Nashville Arts Magazine January 2016

Alicia Henry

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Jason Isbell

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Matt Logan

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Beth Foley

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Veda Reed

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PUBLISHED BY THE ST. CLAIRE MEDIA GROUP

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www.nashvillearts.com EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OFFICES 644 West Iris Drive | Nashville, TN 37204 615-383-0278 ADVERTISING Cindy Acuff | Keith Wright 615-383-0278 DISTRIBUTION Wouter Feldbusch | Christian Lester SUBSCRIPTIONS & CUSTOMER SERVICE 615-383-0278 BUSINESS OFFICE Mollye Brown 644 West Iris Drive | Nashville, TN 37204 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 EDITORIAL INTERNS Jennifer Hartsell Harding University Maggie Knox Vanderbilt University Erin Lewis Belmont University Luke Levenson Belmont University DESIGN Wendi K. Powell Graphic Designer ADVERTISING Cindy Acuff cindy@nashvillearts.com Keith Wright keith@nashvillearts.com

COLUMNS Emme Nelson Baxter Paint the Town 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

Alicia Henry

January 2016 31

36

Photograph by Gina Binkley

Features

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The Art of Noriko Register At Customs House Museum

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Symphony in Depth Symphony Goes 'Al Fresco' with 2016 Amphitheater Concerts

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Antiques & Garden Show At Music City Center

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Art Smart

by Rebecca Pierce

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Leiper's Creek Gallery Perfectly Matched - Perfectly Balanced

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And So It Goes

by Rachael McCampbell

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Kaki King The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body

86

Art See

31

Matt Logan Artfully Staged

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Paint the Town

by Emme Nelson Baxter

36

Alicia Henry The Walk

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Realism to Abstractionism Tennessee Paintings 1920-1970

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Stanford Fine Art From City to Country

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David Lusk Gallery Beth Foley & Veda Reed

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Jason Isbell Sittin' on Top of the World

60 Stacey Irvin

The World Through Irvin's Lens Wins

Top Honors at the First Nashville PhotoSLAM

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by Jim Reyland

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Art Around James Mortimer - A Meeting of the Artist's Mind

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Open Spaces

by Erica Ciccarone

Columns

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Critical i

by Joe Nolan

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Beyond Words

by Marshall Chapman

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My Favorite Painting

65

Daniel Holland The Poetry of Untamed Spaces, Exploration, and the Indifference of Land

Crawl Guide

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A Triumphant Art Trio

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Article on Page 36

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As I See It

by Mark W. Scala

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The Bookmark Hot Books and Cool Reads

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Arts & Business Council

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5th Avenue Street to Canvas

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Sounding Off The Gateway Chamber Orchestra's Winter Baroque

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Publisher's Note

A Great City Deserves Great Art There are a lot of great artists in Nashville, and like you, I have my favorites. Some I like for their technical skill, some for their emotional expression, and still others simply because their work makes me sweat. One artist checks all those boxes for me, Alicia Henry. That's her on the cover slightly revealing herself from behind one of her mask creations. Alicia's highly conceptual work is both simple and complex and challenges our understanding of self and identity. Her exhibit at Zeitgeist opens January 2, and I will be there first in line.

I will also be at Daniel Holland’s exhibit of abstracted landscapes that opens January 9 at Red Arrow Gallery's new location in East Nashville. Holland's dramatic paintings capture the rocky, jagged, and sometimes violent terrain of Antarctica—you can almost feel the cold winds blow across his canvases. Feel it for yourself on page 65. Kudos to Katie Shaw, gallery owner, on her new space and her successful crowd funding efforts to relocate the gallery and to the Nashville community for supporting her.

Michelangelo will be leaving the Frist on Jan 9. How wonderful that I can even include the name Michelangelo in this list of Nashville exhibits. It's a stunning presentation and not to be missed. And, while you're there, stop in on Phantom Bodies, curator Mark Scala's tour de force of contemporary art.

Beth Foley is another artist whose work has me mopping my brow. The storytelling narrative of her work, and the incredible attention to detail, have me both smiling and scratching my head. Her show Murders, Misfits, and Other Unpleasantries opens at David Lusk Gallery January 5. I will also be there and look forward to seeing you there too. Happy New Year to each and every one of you!

Paul Polycarpou | Publisher

The Art of Noriko Register Customs House Museum

A Peaceful Place, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 16”

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January 4 – 31

Lined Up, 2014, Acrylic on paper, 30” x 22”

Okagesan-Thank you, 2012, Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 16”

by Rebecca Pierce Even if you haven’t seen her art, you have probably seen this charming sprite of a woman, sketchbook in hand, out and about in the Nashville art scene.

Noriko Register is fascinated with everyday objects—their color and shape and the space they inhabit. She sketches what she sees and then transfers her imagery to canvas or paper.

“Then I paint using bold colors and I reconstruct the scene,” she says with smiling eyes. “I studied the traditional way, so if I want to I can paint in a representative way. But I prefer to paint a little differently. Of course, I admire the impressionists and the masters, but I want to do my own color and shape. I start with whatever I see, but what I put on canvas, I want to change.

When you change one color you have to adjust the others. I like to find colors that make you feel good. So you jump to some unknown place. It’s fun!”

Noriko has studied art since high school in Japan, and even then she aspired to “do something different.” She attended art school at Bunka Gakuin in Tokyo and at the Art Students League in New York and is a prolific painter dedicated to her vocation.

“Being creative can be hard. Almost every day I try to be creative,” she says. “You have to exercise the creative muscle every day. If you draw every day and think carefully about each subject, your eyes become more keen. If you don’t do anything your eyes become like normal people’s eyes. Just like a ballet dancer, you have to practice.”

Noriko has received awards at the Tennessee Watercolor Society Show, Tennessee Art League Juried Show, the Pennyroyal Art Exhibit in Hopkinsville, Kentucky; and the North Valley Art League in Redding, California. Her paintings can be found in private and corporate collections in Japan and the U.S. na

The Art of Noriko Register rounds out a yearlong series of exhibits curated by Nashville Arts Magazine at Customs House Museum’s Planter’s Bank Peg Harvill Gallery in Clarksville. The exhibit is on view January 4 through 31. Noriko will be on hand to talk about her work at the Customs House Winter Exhibits opening reception January 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. For more information, visit www.customshousemuseum.org. To see more of Noriko Register’s art, visit www.norikomregister.weebly.com.

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Hattie Dreams Vermeer, 2015, Wood, acrylic paint, 60" x 36" x 6"

Buddy Jackson Reality Bytes

Nashville International Airport through February 28 Known primarily as a sculptor, Buddy Jackson has expanded his artistic practice over the past few years to include painting and photography. His latest installation, on view now at the Nashville International Airport, reveals the artist’s next step in his evolving artistic identity.

Jackson’s four wooden sculptures challenge viewers’ inclination to make sense of the blocks of color that form the portraits of four different women. Hattie Dreams Vermeer began as a photograph, which the artist reduced to individual units or “bytes.” Each oneinch wooden square is perfectly cut and colored to correspond to the light and tones of the original photograph. While each piece stands on its own, when combined the image only partially comes together. In fact, the viewer becomes even more aware of the parts and must struggle to comprehend the portrait. Gestalt theory suggests that humans grasp the visual character of things by broadly summarizing and innately combining the perceived parts into a complete form. By foregrounding the pieces and spaces in between, Jackson reminds us that perfection is an illusion, and flawlessness is subjective. Through modulated planes, exposed pixels, and abstracted photography, Jackson’s art breaks apart the notion of perfection in reality. In fact, he reminds us that reality isn’t what it appears to be—it is something we perceive.

Buddy Jackson’s Reality Bytes is on exhibit at Nashville International Airport through February 28. For more information visit www.flynashville.com.

January Crawl Guide Green, Kevin Guthrie, Victoria Reynolds, Jeff Stamper, Delia Seigenthaler, Emily Holt, Erin Murphy, Julia Martin, and David Kring. Channel to Channel is featuring Knoxville-based artist Heather Hartman. Seed Space is presenting PlantBot Genetics: Monsantra by Wendy DesChene and Jeff Schmuki, who have created PlantBot Genetics Inc., a parody of the Monsanto Corporation and other Big Ag firms who skillfully manipulate current food production and distribution systems.

On January 15, CG2 Gallery opens Familiar Strangers featuring artwork by Christina West.

Jason Craighead, Tinney Contemporary

First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown Saturday, January 2, from 6 until 9 p.m.

The Arts Company is celebrating its 20th Anniversary previewing new works in the gallery’s Of Things to Come 2016 exhibition (see page 63). Tinney Contemporary is showing Self and System, new work by Jason Craighead. The Rymer Gallery is showing CHANGES, hand-blown glass by Nicholas John, the Halcyon Collection, by Chris Coleman, and Harrison Brammell's black-and-white photography series.

Photographer Nathan Crowder is exhibiting new work at Tennessee Art League. The Browsing Room Gallery at Downtown Presbyterian Church is presenting The Labyrinth Decoded in which Nashville-based artist Nick Hay shows new work that investigates themes from his ongoing collaboration with historian and space exploration pioneer E.C. Piedra (see page 95).

Christina West, CG2

In the historic Arcade, WAG is featuring Death Panels: The Comics and Art of Luke Howard and Cameron Lucente. At Hannah Lane Gallery, Valentina Harper is hosting a coloring exhibit where visitors may color in her designs on the wall.

Corvidae Collective is showcasing large works on wood

by Stephen Watkins and Billy Martinez. COOP Gallery is unveiling Far More Real, a group exhibition by members of the Napoleon Artist Collective in Philadelphia including Marc Blumthal, Lewis Colburn, Marianne Dages, Christina P. Day, Leslie Friedman, Alexis Nutini, H. John Thompson, and Tamsen Wojtanowski.

Daniel Holland, Red Arrow Gallery

Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston

East Side Art Stumble

Saturday, January 2 and January 9, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Saturday, January 9, from 6 until 9 p.m.

On Janaury 2, Zeitgeist is hosting an opening reception for Alicia Henry’s exhibition The Walk (see page 36) and May I Help You? by Karen Barbour. On January 9, David Lusk Gallery is unveiling Murders, Misfits, and Other Unpleasantries

by Beth Foley and Day Into Night by Veda Reed (see page 50). Julia Martin Gallery presents the 2016 Preview Exhibition featuring the work of artists including Buddy Jackson, Rebecca

Gallery Luperca is presenting the exhibition No Skyline Nashville in which they have invited artists who currently live in, have lived in, or have been influenced by time spent in Nashville to create work about this place that we love. Red Arrow Gallery is featuring Daniel Holland's Slow Violence (see page 65). Modern East Gallery and Sawtooth Print Shop are also participating.

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2016

by Emme Nelson Baxter

Antiques & Garden Show Music City Center

Landscape of Design

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February 12–14

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Photograph by Eric Sander

lanners of the Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville to be held February 12–14 cast a wide geographic net to attract intriguing speakers for their lecture series: to Hollywood, Paris, London, and Manhattan.

While speakers are a major highlight, the annual show at Music City Center also features 150 vendors of antiques, art, and horticulture from across the nation, plus a handful of spectacular gardens produced by local landscape artists. The year’s theme is “Landscape of Design.”

Louis Benech, Garden in St. Tropez

Acclaimed French landscape artist Louis Benech and London “florist to the royals” Shane Connolly will give garden lectures. Event cochair Elizabeth Coble said the pair epitomize what makes the Nashville show unique. “The show is a celebration of the best in home and garden design,” Coble says. “And they both offer nothing short of that.”

Louis Benech

Connolly rose to international fame as the florist for Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding in 2011. Over the past quartercentury, his eponymous design firm has produced stunning and sustainable floral work for clients from the United Kingdom to South Africa and the United States. Closer to home, he designed the flowers for the Duchess of Cornwall’s 2005 marriage to the Prince of Wales, for Her Majesty the Queen’s 80th birthday, and for the service of remembrance for Diana, Princess of Wales. Shane Connolly & Co. now holds a royal warrant of appointment to the Prince of Wales, deeming it as the selected floral designer for royal events.

Honorary Chair Bunny Williams, Brian McCarthy, Mark Sikes, Suzanne Rheinstein, and Brian Murphy have signed on for talks or panels. na Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville will be held February 12–14 at Music City Center. For more information, visit www.antiquesandgardenshow.com.

Shane Connolly

Photograph by Peyton Hoge

While Americans are familiar with celebrity Paltrow, perhaps fewer are aware of Benech’s globe-spanning career of blending aesthetically pleasing, long-lasting, and economically conscious gardens. The designer is currently working for the Palace of Versailles on a contemporary garden at the Water Theater Grove—the first new commission at the palace since the days of Louis XVI. Benech’s extensive portfolio features work in more than 300 private and public projects, including Elysée Gardens, Quai d’Orsay, Courson, and the main square of the National Archives in Paris, Pavlovsk’s Rose Pavilion in St. Petersburg, and the Gardens of the Achilleion in Corfu.

Photograph by Eric Sander

Photograph by Eric Sander

As keynote, Oscar-winning Hollywood actress, food writer, and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow will no doubt focus on her role as founder of Goop.com, the popular lifestyle website. The chic celebrity founded the online forum devoted to food, shopping, and mindfulness in 2008 to inspire others to “nourish the inner aspect.”

It now includes an e-commerce boutique. The site will carry her February 12 on-stage conversation with interior designer friend Windsor Smith.“We can’t wait to hear her exclusive insights,” says show co-chair Amy Liz Riddick.

Antiques & Garden Show

Matilda The Musical

Photography by Joan Marcus

Tennessee Performing Arts Center January 26–31

TIME Magazine’s No. 1 show of the year, the Tony Award-winning hit Matilda The Musical makes its Nashville debut with a one-week run at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

"When I Grow Up"—The Company of Matilda The Musical National Tour

Based on the much-loved novel by Roald Dahl, Matilda The Musical is the story of a precocious little girl with a brilliant mind and vivid imagination. An inspiration to young and old alike, Matilda takes a stand and changes her destiny despite her indifferent parents and her intimidating headmistress.

The tale unfolds during Matilda’s visits to the library where she finds sanctuary in books and librarian Mrs. Phelps, who encourages Matilda to be herself. Ora Jones, who plays the role of Mrs. Phelps, explains, “Within the play, Matilda has a story, she is telling. Every time she visits Mrs. Phelps she is telling part of her story and it gets bigger and bigger throughout the course of the play.”

It is a lively show in which music, dialog, costuming, sets, choreography, and acting work together to deliver an energetic and captivating story of an underdog.

“With clever use of staging and special effects, this smart and hilarious production features some of the most talented and raucous young performers you’ll see on stage,” says Kathleen O’Brien, TPAC’s president and CEO.

Jennifer Blood as Miss Honey and Bryce Ryness as Miss Trunchbull

Audience members are encouraged to donate new books for children ages 5 to 10.

“Matilda The Musical is about a young girl whose foundation is built upon the adventures she takes by reading books. We felt a partnership with the Nashville Public Library Foundation was a wonderful way to underscore just how fun reading can be,” O’Brien says. “There is a great need for books for our community’s youth. We hope the small but mighty Matilda will inspire our patrons to share their love of reading and participate in this book drive.” na Matilda The Musical will be performed at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall January 26–31.

For more information, visit www.tpac.org.

Gabby Gutierrez as Matilda Wormwood and Ora Jones as Mrs. Phelps

A Triumphant Art Trio

Beth Foley, The Gap, 2013, Oil on panel, 18” x 32”

Veda Reed, Light from the Dying Sun—Garuda, 2013, Oil on canvas, 36”x 84”

In December, in the midst of the swirling madness that is Miami Basel, The New York Times published a piece titled Art Basel Miami Beach: A Focus on Female Artists. What I gained most from the article was that it set afire a topic that I have long considered in regards to the Nashville art scene. In our dear city, from top to bottom, women are responsible for a majority of the components that guide our growing arts community.

They hold top positions from the Frist Center to many commercial galleries, various artist-run spaces, arts writing, the Tennessee State Museum, the Arts Alicia Henry, Untitled Commission, Arts & Business Council, and, of course, the numerous visual artists. Even behind the curtain at Nashville Arts Magazine, women are making it happen. Thank you all.

With that in mind, I want to spotlight three women in particular that will be exhibiting in January and February at David Lusk Gallery and Zeitgeist located at 516 Hagan Street. You can discover much more about Alicia Henry, Beth Foley, and Veda Reed in their respective features in this issue, but I want to highlight several specific traits about these women and their work.

Although the subject matter and general aesthetic of their artwork could hardly be more different, their respective mastery of materials and strength of individual creative voice are at the top of the game.

There is a certain powerful resonance in Veda’s skyscapes, in Alicia’s “masks” and figures, and in Beth’s highly detailed, macabre vignettes that target the depth of our own humanity, stirring feelings without our permission. There is a balance of strength and delicacy in these three women’s work that I generally find to be an essential element in the most successful works of art.

The resonance and balance are not specific to female artists, of course. But the sensitive approach to the material and subject matter is definitely at home in the hands of Alicia, Beth, and Veda.

Don’t miss the opportunity to see this triple play of Nashville- and Memphisbased art heavyweights as they exhibit side by side at David Lusk Gallery and Zeitgeist. See you soon! na For more information, please visit www.davidluskgallery.com and www.zeitgeist-art.com. Read more about Henry's exhibition on page 36 and Foley and Reed’s exhibitions on page 50.

WEDGEWOOD/HOUSTON

BY DANE CARDER

leiper’sCreekGALLERY Perfectly Matched - Perfectly Balanced

Gallery Owner Lisa Fox and Interior Designer Robin Rains

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Photography by Jerry Atnip

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ver the past 14 years, Lisa Fox has welcomed all kinds of visitors and collectors through the doors of Leiper’s Creek Gallery. She has heard and felt the longing people have to somehow include art in their homes and in their lives. As the owner of the gallery, she has placed hundreds of art works in private and public collections. She has an eye, as well as an ear for listening to what clients connect with. She had the idea that if the art were put into a context with furnishings, not only would it increase the offerings, but it would help people visualize and have reference spatially.

Paintings by Paula Frizbe, Roger Dale Brown, Leslie Shiels, and Michael Madzo.

Sculpture by Debra Fritts and Clay Enoch

Over the years Fox had worked with many well-known designers, but her first thought was of Robin Rains of Robin Rains Interiors. “We had worked together when she had Old Hillsboro Antiques across the street from the gallery several years ago,” Fox says. “I knew how she loved and appreciated art in her interiors. Robin is an artist in her own right. Her medium is furnishings and her interior spaces are her canvas. Texture, color, shape, scale, and placement are all considerations for her as well. Like me, she loves the mix of traditional and contemporary.”

They both felt like it was meant to be. “When I called to invite Robin to join me, she said, ‘Lisa, I have been thinking the same thing!’” Fox says.

So in true Leiper’s Fork style, Fox threw an opening to introduce the furnishings and Rains as the next level of excellence to add to the experience of Leiper’s Creek Gallery.

“The results were impressive, and the response was overwhelming! Our clients can now see how a certain painting will look over a sofa, or how a unique sculpture can take center stage as the focal point of a room," Fox says. "It has unlocked imaginations. I was a little reluctant to lose the traditional gallery model. But I'm glad that I did. We're providing an enhanced gallery experience, showing art in a new and innovative way, and people are responding. Not just in increased sales, but I can see they are spending more time connecting with the art, visualizing it in their homes and enhancing their lives. We're also working with many other interior designers, helping them find the right piece of art or furnishings for their clients. This has been a successful collaboration for all of us.”

Paintings by Pamela Padgett, Sharon Spigel, Dawn Whitelaw, Mel Rea, Anne Blair Brown, P. E. Foster and Kevin Menck. Sculpture by C. T. Whitehouse

Leiper's Creek Gallery, nestled in the magical landscape of Leiper’s Fork, is an eclectic collection of fine art, mixing contemporary artists including Mel Rea, Leslie Shiels, and Michael Madzo to more traditional artists such as Roger Dale Brown, Clay Enoch, and Anne Blair Brown.

Rains keeps her color palette in the gallery neutral, with shades of white, bone, and gray, so the art is still the focus of the room. "The art and sculpture complete the look by adding drama and personality," Rains says. "Art can add a pop of color, and sculpture gives the space an unexpected design element.”

Sculpture by Debra Fritts and Tim Cherry (on chest). Paintings by Pamela Padgett and Roger Dale Brown

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The results were impressive, and the response was overwhelming. It has unlocked imaginations!

Sculptures by C.T. Whitehouse and Clay Enoch. Paintings by Roger Dale Brown and Mel Rea

She layers in texture through rugs, vintage Oushak pillows and unique accessories. The array of furnishings is a blend of styles and periods, including 18th-century French antiques and Spanish pieces mixed with post modern and contemporary furnishings.

Fox and Rains agree that the gallery has a newfound sense of intimacy. With more to offer, visitors linger and seem to enjoy perusing the gallery in a new way. With both art and furnishings to offer, it is a win/win. The furnishings are selling the art and the art is selling the furnishings. Perfectly matched, perfectly balanced." na Leiper’s Creek Gallery is located south of Nashville in Leiper’s Fork. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.leiperscreekgallery.com.

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12x12

A National Exhibition of Small-Scale Works of Art MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery January 22–February 10

Charles Clary, chutra-a-diddlittis movement #2, Hand cut paper and wallpaper on distressed drywall, 12” x 12” x 4”

The fifth triennial edition of 12x12: A National Exhibition of Small-Scale Works of Art opens at MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery this month.

“12x12 is a juried exhibit comprised of works that do not exceed 12” x 12” x 12” thereby compelling today’s contemporary artist to reimagine work that conforms to the space while it challenges the viewer and seeks an expansive artistic statement in miniature.” says Eric Snyder, gallery coordinator.

There are no media restrictions, so viewers can expect to see a broad range of art including ceramics, sculpture, painting, mixed media, collage, and drawing by working and student artists from across the country.

Approximately 75 to 80 works will be juried into the exhibition by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, graduate dean emerita of Maryland Institute College of Art. The show is closed to MTSU faculty and students.

“It is good exposure for MTSU students and faculty because the character of the work tends to be surprisingly different,” Snyder says.

“It is a great experience for the department.”

12x12 is presented by Ascend Federal Credit Union, and sponsored

by Jerry’s Artarama-Nashville and Plaza Art. 12x12: A National Exhibition of Small-Scale Works of Art opens with a reception at MTSU’s Todd Art Gallery Thursday, January 21, 4–6 p.m.

The show remains on view through February 10. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, visit www.mtsu.edu/art.

Kaki King’s The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body OZ Arts Nashville

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January 22–23

by Luke Levenson

Kaki King

With a flick of her finger, guitarist/composer Kaki King summons a radiant 15-foot orange spiral out of the projector across from her. It beams the moving image out onto a large blank wall, landing also on King’s guitar and making it shimmer and dance with the same motions. It’s a confusing perception to follow, especially because it’s constantly changing and there isn’t any narration other than light and music, but by the end of King’s performance of The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body, the audience will have a different understanding of the guitar and of her as an artist.

On Jan. 22 and 23 at 8 p.m., King will present this multimedia show at OZ Arts. The performance features a seated, whitegarbed King wearing sunglasses playing a stationary guitar on which abstract images are projected as accompaniment to the music. It’s meant to be an expression of the power of the instrument.

“When you’re watching it, you realize the guitar is the master,” King says. “I’m just the facilitator, and by the end of it we’ve become interchangeable. The guitar and I become one thing.”

In late 2014, King teamed up with the visual design masters at Glowing Pictures, who started using MIDI technology to link the notes she played on a custom made guitar to images representing genesis, travel, and a grand finale.

“During that time, I had gotten very obsessed with being a

disciplined, strong guitarist,” King says. “I wanted the challenge every night of carrying an audience for 90 minutes with just me and two or three guitars onstage.”

Known primarily for her work as a solo acoustic guitarist, embarking on a project with so much emphasis on imagery was new for King, who released her seventh album last year.

But King felt like it was time for a new challenge, and she had been keeping an eye out for new ways to entertain her audiences.

A friend suggested that she come up with a lighting concept.

“And so I started researching,” she says. “I had seen projection mapping on the side of a giant building, and I started thinking about this on a smaller scale. I started thinking about doing it on a guitar.”

While there isn’t one particular story told throughout The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body, there is an idea that can only truly be grasped by those that see the show: “This is an X-ray of the guitar,” King says. “This is a deconstruction of what it is. We can’t use a keyboard. We can’t use a cymbal. We have to use the guitar to make this particular thing happen. And it’s effective!” na Kaki King will perform The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body January 22–23, OZ Arts Nashville, located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle.

Doors open at 7 p.m. for the show at 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.ozartsnashville.org/kaki-king.

mattLOGAN

by Martin Brady

Artfully Staged

Photograph by Anthony Matula for Ma2La

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If we can’t get imagination into the audience,” says Matt Logan, “then we can’t get the story to live in their head.

Matt Logan, Artistic Director, Studio Tenn

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Costume design for The Mermaid in Peter Pan

ince 2009, Logan has been inciting imagination in audiences as the artistic director of Franklin-based Studio Tenn theatre company.

Under Logan’s guidance, Studio Tenn established its high standards immediately and has gone on to produce nonstop consecutive seasons of remarkable theatre, presenting a mix of musical and straight classics, the occasional contemporary drama, and also a few original revues based on the careers of famous music personalities.

Logan is clearly a director who gets results, but it is his background as an artist that drives his approach to every show. Anyone who has experienced such amazing Studio Tenn productions as The Wizard of Oz or Into the Woods or even the 2014 Nashville premiere of the brooding Frost/Nixon can attest that Logan’s skillset combines an eye for stage movement with a keen visual sense of costume and scene design. Logan’s professional story begins as a child, with art lessons at the age of 7. “I was always drawing and painting,” he says. “Charcoal, watercolors … I just did stuff, and my parents saw that I liked it and they encouraged it.”

Brentwood native Logan attended Christ Presbyterian Academy, where he explored singing and acting and also discovered how his art could serve him in the theatre. “I was a kid, and everything I did was to mirror reality—draw an apple to look like a photograph. I didn’t understand the poetry of the abstract,” Logan says. “So I didn’t really have a voice in art until high school, when the theatre gave me some momentum. It also provided me the freedom to fail.”

RED featuring Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as Ken

Logan later attended Pepperdine University in Malibu on a special achievement scholarship, after submitting an impressive design portfolio. Yet he majored first in acting before switching to directing. “I was in shows and doing costumes and sets, and painting backdrops,” he says. “I was learning what a production should look like, and what everyone should wear, and how all of that was storytelling and art coming together.”

Following college, and after a few years working and performing in Los Angeles, Logan made the move to New York in 2003 in answer to a colleague’s challenge.

Acting opportunities did not come readily, but exposure to the business—working wardrobe and in casting—kept him busy and also paying his bills.“New York became my master’s degree,” Logan says. “It was incredible working backstage in shows, plus working with phenomenal directors and designers. Mike Nichols was my everything in Spamalot.” Logan also worked on high-profile Broadway revivals of Gypsy and Oklahoma.

Just as important, New York is where Logan gained important recognition as an artist. He was singled out in an August 18, 2010, New York Times feature— “Illustrating the Moxie of Broadway”—as one of the four heirs to the legacy of the late, great Al Hirschfeld (19032003), the caricaturist best known for his stylish blackand-white portraits of Broadway stars and celebrities.

“Hirschfeld created a language and I continue to try to speak it,” Logan says. “I love the simplicity of blackand-white and how a little line means so much.” Logan’s drawings were a big hit as cast gifts when he worked in

Mama Mia

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Costume design for White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

Costume design for Captain Hook in Peter Pan

regional theatre, and that tradition continued in New York, where his notoriety as a specialty artist began to attract the favor of the likes of Bernadette Peters, Sam Mendes, Mary Tyler Moore, and Alec Baldwin, the latter even introducing Logan to Hirschfeld’s widow. “My approach to those drawings is what I strive for in designing for the theatre,” Logan says.

“It’s the sparest and simplest form, but in an edited version.”

Career goals as a director eventually led Logan to leave New York and return to Nashville, where supportive friends and family encouraged him to head up the theatre company that would soon give legs to the designs he’d been channeling for years. His striking costume ideas, not to mention his scenic

conceptualizations, were the driving forces behind earlyera Studio Tenn productions—including a jewel-like The Glass Menagerie and a powerful, broad-canvas staging of A Christmas Carol—and paved the way for subsequent, equally impressive musical shows like Hello Dolly!, My Fair Lady (in which Logan co-starred as Henry Higgins), and Fiddler on the Roof. Logan’s creative eye even breathed new life into the art direction of the oft-produced Southern standby Steel Magnolias.

“I have to have a portal into every project, something I can connect with through story or music,” Logan says. “I am also very aware of how cinema has influenced theatre. Yet even when I do my Broadway-style art, I am trying to capture the show in a design sense: the set, the actors, the facial expressions, the whole idea of the piece.” na See Matt Logan's art in action during Studio Tenn's The Glass Menagerie, February 18 to 28 at Jamison Hall. For more information, visit www.studiotenn.com.

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Landmark Preservation A New Painting and an Opinion from Nashville Artist Harry Underwood Landmark Preservation is a painting about uncertainty. I believe that Nashville’s identity is being sacrificed for rent and tax revenues. I believe that buildings like the recently demolished Trail West, and others potentially on the chopping block, are part of our history and should be preserved. Previously an entire block of Hillsboro Village was torn down to accommodate more retail and living space to produce more rent and revenue. I don’t buy any of the excuses put forth about why they had to demolish the Trail West. What I realized when I wrote the text for my painting was that demolition and creation are how cities are manufactured. They wouldn’t exist otherwise. That is why my painting Landmark Preservation is subtitled: To Honor the Prosperity of the Ancients for Servitude and Uncertainty. I hope it makes sense? Although I disagree with the recklessness that goes on, I think the uncertainty they perpetuate has its own historical meaning.

—Harry Underwood To see more of Harry Underwood’s work, please visit www.artbyharry.com.

Harry Underwood, Landmark Preservation, 2015, Pencils, latex paint, varnish on wood panel, 4’ x 6’

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aliciaHENRY

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The Walk Zeitgeist

|

Opens January 2

I

n January, Zeitgeist will unveil The Walk, an exhibition of Alicia Henry’s recent artwork, which continues her ongoing exploration into the idea of isolation and interaction. Using fabric, wood, paper, and other media, she weaves these materials into large-scale wall installations that include abstract images of the human face and body.

Henry says that the idea of isolation and interaction is linked to “the contradictions surrounding familial relationships as well as societal differences and how these variations affect individual and group responses to themes of Beauty, the Body and Identity.” The way in which she addresses

Words by Jerry C. Waters Photography by Gina Binkley

these concepts is through the arrangement of figurative groups, which she displays as “communities.” Rising from the gallery floor and extending upward along the wall, her figures seem to float in space. In fact, through extended contemplation, her expansive mural-like displays will trigger an ethereal experience for the viewer.

An overview of Henry’s educational pursuits and life experiences provides some insight into her artistry and her desire to focus on the individual in relationship to beauty, race, and community. Henry holds a BFA from the School of Art at The Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from the School of Art at Yale University. She has been the recipient of several prestigious awards that include fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (following her academic studies) as well as the Joan Mitchell Foundation award, which she received in 2014. “The Art Institute of Chicago allowed me to be freewheeling and experimental, to try a lot of things,” Henry says. “After that, I wanted more structure, which I found at Yale.”

“

There will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

An important life experience—in conjunction with her academic pursuits— was living in Ghana on the coast of West Africa, for two years as a volunteer in the Peace Corps program. There she experienced isolation from the world she had known and became familiar with communal living. “It was wonderful living with a family though sometimes it was excruciating because of the lack of privacy,” Henry said in 2005 during a lecture at Rhodes College. She also devoted some of her energy to watercolor painting and began her manipulation of fabric and other materials for creative expression. Collectively, these experiences provide a range of creative and spiritual stimuli for her artwork.

—T.S. Eliot Henry’s participation in regional and national art exhibitions is a testimony to her ability to communicate visually. For instance, her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Presently, her artwork is included in the Frist Center for the Visual Arts exhibition about the human body in contemporary art. Organized by Mark Scala, chief curator at the Frist, the installation includes paintings, photographs, and video of internationally recognized artists such as Damien Hirst, Sally Mann, and Gerhard Richter.

“The artworks in this exhibition are meant to inspire reflection about the relationship between the body, mind, and soul, while triggering feelings of remembrance and compassion,” Scala says.

An additional underlying premise for the exhibition is the notion that artistic materials can conjure both illusion and allusion. Within Henry’s installation are sewn and collaged materials (cotton, linen, thread, yarn, and leather) that assume the shape of small and large human heads and that resemble doll-like figures and fractured body limbs. Some of the facial forms call to mind traditional West African tribal masks. These masks, often carved 38 nashvillearts.com

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Courtesy of Frist Center

Alicia Henry's installation on left in Phantom Bodies at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts

from wood, are used in rural communities within ceremonial rituals associated with aspects of life such as human fertility, birth, marriage, and death. Although the faces and heads that appear in the Frist installation have no ritualistic purpose, some resemble the serene expressions found within some wooden African facial masks that honor ancestral spirits. Some of Henry’s faces possess a restful gaze and, like a frozen portrait (with closed eyes and sealed lips), are indicative of the human body at sleep or in meditation. Other faces conjure up images of the final visage—following death—and speak to the concept of the human spirit that has vanished into the realm of eternal Peace.

intention to create a restful, peaceful and mediation place,” Knowles says. And the design speaks to Henry’s ongoing exploration of the notion of isolation and the individual within the community.

Henry’s profound insight and exploration of sometimes-difficult societal issues as they relate to the human experience undergird her interaction with and desire to propel undergraduate students forward into the future through her work as a professor of art at Fisk University. na Alicia Henry’s The Walk opens on January 2 at Zeitgeist and will be on exhibit through February 27. For more information visit www.zeitgeist-art.com.

In 2012, Henry’s composition Intimacy and Peace was installed in Music City Center. The work is a site-specific wall mural and is one of seven permanent installations commissioned by the MCC following a national call for entries. The competition attracted more than 300 top-tier artists living in the United States. Monumental in scale, the mural contains 21 panels (each panel is 36 by 36 inches); overall it measures 21 by 9 feet.

Intimacy and Peace incorporates a mixture of media—acrylic, clay, fabric, graphite, ink, paper, and yarn—through which Henry formed images that depict a group of people walking in a line, a female figure facing forward, and figures standing in front of a house. “[The mural] exudes a sense of stillness, balance and quietude,” says Susan Knowles, project coordinator for the Music City Center’s art collection. Located in a light-filled seating area and surrounded by the geometry of the building’s floor and wall treatment, Henry’s artwork “has more than succeeded in her 40 nashvillearts.com

Photograph by Jerry Atnip

Alicia Henry with her installation Intimacy and Peace at Music City Center

Realism to Abstractionism Tennessee Paintings 1920-1970 Tennessee State Museum through May 15

Max Hochstetler, Interior of a Chicken House, 1966, Mixed media, 61” x 73”

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“

by Annie Stoppelbein

The show is arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, to show the dramatic shift in style among the artists.

T

ennessee artists matter, and the current exhibition at the Tennessee State Museum is hard proof. Realism to Abstractionism: Tennessee Painting 1920 to 1970 is curated

by Jim Hoobler, who has been with the museum since 1988.

Hoobler has culled more than 70 works by 56 artists from the museum’s permanent collection, including Tennessee natives, imports, expatriates, and visitors who fell in love with the Smoky Mountains. The exhibition is in conjunction with a retrospective of Tennessee modernist Charles Cagle’s work.

Hoobler demonstrates encyclopedic knowledge of history, especially pertaining to Tennessee. And he beams enthusiasm for this particular exhibition, since he personally acquired nearly all of the works. In his 27 years at the museum, he has greatly contributed to the collection. “The first time the state had held an art competition to purchase work was 1967,” Hoobler says.

Hoobler has a tremendous amount of luck in finding the right piece; one of the works in the show he fortuitously rescued from being discarded as trash. Now the museum holds the largest art collection in the state. “Most people don’t know this, because we simply don’t have enough space to show it,” says Hoobler. However this is scheduled to change. The exhibition is a taste of what is to come in the new museum, projected to open on the northwest corner of Nashville’s Bicentennial Mall in 2018. There they will show much more work from both the 20th and 21st centuries.

The show is arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, to show the dramatic shift in style among the artists. The galleries open with a series of landscapes. “My idea for the installation was to show how in half a century everything radically changes in art. You can see hard edged realism next to Fritzi Brod, where it looks like Van Gogh is lost in the Smoky Mountains,” Hoobler jokes, referring to Brod’s Near Gatlinburg, 1940. More realistic than Fritzi, yet just as familiar, is Sally Vaughan’s birds eye view of Franklin, A Town Far Away in Middle Tennessee, 1970. It is a memory painting of the 1920s, complete with horse-drawn buggies and Tin Lizzies.

1960. Biel-Bienne came from Paris to Nashville, escaping World War II, and joined the arts faculty at Vanderbilt University.

Although they consistently followed the trends in art, Tennessee’s staunchly conservative environment chilled most artists from becoming too bold. Avery Handley’s Segregationist, of the late 1950s, may be the most culturally inflammatory piece in the show.

The richly colored scene depicts a group of racists gathering for lunch near the confederate monument in Winchester after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.

The show comes to a close with a series of portraits. The idiosyncratic oeuvre of Nashville’s Red Grooms is represented by two pieces; a pen-and-ink drawing of his friends, Portrait of Bill Wood and Beryl, 1960, and an odd self-portrait at 20 years old.

In the spirit of promoting Tennessee art stands Peggy Smith’s tenuous 1955 portrait Clara Hieronymus. Clara was a drama and arts critic at The Tennessean newspaper for decades.

The years between 1920 and 1970 saw radical change in Western art. Hoobler’s eye and incredible wealth of knowledge have realized an incredible show, sampling the best of Tennessee’s art from these years. He advocates the prerequisite past to build a strong future. “This is what sets the stage for today,” he says. “It shows where we come from and where we have been. There is a lot of depth and breadth to the art of Tennessee.” na Realism to Abstractionism: Tennessee Painting 1920 to 1970 is on exhibit through May 15. The Tennessee State Museum offers free admission and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. For more information visit www.tnmuseum.org.

Much of Tennessee’s historical narrative is seen throughout the collection. Dean Cornwell’s mural studies for the Davidson County Courthouse were part of Nashville’s makeover during the Depression Era. Cornwell, dubbed “The Dean of Illustration” by Norman Rockwell, created the murals in 1936.

Each of the four studies is an allegorical representation of statesmanship, commerce, agriculture, and industry.

The exhibition’s spectrum of realism to abstraction includes loud 1960s pop art sensibility. Max Hochstetler’s Interior of a Chicken House, 1966, paints a rustic farm scene in Technicolor.

More in the realm of abstraction, evoking Egon Schiele, is Austrian born Eugene Biel-Bienne’s The Great Clown of Paris,

Fritzi Brod, Near Gatlinburg, Oil on panel, 28” x 34”

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Red Grooms, Portrait of Bill Wood and Beryl, 1960, Pen and ink, 14” x 17”

Peggy Smith, Clara Hieronymus, 1955, Oil on board, 40” x 20”

Eugene V. Biel-Bienne, The Great Clown of Paris, 1960, Acrylic on canvas, 73” x 49”

Philip Perkins, Triple Illusion, 1944, Oil on linen, 36” x 28”

From City to Country

Winter at Stanford Fine Art

by Gracie Pratt

I

t was a drizzly gray afternoon, a couple days after Thanksgiving, when I stepped into Stanford Fine Art on Highway 100. Gallery owner Stan Mabry pulled gold-framed pieces from his office into the gallery space, and one by one, he hung them under the golden hue of a high display lamp.

The collection of winter scenes at Stanford Fine Art comes from a variety of early 20th-century artists, most of whom specialized in capturing the essence of the snowy season. Much like the perspective of writers such as Thoreau, Emerson, and Frost, whose poems and essays reverenced the changing seasons with unmistakable awe, these paintings focus on winter not merely as a seasonal setting, but as a majestic, absorbing presence.

The winter scenes on display at Stanford Fine Art create an unexpected warmth, a warmth that settled in me on my rainy drive home from the gallery. Amidst the brisk white and gray strokes of snowfall come patches of red chimneys, burnt-orange flags, and vivid blue skies creating majestic depictions of winter, and also of seasons of life: journeys, destinations, and home. na For more information about Stanford Fine Art, please visit www.stanfordfineart.net.

New England Winter, by Allen Dean Cochran, shows rich woods planted in strokes of snow leading towards a muted house in the distance with a red chimney. The painting is not about the woods or the snow or the house in the distance—it’s about an experience of going home. The snow makes it all the more urgent to seek shelter, and the vantage point of the painting invites the viewer to step foot on the path to a beloved refuge.

Another snowy landscape takes center stage in Among the Pines by Marion Gray Traver. The figures are miniscule—a child and a father with a dog—calling attention upward to the mounting pines and banks of snow rising up on either side of the figures. With an expert depiction of shadows and textures that create a lifelike sense of crunch and movement in the snow, Among the Pines presents woods that are as “lovely, dark, and deep” as those described in Robert Frost’s poetry.

Johann Berthelsen’s The Plaza takes the winter scene to the city, looking at a recognizable New York City fixture through the lens of a snowstorm. Berthelsen utilizes the bleak grays and ivories common in winter cityscapes, with the blush of bright, vivid warmth in the flags that fly from the Plaza balcony.

Stanford Fine Art has represented 19th- and 20th-century art in Nashville for nearly 30 years, and Mabry is deeply committed to the value that art offers to a home.“It is one thing to have art in a gallery and another thing to have it in your home,” Mabry says. “Once art is in the home, it takes on a new dimension.

The piece becomes intrinsically personal, a willing participant of the activity and seasons of life in a household. And in return, the owners find their lives enriched by its presence.”

Johann Berthelsen, Plaza Hotel in Winter, 20” x 16”

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Marion Gray Traver, Among the Pines, Oil on board, 50”x 40” 49 nashvillearts.com

davidLuskGALLERY Beth Foley & Veda Reed January 5–February 13

A Tangible Sense of the Ominous

B

eth Foley and Veda Reed are painters who, at first glance, might seem to have little in common aside from the fact that they are both realists. But a closer look at Reed’s new series of night-sky paintings and Foley’s latest portrayals of ne'er-do-wells, both at the David Lusk Gallery, yields some unexpected commonalities. Despite wildly different subject matter, both artists manage to impart a tangible sense of the ominous nature of modern life, where unseen forces prowl just around the corner.

Beth Foley’s paintings are populated with an assortment of characters who seem to have done or witnessed unspeakable things. In Leopold and Loeb from 2015, the infamous thrill-killers lurk in an automobile while a young boy, who could be their victim Robert Franks, walks up the sidewalk. The image is claustrophobic and rife with psychological tension as one of the killers stares out towards the viewer, while the other’s gaze drifts off to the side, anticipating the arrival of their victim. In an equally unsettling image called Uncle Neil, a leering young man in a disheveled living room tightly grasps a baby as both stare at an unseen character outside the picture plane. The image could be perceived as completely innocent—a loving uncle with his nephew posing for a photo—however the light, color, and the main character’s unsettling expression evoke many unsavory narratives, none of which

Beth Foley, Witnesses, 1986, Oil on panel, 14” x 27”

by Daniel Tidwell

end well. This kind of thematic tension that permeates Foley’s work is palpable. The juxtaposition of subject matter, expression, and form results in images that resonate on multiple levels and resist one-dimensional literal interpretations.

Foley’s paintings are rich with art historical references including the photographs of Weegee, Diane Arbus and Brassaï. She also cites Hans Holbein, Jan van Eyck, Durer, Grant Wood, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann as major influences. It’s also hard to look at many of her images and not think of Eric Fischl’s iconic and transgressive work from the ’80s. Foley says that several of her teachers at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts played important roles in helping shape the way that her work has evolved, including artists Will Barnett and Oliver Grimly, whose drawing class was a key element in her formal development.

Foley describes herself as an avid reader, and says that many of the ideas for paintings come from literature as well as her Jewish heritage. The world of crime is also a source, as are the films of Woody Allen. Many of her images look as if they were painted from photographs, and Foley acknowledges that she does work from old photos at times as well as images culled from the Internet, but also hires models and takes her own photos. “I like to use subject matter that is true, meaning true for me,” Foley says.

“I used to make up stuff and put things in paintings without much thought just to get the ball rolling, but now take a more thoughtful approach as I develop my paintings.”

Beth Foley, “To Be Born Again,” Sang Gibreel Frarishta Tumbling From The Heavens, “First You Have To Die,” 2015, Oil on panel, 12” x 8”

The subjects in Foley’s most recent work, Murderers and Misfits, are derived from true crime and from her own family history with the looming specters of the Holocaust and the Brothers Grimm playing major roles. “The Holocaust has been a major subject for me all my life,” she says “And the Grimm fairy tales were very anti-Semitic, and extremely brutal.” Foley acknowledges that her subject matter may be disturbing at times and that not everyone will like it. Her favorite quote from Gustave Flaubert aptly sums up Foley’s approach to her work: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

While Foley’s characters menace the viewer with violent and seamy narratives, clouds and sky—the central protagonists in Veda Reed’s panoramic landscapes—are equally foreboding. In formal terms, Reed’s landscapes occupy a visual and conceptual space at the opposite end of the spectrum from Foley’s work that is firmly entrenched in the traditions of landscape painting.

However Reed’s luminous and brooding views of broad expanses of sky at dusk with their dramatic contrasts of darkness and light evoke multiple readings in a manner that is similar to the way Foley’s images defy easy interpretation. A luminous, fiery sunset smothered by dark clouds could be a picturesque landscape study perfect for hanging over a living room sofa, or it could be the last gasps of a world on the brink of annihilation. It’s this implication of ambiguous narratives that lends Reed’s work a greater mystery than run-of-the-mill landscape realism and elevates it to a level where the viewer can contemplate more than a straight-ahead one-off image.

Reed’s interest in landscape painting developed at an early age growing up in southwestern Oklahoma. The flat landscape and

Beth Foley, Leopold and Loeb, 2015, Oil on panel, 14” x 11”

Veda Reed, Sunset—Belt of Venus, 2015, Oil on canvas,18” x 36”

limitless sky captivated her, particularly the unobscured horizon in that region of the country. She works on a large scale to reflect the vastness of her subject with most paintings being six to eight feet in length. Sketching on site and in her studio play an important role in the development of her images and Reed says that she takes lots of photographs that she uses as reference points.

Landscape for Reed is a vehicle by which she is able to “celebrate nature in all its guises,” she says. “I still believe in the ‘search for truth and beauty.’ [However, that] does not mean that I must go through life painting pretty pictures—truth is its own beauty no matter what form it takes. For me the cycles of nature are the perfect vehicle for this search. The more I explore the more I learn and understand.”

Giotto, Milton Avery, Giorgio Morandi, Mark Rothko, and Memphis painter Burton Callicott are among the artists who had a major influence on Reed’s work. While landscape is a formidable subject that so many great artists have tackled over the centuries, Reed is not daunted by the history that precedes her. “I’m not trying to be unique,” Reed says. “I just hope that my work may cause people to pay attention to some things that they haven’t noticed before—like the beauty of the full moon on a cloudy night.”

Veda Reed, Clouds Bands at Twilight, 2014, Oil on canvas, 44” x 60”

Gallery director Dane Carder sees an analogous relationship between the two artists’ work. “Beth has long been making work that tells twisted stories, wrapped in mysterious hints of murder, mischief, and orgy,” Carder says. “While Veda’s recent work focuses on the last light of day, colored with ominous, streaking hues and impending darkness. Both have a slightly sinister vibe and Beth’s tight brushwork is a beautiful counterpunch to Veda’s large expanses of ethereal, barely sunlit bands, and collections of clouds.” na Beth Foley and Veda Reed will exhibit their recent work together at David Lusk Gallery from January 5 to February 13. For more information about Reed’s Into the Night and Foley’s Murders, Misfits, and Other Unpleasantries, visit www.davidluskgallery.com/nashville.

Veda Reed, Dark Clouds Edged in Gold, 2013, Oil on canvas, 44” x 60”

John Baeder: Work from 1962 to 2015 Haynes Galleries Extends Exhibit through January 30 Due to the phenomenal response to the retrospective John Baeder: Work from 1962 to 2015, Haynes Galleries has extended the exhibition.

A host of art lovers, as well as John’s fans and family, packed the opening in November making it the gallery’s most successful opening to date, according to gallery owner Gary Haynes.

“The tremendous scope of work and the lure of John’s fascinating career have brought many new visitors to the gallery,” says Haynes. “John’s book signing and gallery tour drew record crowds to see the work and hear John’s colorful stories about the art.”

The gallery also hosted a signing reception for the artist’s recently published book John Baeder’s Road Well Taken, which also drew a large crowd. Plans are in the works for another book signing event.

John Baeder, Diners Club Trio, 2003, Watercolor on paper, 14” x 22”

For more information about John Baeder and the exhibition visit www.haynesgalleries.com, www.johnbaeder.com and also see Nashville Arts Magazine’s November 2015 article at www.nashvillearts.com/2015/11/01/john-baeder-now-and-then.

Chief Curator

Frist Center for the Visual Arts

ASISEEIT

Photograph by Jerry Atnip

Mark W. Scala

BY MARK W. SCALA

Photograph courtesy of Cheekwood

Photograph by Florian Holzherr

James Turrell and the Presence of Light

Wide Out, 1998, Moscow Installation

Great works of art become a part of us. Some do this by recalibrating our understanding of the political, social, or linguistic structures of the world; others intensify time, form, and memory, or open doors to our chaotic interiors in powerful and revealing ways.

Art can also seep into our core by imposing stillness. I began writing this at the ocean, where the mind is calmed by the expansive horizon, volatile sky, and changing moods of light. I compare this to being in a work by California Light and Space artist James Turrell, who architecturally frames light to create human-scaled arenas for the contemplation of pure and numinous experiences.

In his interior works, this light spills outside its structure to illuminate and transform the surrounding space. It often pulses with changes in color and intensity, frequently in degrees that are barely discernible. This prompts the viewer to recognize the elasticity of the boundary between the senses and the mind: the mind, with its tendency to recognize and name experience, has to catch up with the eye.

Blue Pesher, 1999, located at Cheekwood

understand Turrell when he says, “My work has no object, no image, and no focus. With no object, no image, and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking.” Raised a Quaker, the religion that describes Christ’s spirit within each person as an inner light, Turrell acknowledges the history of light as a signifier of religious experience—an avenue toward illumination, literally and spiritually.

In Nashville, the power of harnessed light can be seen at Cheekwood, where Turrell’s Blue Pesher nestles at the edge of the sculpture trail. The city’s most exceptional work of outdoor art, Blue Pesher is a simple affair, just a partly buried concrete bunker with a circular skyward opening. We enter it through a long corridor, and then sit on a concrete bench encircling a field of black gravel.

As we look up toward the aperture, we perceive it as both a disk of light and a solid sphere—an emptiness that silences the mind and a fullness that suggests the sufficiency of absolute form. na

The interval between seeing and knowing enables a subtle disorientation to occur, which is caused by the reading of the light as both a material plane—a wall of color—and a field of indeterminate depth. Further uncertainty may arise as one feels a gap between perception and the material body. That is, being immersed in colored light can make one’s own skin seem distant—to appear to be a foreign surface composed of light. This acute sense of dematerialization helps us 55

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jasonISBELL

Sittin' on Top of the World

J

ason Isbell seems completely miscast as a rock star. Soft-spoken, with a mild accent that belies his North Alabama upbringing. Dressed neither up nor down, in a long-sleeve shirt with buttons and a collar. Clean-shaven, with a haircut he might have picked out from a poster in a barber shop. A youthful face that can only be described as honest. And an overriding air of humility. The only thing that would make him stand out in a crowd is his six-feet-plus height.

And, of course, his music.

Isbell swept the Americana Awards last fall with Southeastern, an album of painfully personal, soul-wrenching songs sung in an edgy tenor voice. Since then, the story behind his music has become as well known as the songs themselves. Playing as a teenager in restaurants around Muscle Shoals. Joining his hometown buddies in the raucous rock band Drive-By Truckers.

Drawing on the experiences of his family members for song material. Drinking. Marrying and divorcing a bandmate. More drinking. Marrying Texas-born fiddler Amanda Shires. And, with her support, straightening up.

As of late 2015, Isbell was on top of the entire music world. His new album, Something More Than Free, was the No. 1 country album, the No. 1 folk album, the No. 2 digital album, and the No. 6 overall album. His personal life was on the upswing as well. Just one week before the birth of his and Amanda’s first child, he talked about musical genres, Nashville, and the personal life that drives his writing.

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by Walter Carter Photography by David McClister WC: The burning question is, how do you sit down and write a record that’s No. 1 country, No. 1 folk, Top 10 pop?

WC: Is there a big change in tone between Southeastern and Something More Than Free, from negative to positive?

JI:

JI:

You don’t think about that at all, that’s what you do.

WC: How do you explain it?

JI:

Just the fact that there’s a whole lot of people who like songs and like lyrics and like to feel like somebody’s trying to communicate with them rather than trying to sell them something.

WC: With Something More Than Free, did you think about anything at all in terms of direction?

JI:

Really the hardest part for me was ignoring the fact that Southeastern had done so well. People ask me a lot about the pressure of following up a record like that. If you can manage to just forget that it happened while you’re writing a song, it’s not that big of a deal.

I tried to write all of these songs like they were the first songs I had ever written or ever released to the public.

WC: It sounded to me like you were over the mountain.

JI: Yeah, right, right. “Then what?” was the question with Southeastern. You’ve got your demons beat back, then what do you do, how do you be happy, how do you be satisfied with your life?"

WC: Did you worry about that kind of thing?

WC: I imagine it was a dose of reality to sweep the Americana awards and then to be completely snubbed by the Grammys.

JI:

JI: Yeah, I worried. I worried about every aspect of it, but most of my worries really weren’t based in reality. Before I quit drinking I thought, am I gonna be creative, am I gonna be funny, am I gonna be attractive, am I gonna be the same person that I was? And really, that was nonsense. That was me just wanting to keep drinking, to keep living the way that I had been living. And then after that I thought, how long is this happiness gonna last? Because I had always been suspicious of good times. And it’s lasted at least until now, and I guess it’s probably about to get better. So time proves you wrong on those kinds of concerns, usually.

That was a strange thing. Of course, I love the fact that Rosanne Cash won all those Grammys. She makes beautiful records, and she’s sweet, and she’s a hard worker, but it does sort of show you the difference between the audience and the people who are voting on those records. So it wasn’t really a big surprise for me. It was great to get the Americana awards because the whole room was full of people whose music either I’d grown up listening to or whose music I currently am into. I’d rather be judged by my peers than by people who might not do exactly the same thing that we do.

WC: Are there still family stories that you can pull out as material?

WC: You live in Nashville, but I have an idea you didn’t move here for the reasons a lot of other people do. Obviously co-writing is not a big attraction.

JI:

I think it’s probably pretty relative to the way my life was going at the time. That’s what I was trying to do by being as honest as possible, trying to make a record for the moment, a record of time. Southeastern, I was very uncomfortable in the world. I had just quit drinking, performing sober, touring sober. All of those were new to me. And very strange and difficult for a while, but by the time we made this new record I felt a little more comfortable in the world. I would say there’s a little more hope on this one.

JI: Yeah, if I need them. Lord, if I need them there’s plenty. We had a baby shower yesterday that my mom put on in Alabama. Some of the conversations there, just sitting out on the picnic table outside with my cousins and their husbands, talking about Chad, our drummer. His house got broken into a few months ago, and somebody sitting around the table said, “Well, killing somebody is not that big a deal.

It’s all the stuff right after it that’s hard to deal with.”

I thought, oh yeah, I’ll never run out of material with this family, no. He did say, “Don’t write a song about this” right before he said it. That’s what they do now.

They always say, “Don’t write a song . . . ” like that’s gonna work. You better not tell a good story if you don’t want me to write a song about it. na

No, I try to get out of those if I can. I moved here because Amanda Shires, who became my wife after that, had lived here for a few years. I’m not used to living in a city even this size, so it took a little getting used to, but it was overwhelming to me how well I was treated here. I still am amazed by the fact that we can go play four nights at the Ryman and sell them out.

And I love the fact that there are good restaurants, great music stores. If we do want to get out at night, which we don’t do a lot, there’s a lot of great venues.

And there’s more than one movie theater. My wife and I go to the movies a lot, and in North Alabama there’s one movie theater, so if you don’t like what’s on, you’re in trouble.

For more information about Jason Isbell, visit www.jasonisbell.com.

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Catch a Rising Star: Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte from Nashville Opera Opens January 22

by Joseph E. Morgan

F

or its third offering this season, Nashville Opera is producing Mozart’s comic masterpiece Cosí fan tutte at the James K. Polk Theater, TPAC. The opera, in the façade of a simple slapstick comedy, presents a brilliant exploration into human character by one of history’s most recognized operatic and dramatic geniuses. The last of the three operas in which Mozart set a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, it tells the story of a bet between two soldiers and a philosopher who believes that all women are fickle. Love, lust, deceit, and disguise are played out in two acts that range from boundless mirth to bittersweet unease in a profound statement of the human condition.

The Nashville production features a cast of up-and-coming as well as established national operatic stars. As the two soldiers, tenor Todd Barnhill will play Ferrando and baritone Patrick McNally will play Guglielmo. As their fiancés, soprano Lacy Sauter and mezzo-soprano Katherine Sanford will play sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella respectively. All four are 2016 Mary Ragland Young Artists and enjoying their Nashville debut with this production. It will be very exciting to hear these young talents tackle the many enchanting moments in Mozart’s comic masterpiece.

One such moment occurs in the stunning Act I trio, “Soave sia il vento,” where the two women are given complicated lines featuring extended runs that must be completed in tandem and softly, as the sisters pray for their lovers’ safety. Further, these lines are set against the contrary vocal line of Don Alfonso, who will be played by the nationally acclaimed baritone John Hancock. Mozart’s construction of Don Alfonso’s line here demonstrates one of his many dramatic geniuses—in the ensembles of this opera it is possible to tell which character is siding with whom, and to what degree.

The established national artist and Metropolitan Opera regular Emily Pulley (soprano) will return to Nashville as the sisters’ witty servant Despina. In all, the evening promises the opportunity to see a couple of stars and catch a couple more as they rise.

The Nashville Opera’s new music director, Dean Williamson, will lead the Opera Orchestra for this production and Amy Tate Williams has prepared the chorus. One hour prior to curtain, on the orchestra level, John Hoomes will present a lively and informative Opera Insights preview talk. na See Cosí fan tutte at TPAC’s James K. Polk Theater January 22 (8 p.m.), January 24 (2 p.m.), and January 26 (7 p.m.). For tickets and additional information please visit www.nashvilleopera.org/cosi.

“

We don’t take time to recognize each other’s humanity.

by Bob Doerschuk

staceyIRVIN

The World Through Irvin's Lens Wins Top Honors at the First Nashville PhotoSLAM

A

t first it was the mountains and the prairies, the National Geographic spreads of China’s mysterious Karst Mountains and the American fields streaming past the window of her father’s car …

These images captivated young Stacey Irvin as she turned magazine pages or watched the world from the backseat of her family’s minivan on their summer road trips.

Growing up in North Dallas, Texas, she drew from the world around her and the wider vistas of her imagination as she cultivated her interest in photography. Finally, in high school, adventure beckoned with a senior class trip to Paris and London, where she spent more than a week snapping every shot that presented itself.

So why did she feel so unsatisfied when she came back home?

Thus Irvin reoriented her approach. Exotic mountains and vistas are well and good, but the people who inhabited them became her passion. The feeling intensified when she enrolled at Vanderbilt University as a philosophy major and eventually invested the $16,000 she received with her Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award in the first of her many international journeys.

She did make it to the Karst Mountains. She also journeyed through Central Asia, Africa, South and Central America and throughout the United States. The catalog she assembled emphasized not the scenery but rather its inhabitants: the Uyghur girl flashing a peace sign and an impish grin in Kashgar, the self-assured gay pride celebrants at Sydney, Australia, the wise woman smiling in Patan outside of Kathmandu, the amiable and shirtless butcher, for whom meat is the medium at his shop in Iquique, northern Chile.

These are only a few of the photos that won her the People’s Choice and Nashville Arts Awards at the first Nashville photoSLAM!, held in 2015 at the Main Street Gallery.

“I want to remind people of our community,” Irvin explains. “We don’t take time to recognize each other’s humanity. It would be great if we could do that more, if I can just let people who can’t travel around the world know that it isn’t as scary as it seems.” na For more information about Stacey Irvin visit www.staceyirvin.com.

White Scarf, I briefly met and photographed this elderly Kyrgyz woman in a small village while traveling through the Pamir region of northwestern China. The sun was extremely bright in this high altitude break; not a cloud in the sky. I enjoyed connecting with her despite the almost blinding brightness all around.

Stacey Irvin

Photograph by Anthony Scarlati

“I’d spent the whole time looking through my camera,” Irvin says.

“I was taking so many pictures that none of them had any meaning.

So I made it a point that next time, if I didn’t come back with a single picture, I’d still have the experience.”

Peace, Interrupted while playing in a roadside puddle near Kashgar’s Old Town, this little Uyghur girl showed me a spontaneous and enthusiastic sign for peace.

Pride, This young group of Australians let me photograph them while waiting patiently in the crowd for Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade to begin.

Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is one of the largest pride festivals in the world.

Girls in a Row, As I wandered through the winding lanes of the Old Uyghur Town area of Kashgar in northwestern China, a small group of children began following me. They were giggling and motioning for me to photograph them. I began to feel a little bit like a “Pied Piper” of sorts. Finally, I turned around to grant their request. They immediately lined up and posed themselves joyfully without any direction from me.

Meat Man,I studied abroad in Chile for a month between my sophomore and junior years at Vanderbilt. Early in the trip I was walking down a street with some classmates in Iquique, a coastal city in the north. My friends walked past the butcher shop, not noticing what was inside. I couldn’t believe the amazing, yet matterof-fact scene before my eyes. I approached and asked the butcher permission to photograph him. He smiled and nodded gladly!

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Of Things to Come 2016

The Arts Company Opening January 2

Susan DeMay, Memorial Bridge, Stoneware clay, stained and glazed, 14” x 3 1/2" x 12"

The Arts Company launches its 20th Anniversary, previewing new works in the gallery’s Of Things to Come 2016 exhibition.

On January 2, The Arts Company begins a yearlong exploration looking back at celebrated gallery artists in photography, painting, and contemporary outsider art, and looking forward to discovering fresh original and contemporary artwork from new and continuing gallery artists.

Since 1996, The Arts Company has been a pivotal arts destination in downtown Nashville representing artists such as Thornton Dial, Ed Clark, Brother Mel, Mandy Rogers Horton, Brett Weaver, Edie Maney, Norman Lerner, James Threalkill, Charles Keiger, Anne Goetze, Philippe Guillerm, Suzan Pitt, Daryl Thetford, Susan DeMay, and many more.

Clay artist Susan DeMay has been showing at The Arts Company since September and is part of the January exhibit. Of late, DeMay has been moving away from utilitarian ceramic work and is using slab constructions to create sculptural forms. DeMay elaborates. “My new constructions are about pure form and surface, and I will show a variety of themes in this exhibit,” she says. “I like having my work placed within groupings of paintings and two-dimensional art, and being connected with modern painting and imagery. Anne Brown and her team work hard to position my work so that it compliments the colors and forms surrounding it.”

Of Things to Come 2016 opens during the First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown on January 2, from 6 until 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.theartscompany.com.

THEBOOKMARK

A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS

Only Love Can Break Your Heart Ed Tarkington The American Booksellers Association named this as one of their 10 "Indies Introduce" titles to watch in 2016, and early readers are raving over the suspenseful tale that blends Southern Gothic stylings with the coming-of-age story of Rocky, a boy in a small Virginia town at the turn of the 1980s. This locally based author and rising star in the literary world will read and sign his book on January 5 at 6:30 p.m. in store.

Fun fact: Nashville singer-songwriter Will Hoge wrote a couple of songs inspired by the book and will perform them at the event!

My Name Is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Strout's brilliant storytelling can be summed up in two words: Olive Kitteridge. (Or in three words: The Burgess Boys). Now Strout is back with another beautifully written, emotionally compelling novel. At the center of the story is Lucy Barton, recovering from what ought to have been a simple operation while being visited by her estranged mother in the hospital. As they talk, the many truths about their relationship are revealed, as well as the story of Lucy's past. Join us at the Downtown Public Library at 6:15 p.m. on January 21 for a Salon@615 event with Strout.

When Breath Becomes Air

The Road to Little Dribbling

Paul Kalanithi

Bill Bryson

When he was just 36—married, starting a family, and about to complete his decade-long training to become a neurosurgeon—Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Suddenly, he was the patient instead of the doctor, struggling to survive in the face of a terminal prognosis. Kalanithi died as he was completing the book, leaving behind a profoundly moving memoir that asks and answers some of the most important questions any of us can face. Ann Patchett says, “Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life.”

Bryson's readers—especially those who loved his 1995 travel memoir Notes from a Small Island—will be thrilled to know that two decades later, he's revisiting England and all the quirky joys it has to offer in his new book, The Road to Little Dribbling. This is a humorous roadtrip chronicle of highest order and a must-give to every Anglophile in your life. Erik Larson, author of Dead Wake, says: "It’s a rare book that will make me laugh out loud. This one did, over and over.”

by Megan Kelley

danielHOLLAND The Poetry of Untamed Spaces, Exploration, and the Indifference of Land |

January 9–February 7

Photograph by Lauren Holland

The Red Arrow Gallery

Daniel Holland

H

e’s been painting since 7 a.m., and as Daniel Holland takes a moment to speak to me about his recent work for Slow Violence, his exhibit at The Red Arrow Gallery, it becomes apparent that even when he’s not painting, Holland speaks—and understands the world—primarily through his philosophy of paint. Articulate, thoughtful, and deliberate in his poetic phrasing, Holland admits that painting is his first and most native language. Though he occasionally engages other mediums, such as sculpture, “I always come back to paint,” he states. “I use paint to discover new things: to learn, not just speak to what I know.”

“

There’s force, movement, gesture; capturing the feeling and atmosphere—in essence, the honesty of physical expression.

The paintings within Slow Violence are some of his most literal, and yet Holland balances his representation of physical space with the trademark attention to materiality that characterizes his painted works. Barren juts of rock are wet with high-gloss paint; the brooding forms of mountains are carved out from the field of sky through a heavy application of turquoise; spray painted canvases are left in the rain to temper Holland’s marks with nature’s own hand; the built forms surrounding a pool of deep blue suggest terrain, and create protruding topography through concrete powder mixed into the paint.

Distant Glory Looms, Acrylic and gesso, 60” x 70”

Holland’s works have a sense of structural tension and deliberate composition, and yet there exists a fluidity in Holland’s markmaking that speaks to the movements of the body in painting and the happenstance of drops, spills, and strokes. As conversations on landscape, “I want the painting to sit where it’s comfortable to look at, but it’s still very much alive,” Holland describes, remarking on the push-and-pull dynamic that is the driving action within his painting style. “There’s force, movement, gesture; capturing the feeling and atmosphere—in essence, the honesty of physical expression“is foremost in articulation.” The final effect is works that speak less of specific places and more to the concept of place and wildness as an inherent, immutable part of our interactions with the world around us: a vocabulary of harshness written in labor.

Debris, Acrylic, gesso, gravel, spray paint, 70” x 50” 66 nashvillearts.com

It’s part of an extended conversation that Holland has been holding with himself and his work. “I’m constantly in a reflective process, trying to find my place in history.”

In Slow Violence, Holland began thinking of

Overhead View of the Edge, Acrylic, gravel, spray paint, 30” x 40”

literal places: landscape, specifically in terms of rebellion. “I began to ask myself: with so much ‘discovered’ country, what are the obstacles we push against in contemporary life?” Landscape—and in particular, the indifference of wild spaces in regards to the individual comforts of man—resonated with Holland. Exploring physical spaces and accounts of Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure, Holland found the painting came fast once the obsession had lodged itself within his mind.

Slow Violence also includes an installative video collaboration created with fellow artist Casey Pierce. For the work, Holland cut telephone poles into the eroded supports of a broken pier, surrounding it with shiny dark rocks, and letting Pierce—whose recent video work has been engaging a sense and desire to see the unreal—find elements of time and motion in the simulated environment. For Holland, the video collaboration isn’t separate from the painted works, but rather acts as an expansion and honesty to concept, and the next step of immersiveness to the untamed spaces he has been creating. If the paintings themselves are vocabulary to this language of ground, the video work begins to document the grammar and narrative possibilities that the viewer enters. “These spaces, they are what they are, and they are unconcerned with you even as you exist within them,” Holland explains. “It’s harsh, but it’s beautiful, and it’s somehow essential: if you are there, it is a gift.“ na Daniel Holland’s landscape work is on view from January 9 to February 7 at The Red Arrow Gallery, located at 919 Gallatin Avenue, Suite #4. Opening January 9, Slow Violence also marks the grand opening of the new Red Arrow location. For more information visit www.theredarrowgallery.com and www.danielhollandart.com.

Portrait of a Mountain, Acrylic and oil, 40” x 30”

War and Weather, Acrylic, oil, water, spray paint, and gravel, 72” x 80” 67 nashvillearts.com

lipscombACADEMY The Art Event

February 12–14

by Cat Acree

R

inging in the New Year and a new arts season, Lipscomb Academy presents the 12th annual Art Event, a three-day juried art show and silent auction featuring works from 55 artists of pottery, jewelry, and fine art.

From its inception, the Art Event has been the biggest annual fundraising effort for Lipscomb, and the last 12 years have seen tremendous growth for the show.

“We’ve been able to expand the number of artists in the show over the years and have continued to build the reputation of the show to attract a higher caliber of both local and national artists,” says Kerri Fox-Metoyer, marketing chair for the Art Event. “We love evolving with the Nashville art community by inviting both traditional and non-traditional artists to give our patrons and supporters a new experience each year.”

This year’s featured artist will be Lauren Dunn, whose textured, colorful paintings evoke the spirit of rich Southern heritages.

Through layers upon layers of paint, her works develop an aged, shabby look, honoring generations past with imagery of old churches and familiar landscapes, as well as heartwarming tableaux of hearth and home.

“My work is a representation of the inspiration that I see around me daily,” Dunn says. “It is my hope that my work be a simple blessing to those who own it.”

Perhaps nothing can better chase away the January blues than the warmth of Dunn’s bright bouquets.

The 2016 lineup features 32 returning artists and 23 brand-new faces, with work from Jonathan Howe, Jairo Prado, Elizabeth LaPenna, Marilyn Wendling, Caryl Witt, Brenda Behr, Carolyn McDonald, Vicki Denaburg, and many more.

The silent auction will take place both online and onsite, with donated pieces from Lipscomb students, the 2016 artists, and Lipscomb University’s artist-in-residence, Michael Shane Neal.

The auction’s proceeds will directly benefit enhancements to Lipscomb University’s Visual Arts department and equip them with the ability to exceed their planned curriculum.

“We love the ability to help showcase the many talented artists who are part of the event, while also welcoming members of the Nashville community onto our campus,” Fox-Metoyer says. “We are also very fortunate to be able to showcase student artwork as part of the show, as it is a great platform for them to see their work among many talented professionals.”

Hosted in the Lipscomb Academy high school gym, the Art Event kicks off on Friday, February 12, with an opening reception that will be open to the public. Major sponsors and members of the art community will have the chance to welcome Dunn with an intimate private event earlier in the week. na The Art Event at Lipscomb Academy will take place February 12–14. For more information, visit www.lipscomb.edu.

Charla Steele, Ready for Flight, 2015, Collage with acrylic paint, 30” x 30”

Amy Crew, Tennessee Nest, Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”

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ARTS&BUSINESSCOUNCIL

BY CAROLINE ALLISON

Putting Together a Show

Caroline Allison, Angel Oak, 2013, Archival pigment print, 36" x 46"

Whether in a traditional gallery setting, a coffee shop, a weekend pop-up, a hotel-room show, or out of the back of a truck, having the opportunity to present your work to the public is truly an exciting event. How one puts together a show will vary wildly from artist to artist, but there are some things that are essential to have and helpful for your viewers.

Have an artist statement. Somewhere, somehow, anywhere.

Pencil it on the wall or print out copies for people to take. We are long past the era in which one’s art could “speak for itself.”

It is always helpful for your viewer to have insight into the how and why a body of work was made. One page maximum. Be authentic to your voice and avoid art jargon. It is extremely productive to have a friend who is not an artist read your statement and give comments.

Have good documentation of your work ready. A goodquality photo (i.e. not from your phone) is necessary for any press releases and promotion of the show. If your show is reviewed, the publication will most likely run the image you have provided them.

Enjoy the opening event. They are incredibly fun and celebratory and full of well-wishers and white wine in acrylic cups. However, if you want honest, critical opinions, make appointments with individuals for a return visit when you will have the chance for lengthier conversation and feedback.

So much time and energy are devoted to making one’s art that it is often easy to ignore the presentation and marketing of your work.

For more information about the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville visit www.abcnashville.org.

Caroline Allison is a photographer who has lived in Nashville since 2006.

Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art, Chicago Cultural Center, and Momentum Art in Berlin. In addition to shooting editorially, she photographs architecture and interiors for commercial clients across the country.

Street to Canvas

Herb Williams's Glitchmule at The Family Wash, 26' x 104'

Street to Canvas Miami Art Week packs a lot into the first week of December.

Having returned and digested so many works, a recurring trend The Rymer Gallery staff noticed was the move of graffiti art from the streets to fine art galleries from around the world.

Today, graffiti is now a respected and new art form, a rich medium with no restrictions. There are already a few cuttingedge murals in Nashville by local artists who have worked together to create exciting new graffiti paintings.

The new NORF Wall Fest organized by Jay Jenkins, and featuring such incredible artists as Sam Dunson, is one of the best steps toward increasing the public perception of graffiti and growing the public art scene. One of the largest graffiti murals painted by a single artist is the multi-colored Glitchmule on the long wall of the new Family Wash restaurant and Garage

Coffee by Herb Williams. Banksy’s glitch mermaid in the new themepark of Dismaland in Great Britain influenced Williams in his mural.

The Rymer Gallery is excited to support an upcoming graffiti art exhibition in the spring, going hand in hand with a citywide initiative, bringing in national graffiti artists and working with local artists, to create several murals around the city. By enlisting internationally renowned artists to use public and private spaces as giant canvases, alongside some of Nashville’s incredible local artists, will help raise the city’s collective art power and consciousness of culture. Stay tuned for more details to come from the Nashville Walls project. www.therymergallery.com

5THAVEUNDERTHELIGHTS

Photograph by Ashley Segroves

BY JEFF RYMER | THE RYMER GALLERY

SOUNDINGOFF

Photography courtesy of GCO

BY JOSEPH E. MORGAN

The Gateway Chamber Orchestra’s Winter Baroque On December 6, the Gateway Chamber Orchestra gave its annual Winter Baroque Concert at the Madison Street United Methodist Church in Clarksville. Featuring a festive mix of instrumental and choral works, the concert opened with an excellent performance of three intimate choral pieces, Michael Praetorius’ Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen, Felice Anerio’s O bone Jesu, and Heinrich Schütz’s Dank sagen wir, alle Gott. Choir Director Douglass Rose had prepared his choir well, especially for the Schütz, which was the highlight. Although composed late in life, Schütz’s work is reminiscent in texture, scope and expression of works he composed at the height of the Thirty Years’ War, perhaps as a thankful reminder for surviving difficult times. During the stirring performance, this meaning was still tangible, creating a poignant moment appropriate for the holiday season.

This was followed by two instrumental works, Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor for Strings and J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor, featuring Lisa Wolynec as solo flutist. Gateway violinists Emily Crane and George Meyer dealt with Vivaldi’s virtuosic outer movements with ease, and their beautiful singing lines for the dramatic inner movement were exceptional. For the Bach, the orchestra seemed to get off to a bumpy start, but they soon found their footing. By the Badinerie their delicate phrasing matched well with Wolynec’s warm tone, making for an exciting finish.

After intermission, the orchestra and choir joined together for Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël (Midnight Christmas Mass). Although Charpentier’s work is built on a number of long-forgotten French carols, it stands extraordinarily well on its own. One of the most memorable moments of the evening was the Credo’s et crucifixus section when the trio of extraordinarily well blended male voices (bass Zachery Richards and tenors Daniel Christian and Michael Dozier) were isolated in a point of imitation against Tiffany Freeman (contrabass) and Christine Kim’s (cello) crisply fashioned continuo line. At intermission, a member of the audience lamented that “In Nashville, too often [Baroque chamber music] is only heard in an educational setting.” Indeed, the GCO is only a few years removed from its own overt connection to Austin Peay State University (several of the core members are faculty). However, if the full pews and extended applause are at all telling, there is plenty of interest in early music here.

For more information about Gateway Chamber Orchestra, please visit www.gatewaychamberorchestra.com.

Cumberland Gallery Introductions January 16–February 20 In curating her first exhibition of 2016, gallery owner Carol Stein took a fresh new approach. Introductions focuses on five established artists who have each developed a unique artistic language. Although these artists are nationally acclaimed, they are fairly new to Cumberland Gallery.

“Each of the artists works in different formats and there is nothing tying them together other than my respect for their work,” Stein says. “I think it is refreshing to see new interpretations and it is important to expose folks to new work.”

Sculptor Doug Schatz has been on Stein’s radar for some time. When he showed her his recent drawings, she wanted to include them in the exhibit. In his charcoal drawings, Schatz interweaves the formal use of light with existential ponderings.

His use of chiaroscuro accentuates the forms as they fade into surrounding space.

Douglas Schatz, Portal, 2015, Charcoal on paper, 32" x 43"

By layering visuals such as blueprints, networking graphs, geographic patterns, weather charts, and topographic maps with mixed media, Heather Patterson forms new landscapes connecting the organic and geometric manmade world.

Gavin Zeigler’s new collage work invites the viewer to see objects such as coins, checks, and stock certificates in a new artistic context. Jean Wetta’s intimate but mystical oil-on-panel works are primarily inspired by time spent with her grandmother when it seemed anything was possible. Ben Dallas returns to Cumberland Gallery with a new series of paintings in which repetition of pattern reveals subtle differences in the aesthetic.

Introductions is on view at Cumberland Gallery from January 16 to February 20. For more information, visit www.cumberlandgallery.com.

Courtesy of Magnum

Arts Worth Watching Mike Nichols

Courtesy of Sari Goodfriend

We also have a wonderful selection of arts programming this month. Season 3 of the genealogy series Finding Your Roots premieres Tuesday, January 5, at 7 p.m. with The Stories We Tell. This episode includes artist Kara Walker, whose large silhouette installation Camptown Ladies was part of 30 Americans at the Frist Center a couple of years ago. Walker was a recipient Artist Kara Walker appears of a MacArthur in Finding Your Roots Foundation “genius” grant in 1997. Her work examines race, gender, sexuality, and violence. Most recently, Walker received media and critical attention for her 2014 installation at a former Brooklyn sugar factory.

Finding Your Roots also features Norman Lear and Shonda Rhimes along with several actors and comedians this season.

Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Silkwood, Angels in America) is the subject of a new American Masters profile that highlights the late director’s 50-year career through interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Dustin Hoffman. Nichols also gave extensive interviews for the documentary, which kicks off American Masters’ 30th season Friday, January 29, at 8 p.m.

PREMIUM PERFORMANCES

In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of American Creativity— airing Friday, January 8, at 8 p.m.— includes Buddy Guy, Queen Latifah, Audra McDonald, Keb’ Mo’, Smokey Robinson, Esperanza Spalding, James Taylor, and special guest Carol Burnett. The program commemorates the 50th anniversary of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, which called for the creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Washington, D.C., was also the setting for a Willie Nelson tribute concert last fall.

Rosanne Cash, Alison Krauss, Raul Malo, Paul Simon, and Neil Young are among the performers in Willie Nelson: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The special, which also includes Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah, airs Friday, January 15, at 8 p.m.

Willie Nelson, the 2015 recipient of The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song

include jazz guitarist Frank Vignola (January 8) and acoustic guitarist Tommy Emmanuel (January 29).

Great Performances at the Met will present 10 operas for its 10th season on PBS. The first, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, airs Friday, January 22, at 8 p.m. At the heart of this multifaceted story is a woman who sacrifices her life for the love of a Gypsy troubadour. Il Trovatore marks the Met debut of tenor Yonghoon Lee in the title role and that of soprano Anna Netrbko as the opera’s heroine. Mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick sings her signature role of the gypsy Azucena, and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is the evil Count di Luna. na Start 2016 off by showing your support for NPT by going to www.wnpt.org and clicking the donate button. To watch encore presentations of many of NPT programs, tune in to secondary channel NPT2.

Music City Roots Live from the Factory continues Fridays at 7 p.m. Be sure to look out for Music Gone Public, a series of concerts edited for public television, Fridays at 11 p.m. This season’s performers

Yonghoon Lee as Manrico in "Great Performances at the Met: Il Trovatore"

Photograph by Marty Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera

ARTISTS’ STORIES

A Craftsman’s Legacy continues Sunday nights at 10 p.m. with host Eric Gorges visiting metal engraver David Riccardo (January 3), North Carolina wood turner Alan Hollar (January 10 at 10:30 p.m.), master weaver Juanita Hofstrom (January 31), and others.

Courtesy of David McClister

January on NPT is packed with premieres and specials, starting 6:30 p.m. New Year’s Day with the annual From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2016 on Great Performances. That is followed at 8 p.m. by a new Sherlock feature set in Victorian times. Sunday, January 3, at 8 p.m. the sixth and final season of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece gets underway. Later in the week, the seventh season of Doc Martin premieres on Thursday, January 7, at 8 p.m. Finally, Mercy Street—the first original American drama series by PBS in more than a decade—premieres Sunday, January 17, at 9 p.m. Inspired by real people, the series is set in Civil War-era Virginia at a Union hospital offering care to soldiers on both sides of the divide.

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SYMPHONYINDEPTH JANUARY 2016 Symphony Goes ‘Al Fresco’ with 2016 Amphitheater Concerts It’s an exciting time to be a music lover in Nashville. Along with a thriving scene for music venues of every size, our city has become home to a number of outdoors festivals and, most excitingly, a new amphitheater downtown attracting major acts from every genre.

This is especially thrilling news for the Nashville Symphony, which has long dreamed of an outdoor venue where the orchestra could perform for diverse audiences of all ages.

Boyz II Men

Courtesy of NSO

“The opening of the amphitheater is great for Middle Tennessee and it reflects the incredible growth of our city, but it’s also a big development at an important time for us as well,” says Alan D. Valentine, Symphony president and CEO. “So many of our peer orchestras around the country enjoy the benefits of a summer home, so finally adding one of our own fills a big need and enhances our reputation nationally.”

Recording Artists Styx

Courtesy of NSO

Many other orchestras across the country enjoy similar venues: Los Angeles has its celebrated Hollywood Bowl, Boston has Tanglewood, and Cleveland has Blossom Music Center. Now with the opening of Ascend Amphitheater, the Nashville Symphony will be able to reach even more music fans, expand its programming, and build on the turnaround it has engineered in recent years.

Nestled along the downtown waterfront with sweeping views of the city’s skyline, the state-of-the-art Ascend Amphitheater promises to deliver the same outstanding concert experience Nashville Symphony patrons have come to expect at Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

“Ascend is a beautifully crafted facility that will provide the optimal outdoor performance venue for our musicians,” says Sonja Winkler, senior director of operations and orchestra manager. “Great care was taken to outfit the space with ample room for the orchestra and its equipment, and the E-coustics (electronic acoustic) shell and versatile production staff ensure that we won’t miss a beat when we take our music outdoors.”

The inaugural slate of the Symphony’s amphitheater performances, which begins in May, features a lineup worthy of the sparkling new venue. Styx will kick off the Symphony’s outdoor summer season May 21, an ideal date for the group, whose last Nashville appearance with the orchestra was hampered by a winter ice storm last February. On June 4, the orchestra plays a starring role in an evening devoted to the music of America’s most beloved composer, John Williams. It’ll be a night of classical film music from Star Wars, E.T., and much more. Later in the fall, on September 11, Boyz II Men return to perform with the orchestra classic ’90s tunes, including “Motownphilly” and “End of the Road.”

“There is something so special about attending a symphony concert beneath the stars,” Winkler adds. “We’re really looking forward to providing a whole new experience for audiences this summer.” na For more information, visit www.NashvilleSymphony.org/amphitheater.

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artState SMART of the Arts

Photograph by Jerry Atnip

A monthly guide to art education

Words by Jennifer Cole, Executive Director, Metro Nashville Arts Commission Photography by Dr. Ryan Jackson

I meet arts naysayers every day. They claim to not “understand” fine arts, when in fact our lives are punctuated by the influence of art on pop culture, products we use, and phrases we utter.

We “curate” our playlists on Pandora, work in offices that have been carefully shaped by architects and interior designers and are beholden to smartphones, the very embodiment of high art and technology. In December, the president signed the most sweeping update for public education in the last decade. It begins to peel back some of the high-stakes testing that marginalized arts education in many communities and provides a clear definition of art and music education as core subjects along with English and math. Perhaps most important, the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act, drafted by Tennessee’s own U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, acknowledges the inclusion of ART into the decades-old focus on science, technology, engineering, and math in American schools. This move to STEAM opens doors for more arts integration in “hard skills” subject areas and allocates resources for the intersection of innovation, art, design, and technology in classrooms across the country.

This is a win for kids and for communities. The STEAM approach unlocks the natural curiosity of students, the drive to solve problems and the required life skills of teamwork and creative failure. Locally, we have a bit of STEAM rock star in Dr. Ryan Jackson, the lead principal of Maplewood High School’s Academy of Energy and Power.

Jackson is a thinker, preacher, and Twitter phenom who believes that STEAM is “the perfect marriage of what occurs when digitally native teens meet millennial teachers and together unleash the innate power of self-expression.” Students at Maplewood daily explore what Jackson dubs #ArtsAntidote, the idea that students want to solve problems that affect their lives through art and creative approaches. In other words, art is the natural learning mode for Generation Z. Last fall, students noodled in a project-based learning cohort about what it would take to colonize Mars. They focused on the energy to get there, the terraforming required to transform a planet to produce food and breathable air, oh, and space suits. Enter Nashville-based designer Amanda Valentine. Valentine connected to the project and helped students work through design challenges of constructing spacesuits that might be part of a colonization project. The inclusion of an art-and-design angle moved the project from a linear science exploration to that of a 360-degree life project. The tangible connection to local designers helped students see the practical and career links between manufacturing, industrial design, advanced materials, and yes, Mars.

This year, the Panther Nation has learned to program drones for positive applications such as painting (#createnotdestroy) and is working with Salemtown Board Company to study the physics of skateboarding while designing custom boards in the classroom.

This is a mirror of the modern workplace—teamwork, tricky problems, no single answer. It is also fun. And for kids in one of highest poverty zip codes in the county, it is “another world.” Jackson proves every day that the 16 year old who can curate their life on Instagram and SnapChat is drawn to learn in this way that is driven by self-exploration and personal power. This is STEAM, and it is the future of learning in American public schools.

For more information about the Congressional STEAM Caucus, visit www.stemtosteam.org.

Follow Dr. Ryan Jackson on Twitter at @RyanBJackson1, or visit his blog on the power of STEAM at www.underdogsadvocate.wordpress.com.

“

This is STEAM, and it is the future of learning in American public schools.

by Cassie Stephens Art Teacher, Johnson Elementary

Photograph by Juan Pont Lezica

A Day in the Life of an ‘Art Teacherin’ Lady’

When folks ask me what I do for a living—that is if they can’t figure it out by the paint splattered clothes, the clay under my nails, and the glue in my hair—I tell them I’m an art teacher. Or, as I like to call myself, an Art Teacherin’ Lady. After making that announcement, my curious inquirer will do or say one of two things: 1. Get a faraway look in their eye and recount their favorite art class experience. Like the checkout clerk at my favorite grocery who told me all about his teacher singing his praises after he learned to shade a piece of fruit.

2. Or, with a shudder and a pause, tell me some wild tale of their “crazy art teacher.” Like the story I heard of one who knitted a sweater from her child’s hair that would tickle her students’ faces as she bent down to help them with their work.

Kaelyn Richardson

Which could only lead an art teacher such as myself to assume the following: We art teachers are a special bunch with the ability to touch our students lives. But they would prefer that not mean being tickled by a hair-knit sweater (shivers).

If I’m to tell you honestly what it is like to educate children on the wonderment that is art-making then I must let you know, it is overwhelming for the over-thinker. Every day I strive to introduce my students to new vocabulary, a touch of art history, a splash of contemporary art, and still allow them time to create their own individual masterpieces. I often get so stressed trying to do it all that I lose sight what is most important—the young artists themselves.

Aayden Hayes, Elizabeth Brown and Samuel Hendry

For example, on a recent half day, I made the “mistake” of overbooking my classes. I took on a kindergarten and a third grade class at the same time. We had just a mere 30 minutes together. So I scrapped the vocabulary and art history lesson. Instead, I paired each “biggin’ ” with a “little,” and assigned them the task of creating a collaged cottage for our winter mural. Near the end of the class, each house was displayed with a round of applause and acknowledgement for each artist. When I told the kids it was time to go, the biggins wailed, “No!” and hugged their new kindergarten artist friends tightly.

No one said, “what about art history? What about art vocabulary?”

Instead they cried, “When can we do this again?”

It was then I realized that what my students value, cherish and learn from the most is a positive experience that involves learning (without realizing) and praise for a job well done. Like the experiences of my checkout-clerk buddy, who has such fond memories of an art teacher who knew how to reach her students. That is, without tickling them with a human hair knit sweater. Although, let’s face it, in the art world, it truly does take all kinds.

Priscilla Hayden and Daniel Galindo

On The Horizon

Visual Artists Shine at University School of Nashville Words by Rebecca Pierce Photography by Tiffani Bing

INGRID KOMISAR

“I knew I wanted to be a photographer when I was 13, and opened up my own business for it when I was 16, so I’ve known for a while this is something that I want to do for the rest of my life,” says Ingrid Komisar. “I am going to major in photography in college and continue running my business after that.”

Right now, she is working on an incredible number of different projects for both school and her photography business. She is helping a model develop her portfolio so she can get signed with an agency. She is doing an independent study focusing on portraiture. She is taking an advanced photography class, which requires a new project every two weeks. Ingrid photographs all the sports events at USN, and in her own time she’s doing a series in which she includes objects that don’t belong, like a pineapple in a pool or a fish in a bathtub.

“I feel like sometimes people overlook photography,” she says. “Some don’t consider it an art because you are just capturing something. However, a huge part of art is how you capture things. Once you see something a certain way, and you capture it, it’s completely different from the way anyone else sees it. It opens up people’s minds in ways that other kinds of art I don’t think could. I love knowing that my photographs could have the power to change how someone sees something, so I strive to make my work unique.”

BEN WERTHER

Ingrid Komisar, Knee Deep, 2015, Digital photograph

In terms of making art, Ben Werther sees himself as Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill every day only to have it roll back down.

“Last year I was doing the same thing over and over again, and I wasn’t thinking consciously about what I was making,” Ben says.

“Over the summer I started really thinking about my work and realized that I need to improve upon everything I do. So that’s kind of like pushing the rock up the hill. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but that’s how I see me making art. If I am working on a project and I don’t think it’s better than the last thing I did, I’ll quit. It’s constantly learning and improving. That applies to the concepts behind my work too.”

He takes copious notes and pictures to generate ideas. Television, books, phrases, and imagery he sees on walks inspire him. “It may not mean anything at the time,” he says, “but later I might be flipping through my book and discover a concept.”

Currently Ben is working with graphite, but he also likes sculpture.

He’s been making drawings of surfaces that appear threedimensional and wants to learn to work in more mediums so that he has additional outlets for self-expression.

Ben Werther, Fishing in the Grey, 2015, Graphite on paper, 10” x 12”

Ben definitely plans to study art in college.

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“I just decided that this is what I have to do,” he says. “Why waste your time doing something you don’t really want to do if you have the option?”

HENRY CONDON

Henry Condon prefers sculpting with clay as opposed to using a wheel to make pots or bowls.

“The entire process of shaping the clay into whatever I want and have my piece turn out exactly as I’ve pictured it is always extremely satisfying,” he says, smiling.

His first exposure to ceramics was in the sixth grade when he started at USN. He had never considered it before then, but he enjoyed it so much that he started taking every ceramics class he could.

Henry says that he thinks his strengths lie in knowing what he wants to make, and his patience.

“I don’t think there has been an instance where I’ve had no idea what to create, and it doesn’t matter to me how long it will take to finish a piece because working with clay is a total escape,” he says. “I have a clear image in my mind of what I want to make and how to make it. It feels very rewarding when I see the finished piece.”

One of Henry’s goals is to learn additional techniques to make his work even more

Henry Condon, Octopus, 2015, Clay, 12” x 12” x 15”

intricate. He has a lot of tiny tools for detailing, but would like to find more. Henry says he will continue making art, but plans to study engineering in college.

“I really love engineering, and I love my art, and I hope I can incorporate it in some way,” he says. “To me art is more like a hobby and it is very, very relaxing. I love doing it.”

Roxy Haines has been interested in art for as long as she can remember.

“Since my parents are both artists, they introduced me to art early and I have stuck with it,” she says.

Growing up in an artistic environment has given her a well-developed view of art.

“There are so many different artists and styles that I like it is difficult to choose just one,” she says. “I like some of the classical sculptors because of the realism and beauty they can bring to the form. It can look amazingly real but not be correct. I also like Goya because of the raw emotion he brings to his art. You can see what’s going on in his head.

And Banksy brings a new light to art, something different with a political standpoint but still very creative.”

Roxy religiously sketches every day, and she likes working with pencil because it is easily and always available. She also does digital work and three-dimensional art with clay and mixed media. Roxy has explored working on comics and with animation and is looking forward to taking an animation class next semester.

She keeps her imagination alive by letting it run free and usually creates characters and stories around each work she creates.

“Like when I am falling asleep and an idea comes to me I write it down and let it flow,” she says. “I don’t push it away.”

Roxy Haines, Creator, 2014, Mixed media, 12” x 3” x 4”

Roxy is applying to colleges with programs in animation and game design.

ROXY HAINES

Photograph by Ron Manville

ANDSOITGOES

BY RACHAEL McCAMPBELL

Rachael McCampbell is an artist, teacher, curator, and writer who resides in the small hamlet of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. For more about her, please visit www.rachaelmccampbell.com.

Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal …

But Do They Sleep Well at Night?

Actually, it’s been said it may even help them. The spread of a new style creates a trend, a fashion cycle, that might not have happened had it not been for the spreading of that idea through knock-offs.

In the fields of music and art, however, trends don’t come and go in the same way as the fashion world. A song can be financially impactful for decades as can a painted image. Illegal sampling of songs has become a tremendous issue for record labels and their artists; and in the visual arts, famous artists and their estates are constantly issuing cease-and-desist letters to people using their images on products that are not licensed.

Most artists are under the impression that once someone creates a piece of art, it’s automatically copyright protected— and since 1989 it is to some extent. But if someone copies your work, an artist doesn’t have much of a case unless the work has been properly registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

But what about copyrighting a style? What if an artist, for example, has spent a lifetime creating a distinctive style, and gets blatantly imitated by another artist? Can the artist sue the imitator for stealing their imagery and/or style?

I asked Nashville copyright lawyer Mark Patterson about this.

“Copyright protection exists from the moment the artist embodies the artistic work in a tangible form, which can include digital media,” Patterson says. “Copyright registration is optional for the protection to exist, but is required before a lawsuit can be filed against an infringer. Also, if an infringement commences before registration is obtained, some of the legal remedies available to the copyright owner [aka the artist] may be lost. To establish that an artistic work has been “copied” for purposes of copyright infringement, there must be: (a) proof that the alleged infringer had access to the artist’s work; and (b) substantial similarity between the artist’s work and the alleged infringing work. Merely changing an “element” in the work will not by itself be a defense if the overall work is substantially similar. On the other hand, mimicking an artist’s style is not copyright infringement if the works themselves are not copied.”

Walker Evans photo of Allie Mae Burroughs, 1936, for his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941, that Sherrie Levine photographed in 1981

They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. But is it?

Media sources encourage us to follow the latest trends. Every season, we are told what the new “in” color will be; and it’s an accepted fact that within days of a couture fashion show, knock-offs of the top designers’ wares will be on the streets at a fraction of the price. But does this hurt the top designers?

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But in the fine-art world, the boundaries between art that has been changed enough and blatantly copied are blurred, to say the least. The courts’ determinations on copyright cases are often grey, and seem subjective and inconsistent.

Shepard Fairey, for example, famously took an Associated Press photographer’s image of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, altered it, and put the word “HOPE” below it. He sold posters, T-shirts, and buttons, which resulted in it becoming the most iconic image of the 2008 presidential campaign. The

Photograph by Wesley Duffee-Braun

mixed-media stencil portrait was even sold to the Smithsonian for its National Portrait Gallery. However, it was determined that Fairey falsified evidence of his original source photo, saying that he had transformed the image enough to constitute “fair use” under copyright law, when in fact he has used a different photo as a resource by the same AP photographer. In the end, Fairey had to share future rights to the “Hope” image with the AP, provide the news agency an undisclosed amount of money, pay $25,000 in fines, and complete 300 hours of community service for falsifying and destroying evidence.

Yet, on the flip side, is the artist Elaine Sturtevant, who made a fine art career of copying famous paintings by Warhol, Jasper Johns, and others, not as a forger, but as a conceptual artist signing her name on the back. She was interested in the idea of authenticity, originality, icons, artist celebrity, and the art market’s ever-changing styles.

The curator of a major exhibition of Sturtevant’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Peter Eleey, said, “In some ways, style is her medium.” Ironically, Sturtevant’s reworking of Roy Lichtenstein’s print of Crying Girl sold at auction in 2011 for $632,100 more than Lichtenstein’s original print version only four years earlier.

Then again, there’s Jeff Koons’ famous case where he used a postcard of a photo of a man and woman holding puppies and created a 3D sculpture of that image with clear changes, String of Puppies, and was sued. The court deemed that Koons had not altered the image enough under the “fair use” protection. He didn’t even make an exact copy of a photograph, he made a sculpture based on a photograph and lost.

Hope poster/button by Shepard Fairey of Barack Obama based on a 2006 AP photo of George Clooney and Barack Obama

Sherrie Levine, who created a series called After Walker Evans, where she photographed Walker Evans’ iconic photographs from his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, thought she was protected since the photographs were part of the public domain, but Evans’ estate sued and won gaining the rights to Levine’s series. To make things even more complicated, the conceptual artist Michael Mandiberg came along and created a digital appropriation piece of Sherrie Levine’s photos of photos with the website, www.aftersherrielevine.com, where one can download and print out copies of Sherrie Levine’s copies of Walker Evans photographs, with a certificate of authenticity for each image. At this point, who owns the copyright to any of it?

Back to the artist who knowingly imitates another artist’s style, gives that artist no credit, and goes on to license the imagery to be printed on napkins and cell-phone covers. There’s the saying, often attributed to Picasso, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Yes, but do they sleep well at night? If you are an artist who borrows or appropriates from others as a part of your statement, then be aware that the laws are ambiguous and the courts could easily side for or against you. In my opinion, to avoid copyright infringement issues, work on creating a unique style and imagery that you alone generate. Isn’t that one of the biggest perks about being an artist anyway—that you get to express your original thoughts and feelings? na For more information on copyright laws and how to register your work, visit www.copyright.gov.

At Ground Floor Gallery

Jim Robert at The Rymer Gallery

Jessica Rudolph, Matt Fish, Jacob Robertson, Angela Perez at The Arts Company

Mary and Walt Schatz at Haynes Galleries

ARTSEE

ARTSEE

Photograph by Caroline Davis

ARTSEE

Jessica Shealy and Arielle Myles at The Rymer Gallery

Anna Jaap and Steve Sirls at Parish-Hadley celebration at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film

Stephen Watkins at Corvidae Collective

Photograph by Tony Youngblood

Photograph by Tony Youngblood

Paul Polycarpou and John Baeder during artist talk at Haynes Galleries

Exhibiting photographer Annika Baker at artist reception and talk at The Red Arrow Gallery

Crowd at artist reception and talk at The Red Arrow Gallery

Photograph by Caroline Davis

Angela Burgess and Kim Plummer at The Rymer Gallery

Watkins College of Art, Design & Film Commissioner Susan Basham, Interior Design Chair Cheryl Gulley, and Watkins Vice President for Institutional Advancement Hilrie Brown, with sketches by Albert Hadley

Micaela Bray at Coop Gallery

Carlos Trenary at Tinney Contemporary

Megan Kelley leading interactive art project at 40AU

Jessica Wayda and Evan Vaughn at The Rymer Gallery

Jason Lascu and Mark Hosford at CG2

Dan Hoy and Maggie Welles at CG2

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN JACKSON

ARTSEE

ARTSEE

Katlyn Mountain at The Arts Company

Kylie Condon and Kevin Brennan at Julia Martin Gallery

ARTSEE

Gary Haynes, Se単or McGuire, and Amy Richmond at Haynes Galleries

Wynn Smith and Charlie Duncan at 444 Humphreys Pop-Up

Nikole Martine and Adam Cohen at Julia Martin Gallery

Alarick Pruitt, Michelle Pruitt, Bev Martin, Keegan Shea at Julia Martin Gallery

Michelle Steele at Julia Martin Gallery

Jason S. Brown at Ground Floor Gallery

PAINTTHETOWN

BY EMME NELSON BAXTER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIFFANI BING

Literary Award Gala Parties Literary Award Gala 2015

Dara Russsell and Jeff McMahon

Collins Hooper with Ann Teaff and Don McPherson

Kenneth and Sandra Parham Literary Award Gala 2015

Kindy Hensler

Living in Nashville, we are spoiled to have on any given weekend the opportunity to hear stellar local talent perform at benefits – from blue jean to black-tie affiars. Hopefully, we don’t take this for granted.

Earlier this year, when a certain Music City resident was named to be honored by a certain venerable nonprofit, you can bet no one thought, “ho hum…”

Jennifer Frist, Jon Meacham, and Kate Ezell

David Fox, Julia Landstreet, Brooks and Bert Mathews

Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham was presented with the Nashville Public Library’s Literary Award. Meacham joined a formidable gang of award winners, including John Irving, Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Billy Collins and Ann Patchett.

Going local meant nabbing the talk of the nation, esteemed biographer Meacham whose tome on George Herbert Walker Bush was hot off the press. Organizers could not have attracted a bigger national act on the literary scene.

Beth Alexander and Dr. John Frist, and Jillian Waters

So between interviews with Fox News to the The New York Times, Meacham took time on November 6th to venture a half mile from his house to library patron Margaret Ann Robinson’s stately residence on Belle Meade Boulevard. There, he sat down with Nashville native cum Al Jazeera America news anchorman John M. Seigenthaler for a conversation in front of 250 library patrons who paid $850 per person for the opportunity.

Meacham began by halfway kiddingly saying that the 41st president is “one of the most underrated presidents…something which I hope to change by Christmas.”

John Seigenthaler Portrait by Michael Shane Neal

Anne Davis and Karl Dean with Sherry and Dudley West

Prior to the intimate interview, guests sipped cocktails as a specially commissioned portrait of John Seigenthaler Sr., painted by Michael Shane Neal, was unveiled.

Post interview, the party dispersed for the dining room where Sargent’s Fine Catering had prepared a substantial buffet.

The patrons party was cohosted by Jean Ann and Barry Banker, Mary and John Bettis, Barbara and Jack Bovender, Annette Eskind, Heloise Kuhn, and Stephanie and John Ingram.

Adam and Julie Dretler with Jan and Steve Riven

Later, on November 14th, the black-tie Literary Award Gala, a $600 per person fundraiser for the Nashville Public Library Foundation, was held at the downtown building. Kate Ezell and Jennifer Frist chaired the sold-out event. Kristen Winston catered. Big Events Inc. handled the

Libby Page

Photograph by Tiffani Bing

Emme is a seventh-generation Nashvillian and president of Nelson Baxter Communications LLC.

Owen and Ann Kelly Torry and Mary Leyden Johnson with Barry and Jean Ann Banker

Tom and Ann Curtis with Lucy and Jeff Haynes

Steven and Kat Ezell and Jennifer and Billy Frist

dramatic décor in the Grand Reading Room where dinner was held. Think sapphire blue lighting and ghost chairs circling tables.

Michael Shane Neal and Jennifer Puryear

Guests left these intellectually scintillating parties realizing they had made investments in themselves as much as they had the organization.

Katie Crumbo and Matt and Sanders Miller

John Seigenthaler Jr. and Delores Seigenthaler

Ann Patchett and Jon Meacham

Annette Eskind, Kate Grayken, and Margaret Ann Robinson

Sparkle and Twang This year’s iteration of Sparkle and Twang—a benefit for The Tennessee State Museum—saluted 2015 Costume and Textile Institute inductees.

This year’s crop featured fashion journalist Libby Callaway, textile artist Andra Eggleston, apparel designer Maria Silver, jewelry designer Diana Warner and fashion entrepreneur Barry Wishnow. The vibe was heavy on sequins and bling, with an altogether edgy, party-ready feel.

Karen Brick Werthan and Barry Wishnow

Event chairs were Marcia Masulla and Austin Pennington.

Held at the Lexus of Nashville dealership on Rosa Parks Boulevard, the $90-per-person event featured drinks, heavy hors d’oeuvres, music, a silent auction and the induction itself.

Rob Beach, Sarah Silva, Terry Vo, and Brian Gordon

Tricia Ericson, Gigi Crouch, and Patti Crane

John Finger and Judi Caston

Tammy Boone, Brittainy Jones, Stevee Curtis, Nathan Mott, Kim Skallcross, and Gigi Crouch

Liz McDermott, Terry MacIlvain, and Lois Riggins-Ezzell

Marianne and Andrew Byrd

Cynthia Brewer

Gloria Houghland and Chuck Welch

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

This just in …

King Lear makes rare Nashville appearance!

King Lear hasn’t been spotted in Nashville in many a fortnight.

The last anyone had heard, he’d gone mad. As with most kings, it didn’t happen all at once; it was a gradual descent.

Fortunately, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival has found him, King Lear, buried deep inside a good book and is preparing him for the stage as part of their ninth annual Winter Shakespeare season at Belmont University's Troutt Theater January 8-31.

This King Lear will be Nashville’s first full, professional production of the famous tragedy—previous productions were presented by community theatres or have been adaptations of the original story—and will feature live, original music. It also features David Landon, Ph.D., professor of theatre arts at The University of the South, Sewanee, who will play King Lear. It’s a role he has studied for decades.

“I am, unsurprisingly, thrilled and honored to be working on Lear with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, such a vital part of the impressive and thriving Nashville theatre scene,” Landon says. “In a way, this project is a kind of homecoming. I began my acting career in Nashville.”

Package? This one-of-a-kind Shakespearean gift includes tickets, VIP seating and parking, a pre-show reception, and a post-show meet-and-greet. All proceeds support the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s educational outreach and programming. A Royal package is $100, 75 percent of which is tax deductible.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, ”No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear.” You decide. na Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s presentation of King Lear will take place January 8–31 at Belmont's Troutt Theater.

For more information, visit www.nashvilleshakes.org.

“

Over the last few years, we’ve received many requests from the community for a professional production of King Lear,” says Denice Hicks, executive director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival. “We are happy to finally bring the story of King Lear and his three daughters to life.

Photograph by Jeff Frazier

Landon teaches acting, physical comedy, and solo performance, and is a frequent director and actor for Theatre/ Sewanee. He has played leading roles at the Heritage Repertory Company, the Arkansas Rep, Alabama Shakespeare Company, and the New York Shakespeare Festival, as well as roles in film and television. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Vanderbilt University.

Photograph by Jeff Frazier

Nashville Shakespeare’s King Lear promises to warm our literary hearts this winter. For some, that alone will serve. But, for those looking for a little more fun, how about the Royal

Amanda Card as Cordelia, David Landon as King Lear, Nettie Kraft as Goneril and Shannon Hoppe as Regan

Becky Wahlstrom as the Fool and David Landon as King Lear

ARTAROUND

James Mortimer

Courtesy of James Mortimer

BY SARA LEE BURD

James Mortimer A Meeting of the Artist’s Mind

Coconut Man, Oil on canvas, 14” x 10”

Young, intelligent, skilled, and ambitious, painter James Mortimer creates worlds and concocts tales in his artwork.

His training in painting and sculpture at the Bath School of Art provided Mortimer the art historical background to engage the lessons of artists past. His imagery of human and animal interactions echoes Frida Kahlo’s dark humor, and his occasional naïve style recalls Henri Rousseau’s paintings of landscape settings that also portrayed imagined lore.

Mortimer’s use of foregrounded figures set against retreating landscapes recalls perspectives by Fra Angelico combined with dreamlike overtones of the morbid, occult, and erotic à la Symbolist Puvis de Chavannes.

While the Bath-based painter’s stylistic lineage peaks through, his work is hardly derivative. The figures, narratives, and palettes are all his own—neither blatantly contemporary nor pulled from a specific time in the past. Considered controversial by some, Mortimer’s paintings arouse a connection with the darker side of life that exists below the surface of polite society, one that embraces temptation, indulgence, danger, and decadence. As Mortimer recalls, “a few of the tutors absolutely hated my work and one described it as ‘the product of a disturbed mind, deeply misogynistic— horrible.’” This type of review compels attention, and the young artist’s career has taken off with his most recent exhibition at the prestigious Catto Gallery in London. By blending various moments from the history of art with his own quirky and often mischievous perspective, he creates distinct work that resonates widely. na For more information, please visit www.jamesmortimerart.com.

The Wheat Field, Oil on canvas, 14” x 10”

Burning House, Oil on canvas, 39” x 30”

Monkey and Melons, Oil on canvas, 14” x 10”

Man with Stick, Oil on canvas, 14” x 10”

The Frenzy, Oil on canvas, 14” x 10”

Socially Engaged Art Photograph by Tony Youngblood

Design Studio Pairs Artists with Activists

Kenneth Bailey lecturing at “Insight? Outta Sight!“

In November, Seed Space’s lecture series “Insight? Outta Sight!” brought Kenneth Bailey, co-founder of Boston’s Design Studio for Social Intervention. Bailey and his team see an intersection between social justice workers and artists. He says the thinking that comes out of the art world—about form, gesture, beauty, and aesthetics—can be brought to bear on solving problems within communities.

When Bailey was just 12 years old, he was already working in his community for tenants’ rights in St. Louis. At 30, when he was doing social-justice consulting and research, he started to notice that when methods didn’t work, organizers were stymied.

“We seemed fixed around the same solutions that we had, and we didn’t have mechanisms with which to innovate solutions and new strategies,” he says.

Bailey calls this a “crisis of imagination,” in which leaders are locked in traditional approaches that don’t necessarily solve problems. DS4SI is an institution to instill imagination, giving community organizers and activists permission to criticize and re-imagine the tools they use. It pairs community organizers nonprofits with artists.

“Bodies of thinking that come out of art world having to do with form and gesture and beauty and aesthetics that can be brought to bear on how you describe the problem in the first place,” Bailey says. It’s an assets-based approach to problem solving that uses existing social relationships, individual gifts and skills, and untapped local resources.

A huge part of DS4SI’s work is coming up with horizontal strategies that are designed and deployed by the population experiencing the particular social problem. For example, Public Kitchen addressed food justice in public space when members of Boston’s Upham’s Corner worked with a chef and design collective to build and run a mobile kitchen. At the Studio’s Youth2Youth Action Summit in 2012, teens designed three public action projects that constructed symbols that interrupt youth-on-youth violence.

“We want to cut a piece of socially engaged art out and use it as a way to talk about artistic gestures that actually affect people in a way that has a soul change,” Bailey says.

For more information on the Design Studio for Social Intervention, visit www.ds4si.org.

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.

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CRITICALi

BY JOE NOLAN

The Labyrinth Decoded The Browsing Room at the Downtown Presbyterian Church through January 23 During the December Art Crawl, The Browsing Room at the Downtown Presbyterian Church opened The Labyrinth Decoded, a collaborative exhibition including work from Nashville artist Nick Hay and historian and space exploration pioneer E.C. Piedra. The exhibition suggests that telling stories is the hallmark of civilization, and to that end it incorporates images and ideas connected with the Greek myth of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. A didactic label on the wall features a text by mythologist Joseph Campbell. It reads in part:

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

In the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur the brave Theseus is tipped off by the beautiful Ariadne to tie a ball of string to the door of the labyrinth that the monster’s trapped in. After fighting and decapitating the beast, Theseus is able to find his way out of the maze by following the string.

Nicholas Hay, Untitled, 2015, Acrylic and paint markers on paper, 10” x 8”

The language of the myth and the string in the labyrinth both lead into and out of the heart of this hero’s journey both mythically and literarily. Hay and Piedra go one step further, replacing the language and the thread with their own analogs of paint and photography.

Hay’s large, colorful paintings on paper feature abstract textures, geometric designs and text arranged in architectural spaces. The pieces also incorporate painted text which connects to the Minotaur myth while also echoing elements in Piedra’s images.

Piedra isn’t an active visual artist, but his contributions to this show are striking. Utilizing archival photographs Piedra reimagines Cold War-era U.S. missile silo bunkers as labyrinths of a different kind by using red ink to superimpose elements on exterior and interior snaps of the bunkers. The best additions recall design schematics and remind viewers that the most monstrous mazes are often the ones we conceive for ourselves. na

Nicholas Hay, Untitled, 2015, Acrylic and paint markers on paper, 8” x 10”

The Labyrinth Decoded is on exhibit at The Browsing Room Gallery located in the Downtown Presbyterian Church, 154 5th Avenue North through January 23. For more information about Nick Hay visit www.nickhayart.com.

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Huh? . . .

My mother once told me the following story about memory loss or whatever it is that causes funny things to happen as we age.

She had driven to Aunt Liz's house. She was in her late eighties at the time, and my sister Dorothy was beginning to question her ability to drive. Okay. So when it came time to leave Aunt Liz's, Mother got in her car as usual, but then she noticed something wasn't right.

Her first thought was … Oh, my God, somebody stole my car radio! Her second was … Damn! I'm not making any progress getting home!

Then she came to a stark realization. Namely … she was sitting in the back seat.

The writer Lee Smith once said, "Proper nouns are the first to go at fifty." And it's true. I can recall, shortly after I turned fifty, telling a friend about the movie Moonstruck. "Oh, it was great!" I said, "It starred Cher and … you know … ah … Oh, what's his name?"

It was frightening at the time. I could see this actor's face clear-as day in my mind, but his name eluded me. I could recall trivial facts about him. I knew that he had a famous uncle who produced movies. That he was once married (briefly) to Lisa Marie Presley. I even knew his birthday, only because it was the same as mine. But I could not for the life of me come up with a name. The cell in my brain that stored his name wasn't speaking to me. Later that night, I bolted upright from a dead sleep shouting, "NICOLAS CAGE!!"

I once heard, at a lecture on the brain, that our conscious mind only uses seven percent of our brain. The other ninetythree percent deals with the subconscious. Dreams, ideas, songs … all the good stuff. It seems as we age, the line dividing the conscious and subconscious begins to get a little fuzzy. And that could be a good thing.

I hear people lamenting their memory loss left and right, but let's face it … there is a positive side. Memory loss keeps us in the moment. And therein lies a universe of happiness. 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 JOHN HINDLE, MARKETING CONSULTANT I first became aware of the sculpture in an online invitation from a gallery in Bath, England. I bought it immediately, sight unseen.

Unfamiliar with John Behan’s work, I began to understand through my research why it had so captured my imagination. Behan’s sculptures give voice to ancient themes—of identity, displacement and expatriation—through the metaphor of his native Irish culture and events, including the Great Famine. His countryman Seamus Heaney calls Behan’s works “vessels of spirit, symbols of human knowledge, images, as Yeats said, ‘that yet/Fresh images beget.’”

The piece is spare in execution and timeless in its simplicity, reflecting Behan’s belief that “Form is the dominant quality in sculpture . . . Then there’s the imagination.” Here, the stylized arrangement of oars and boat with its ghostly patina becomes hugely evocative—inviting the beholder aboard, bound for distant shores and unknowable futures.

John Behan, Ghost Oar Boat II, 2014, Bronze, ed/9, 15” x 22” x 11”

John Behan, Ghost Oar Boat II, 2014, Bronze, 15" x 22" x 11"

ARTIST BIO: John Behan

For me, it recalls the time when my family and I embarked on what turned out to be a 25year expatriate life in London—with hope and excitement for the future, tempered by sadness for the distance from friends, family, and familiar places—uncertain what our new life would bring.

Emotions not unlike those the 19th-century Irish felt, leaving their homeland under vastly different circumstances. Emotions familiar to any voyager in any era, I think.

Unsurprisingly, those same emotions arose again in 2014 when we sailed back to our native land, changed as it was—and as we had been—by time and experience. Today the piece is a constant reminder of our life’s journey, where we’ve been and where we might go next. na

Photograph by John Jackson

Born in Dublin in 1938, and now living and working in Galway, Ireland, John Behan RHA is firmly established as a sculptor of international stature. After an apprenticeship in metal work and welding, the foundations for Behan's success were laid in the ’60s, when he trained in London and Oslo and began to exhibit widely. He was a founder member of the New Artists’ group in 1962 and the innovative Project Art Centre in Dublin in 1967. He is a co-founder of the Dublin Art’s Foundry, established in 1970.

Behan has been awarded many honors over the years and is a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. In a general sense, he can be credited with playing a major part in the development of sculpture in Ireland over the past 50 years. In June 2000, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland, Galway. His major public commissions include Flight of Birds, Famine Ship, Tree of Liberty, Daedalus, Millennium Child, Arrival, and Equality Emerging.

John and Joan Hindle