the morality of such remote mechanistic warfare and the possibility that the technology could as easily be used against us. In this video, Fast captures these ambiguities, segueing smoothly between fiction, memory, and reality to animate that space in our minds and our culture in which conceptions of right and wrong, risk and gain, remorse and absolution struggle to co-exist. The film is based on two interviews he held with a former Predator drone sensor operator who was based in Las Vegas, a half-world away from the conflict. The operator, shown on the screen as a blurry face, tells about the training, logistics, and psychological impact of drone warfare. 52 nashvillearts.com
As a counterpoint to this anonymous figure, Fast hired an actor to play the part of a drone operator, whom he ‘interviewed’ in a dark hotel room. In addition to reflecting on the nature of drone warfare, the actor tells three stories. The first two are about people who employ deception in pursuit of criminal goals—no obvious connection to drone warfare other than to evoke the porous cloth between fiction and reality, which is also the underlying theme of the film itself, as the actor embodies emotional intensity, in contrast to the more matter-of-fact testimony of the drone operator. The explosive third story holds the key to the entire narrative. This is a parable in which a middle-class American family leaves home, perhaps outside of Las Vegas, for a drive in the country. They pass through a checkpoint guarded by Chinese soldiers, an occupying force that is the reverse mirror of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The family drives deeper into the desert until they encounter a small group of armed men digging a hole in the road in which to place an improvised explosive device. The men are described by the actor as shepherds or tribesmen, such as might be found in Iraq, but we see them to be Americans, fighting against the occupying power. The family drives slowly past at just the moment that a missile hits from a Chinese drone above. The message is clear—in different circumstances, the resistance could be ours; the collateral damage could be us. Fast’s simulation of a documentary mode, which weaves a story at once factual and metaphorical, seems fitting in the context of the ‘unreal’ clarity of the view from 5,000 feet high. Even from this height, the operator is able to tell what shoes someone is wearing, or whether a person is smoking. At the same time, the bird’s eye view flattens space and depth, making the image diagrammatic. From a mile above, the tops of people’s heads are like icons on the screen. Indeed, the actual operator compares his work to playing a computer game, with a clear split between the mechanics of his job and the psychological trauma that comes with realizing the devastation he has caused. Omer Fast knows war is complex and does not moralize. He only asks questions and allows others to speak, then reconstructs their testimony into a fictional meta-narrative. In the end, 5,000 Feet Is the Best is not an indictment of a particular weapon. It is a probing consideration of the psychological effects of its use on the user and the implications for the society that accepts, or turns a blind eye to, its ambiguities. na Omer Fast, 5,000 Feet Is the Best (film still), 2011, Single channel, HD video, color, sound, 30 min.© Omer Fast, courtesy of James Cohan, New York
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janeBRADDOCK The Color of Words Tinney Contemporary through March 12
The Sheltering Sky, Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"
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by Susan W. Knowles
Sea of Poppies Triptych, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 180” (each panel “60” x 60”)
B
y choosing letters as compositional elements in some of her paintings, artist Jane Braddock confronts the conventional notion of abstract art. In a recent interview, she muses on the use of text and color as meaningful components in her art. Susan Knowles: There are many references to poetry and poetic writing in your titles. We can find words and phrases by Pablo Neruda and Rumi and Swami Muktananda and Amitav Ghosh and quotations from Chinese poetry, as well as those of contemporary American poets Jana Harris and Walter Benton. Are you inspired by the philosophy behind literary images or more interested in the feelings and images they contain? Jane Braddock: My interests drive where I am looking and what I am looking at. In that way, my personal philosophy and curiosity inform the sort of things I will be reading. Within that range of material, fragments emerge. I often use text out of context—it may actually refer to a religious figure or a landscape or it might be part of a love poem—or any one of a number of different things, but I try to limit the context so that the interpretation can be more open ended. I don’t want to direct the experience for the viewer so much as suggest a feeling that they can explore in their own way.
Looking for text to be used in paintings is very specific as I can’t have many letters—the most I ever used was one hundred and fifty and I did it one time for the challenge—but I prefer if it’s under thirty characters. That has a lot to do with the impact of the painting: how large or small the letters are in scale, what is appropriate to the meaning of the words themselves, and how the text integrates with the painting.
SK: You have been using letters in your paintings for a while now. JB: Yes. The way the text entered the paintings was that I was already using fragments as painting titles. I love to read, so sometimes I would just scribble down lines or little notes and put them up as post-its in the studio or in books and drawers like everyone does, and then I would find them and think, wow, that’s a really good title for a painting. At first I would paint the paintings, and then I would find something that would resonate as a title. Then I found myself beginning with text and then making paintings that felt like they expressed, at least in feel, that idea. And I’ve noticed lately that in the last couple paintings I’ve done that have text in them, I’ve been painting out part of the text so it won’t show at all. As far as I’m concerned, the title will always be the full 55
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I Am the Loon, Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"
Seeing Is Separate from What Is Seen, Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"
text (which is written on the back of the painting, along with my signature). But I’m OK with having some of the “message,” so to speak, buried in the image, as if it arose from the image, and it can also be submerged in the image. I’m not wedded to the text as communication. The communication is the painting itself. SK: Can you elaborate on how the letters themselves have become part of your compositions? JB: There are a few levels on which this question can be answered. One of them is that my work has always been based on the idea of the grid [an x, y composition in which vertical and horizontal lines are perpendicular to one another]. For every text piece, I draw out the grid and letters full size on paper. They are all within the grid at exactly the same place in terms of horizontal and vertical. One of the things this does is give a formal stability to the work itself, allowing me to explore more fluid and less compositionally based painting approaches because the grid is always there to rope it back in. Leaving Their Bodies, Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"
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One other thing about the way I do the text. I have pretty narrow parameters of what I allow and don’t allow: I’m only using one font; the letter forms are simple and unadorned, as straightforward and almost unattractive as they can be, simple, flat, same thickness all around, all caps. What I like about it is you are not swept away by the
to it a little more. People learn in their own way. Some people are intuitive; some are intellectual; some are emotionally based—whatever learning style you have (which is probably your approach to life) is what you want to try to bring to the experience.
beauty of the letters. Letters are beautiful and language is beautiful, and I don’t want that to be the overriding impact or the first thing you are aware of in the work. Interestingly, the font name is Phantom. SK: What types of discoveries have come along with incorporating words this way? JB: As I was using different texts I became interested in how the painting might reflect that particular text. I was painting in ways that I wouldn’t normally be painting if I were just going to grab a canvas and start painting. An example might be the diptych Seeing is separate from what is seen. I decided that I wanted to make the background of the piece in metallic silver and then the text in a gray of the same value so that when you look at the painting from a certain angle you don’t see anything at all, but when you look from another angle you can read it. It’s playing with the idea of what it is that we see. I don’t think I would have done this if I hadn’t had that line. Even though this had more to do with a spiritual idea, it’s also an art idea. I like it when the text can be imagined in different ways and in different contexts. SK: What is new about this current series? JB: This show is going to be called Drip Paintings. Something about the dripping with the formality of the grid was aesthetically pleasing. I have noticed over the years when my work changes it’s often something to do with a materials change. And if there’s concept to it, I’m often only aware of that later. It’s like what happens when you unwrap something that needs to be put together and you don’t want to read the directions. The minute you take the pieces up in your hands you begin to know something. That’s part of what I love about art making. Having the materials in your hands and making something is really satisfying and exciting. Trying different techniques and processes is something that has characterized my work over the years. Right now I’m using a lot of very wet washes so I don’t really know what I have until later.
SK: If you had to sum up the essence of your art in a few words, what would you say? JB: Color and light are absolutely huge in my work. I love color. Color is the original creative expression of light. Then color becomes sound and form, and then form becomes matter, and then matter becomes life as we know it. The more spiritual our experience becomes, the more immaterial it becomes and the more light-filled it is.
I do believe there is divine order in the universe. As Terence McKenna once said, the “big bang” was the only explosion he ever knew of that ended in order. Having studied astrology for many years, I’ve come to the same place. My work has to do with this mystery, which is compelling, seductive, and precious—just like life. na
Jane Braddock’s exhibition Drip Paintings opens with a reception at Tinney Contemporary on February 6 from 6 to 9 p.m. and will remain on view through March 12. For more information, please visit www. tinneycontemporary.com.
JB: It’s easy to have new art stimulate fear as a first response. One of the things you can do is to establish something about the painting that you feel resonant with, maybe color, maybe a feeling, maybe a subtle political agenda that you pick up on, maybe something about the title, maybe the scale of the piece. Generally speaking, the more you know about something the more comfortable you are with it. This is true with anything new or foreign. So if you are really uncomfortable with something, finding out about it is one of the best ways to open yourself up
Jane Braddock in her studio
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Photograph by John Schweikert
SK: What advice would you offer to viewers looking at abstract paintings for the first time?
Socially Engaged Art Liz Clayton Scofield Unpacks Trans Identity through Performance
Nobody Can Eat 50 Eggs, 2014, Video stills from performance video, 42:22 This performance, in both its manifestation as live interaction and as video, reenacts an iconic scene from 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.
I first came across Liz Clayton Scofield’s work in 2013 at Ground Floor Gallery with their video The Nature of Codependency. In it, Scofield rams into a closed door, full force, again and again. On the other side of the split screen, they complete the fruitless task of planting a seedling in gravel. It’s an endless loop of violence against the body and a thwarted attempt at growth that struck me hard. Scofield is a queer trans artist born in West Tennessee who uses performance, video, and sound to explore and critique gender constructs. Scofield, whose pronouns are they/them/their, creates performances that subject their body—and social norms—to inquiry, often by enduring great discomfort. “In a large way,” Scofield says, “these performances came from me accepting and beginning to unpack my trans identity and the anxiety that came with that.” They use their body as a tool, a collaborator, and, essentially, an object. “Yes, I was expressing violence against it, but in many ways, I was testing it. How could I change my relationship to my body?” Their performances contain a slapstick quality that both tempers and draws the pain of the process into focus, like when Scofield attempts to fit themself into a cardboard box labeled “Safe,” or when they perform the famous scene in Cool Hand Luke, when Luke takes on the challenge of eating 50 eggs to prove his prowess. In a recent project, Scofield scanned their body and 3D printed dozens of action figures. The “LiZes,” as they call them, were just on view in Detroit in CROTCH: Contested Territory, and they’ll appear in Scofield’s Modular Art Pod, coming to Oz Arts Nashville in June. Scofield envisions a revised queer art that doesn’t concern itself first with narrative and isn’t tailored to a heteronormative, cisgender audience. “What I hope for,” they say, “is an anti-assimilationist, dirty, never finished, violent and playful, loving and feeling, hearton-its sleeve, rebellious queer art, or, you know, a quiet, reserved, covert queer art, but at the heart of it is a ‘screw you’ and a hug.” To learn more about Scofield and read their manifesto of a queer art, visit www.lizclaytonscofield.com. Read the complete version of this story at www.nashvillearts.com Photograph by Tony Youngblood
OPENSPACES
BY ERICA CICCARONE
Erica Ciccarone is an independent writer. She holds an M.F.A. from the New School in Creative Writing. She blogs about art at nycnash.com.
Southern folk/outsider art. Also since the 1980s, the Kentucky Folk Art Museum has been discovering, exhibiting, and collecting folk art in the Appalachian area. In the 1990s, the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore became the official national museum for “intuitive, self-taught artistry.”
Thornton Dial, Heading for the Higher Paying Jobs, c. 1990, Watercolor, 22” x 30”
American Folk Art a.k.a. Contemporary American Art American folk art of the 20th century has been understood to be folksy art of the people—“untrained, rural, loner artists” living mostly in the South, usually in poverty, and generally untrained and uneducated as artists. At the beginning of the 21st century, some of these artists are coming to be viewed as significant American artists whose contemporary artwork has helped shape our modern visual culture, artists who will have a lasting influence on other artists, collectors, and audiences for years to come. In the 1980s, the discovery of the late folk artist Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden in Georgia put a new spotlight on
In the 1990s, Bill Arnett, an Atlanta-based educator, writer, and curator for decades of internationally important collections of African and Asian art, wondered why there was no visual equivalent to the distinctly American jazz forms in music created by African-Americans in the South. Ultimately, Arnett’s efforts led to his discovery of artists such as Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Gee’s Bend Quilters, and others, leading to a gift from Arnett and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This September, the Met will present a major exhibition of this gift. As Sheena Wagstaff, Chair of the Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, acknowledges: “The most important aspect is that the collection adds to the American story of twentieth-century art—not the African-American story but the American story.” As folk art enters officially into mainstream American art, it is the urban element, both aesthetic and cultural, that separates it from what has gone before. It’s what these artists know about our culture, and how they express it using available materials, that offers fresh insight. Anne Brown, The Arts Company
5THAVEUNDERTHELIGHTS
BY ANNE BROWN | THE ARTS COMPANY
SYMPHONYINDEPTH FEBRUARY 2016
In addition to being a world-class concert hall with phenomenal acoustics, Schermerhorn Symphony Center is a unique venue thanks to the sheer variety of concerts that take place there. And the very same thing could be said of the Nashville Symphony itself. This ensemble is so nimble and experienced that it can perform orchestral classics by Mozart and Beethoven, adventurous new music by contemporary composers like Jennifer Higdon and Michael Daugherty, and concerts with today’s leading pop artists— sometimes within the span of just a single week. This month will see the orchestra and the venue exploring the full variety of music, kicking off with a star-studded lineup that includes two acts making their first-ever appearances at the Schermerhorn. More than 50 years after she appeared at Nashville’s Memorial Auditorium with The Supremes, Diana Ross will join the orchestra February 2–3 to perform timeless classics from her catalog of more than 30 Top 10 hits. Immediately following, on February 4–5, the orchestra teams up with “The World’s Greatest Party Band” as The B-52s make their own Schermerhorn debut. The two-night run follows up the group’s first-ever orchestral performance back in September at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and promises to showcase The B-52s as they’ve never been seen or heard before. The following week brings two artists—Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow—who have earned an astounding 20 GRAMMY® Awards and more than 80 GRAMMY® nominations between them. Nelson returns to the Schermerhorn for the first time since 2012, playing two sold-out nights with his band February 11–12, before Crow makes her Nashville Symphony debut Valentine’s Day weekend with two performances featuring her unmistakable blend of pop, rock, folk, and country.
Diana Ross
Sheryl Crow
For Symphony Associate Conductor Vinay Parameswaran, who will lead the orchestra for the performances with Ross, The B-52s, and Crow, working with these pop icons is both exciting and humbling. “I have been fortunate to work with so many incredible artists in my time here at the Symphony, but this month’s concert schedule really takes things up a notch,” he says. “These are artists who have inspired and brought joy to millions and millions of people around the world through their music, and it’s going to be a privilege for all of us to share the stage with them.” These artists represent just one part of the Symphony’s diverse February offerings, which also include performances of Mussorgsky’s celebrated Pictures at an Exhibition and three nights of the orchestra paying tribute to The Eagles. As it turns out, the shortest month of the year may also be one of the best for concert-going as well. na For more information on all February concerts at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, visit www.NashvilleSymphony.org/tickets.
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The B-52s
Photography courtesy of NSO
A Star-Studded February at the Schermerhorn
After 500 Years of Art and Collecting, The House of Alba Brings Its Treasures to Nashville Frist Center
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February 5 through May 1
by Annie Stoppelbein
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he most powerful aristocratic dynasty in Spain owns one of the most significant art collections in the world. For five hundred years the Alba family has lavishly supported the arts in Europe. Their collection is now divided between three extravagant palaces and has been publicly exhibited only once before. For the first time it is traveling as a group outside of Spain. Co-presented by the Foundation of the House of Alba and the Meadows Museum in Dallas, Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting is making the Frist Center for the Visual Arts its second of two stops in America. These treasures have been organized by their collector and will focus on the most notable family members in the five-century lineage. The art reflects their exquisite taste and desire to preserve their legacy through portraiture and historical acquisitions. Over the years the family has been very protective of their collection, rarely loaning individual works of art, making this Nashville viewing all the more remarkable.
Diego Velázquez and Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, The Infanta Margarita, 2010, Found materials, 45” x 40” x 20”
Frist Center curator Trinita Kennedy affirms that Treasures from the House of Alba is a momentous occurrence. “It’s a family collection, so it is really extraordinary that they are willing to take the works out of their libraries, off of their walls in the palaces, and put them on view to the public.” Kennedy has been with the Frist for eight years and witnessed many exhibitions. “We haven’t had an exhibition like this focusing on a collection that spans this amount of time.” The show will offer over one hundred and thirty works of art, representing many of the finest artists of European history. While the core of the collection is Spanish, the family’s acquisitions reach beyond borderlines. “We wanted a first-rate exhibition of Spanish painting. But this is so much more. It has Goya, Ribera, and Murillo. But there’s also Titian, Dürer, Rembrandt, and Sargent.” Much of the work will come from the Liria Palace in Madrid, which until very recently was the home of the 18th Duchess of Alba. The late Duchess Doña María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart headed the House of Alba from 1955 until her death in 2014. She played two significant roles in the growth of the collection, one being that she was an only child, inheriting everything from her parents, including her father’s ambitious restoration of the Francisco de Goya, The Duchess of Alba in White, 1795, Oil on canvas, 76” x 51”
Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, Portrait of María del Rosario de Silva y Guturbay, Seventeenth Duchess of Alba, 1921, Oil on canvas, 81” x 71”
Mexican tray 17th century Silver, 22” x 22” x 2”
Liria Palace after the Spanish Civil War. During the war it was severely damaged along with many valuable works of art. The 18th Duchess, or Cayetana as she was known, added a substantial amount of art to the Alba collection. Much like her father she was an anglophile and sought out English artists as well as French Impressionists. While she was a worldly woman, she was also a model Spaniard with a zest for life and was very popular among the Spanish people. There are fantastic portraits of her in the show, including one from her childhood. It is a comical depiction with her horse that borders on kitsch but shows how she was beloved by all from a young age. The Duchess’s eldest son inherited her title, becoming the 19th Duke of the House of Alba, the highest ranking noble beneath the King and Queen of Spain, and keeper of the Alba dynasty’s tremendous collection.
Master of the Virgo inter Virgines, Annunciation with García Álvarez de Toledo, First Duke of Alba, c. 1485, Oil on panel, 36” x 27”
The exhibition begins with documents to establish the family lineage, including works from the 15th and 16th centuries. From there it flows through the Baroque period, to perhaps the masterpiece of the show, Francisco Goya’s The Duchess of Alba in White, 1795. It is a rarely seen and quite striking depiction of the 13th Duchess, who was a close friend of the artist. During Goya’s time portraiture was highly valued. Even two hundred years later, his painting preserves the aristocrat’s character; extravagant, powerful, and poised. The changes in the family structure directly affected their collection of art. One family member married into the family of Christopher Columbus, a union that secured for the House of Alba the largest group of the explorer’s documents in the world. Of the forty documents related to Columbus, the Alba family has twenty. There will be three on view in the collection, including a list of men who traveled with Columbus on the Santa Maria in 1492. It is a payment roll, showing who the men were and how much they were paid. There is a document by Ferdinand and Isabella declaring Columbus the governor of the lands that he discovered. Additionally, there is a log book, opened to a page that is thought to be one of the earliest European maps of the new world. Over time the family has shown interest in a variety of things. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Jan Six, 1647, Etching, drypoint, and engraving, 10” x 7”
Don Carlos Miguel Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, 14th Duke of Alba, spent a lot of time in Italy in the 19th century. He was interested in Italian Renaissance art. During his time there were major historical discoveries, such as Pompeii, which sparked his interest in antiquity. He acquired many fantastic paintings for the family, as evidenced in the exhibition. There is a gallery that shows his eclectic tastes, including Titian’s The Last Supper, c.1550–1555, as well as his drawings and prints by Rembrandt van Rijn and Albrecht Dürer. The vast majority of the paintings come from the House of Alba, but a few have been borrowed. After the heirless death of the 13th Duchess, many works were dispersed. Some paintings that were previously in the collection now live in museums around the world. For the first time, the Frist will be loaned a work from the Prado Museum in Madrid. “This is very exciting for us,” says Trinita Kennedy. “The Alba name in the art world is legendary.” Akin to a passing comet, Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting is an incredibly rare and significant opportunity for Nashville and the United States. na The Frist Center presents Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting from February 5 through May 1. For more information and programming notes, visit www.fristcenter.org.
Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Fernando de Silva Álvarez de Toledo, Twelfth Duke of Alba and Huéscar, 1773–76, Oil on panel, 34” x 28”
Gérard Seghers, Artemisia Before Drinking Mausolus’s Ashes, ca. 1612–15, Oil on canvas, 47” x 57”
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February 12–14
For this year’s rendition of the celebrated Attitude series, Nashville Ballet brings the essence of The Bluebird Cafe to TPAC’s Polk Theater. In classic Bluebird fashion—a writers’ round complete with stripped down sound, the stories behind the songs, and spontaneous collaboration—songwriters Victoria Banks, J.T. Harding, and Georgia Middleman perform some of their biggest hits. Hit songs made famous by country superstars such as Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Reba McEntire, and Sara Evans provide the soundtrack to new choreography by Christopher Stuart of Nashville Ballet, Banning Bouldin of New Dialect, Brian Enos, and Gina Patterson. Entitled City of Dreams, the piece is named after Banks’s song, which she wrote just after the flood of 2010 and that was subsequently recorded by more than 40 artists to support flood relief. “The overarching theme is City of Dreams, because Nashville is that,” Erika Wollam Nichols, the Bluebird Cafe Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, said. “Nashville is the place where people come with dreams, even if you’re not a songwriter or musician. The energy of chasing your dreams is here.” Attitude will also feature Petite Mort by famed Czech/Dutch choreographer Jiˇrí Kylián set to music by Mozart. James Sewell’s Chopin Tributes rounds out the program with a piece that was created to honor the Polish composer’s 200th birthday. Presented by SunTrust, Attitude will be held at TPAC’s Polk Theater for four performances February 12 through 14. For tickets and a complete performance schedule, visit www.nashvilleballet.com.
Photograph by Karyn Photography
TPAC’s Polk Theater
Photograph by Karyn Photography
Attitude by Nashville Ballet
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Resurface The New Work of Amanda Joy Brown Ground Floor Gallery
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February 1–29
by Ara Vito Inspiration is often fueled by unexpected discoveries, and this is certainly true of Amanda Joy Brown’s most recent series, in which she uses innovative materials such as acrylic paint sheets to create intricate patterns and dimension. “By accident, I discovered that peeling dried paint off of surfaces created beautiful textures and let me work with paint in a similar way you work with pieces of a collage or assemblage,” says the Nashvillebased artist. The results are dynamic; the delicate sheets, supported by surfaces of canvas and wood panel, are precise while still evoking vividness and motion. Drawing from an interest in decorative arts as well as a fascination for repetition and draped fabrics, Brown has allowed experimentation to take her in another direction. While much of her previous work has focused on the human form and the repetitive chaos found in large crowds, her latest material-based work has been a new venture for her, and it is this sense of exploration that excites her most about the process. “Deviating from representation encourages the use of materials to their unique potential. This has caused me to go down roads I haven’t gone before out of curiosity and a kind of ‘dialogue’ with the medium.” Her upcoming exhibit, Resurface, features her current series and will be in the Ground Floor Gallery for the month of February, with a reception on February 6 from 6 to 9 p.m. Her work is also featured in A.I.R. gallery in Brooklyn, Parker Gallery in Georgia, and Galerie Ortus in France. For more information about the exhibit, visit www.groundflrgallery.com. See more of Amanda Joy Brown’s work at www.amandajoybrown.com.
Conjoined Parameters, 2015, Acrylic paint sheets on frames
Th3 Anomaly abrasiveMedia February 6 After four years, more than 8,000 hours of volunteer labor, over 5,000 reference photographs, and gallons of paint, the world’s first and only gallery-sized graphic novel was recently unveiled at abrasiveMedia. Th3 Anomaly features 321 large paintings displayed three-dimensionally along with dozens of props, costumes, and miniatures. The family-friendly experience gives participants the chance to immerse themselves in a steam-punk alternative history that includes magic, science, monsters, ninja pirates, swords, and an airship. In 2011 abrasiveMedia opened its residency program to an ambitious proposal by Nashville artist David Landry. The idea was to blend fine art with comic-book-style narrative to create a graphic novel you could walk through. abrasiveMedia helps artists make big ideas happen, so the partnership was a perfect fit. A story was written, dozens of costumes and props were created, and seventeen models portrayed characters for the paintings, which showcase the adventures of Nikola Tesla, Sarah Bernhardt, Jules Verne, and other characters from the story. For Landry, Th3 Anomaly has been his chance to show that comic art is in fact “high art� enough for the walls of fine art galleries. A second showing of Th3 Anomaly will be held at abrasiveMedia on February 6 from 6 until 9 p.m. during Arts & Music at Wedgewood/ Houston. Th3 Anomaly can also be seen by appointment during the month of February. A 124-page printed graphic novel and an ebook version of Th3 Anomaly are available for purchase. abrasiveMedia is located at 438 Houston St. Suite 257. For more information, visit www.abrasivemedia.org and www.th3anomaly.com.
David Landry with all 321 paintings
michaelAURBACH
by Jesse Mathison
Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery through March 3
Administrative Spectacle (detail), 2013, Mixed media, 8’ x 9’ x 16’
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he artwork of Michael Aurbach is an ongoing critique of power structures. His sculptures, with their machined aesthetic, are cold and unforgiving, yet also alive with a wry sense of humor, a mainstay of Aurbach’s art and teaching style throughout his career. The Last Laugh highlights three pieces from the artist’s Secrecy series (begun in 1993), with each addressing how institutions and individuals maintain control. The show is presented in honor of Aurbach, who will retire after thirty years of teaching sculpture and drawing at Vanderbilt University. Joseph Mella, Fine Arts Gallery Director at Vanderbilt, especially wanted to recognize Professor Aurbach’s contributions to the University. “We’re thrilled to show his work here. His artwork of course deals with power structures, and from my perspective he’s reacting to these ideas through his own lens of being in an academic institution for a number of years. But of course his work goes beyond academia; it’s a broader stroke.” 70 nashvillearts.com
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Power does funny things to people . . . you never know who a person is until they’ve been placed in a position of power.
The Last Laugh: Selections from the Artist’s Secrecy Series
When asked about the underlying themes of this series, Aurbach mused that “power does funny things to people: Ljubica Popovich, a former colleague, once told me that you never know who a person is until they’ve been placed in a position of power, and that changed my outlook on the world. These pieces emerged from that sentiment and deal with human folly, abuse of power, and how people can suffer from bad judgment.” The series is rich in satire and symbolism, and a sense of humor is essential to fully understanding the work. To that end, we discussed the specifics of each piece. Cassandra focuses on whistle blowing and the figure of Cassandra, who in Greek mythology predicted the fall of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy but was also cursed, so that no one took her warnings seriously. The work consists of two figures, each in opposition to the other. On the left, a whistle sits atop a megaphone, which is to be taken as feminine, and the figure on the right, fitted with a camera lens, is indicative of power. It’s a representation of confronting power and illuminates the fact that institutions often make an effort to suppress the message of the whistleblower.
Cassandra, 2016, Mixed media, 8’ x 8’ x 4’
Administrative Spectacle uses Roman archetypes to reference ideas of “the insatiable need that many administrators have to outdo their peers.” The centerpiece is the use of three urinals, each poised at a different height, illustrating a metaphorical pissing contest. Other symbols consist of a surveillance camera, an anemometer (to check wind speeds), and loudspeakers. It’s vaguely Orwellian, absurd, and somehow barbaric in its sterility. Administrative Trial and Error is a portrait of an administrator who seeks control over their colleagues. The setting is both a cage and a boardroom, where those seated are at the mercy of this figure who is subdued by the need for control. There are feeder bottles in front of each chair, a crown above the throne, a chess set in the corner, containing only pawns. “There’s unresolved tension in this piece, and I wanted it to be unpleasant and claustrophobic so I compressed the space.” The effect is successful. Overall, there is a sense of uneasiness, punctuated with more absurd symbolism in the form of dual exhaust pipes fitted on the rear of the structure. na Michael Aurbach’s The Last Laugh will be on exhibit at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery through March 3. The gallery is open to the public Monday–Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and weekends 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, please visit www.vanderbilt.edu/gallery.
Administrative Trial and Error (detail), 2008, Mixed media, 8’ x 8’ x 12’ 71
nashvillearts.com
As Fisk University Celebrates Its Sesquicentennial, the Prodigal Stieglitz Art Collection Finds Its Way Back Home
by Jerry Waters
Carl Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University
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n November 4, 1949, Georgia O’Keeffe, a nationally recognized American artist, presented Fisk University with the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art during a dedication service held in the Fisk Memorial Chapel. Most of the objects Fisk received had been collected by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who was an internationally accomplished photographer and an art gallery director who introduced modern art into America through a series of galleries he operated in New York City from 1905 until his death in 1946. O’Keeffe was the executor of his estate. Following her visit to Fisk, The New York Times Magazine published O’Keeffe’s article “Stieglitz, The Pictures Collected Him” (December 11, 1949 edition) in which she said the Fisk portion was given “because I think it is a good thing to do at this time and that it would please Stieglitz.” O’Keeffe’s decision to donate a portion of the Stieglitz Collection to Fisk, a prestigious African American university located in the racially segregated South, was a cultural phenomenon in that much of the artwork (over 800 art objects) had already been placed in established American museums primarily located in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. These mainstream institutions included the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and were devoted to collecting and exhibiting visual culture from a worldwide perspective. O’Keeffe’s bequest to Fisk was, indeed, a remarkable occurrence that resulted in the creation of the first art gallery on the campus, The Carl Van Vechten Gallery of the Fine Arts, and was the genesis for the Fisk University Art Galleries museum program. Her decision to create a permanent exhibition, using 101 objects, was a modernist notion and a radical statement that advanced the concept that cultural material could be donated to a college that provided higher education for African American students. In conjunction with this concept the University established an admission policy so that The Carl Van Vechten Gallery would be open to visitors from the broader community regardless of race, color, or social class. This was a socially progressive idea because in the midst of the twentieth century many mainstream American museums implemented policies that either excluded African Americans from their facilities or limited their viewing hours to perhaps one day per week, often called Negro day.
Arthur Garfield Dove, Swinging in the Park (There Were Colored People There), 1930, Oil on board, 23” x 32”
Paul Cézanne, Les baigneurs, grande planche, c. 1896-1898, Color lithograph, 17” x 20”
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If all my photographs were lost and I’d be represented by just one, The Steerage, I’d be satisfied. —Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, Photogravure, 13" x 11"
The admissions policy at the Fisk art gallery was spearheaded by Charles Spurgeon Johnson, director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk and the first African American president of the University, and by Carl Van Vechten, a white American novelist, art advisor to O’Keeffe, and a staunch advocate for racial and cultural integration in America in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the enlightened spirit of Johnson, O’Keeffe, and Van Vechten that appeared over sixty years ago is present today through a partnership agreement between Fisk and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The agreement, adopted in 2012, allows this important collection to be displayed between both institutions on a biannual basis. The Stieglitz Collection exhibition is a precise art historical survey that contains some of the finest works from Stieglitz’s vast collection of drawings, photographs, prints, and sculptures by prominent late-nineteenth-century European artists and by early-twentieth-century Euro-American artists. As the first curator for the Collection, O’Keeffe selected images that represent a multi-faceted visual feast that juxtaposes the stylistic choices of four artists of the modernist School of Paris (Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso) against five American avant-garde artists whose work is significant in the early development of abstract painting in America. These five artists, famously known as the “Stieglitz Circle” are Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Within the gallery at Fisk, visitors may view Demuth’s oil and watercolor paintings that depict flowers, fruits, and vegetables. His artwork illustrates his ability to render naturalistic shapes through rich color harmonies and exquisite detail. In contrast, Dove’s oil painting Swinging in the Park (There Were Colored People There) reflects his connection
Florine Stettheimer, Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, 1928, Oil on canvas, 38” x 26”
Alfred Stieglitz, Self-Portrait, 1907 (printed 1931), Platinum print, 9” x 8”
Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1932, Gelatin silver print, 8” x 10”
to an abstract interpretation of shapes, decorative patterns, and swirling expressive lines which suggests movement in time and space in the natural world. John Marin’s etchings Woolworth Building, Number 3 and Brooklyn Bridge both contain swaying buildings, leaning trees, and kinetic lines that collectively allude to the energy of New York City. In fact, Marin believed this energy was alive in the skyscrapers and other architectural structures constructed in the early twentieth century. Painting Number 3 and Vase of Flowers are examples within a diverse range of colorful forms and stylized subject matter that Hartley experimented with on traditional surfaces—canvas and wood— as well as on glass, an unconventional support. Within the Fisk bequest, O’Keeffe included her New Mexico landscape painting of 1944 Flying Backbone and her haunting depiction of Radiator Building—Night, New York, which has become the signature image for the Stieglitz Collection at Fisk. This iconic work may also be interpreted as an emblematic portrait of Stieglitz, who was instrumental in the advancement of O’Keeffe’s artistic career. She also hung four West African tribal sculptures (from the Congo, Gabon, and Ivory Coast) in the gallery to show the possible influence of such forms on modernist European paintings in the exhibition such as Picasso’s Blue Period study Tete de Femme of 1904, and Gino Severini’s Futurist-inspired canvas Femme et Enfant (Woman and Child) of 1916. The first Cezanne images to be shown in America—two color lithographic prints, Les Baigneurs (The Bathers) of 1897 and 1898 that Fisk received—are significant in the history of art collecting in this country. And O’Keeffe’s gift includes nineteen photographic masterworks by Stieglitz that today exist within the canon of American photographic history. Most notable is The Steerage of 1907, of which the photographer said, “If all my photographs were lost and I’d be represented by just one, The Steerage, I’d be satisfied.” na
Georgia O’Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York, 1927, Oil on canvas, 48” x 30”
See The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University beginning April 7. For upcoming programming and gallery information, please please visit www.fisk.edu. All images: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas. Photography by Edward C. Robison III. 74 nashvillearts.com
Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 3, 1913, Oil on canvas, 42” x 35”
Bachman-Gretsch Collection
by Jake Townsend
American Sound and Beauty: Guitars from the Bachman-Gretsch Collection The Country Music Hall of Fame Through July 2016 Almost forty years ago, the Canadian guitarist and songwriter Randy Bachman amassed a collection of more than three hundred historic and rare Gretsch guitars. Now, the BachmanGretsch Collection of seventy-five classic guitars is on view at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, offering a stunning look at its evolution from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. There has never been a more complete picture of this collection, showcasing Gretsch guitars in the Baldwin, Gretsch Golden, and pre-war eras. This is the museum’s largest display of stringed instruments to date. “This collection of instruments tells a story of American life,” said museum CEO Kyle Young. “From the Great Depression to the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, music has always evolved to reflect the important issues of the day, providing a soundtrack to history. Through sound and beauty these guitars reflect that evolution and tell our story.” The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum boasts over two million of their own artifacts. Nashville, as a hub for music and art, easily became the perfect location to host this exhibit. Fred Gretsch, president of the Gretsch Foundation, added, “When thinking about where to debut this collection, they were the obvious choice to both tell the Gretsch story and showcase these beautiful works of art to the world.” American Sound and Beauty: Guitars from the Bachman-Gretsch Collection is on view at the Country Music Hall of Fame through July 2016. For more information, visit www.countrymusichalloffame.org or follow @countrymusichof on Twitter to join the conversation using #BachmanGretschExhibit.
Electromatic Spanish: early 1940s. This is the first electric Spanish guitar Gretsch offered in the 1939 catalog. A very rare 6-on-a-side headstock with Harlin tuners. 16” wide non cutaway body with checker binding, with unbound f holes, checkerboard bound fingerboard with dot inlays, Gretsch / Electromatic logo, trapeze tailpiece. One neck pickup, two knobs on top bouts, screw on input jack.
Courtesy of Oskar Landi
Arts Worth Watching Misty Copeland performing at the BRIC Arts House on Dec. 1, 2013
As one of the “starchitects” who rose to prominence in the 1990s, Frank Gehry helped to redefine the cultural landscape of many cities, including Los Angeles (the Walt Disney Concert Hall) and Bilbao, Spain (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao). Gehry’s current projects include another Guggenheim branch in Abu Dhabi and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s expansion. How will Gehry’s Deconstructivist vocabulary of angular lines and metal facings fit into that august institution? Wait and see. Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial initially drew harsh criticism before eventually redefining how we think about memorials. Winning that design contest in 1981 was the beginning of a career of conceptual projects for Lin that include the Civil Rights Memorial in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Wave Field, an earthen sculpture on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. Gehry and Lin are two of the guests in the Visionaries episode of Finding Your Roots, airing Tuesday, February 2, at 7 p.m.
CLASSICAL PERFORMANCES
Copeland didn’t just leap to stardom; her tough recovery from a potentially careerending injury is part of the story in Nelson George’s A Ballerina’s Tale airing Monday, February 8, at 9 p.m. on Independent Lens. If you missed Copeland’s performance in American Ballet Theatre: A History, the Ric Burns portrait of the company at 75, tune in at 11 p.m. for an encore broadcast. Opera fans, be sure to watch Live from Lincoln Center on February 5 at 8 p.m. when Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming, 2015 Richard Tucker Award-winner Jamie Barton, and other stars appear in From Bocelli to Barton: The Richard Tucker Opera Gala.
FABULOUS FRIDAYS Fridays are music nights on NPT, and this month we are really making it hard to miss. B.B. King: The Life of Riley premieres on February 12 at 8 p.m. and features interviews with the blues legend filmed shortly before his death last year. Musicians Bono, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and Carlos Santana also appear in the American Masters program. February 19 at 7 p.m., Music City Roots presents Americana Music Festival Showcase and a BR5-49 reunion. Next at 8 p.m., American Masters uses interviews, photographs, and rare home movies to present a—dare we say it—Tapestry of
American Ballet Theatre’s Misty Copeland has accomplished a rare feat in recent years—and not the obvious one of becoming the first female African-American principal dancer in her company’s history. Perhaps not since Mikhail Baryshnikov back in the 1970s and ’80s has a ballet dancer had such crossover appeal. Copeland has performed with Yo-Yo Ma on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, danced the Cookie Ballet with Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, appeared on Broadway and on
Fats Domino at the piano
B.B. King performs live at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, 1972
Courtesy of Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATIONS
the cover of Time magazine, and is now starring in Under Armour commercials.
Courtesy of Getty Images
If you love music and cultural programming, you’re going to love February on NPT. This month we also observe Black History Month with a number of documentary and music specials.
Carole King: Natural Woman. King was a 2015 Kennedy Center honoree, and 2016 marks the 45th anniversary of her landmark album. This month’s fantastic Fridays close out with yet another unbelievable night of music on February 26. Airing at 7 p.m., Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears chronicles Cash’s 1964 concept album inspired by his experiences with Native American culture. The program also covers the 2014 tribute album recorded for the record’s 50th anniversary. At 8 p.m., Smithsonian Salutes Ray Charles is an In Performance at the White House special in which musicians perform Charles’s arrangements. February 26 will be Antoine “Fats” Domino’s 88th birthday, and American is celebrating. At 9 p.m., Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll honors the New Orleans pianist who found his thrill on “Blueberry Hill”—and helped launch the rock era. na To support the programs you love on NPT, go to www.wnpt.org and click the donate button. To watch encore presentations of many of our programs, tune in to NPT2, our secondary channel.
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THEATRE
Jim Reyland’s new book Circling the Angels–Friendships Famous and Infamous, Real and Imagined. Available February 15 at Amazon.com in paperback and on Kindle. jreyland@audioproductions.com
BY JIM REYLAND
Write a play! I dare you!
First in February is Nate’s new play Good Monsters, in development at Nashville Rep as part of the Ingram New Works Lab with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright. “With Good Monsters I wanted to see if I could find empathy where I would usually find very little,” says Nate. “He’s an off-duty cop who shoots an unarmed teenage shoplifter in the back. And while I did find empathy, I also found that empathy does not settle accounts. Forgiveness does not quiet the dead.”
Nate Eppler with the other playwrights from the Ingram New Works Lab in 2014–15
Writing a new play is like eating a coconut. It’s hard to start, but once you’re into it a while, it’s pretty good, and when you finally finish, you’re definitely proud of yourself. Join Nate Eppler twice in 2016 as we all stand up and celebrate a job well done. na Nashville Repertory Theatre presents a new play for Nashville, Nate Eppler’s Good Monsters, February 11–27 at TPAC. Buy tickets online at www.nashvillerep.org. This summer, Actors Bridge presents Nate Eppler’s The Ice Treatment, July 15–24 at the Belmont Black Box Theatre. For ticket information, visit www.actorsbridge.org.
“I recognize how lucky I am to have two full productions of brand new plays in one Nashville season, but it’s not because of folks like me; it’s because there is a citywide appetite for brand new, locally grown, well made, electric art.” —Nashville Playwright Nate Eppler
Photograph by Shane Burkeen
Next up in steamy July is Nate’s new play The Ice Treatment, also developed at the Ingram New Works Lab. “I suppose the big secret is that The Ice Treatment isn’t really about Tonya Harding. Even our cultural memory of that event is folkloric
and pretty far from fact,” explains Nate. “We should put a disclaimer at the top of the show: Please do not attempt to learn any history from this play.”
Rachel Agee and Amanda Card in the staged reading of Eppler’s The Ice Treatment
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Photograph by Shane Burkeen
I’m guessing that’s how it starts, an offhand challenge from an English teacher or a literary friend. Perhaps you’ve just said to them, “I can do that; it’s not that hard.” Nate Eppler, Nashville Rep’s playwright in residence, took the challenge and has proven that for him and anyone else who tries it, while playwriting is hard, we still do it. Nate’s also never given up, which is why he has two plays in Nashville’s 2016 season. Nate confesses, “If I don’t write every day, I get very unpleasant to be around.”
BY JOE NOLAN
You Got the Devil in You, 2015, Flashe and acrylic on paper, 30” x 22”
January’s First Saturday events landed on January 2 this year. While most of the downtown galleries went ahead with their Art Crawl, Zeitgeist was the only Wedgewood/Houston space to participate, opening Alicia Henry’s startling The Walk as well as a show of works on paper by San Francisco-based painter Karen Barbour. Barbour is an award-winning children’s book illustrator, and her deceptively simple renderings here might seem a bit underwhelming at first glance. When I saw the digital images attached to the show’s press release I had nearly no interest in the work, and that’s why I think this show is so strong: it sneaks up on you like a disturbing dream. In fact, many of the images in Barbour’s work come from her dreams. Pair the oddball content with the revealing juxtapositions created by the installation’s salon-style arrangements of grouped images and all of Barbour’s silly turns strange. Her cute gets slightly creepy, and something deep and mythic begins to emanate from these jumbles of birds, cats, horses, sleeping women, vases full of flowers, dogs, bears, and any number of hunchbacked figures who all seem to be looking for something they’ve lost. The installation is a mostly gray affair with the sudden pop of red or burst of blue setting off one work against another. The palette here reminded me that it’s common for people to dream in both black and white as well as color. Studies have confirmed that most people dream in color most of the time and that people with good recall of color nearly always report that dreams are indeed in color. But the gray here implies a murky fumbling through the subconscious, and that’s part of how Barbour gets the spook in this show. Like Grimms’ fairy tales or Ring Around the Rosie, these images aren’t just kids’ stuff. na Karen Barbour’s How May I Help You? is on view at Zeitgeist through February 27. For more information, visit www.zeitgeist-art.com.
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CRITICALi
Karen Barbour at Zeitgeist
ARTSMART
A monthly guide to art education
TENNESSEE ROUNDUP Washington, D.C. or Bust, A Poetry Out Loud Journey It’s an early October morning. You are in class when you hear your school is holding a Poetry Out Loud contest. This is perfect. You listen carefully to the steps to become a contender. Your teacher offers tips and helps you prepare over the next couple of months. You need to find your poems. You dig deep into the anthology and find the pieces that fit you— poems you relate to, enjoy reciting, and think come naturally to your voice.
The Tennessee Champion will receive $1,000 and a trip to Washington, D.C., to represent Tennessee at the National Finals. He/she will be one of 52 competing high school students from across the country. Join us at the 2016 Tennessee State competition March 19 at the Nashville Children’s Theatre to see which Tennessee high school student will win the state championship and move on to the national competition. Visit www.tnartseducation.org for more information.
Teachers and students can find poems here: www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance You practice the poems at home—in front of a mirror and your family. They hear the poems so many times they start to recite them. You get up thinking of your poems and go to sleep dreaming about your time to shine. Classroom finals come and go. Your careful preparation pays off and you win. You go on to state finals to compete and recite your poems along with other state qualifiers from all over Tennessee. You arrive in Nashville—the excitement and nervousness build. However, you are reassured when you find other participants just like yourself and immediately have a bond. You meet students from schools across Tennessee. The evening before the contest, everyone gets together for activities and pizza. This year on the evening prior, we will have a “Get to Know Your Peers” poetry activity. Hip Hues Screen Printing will be on site to integrate a little hands-on art into the competition. It’s finally the state finals. Time flies by—it’s your turn. You recite in front of a large crowd. The judges watch every detail of your recitation. You, however, are aware only of the poems spilling out just how you practiced. Your performance is perfect. You know you did your best. Now it’s time to wait as other students perform. When the last person finishes, the scores are tallied and the winner is about to be announced. The anticipation builds as everyone waits for the results. They announce your name— you have won. The trip to recite at the National Finals is no longer a dream. Washington, D.C., here you come.
Juliet Lang, Fairview High School, competes in the 2014 TN state competition
Gage Taylor, Baylor School, Chattanooga, competes in the 2014 TN state competition
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Suppose I said the word “springtime” and I wrote the words “king salmon” on a piece of paper and mailed it to you. When you opened it would you remember that afternoon we spent together in the yellow boat when the early whales were feeding and we caught our first fish of the year? Except from the poem every single day by John Straley (After Raymond Carver’s Hummingbird) Recited by Gage Taylor, Baylor School
Words by Danielle N. Brown Arts Education Special Projects Coordinator Photography courtesy of TN State Photography
ARTSMART by DeeGee Lester
School of Nashville Shakes “Methinks” the people of Nashville have a great opportunity to fully embrace Shakespeare with the launching (February 8) by the Nashville Shakespeare Festival of the new School of Nashville Shakes. Directed by actor/teaching artist Santiago Sosa, the idea for the creation of this multi-level school grew out of last year’s popular summer intensive Shakespeare class that brought together the talents of actors from 16 to 60 and culminated in a sold-out performance showcase. This exciting school initiative will train newcomers to Shakespeare, engage young actors with a desire to further sharpen their acting “tools,” and offer longtime performers an opportunity to exercise and stretch those muscles unique to the performance of Shakespeare.
Photography courtesy of Nashville Shakespeare Festival
“We are trying to grow and create a bigger Shakespeare community through these classes,” says Sosa. “The classes are for everyone who loves Shakespeare—from those who just always wanted to take classes to those who continue to develop their craft.” Sosa is a seasoned Shakespeare veteran. Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, he has a BFA from Texas State, an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, and has both stage and teaching experience in Shakespeare companies around the U.S., including Oregon, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. He recently performed the role of Edmund in the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s winter production of King Lear. In addition to performing, he will serve as director/mentor in both the School of Nashville Shakes as well as the Festival’s apprentice company with their own separate productions (including next summer’s production of Macbeth). “It is our hope that many actors will take the classes hoping to use what they have learned in order to maximize their chances in auditions,” Sosa says.
The School of Nashville Shakes will eventually offer students the opportunity to progress through five levels of training. Starting February 8, two levels of classes are offered (6–9 p.m.) over eightweek sessions with the location to be announced. Level 1 will meet on Monday evenings, and Level 2 will meet on Wednesday evenings. The cost for either level is $275 or, for those wishing more intense training by combining levels, the cost is $500 for both. With the completion of Levels 1 and 2, students will have the opportunity to proceed through the additional three levels of training. In addition, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival will offer improv classes directed by Erica Elam, an alumna of The Second City who has taught in Chicago and England. The cost for those classes is also $275. For more information on these exciting opportunities, visit the Nashville Shakespeare Festival website at www.nashvilleshakes.org.
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ARTSMART
A monthly guide to art education
NASHVILLE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS JURIED COMPETITION Visual Art Students Illustrate Stephanie Pruitt’s Poem “Seen” Creative people are often asked: Where do you get your inspiration? Most answer: From everything. A songwriter may find inspiration in poetry, or a poet may turn to visual art; life experiences also figure. Nashville poet Stephanie Pruitt wrote “Seen” in response to a sculptural work, a soundsuit, by Nick Cave she saw at the Frist Center. The soul of one artist spoke to the soul of another. Marti Profitt-Streuli and Camilla Spadafino, teachers at Nashville School of the Arts, gave students, freshmen to seniors, the opportunity to create a work of art in response to Pruitt’s poem. Students were given broad parameters allowing them to respond to the poem in its entirety or merely to a single line. They were also asked to write an accompanying narrative that would offer additional insight for the viewer. Their work was entered in an annual competition with the added incentives of prize money and the publication of the winning entries in Nashville Arts Magazine. There were 108 entries, all winners in my opinion. The criterion for judging is subjective. While it is important to distinguish between technical facility and artistic sensibility, a work of art, for me, must first and foremost stand out visually. Artists study the art of the past for models of excellence but also for springboards to individuality or finding one’s own voice.
Romany Nagy, The Beauty of Two Adventures, 2015, Collage, 10” x 11”
1st Place - Romany Nagy
My art piece was based on many sentences of the poem. One of them was, “I want you to see the beauty in me carefully nurtured, set free to dance.” This sentence represents my art because I want people to see the beauty of my background. I’m not just an Egyptian who came to the U.S., I also have a background. So many times I’ve been called “Arab” or “terrorist”, but that is not who I am. I come from a family of Christians. And this piece shows the beauty of my background.
The ten finalists were exceptional. The top three, all published here, are works of art I found unforgettable for one reason or another. They are visually compelling. The accompanying narratives were insightful, poignant, and individual. Moreover, each of these three students embraced a universal theme, something larger than self.
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
The youth of today have been unfairly labeled Generation Me, disengaged, unconcerned about the environment and society. There’s a difference between taking and sharing a selfie and missing the point of what it means to be human. Teachers, parents, Stephanie Pruitt, and Nashvillians, take pride. Students at Nashville School of the Arts get it. Our future is in good hands.
by Susan Edwards Executive Director Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Sophia Swanson, Untitled, 2015, Photography, 8” x 10”
2nd Place - Sophia Swanson
My photograph is a response to the lines “I want you to see that beauty spreads and there is beauty in women who live their lives like me.” I chose to use a woman as the subject because this poem speaks to (and about) women. I asked her to lay in a milk bath because I believe we are in a very vulnerable state when we bathe. Bathing also cleans you and purifies the body. I believe the women of the Magdalene house have purified themselves and are now relieved of the painful memories associated with their previous misfortunes, which is what I tried to capture in the photograph.
Top 3 winners Romany Nagy, Sophia Swanson, and Joshua Myles
Photograph by Tiffani Bing
ARTSMART
Joshua Myles, Untitled #47, 2015, Acrylic, chalk, paint marker, dirt, spray paint on cardboard, 13” x 10”
3rd Place - Joshua Myles
My piece represents how the poem describes that there is something beautiful in the confusion and destruction of the world. It is a contemporary piece that shows a woman in bright colors, and even though the background is chaotic and expressive she is blind to the mess and still shines bright and as the poem says, “These harsh realities do not keep me. I want you to see how my trials have shaped me into something beautiful. I want you to see that all women sparkle, all have something special, even me.”
Seen
I want you to see the beauty in me carefully nurtured, set free to dance. I want you to see all colors, all kinds of bloomings. No matter the weight on my shoulders, I move with a crown of blossoms, the designs of life dancing the sock-hop and cha-cha of love. I want you to see I was so lost, so damaged, but one day—no this day, I became all colors of the rainbow. Color me laughter. Color me sorrow. Color me joy. I want you to see how I wrap the bars of freedom around me. Flowers blooming in my life, only peace can cover me. I want you to see that beauty spreads and there is beauty in women who live their lives like me just see how we shine with our own rhythm I want you to see I am not caged. I am not locked. These harsh realities do not keep me. I want you to see how my trials have shaped me into something beautiful. I want you to see that all women sparkle, all have something special, even me. There is a place even for me. I want you to see that I am star struck by my own brilliance Shhh. Shhh. You might hear the sound of my joy, here, inside the garden I’ve cultivated myself. by Stephanie Pruitt, Poet A compilation poem “quilted” by Stephanie Pruitt composed of lines from 16 women of the Magdalene House during a visit to the Frist Center’s 30 Americans exhibit as part of Pruitt’s 30x30x30 project.
Photograph by Tiffani Bing
After Nick Cave’s soundsuit
Art Instructors Marti Profitt-Streuli and Camilla Spadafino with finalists Kadyn Williams, McKenna Perry, Donisha Hayden, Romany Nagy, Sophia Swanson, Blakelyn Hare, John Curtis, Johnny Hisel, Joshua Myles See additional artwork by all finalists online at www.nashvillearts.com.
Jerry’s Artarama of Nashville generously sponsored this arts competition and gave gift certificates to the winners. “The thoughtfulness and quality of the work inspired by Stephanie Pruitt’s poem is incredibly impressive, and we are happy to be a part of supporting student artists in our community,” said Jerry’s Artarama Manager, Amanda Micheletto-Blouin
mcleanFAHNESTOCK
by Megan Kelley
The Submersion of the Known and the Exploration of Loss
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uggestions of waves rise, bulge, and push out of the sea; the edges of ships become reclaimed spaces where the ocean rushes in to fill the known. In creating photographic collages and animations of shipwrecks and marine disasters, McLean Fahnestock draws from a deep and personal history of exploration, following in the footsteps of her grandfather and great-uncle’s documentation expeditions into the South Pacific. In seeking to engage common threads in visual commentary, a history of appropriation weaves through her process. In addition to utilizing images, sounds, and clips from her family’s past, Fahnestock often turns to the Internet to pull images, researching archives of open source work, creative commons, and free stock photography for themes. By utilizing a broader, less specific, and global conversation based in archival institutions, Fahnestock investigates methods of finding individuality within a shared context of similar experiences and harnesses the power of the voices of the past to narrate her own explorations. The loss of a ship during an expedition forms the crux of Fahnestock’s current work. “This series is very much about loss,” Fahnestock explains. “Looking at the images of my grandfather and great-uncle’s shipwreck, I couldn’t help but question how you move forward after disaster.” This presence of absence speaks articulately in Fahnestock’s collages, the submersion created through a careful manipulation of digital layering and a push-pull dynamic of “ghosting” the original image through transparencies while simultaneously creating her own evidence of suggested shape, contour, and physical failure through additions and edits. By removing identifying features, Fahnestock inserts the viewer into the ambiguity of unspecified disaster. The unexpected colors of blue ice or green swamp dislocate the viewer and evoke new locations; the sheen of rainbows hints at misfortune and consequence not actually revealed. “We use these visual identifiers to process place; we refer to our own experiential frameworks as guidelines when building new experiences.” Removing these cues creates an archetype of experience. By engaging erasure and replacement, Fahnestock acknowledges similarities in events. Their repetition could suggest the impotence of action or helplessness, but rather than detachment or normalizing disaster, the works instead create a universal understanding, a familiar feeling of being ungrounded through a dramatic
The Reclamation of Twin Star, 2015, Archival inkjet print, 11” x 14”
The Reclamation of Rena, 2015, Archival inkjet print, 14” x 20”
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The Reclamation of Sea Princess, 2016, Archival inkjet print, 12” x 18”
shift in circumstance, and an awareness of how destruction becomes a personal catalyst to change. “Shipwrecks are a slow process. There’s a lurch, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and suddenly it hits you: you ask Wait, are we okay?” In exploring the uncanny boundary where the known passes into liminal space, Fahnestock’s ships create a juxtaposition of loss and discovery, evoking the balance of disaster and risk at the heart of a journey and the place where decisions are made to continue on. “There’s the moment where the journey becomes worth taking, despite sacrifice; the need to see something for yourself, despite danger. We have an urge for forward momentum, despite risk.” na View more of McLean Fahnestock’s works online at www. mcleanfahnestock.com, or follow her progress shots via Instagram at @mcfahnestock. The Reclamation of Unknown Vessel I, 2015, Archival inkjet print, 8” x 12”
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Shawnique Rivers, Shawnta Moore, Jamika Donaldson at The Rymer Gallery Gina Binkley and Alicia Henry at Zeitgeist
At Modern East Gallery
ARTSEE
Jonathan Mendoza at Gallery Luperca
Anne Brown, Susan DeMay at The Arts Company
Chelsea Howell at The Rymer Gallery
ARTSEE
ARTSEE
Paul Polycarpou interviewing Alicia Ponzio at Haynes Galleries
Kelsey Lynas, Joshua Stockton at The Arts Company
Rivers Hay and Dad in the Browsing Room at the Downtown Presbyterian Church
Stephen Watkins at Corvidae Collective
Malkoshale, Thaxton, Ahmovu at Zeitgeist
Karen Lewis, Kate McGuiness and Robin Zeigler at Cumberland Gallery
Photograph by Mandy Thomas
Elisabeth Donaldson at Coop Gallery
Herb Williams (right) at The Rymer Gallery
At The Arts Company
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN JACKSON
ARTSEE
Photograph by Mandy Thomas
Mike Thomas and Russell Jackson at Cumberland Gallery
Frist Center’s 3 millionth visitor, Conra Collier (left), with Frist Executive Director Susan Edwards (right) and Angela Butler at the Frist Center
Printmaker Jenny Lee demonstrates printmaking at Sawtooth Print Shop
ARTSEE
At Blend Studio
No Skyline Nashville group and Maplewood High School exhibits at Gallery Luperca
ARTSEE
At The Rymer Gallery
At 40AU
At The Arts Company
Frist Center Docent Keith McLusky and TK of Bridges lead a tour of Phantom Bodies with ASL Intrepretation at the Frist Center
Daniel Holland’s exhibition at the newly renovated Red Arrow Gallery
Beth Nielsen Chapman,Jeanie Smith, Alicia Ponzio, and H olly Chapman at Haynes Galleries
SOUNDINGOFF BY JOSEPH E. MORGAN
Oboist James Button
Clarinetist James Zimmerman
The Nashville Symphony: Two Concertos and a Requiem On January 7–9 the Nashville Symphony presented a concert that paired two concertos by contemporary composers with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem, K. 626. The concertos, Jennifer Higdon’s Oboe Concerto and Frank Ticheli’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, were recorded live and provided a needed balance of individual virtuosity and flash with the gravitas of Mozart’s masterpiece. Higdon is a local, from East Tennessee, and has a genius for timbre. She won a Grammy for her Percussion Concerto (2009) and a Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto (2010). The Oboe Concerto is of that caliber, especially as it was played by NSO principal oboist James Button. The work spanned a delightful continuum from lyrical subtlety to rhythmic mischief. Ticheli is a Los Angeles-based composer; his concerto is a tribute to the American composers George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, offering a rhapsody, song, and riff to each respectively. The main difficulty with this work is that the tribute’s reference and imitation trumped the originality. The opening moment was so reminiscent of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that I found myself wishing I was listening to that instead, a feeling that was even stronger during the Appalachian Spring-esque Copland tribute in the second movement. However, Ticheli’s piece is a unique and wonderful vehicle to display NSO principal clarinetist James Zimmermann’s chameleon-like virtuosity. For this it was a fun performance to watch and hear. After intermission, the Nashville Chorus joined the Symphony for Mozart’s Requiem. As Requiem was, famously, left unfinished at Mozart’s death, the NSO employed Robert Levin’s completion, which builds on the traditional Franz Süssmayr completion from the 18th century, but adds an Amen fugue derived from a sketch discovered only in the 1960s. The performance was, overall, outstanding. Beyond a few jitters in the opening moments, both the chorus and the symphony gave an intense interpretation which managed to reach chilling heights of awe and terror in the “Dies Irae.” Led by Leah Wool’s rich and velvety mezzo, the quartet of soloists, which also included Miah Persson (soprano), Jeremy Ovenden (tenor) and Andrew Foster-Williams (baritone), found their own beautiful blend in Süssmayr/Levin’s “Benedictus.” Finally, one could tell that Maestro Guerrero is a devout believer in Levin’s completion. His interpretation brought out the subtle thematic relationships that powerfully argued that the Amen belongs exactly where Levin put it. That the audience was converted was evinced by the thirty seconds of raptured silence at the end followed by an enthusiastic ovation. For more information about the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, please visit www.nashvillesymphony.org.
Heather Hartman Echo and Blur Channel to Channel through February 29
Whirl, 2015, Water-soluble oil, acrylic, gouache on paper and polyester mesh, 25" x 30"
Heather Hartman is fascinated with the atmosphere, weather, and constantly changing skies. She thinks about what we have to look through to see things—particles in the air, window panes, eyeglasses, and smog— and how that affects color, light, and the duration of a single view. Much of what we see is fleeting. She contemplates location. “People now are always moving. We are more global. Technology is such that we can do a lot from one location, or many different locations. Actual location becomes more slippery.” Hartman’s paintings reveal her reflections. Blurry atmospheric forms and distorted shadows show through washes of color juxtaposed to linear angles that suggest beams of light. Painted on layers of paper and translucent polyester mesh, her images are built up and excavated and become part of the content. There is a shifting and changing quality to her landscapes where things slip into focus and then back out. “I like taking light and space and saving that part and then letting go of the rest. What makes a location for me is the feeling of light and sense of space,” she says. Seeing her first solo show in Nashville, Echo and Blur, at independent art space Channel to Channel, one cannot help but become immersed in the sense of depth and beauty she creates. Like the 18th-century romantic landscape painters and their concept of the Sublime, we experience our humble place in nature. Echo and Blur by Heather Hartman is on view at Channel to Channel through February. The Knoxville-based artist will be on hand to talk about her work during Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston on February 6 from 6 until 10 p.m. To see more of Hartman’s work, visit www.heatherhartmanart.com. For her Channel to Channel exhibit information visit www.am-wh.com/channel-to-channel.
POET’SCORNER KELLY CASS FALZONE
Award-winning poet and teaching artist Kelly Cass Falzone is a longtime member and the new Executive Director of Art & Soul, a community studio in Nashville’s 12South neighborhood that invites authentic living through artistic practice. Falzone’s most recent experiments fuse book arts, collage, printmaking, play, and poetry. Find more at www.ArtandSoulNashville.com.
Poincaré’s Three-Body Problem and Mine for my parents
We did not dream them. They invented us, their own brave friction and stoking breath fanning our ignition. And they bathed us — small as fists we fit into their palms balanced against bent arms, a rocking orbit. They look like us, call forth our voices and we name them: Da, Ma. And once named they change, pulled from that former course, an angular trajectory. It is the expansive contraction, the heaviest thing, the very beginning. And its inevitable collapse. The work of Henri Poincaré, a 19th-century French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, was crucial in
Photograph by Carla Ciuffo
attempting to solve the “threebody problem” which explored how a celestial body introduced into the gravitational fields of two previously stable orbiting bodies will change the orbit and trajectory of all three.
Eric Pasto-Crosby as Tom, Nan Gurley as Amanda, and Ellie Sikes as Laura
Photograph by Anthony Matula of MA2LA
STUDIOTENN
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or Studio Tenn Theatre Company’s award-winning revival of Tennessee Williams’s classic play The Glass Menagerie, Artistic Director Matt Logan brings tangibility to this metaphor by incorporating windows and water features into a reimagined architectural set design that connects the literal to the literary. The four-person memory play is considered the most autobiographical work of iconic Southern Gothic playwright Tennessee Williams and was the first success of his storied career. Studio Tenn’s production was named “Best Revival of an American Classic” by Nashville theatre critic Martin Brady in 2011. The company’s 2016 staging features the full original cast: Eric Pasto-Crosby as Tom, Nan Gurley as Amanda, Ellie Sikes as Laura, and Brent Maddox as the gentleman caller, Jim. Logan notes that although the characters are undeniably inspired by the lives of Williams, his mother, and his sister in the 1930s, The Glass Menagerie is not meant to be a strictly biographical account. “If it were, the audience would be removed from it,” Logan said. Instead, he has found reactions to the play are deeply personal—including his own. Upon first reading as a high school student, Logan said, “I remember thinking, I know these people,” he said. “It’s a very specific account, but it taps into something universal.” However, “the transportive quality of [Williams’s] brilliant writing can get lost easily if the focus of the staging is too biographical,” Logan said. “It becomes a museum piece,” which distances the audience and diminishes “the potency of what the writer put on the page.” While Logan’s props and wardrobe will include some Depression-era artifacts, they are not to overwhelm the dreamlike ambience of the set, meant to evoke an emotional landscape as much as a physical one. In Studio Tenn’s rendering, a faux brick wall of deep murky green encases a series of oversized glass panels, lending a voyeuristic quality to the Wingfield apartment, often depicted
Polishing the Centerpiece: Studio Tenn’s Refreshed Design Highlights Poetic Core of The Glass Menagerie Jamison Hall
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February 18–28
as cramped and dingy. Water cascading down the glass panes creates the effect of a drizzling rain. The costumes’ soft colors and flowing fabrics impart a “luminous, almost ghost-like appearance,” Logan said. The juxtaposition of period artifacts against a modern backdrop provides visual dissonance that “keeps the story from being tethered to a specific location or time,” Logan said. After all, the characters aren’t haunting a place, but a mind. Williams expressly invites interpretation in the stage directions at the beginning of the play: “The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” For Logan, refreshing the design felt more authentic than taking a textbook approach to the production. “To hone in on the emotional core and find innovative ways of expressing that is to be true to the playwright’s intent,” he said. Williams left a legacy of inciting creativity in others, both through his poetic writing style and through his last will and testament. As a memorial to his grandfather, the Reverend Walter E. Dakin, Williams left his copyrights to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with the directive that a fund be established to encourage creative writing. Licensing fees for his plays support the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Tennessee Williams Fellowships, which bring leading writers and performers to the school each year. Many of Williams’s own works have become mainstays of American literature and education curricula nationwide. Through a partnership with TPAC’s Humanities Outreach Tennessee (HOT), Studio Tenn is putting on five weekday performances for more than 1,700 area high school students in addition to its ten public shows. Balancing historical context with present-day relevance is a challenge that exists both in the classroom and on the stage. For artists and educators alike, sometimes it takes shattering preconceptions to reveal anew “that delicate line of poetry that people connect with,” Logan said. “That’s what keeps this piece alive.” na The Glass Menagerie runs February 18–28 in Jamison Hall at The Factory at Franklin. Tickets are available at www.studiotenn.com.
Near Nashville (hubcap), 2014, Acrylic on metal, 13" in diameter
Andee Rudloff’s Recycled Love Green Gallery
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February 18–March 15
Andee Rudloff titled her new exhibition Recycled Love as a nod to both Valentine’s Day and her love of painting on objects that others have discarded, such as hubcaps, old barn wood, airplane parts. For Rudloff, the Green Gallery at Turnip Green Creative Reuse, which showcases artists who create art through recycling and upcycling materials, is the ideal spot to show her new work. “I’m just coming off the huge Car Part Art exhibition at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, which was a massive two-year project involving many, many artists. This show is an opportunity for me to work on my own and to have fun in a more casual and relaxed space,” Rudloff explains with her typical enthusiastic attitude. Recycled Love will include a few works from Car Part Art by artists Michelle Grayum and David Marquez, but as for rest of the show guests can expect to see new work by Rudloff. Her signature colorful, vibrant style will still be in evidence, but she says, “I am revisiting some old techniques, but I am trying things I haven’t done before. There will be a lot of risk in this show.” Andee Rudloff – Recycled Love will be featured at Turnip Green Creative Reuse’s Green Gallery from February 18 through March 15. An opening reception is slated for February 18 from 6 until 8 p.m. The closing reception on March 15 includes an Open Studio at neighboring Platetone Printmaking Cooperative where attendees will have the chance to create and take home their own work of art. To see more of Andee Rudloff’s work, visit www.Chicnhair.com. For more on the exhibition, visit www.turnipgreencreativereuse.org.
WEDGEWOOD/HOUSTON BY DANE CARDER
David Lusk Gallery during Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston
Photograph by John Jackson
A Tale of Two Crawls
Since its inception two and a half years ago, Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston has become a wonderful companion to the First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown . . . or, has it mostly created a variety of issues/concerns for both gallery owners and patrons? There have been many conversations about this topic both on and off the record, and it appears that it remains a divisive subject. As winter is upon us and introspection abounds, I ask that we, collectively, consider what we want and need going forward from these two neighborhood events. On any given first Saturday, there are approximately twenty galleries open on 5th Avenue and in the Arcade, and
throughout the Wedgewood/Houston neighborhood, twelve or so spaces exhibit art and welcome visitors. Is it possible for you to do both art crawls, or are most of you all choosing one over the other? Do you utilize a strategic sort of mentality, where you decide what shows you want to see and go to only those destinations? Does the unified First Saturday Art Crawl benefit anyone in particular and, if so, who? Is the convenience of so many open galleries on one night beneficial to you? I generally hear a shared sentiment about all of this, and I am curious about your thoughts on the subject. Are we, as an arts community, doing the best thing by hosting these on the same night, or would it be better for all involved to separate them into two events? East Nashville has recently created the East Side Art Stumble, held on the second Saturday of each month, and just south, Franklin has claimed the First Friday as their evening to art crawl. As Nashville continues to grow at light-speed pace, I want Wedgewood/Houston to be a participant in an event like this that ultimately has the most value for the most people. So, please offer me your thoughts and feelings so that I can be as completely informed as possible by those of you who we serve as an arts community. If you’re inclined, contact me at dane@davidluskgallery. Thanks, and I hope to see you soon in Wedgewood/Houston.
Keeping it in the yard . . . Have you ever noticed how life seems to take up all your time? And it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can be six, forty-six, or eighty-six, and, like a sponge, life will take up all your time. Soak up every available nanosecond. After weathering a year of trauma, I have recently begun telling friends I’ve retired. At least from playing music on the road. Last month I turned sixty-seven, and, when I think about the time and energy I’ve spent loading up gear and either driving or flying to a gig, well, now just thinking about it wears me out. These days, I mostly putter around the house. Every now and then, I venture out into the yard. But even gardening is beginning to seem a bit much. Last August, when music producer Billy Sherrill died, I read his obituary in a local newspaper. Their select list of his musical accomplishments—including producing and co-writing “Stand By Your Man”—was long and impressive. Granted, I was aware of most of these accomplishments, but what struck me most was the following statement: “After his retirement, Sherrill said he had ‘turned doing nothing into an art form,’ preferring to spend his time with family and friends on his boats in Nashville and in Florida.” Now I don’t have boats in Nashville or Florida (or Smyrna, for that matter). But I have a bungalow in West Nashville, which is where I seem to spend most of my time these days. And if puttering around the house translates into “doing nothing” in Sherrill’s world, then I, too, have turned this into an art form. Talking (and texting) with family and friends, reading, cooking, walking around the Greenway, practicing yoga . . . just being a human being rather than a human doing. And if any thoughts of writing another book or recording another CD cross my mind, I go lie down until the thought passes. Maybe I’m lying when I say I’ve retired. It’s amazing what we tell ourselves sometimes just to make it through the day. The late renegade preacher Will Campbell once ended a conversation of ours with “Keep it in the yard.” I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time. But now I think I know. na Marshall Chapman is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, author, and actress. For more information, visit www.tallgirl.com.
BEYONDWORDS
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN
MYFAVORITEPAINTING MAYOR MEGAN BARRY
I
have made it a practice to only surround myself with art I love—so when asked to choose a favorite piece, it’s like being asked to choose a favorite book, or a favorite meal. It all depends on my mood. My walls are mostly adorned with art from local artists—bright colors from Marilyn Johnson, JJ Sneed, David Arms, and Ron York; landscapes and streetscapes from Creason Clayton, Jann Harris, Jennifer Padgett, and Jason Saunders. But at the moment, I am drawn to a wonderful black-and-white portrait by Kurt Wagner. Kurt has the ability to take a moment in time and capture it on canvas. The painting he did for me is from an old photo of my grandparents from the 1930s. My grandmother is wearing pants— PANTS!—practically unheard of in Hutchinson, Kansas. I love how she is leaning into my grandfather, and she is looking out at me across the years that separate us. She is young, and everything is possible. Art that transports me is art that speaks to me. If it’s a place I’ll never see or a moment I will never share, I value the artist’s ability to give me that experience. Kurt does that with this beautiful painting, and today it’s my favorite. na Kurt Wagner, Portrait
ARTIST BIO: Kurt Wagner Musician, singer songwriter, and visual artist Kurt Wagner is a celebrated creative force in Nashville and around the world. He’s known for his alternative country band, Lambchop, based in Nashville. He launched a successful electronic music program in 2015 called HeTCA that has pushed the media to new audiences. Despite his worldwide recognition as a musician, Wagner has always considered himself a visual artist. He studied art in graduate school at the University of Montana. His art focuses on his connection to people and places. His paintings appear predominantly in black and white and evoke the documentary approach taken by newspaper photographs. Using this style allows Wagner to imbue his subjects with power as they appear as examples that support a larger story.
Mayor Megan Barry
100 nashvillearts.com